Dart's Mining Suggestion

[AeternusDoleo]

Background: The current mess with mining is the fact that there are too many lolwut miners that end up generating too many bull**** sanction reports. There aren't enough admins to go through all of these, and they believe that they are subject to too much work sorting them out.
Mining is also consuming disco. Back when i started to play, a year ago, gold had a larger price and smaller yield. It wasn't so strongly traded as it is now. Now ores are pretty much the only item people trade it. its some ore here and there with taking a generic commodity back to the ore site. This is a problem, and its not the fault of lack of good trade routes. if the fault of
a) too much frowning on piracy
b) having an easily exploitable mining system

I have made this suggestion before, haven't got enough feedback and I truly believe this should increase trading activity as a whole.

Good thoughts on this so far...

-Mining system-

• Add a new system of "Approved Factions." An approved faction shall be a mining faction, that has applied and pledged to have a system of RP where members cooperate and function as they should in RP. They should be responsible for all of their members. and strictly weed out all of those that tear down their image. Meaning, make mining sacred!.
  a) Idea: These factions should petition their creation request to an official faction, OR to the community in the faction creation request thread

Making mining factions as exclusive as SCRA, Phantoms, Nomads etc? Jolly good idea. Who's going to be in charge of who gets in and who gets left behind? How do new players get invited or even made aware that this is the way to go? Moneymaking schemes should -not- be exclusive in my opinion, so I am very much opposed to this idea. Being able to mine should not equate to having the moneymaking variant of the nomad gunboat turret.

Approved Factions aren't official. Meaning they do not have have the ability to set RP policy (like on the comm channel)

Official Factions (which are inherently approved) shall also be given the ability to mine. they should be the source of light for everyone in disco. Official mining factions need to have the following responsibilities:
a) They must do their best to set a good example to new players
b) They must make very clear RP guidelines on the forums how to RP their faction. Not everybody is going to be reading the [story] lore of every faction, and to have simple RP guidelines is a better way to go.
c) If someone who is applying to the official faction has "bad quality RP," do whatever it takes to change that, and to allow the members to join.

You've basically summed up a few of the official faction responsibilities that come with the faction rights. Not sure what you're trying to accomplish by pushing this on unofficial factions.

-Mining yields in coherence with above system-

Raise Ore prices 3-4x

Reduce Yields 3-4x

All Mining IDs/IFFs will have their own base yield.

All "Approved Factions" Will have 2x the mining yields of indies. (admin suggestion: If this is hard to implement via char name, Make a separate ID for factions that allow this bonus)

I thought the aim was to generate more trade? Then you need more cargo, not higher value cargo. I would propose the exact opposite of this: Drop ore prices by 75% (to about the value of the base commodity) and quadruple their droprate. Then kill the Hegemon as a mining vessel (or halve it's bonus) to curb solo mining.

Ore hauling should be a privilege: With a product that is in high demand, and very difficult to come by, Group mining operations are mandatory, for security and for mining speed.

Yea. Hauling unprocessed chunks of rock should be the domain of the most elite of traders. Sorry, but I'm going to have to disagree again. Ever seen a mining operation in real life? They have HUGE cargo movers to move a LOT of stuff in bulk very fast. You don't use armored transports for unprocessed rock. No, restrict mining to small miners to force people to buddy up with a transport, and ensure the transport is full rather quick so that:
a: The transport captain doesn't get bored. 30 minutes of just sitting there gets old.
b: The small miner can fill it's role as an escort afterward and be on the move as well.

Roleplay Changes

add rule 0.1 which clearly states that Cargo piracy is fully permissible and that all haulers and miners should be aware that Life sucks and wealth can be removed from them rather easily.

Ore traffic should be severely reduced, open to a much fewer audience. This system encourages official shipping factions to take over the shipping process, however nothing says indies shouldn't be allowed to haul, they should be well aware of the next bullet.

Since Ore is going to be so expensive and so hard to come by, Pirates may go out of their way to steal the ore. Cargo Piracy should be encouraged in general. That's how a lot of piracy works in the real word! Don't want all your ore to get stolen? hire security!

Please, no exclusivity, just drop the value down to that of every other basic trade commodity. Heck, do away with the "Ore" types entirely and just drop gold, silver, copper and whatnot directly. Gives miners who want to do short hauls a chance to drop it off at the nearest friendly base for a pittance, and pirates can do cargo piracy easily as well since most junker bases will readily trade base materials.

I'm sure a lot of folks who like indie mining will be angered by this idea, but mining operations are meant to be big, and they are meant to gather as much ore as possible in order to meet demand. in space they should go out of their way to get enough logistical support to maintain an operation. If such indie doesn't want to be an a faction, its their problem. If they want to make an "approved faction" then so be it. Just make it clear to the community that you can RP and that you will maintain order (RP and rule-wise) with your members.

Corporations are big by handling volume, not value. How much sense would it make to have one unit of ore, pre-processing, be worth (if your proposal goes) 12-16x more valuable then it's processed equivalent?

---

Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.

Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.