Dart's Mining Suggestion

[Cat]

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.

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]

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.

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Concerning your own suggestion... Mining shouldn't be faction-exclusive. Let people do team-work, let indies have their share of RP. It promotes competition and real ore trading in systems where fields are located (since miners would have to sell the ore, because moving it themselves won't be that profitable).

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