Mining

[Encheta]

I never really wanted to get into this long arguement about mining, spanning over a number of threads now, but I think the main problem is that the mining system is being balanced to certain requirements that can only be met on very rare occasions.

Unselie, you keep saying things like doing mining/trade parties that require 4 haulers. While I agree that mining has to be a teamworking effort, it is very hard to get that sort of ratio - and this is coming from one of the leaders of arguably the biggest mining faction on the server. The amount of times I hear members screaming over our faction skype chat for more traders is uncountable, and it often just gets to the point where the miner just gives up, logs off their IMG, and does something else (pirating mostly, probably to go vent their frustrations). The amount of effort required to get the numbers for a profitable event goes up exponentially the more mining yeild is reduced, and this is for a faction - an independant miner is in no way going to get 4 traders (with decent ships) to carry his ore for him. If it took me 20mins of system chat spruking for someone to tractor up some spare niobium that I mined for free, what's the chances of an indie miner being able to do the same thing and expect a cut out of it?

It all comes to a balance of money earned (in respect to time spent), fun and the effort required to set whatever you're doing up. Mining is more desirable over trading as you have more fun, but with these balances the amount of effort to get the numbers for profitability far outweighs that. Ok don't put the effort in you say? You then have less numbers in the mining party, and the lack of money earnt doesn't make up for the fun. As much as that sounds wrong, that's what happens.

My belief is that mining should be set at a ratio of 2:1 - 2 traders to one miner being able to get profits equal if not slightly better to that of a trader going solo, as the amount of effort to get two traders is minimal for a faction, and still possible for an indie without heaps of trouble. For this sort of ratio one would probly look for a sale point in a neigbouring system to that where it's being mined.

Before the rebalance o49 was set to a ratio of something like 1.2:1 due to it's distance - there was just a little too much niobium for one trader to constantly haul himself, even with speed-docking, u-turning whilst in trade window etc. and having 2 traders meant having to queue. Per hour, one trader and miner could earn about 40mil each, with two traders and one miner less (I expect ~25-30, same as miner going solo) due to the queueing occurring. Granted, this is right on the cap the Igiss is requesting, but reducing the feild yeild by half is overdoing it, which I think is why Kuro and Zein are complaining. Personally, I think the feild should yeild approx. 85-90% of what it did before the update. That should make things so that in a 1 miner, 1 trader situation, the trader has to wait for about 30-45secs or so before the miner gets enough nio for him to be filled. The profit per person would then be ~35mil/hr which I assume is what you're trying to acheive profit-wise (as an average).

Java and Bornhole I admit are going to be a pain in the ass to balance as they are very close/in to the fields they are buying from. The Gold field in dublin on the other hand is next to worthless for miners currently as the places to sell for a good price is simply too far away (New tokyo, New berlin, Penssylvania..). For a solo miner (in Dublin) to acheive the same profit as a trader doing 150c/sec, he has to fill up and transport his ore to the Hood in exactly 5 1/2mins. For your benchmark for an ideal mining position (230-250c/sec), the miner has to do it in under 3 1/2mins. I've just asked through the IMG chat for a member to time it out, though I doubt the result will be that quick (I'd be suprised if it makes even the 150c/sec time).

@Kuro, Zein, and any other IMG I may have missed,

I know that it's frustrating having feilds nerfed to worse than trading, but understand and appreciate the hard hours the devs are putting into this mod even now to try balance things. This post has taken me 4 hours to write up, mainly because I find an idea on how to balance mining easier and halfway through writing the idea up, I recognise a fatal flaw which makes me have to scrap the whole thing - no doubt they've gone through the exact same process for every aspect of the game we now see. For mining, the only option so far that still holds is trail and error, which suprise suprise, is what the devs appear to be using.

@Unselie

You're probly already doing this, but the way I got those time estimates is by taking the base's sale price of the commodity mined, and divided that by the ideal profit per second. Result is the amount of seconds from the first 'roid pewed to the sale on the base. In terms of travel time... Don't know how you factor that in to figure out how long you're actually mining... Stopwatch? :S

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