The Kitty Update

[jammi]

That sounds nice, the problem is when all mining commodities of Bretonia (gold, beryllium, hydrocarbons) are now targetting Rheinland sellpoints. With this nerf, Bretonia does not have a mining commodity which is meant for Liberty.

Balancing trade routes should take into account more aspects, such as variation.

That is a good thing, isn't it? If anything, Liberty isn't the house which needs activity.

So what you're saying is that Liberty's corporate factions deserve to be punished because they unfortunately happen to have the server's start point located in one of their systems? Liberty has historically been afflicted by terrible ore balance from the mining mod's inception, which was generally handwaved with excuses like, "well, it's not like Liberty needs it, do they?"

Frankly, that's a terrible excuse, and only leads to sections of the playerbase being unfairly burdened by sub-par routes. It also reduces variation as Starflier and MacRae have stated, which is even more detrimental because people who get bored stop playing. Liberty's activity has generally been fairly lopsided in any case, with lots of pirates and military but a proportional dearth of corporate activity partially due to systematic, intentional neglect when it comes to ore balancing.

Honestly, I'd expect a less flippant attitude from the staff that are responsible for implementing ore prices in a manner that fosters good gameplay and preserves the server's overall wellbeing. I'd actually advocate for Pittsburgh to be rebalanced from an Omega 3 mining point, seeing as Manchester is no longer being considered a primary mining site.

Ores really shouldn't have optimal buy sites in the House that their mining system borders. Rebalancing to Pittsburgh Omega 3 would be particularly beneficial, seeing as it mines around twice as fast as Manchester. Based on that, a buff to Pittsburgh would enable a decent, medium-to-long route through to Liberty, while Manchester is still preserved as a slow, secondary field that isn't entirely useless.