Announcement: OF Mining Bonuses

[Haste]

33% is simply a very large mining rate increase. We've known this for a long time, and it definitely was a concern while balancing NuMining, for example. You want players to have to spend a certain minimum amount of time in the field to be exposed to hostiles. With a bonus as large as 33% in the game, you're then forced into one of two choices:

• Accept that OFs' mining time will be well below your intended minimum time spent.
  
• Instead design the bonus around OFs' mining rate, making indie mining feel awful.
  

I picked the first of these options, as I think it's the (far) lesser evil. However, it doesn't change that it's just a very large jump. I've thought about adding similar (credit) bonuses for non-mining factions: drop-rate bonuses for PvE for combat-focused factions, additional payouts for trading for OF shipping factions, etc., and I'd never even consider a value as high as 33%. Realistically, you'd end up somewhere around the 10-15% mark -- a nice perk, that feels good to have, but isn't essential to enjoying the activity. And that's where mining bonuses are, now.

Plus, it wouldn't surprise me if this change results in the average mining bonus of OFs going up, considering a lot of 3.0s were increased to 3.5.

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