Ore Changes, the problems with it.

[Karst]

I'll try to write a somewhat productive response here, although I must dismiss some of the assertions or their conclusions out of hand.
Particularly, roleplay concerns. Roleplay concerns can be worked with if and only if it fits into the balance. If it does not, roleplay isn't considered.
The fact that it's a roleplay server is primarily aimed at player interaction. Economic balance must always primarily consider, well....balance.

This is also why we cannot realistically base mining development on player opinions and community sentiment. If we did, everybody would present some justification for how their bases should buy ores, and how this and that route to other factions should be viable, and we would end up with exactly what we were trying to get rid of: Everything goes from everywhere to everyone.

This isn't necessarily a design philosophy that everyone will agree with, but for what it's worth I have for pretty much every critique of the streamlined system received a compliment for how we were finally doing something to concentrate activity.

In regards to piracy, not really sure what to say here as the poor attitudes many traders have towards pirates can't really be fixed with mining balance. The fences have been improved, from previously 70% of the main price to 80. That's a substantial boost to unlawfuls wishing to trade in particular, but also pirates looking to sell loot. Of course one will always make more money powertrading than pirating, but that's always been the case and always will be.

As for the last point, I'm afraid there will again be fundamental disagreement.
This isn't a singleplayer game where the maximum diversity of experience should be encouraged, nor a massively multiplayer game so populous that diversity can be encouraged much. Though the server has revived spectacularly from its darkest days, we're still running 50-100 people roughly, which isn't anywhere near enough to populate the environment with truly diverse routes. People inclined to take unusual routes can, as they always could, trade regular commodities - contrary to popular belief, your ship won't get instantly deleted if you ever load anything other than ore into it.

All that having been said, we might consider a public discord channel like the ID rework one for people to contribute to and discuss further mining changes, although given how controversial the topic is, I don't know how productive that would end up being.

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