• Add a new system of[color=#FF9900] "Approved Factions." An approved faction shall be a mining faction, that has applied and pledged to have a system of RP where members cooperate and function as they should in RP. They should be responsible for all of their members. and strictly weed out all of those that tear down their image. Meaning, make mining sacred!.
  a) Idea: These factions should petition their creation request to an official faction, OR to the community in the faction creation request thread
  
• Approved Factions aren't official. Meaning they do not have have the ability to set RP policy (like on the comm channel)
  
• Official Factions (which are inherently approved) shall also be given the ability to mine. they should be the source of light for everyone in disco. Official mining factions need to have the following responsibilities:
  a) They must do their best to set a good example to new players
  b) They must make very clear RP guidelines on the forums how to RP their faction. Not everybody is going to be reading the [story] lore of every faction, and to have simple RP guidelines is a better way to go.
  c) If someone who is applying to the official faction has "bad quality RP," do whatever it takes to change that, and to allow the members to join.
  
  
  A word on "approved factions":
  I think its clear not everybody wants to be in a faction. They would not like to be bossed around by the Official faction's non-canon RP at many times. Fact of the matter is that Mining isn't intended to be a solo work. Mining operations involve lots of miners and it involves lots of money something an indie usually doesn't have. Most people in RP are poor, and their corporation or debtor hold most of their stuff. unless a freelancer of course.
  Approved factions that have more members than official factions, and have proven to be just as good RPing the faction, should have a right to consume the Official faction's tag, and to take over the official faction's RP policy
  
  -Mining yields in coherence with above system-
  
  
• Raise Ore prices 3-4x
  
• Reduce Yields 3-4x
  
• All Mining IDs/IFFs will have their own base yield.
  
• All "Approved Factions" Will have 2x the mining yields of indies. (admin suggestion: If this is hard to implement via char name, Make a separate ID for factions that allow this bonus)
  
  Ore hauling should be a privilege: With a product that is in high demand, and very difficult to come by, Group mining operations are mandatory, for security and for mining speed.
  
  Roleplay Changes
  
  
• add rule 0.1 which clearly states that Cargo piracy is fully permissible and that all haulers and miners should be aware that Life sucks and wealth can be removed from them rather easily.
  
• Ore traffic should be severely reduced, open to a much fewer audience. This system encourages official shipping factions to take over the shipping process, however nothing says indies shouldn't be allowed to haul, they should be well aware of the next bullet.
  
• Since Ore is going to be so expensive and so hard to come by, Pirates may go out of their way to steal the ore. Cargo Piracy should be encouraged in general. That's how a lot of piracy works in the real word! Don't want all your ore to get stolen? hire security!
  

Quote:Add a new system of "Approved Factions." An approved faction shall be a mining faction, that has applied and pledged to have a system of RP where members cooperate and function as they should in RP. They should be responsible for all of their members. and strictly weed out all of those that tear down their image. Meaning, make mining sacred!.

Quote:Raise Ore prices 3-4x
Reduce Yields 3-4x

' Wrote:No.

' Wrote:[*] Raise Ore prices 3-4x
[*] Reduce Yields 3-4x

' Wrote:why?

Quote:Ilit speshul everything is bad.

Quote:an approved faction isn't an official faction. Its a mining opportunity for those that don't want to be in the official one.

' Wrote:This, bad.

It will take long time to fill up a transport, hours perhaps. Miner <-> transports is the basic interaction that will be reduced significantly.

Then the transports blow up somewhere with 200 million after failing to comply with a demand of let's say 90 million.

The level of whining will skyrocket compared to what is it now.

And I'm also strongly against the idea of approved factions with huge in-game advantage.

' Wrote:As I've said before:

- Drop ore prices by 75%
- <strike>Quadruple</strike> Triple the bonuses MiningMod applies to ore drops.

Result: ~20% profit drop in mining, ore becomes equally valuable to the standard commodity which makes piracy a lot simpler, mining requires more transportation then actual shooting rock.
Subresult: Less hanging around the mining fields, more moving around Sirius. Activity disperses. Mining factions remain a viable option.

I guess this just leaves ferrying scientists in ore tankers and trains around as moneymaker? [/Annoyed]

' Wrote:yes piracy will be brutal and painful. This is something you have to deal with.

' Wrote:If you want to discuss suggestions, I offer you one. That one seems to have been unnoticed in the main thread, so I decided to propose it here. I just want to know other people's opinions on that one. And I used BMM as an example here.
This proposal seems interesting. However, I'd say that dropping ore prices by 55-60% would be enough. Also, double the bonuses of the mining mod. This may help with the following:

1) Solo-Hegemon mining becomes nerfed enough (may also nerf Hegemon's speed/agility and cargo hold, but buff armor, to make it more like a mobile mining base; who knows, maybe depriving the Hegemon of thruster in the long run will do the trick).
2) As for those, who switch to their traders and grab their own ore... Maybe buffing trading (even by 10%) will make them forget about mining. So, we'll get the powertraders (since we're going to get them anyway), but we will get rid of some powerminers.

I'll use BMM as an example (just the first mining faction that came to mind). I was thinking of adding more than 1 ore-buying point (e.g., let the BMM drop ore somewhere in Bretonia for a small sum like 800 per unit), but now player factions can arrange that without admin interference (since the Barge was introduced). I imagine it as something like: BMM sign a contract with Bowex, deliver the ore to Bowex barge, get their share. Then Bowex traders get the cargo from the barge and deliver it to the destination. The profits would not be as high as they used to be, but people will have RP and factions will actually cooperate.

What we need is to find the balance between time and profit: hauling ore must be profitable enough for Bowex (so that they prefer hauling to simple trading), but solo mining+selling ore must be worse in terms of time/money balance than simple trading.

Some other thoughts about mining. These are improvements that could be done to get rid of the problems of the previous mining system.
Add more mining fields with various ore-dropping points. I'd really like to see at least one mining field in Liberty (in Pennsylvania, Colorado, or somewhere else), and at least one field somewhere around Kusari (Sigmas, GMG and gas mining).

I don't know whether adding real gas mining is possible without making a patch. My point on this matter is: why invent something new when you can just make some asteroid fields drop "Gas" commodity? I am aware that it would not look true-to-life, but there're many things on Discovery that look like they'd look in RL (e.g., human guns on nomad morphs, etc). This may be the temporary solution, but it's something that may be done, sort of a compromise.

By adding mining fields for GMG and DSE we will:
1) Give activity boost to DSE and GMG.
2) Provide Kusari with some activity (by putting dropping points there, at least the dropping point for DSE-mined commodity).

General result: mining nerfed enough, trading buffed a bit, powerminers switch to powertrading (though it doesn't mean they'll spread all over Sirius; still we'll get powertraders anyway, without mining mod or with the mining mod nerfed enough), mining provides more RP for both trading and mining factions.