The future of mining?

[lionel]

I believe it would be accurate to say that this situation is the result of a discussion I had with Cannon.

My intention was not to turn it off, but to reduce the profit in Dublin; mainly to give a relief to the "good" players operating there by causing a forced migration. Because, I believed that there was something wrong with the mining mod. Alas, I couldn't put my finger on the right spot.

Blame me... Done? Back to work.

By reading this discussion, it seems that the problem is filling time, value of total cargo and mining areas. (which IMO makes sense)
Filling a ship takes time, and during this time the miner is not moving; trading activity is...non-existent. Thus, making the miner a sitting duck for a long amount of time, forcing pirates who are sitting on lanes and trade points to move to the mining spots. Then, since the pirates are at the mining spots, guess where the lawfuls are too? And then you get a closed circle of activity until one of the parties obliterate the other. It also kills activity in other systems, since everyone is in the mining area (ever seen someone in Cambridge, Manchester or Edinburgh?).

Solution: Reduce the time it takes to fill the ship -> Miners are filling themselves more quickly and thus need to move through Sirius and other systems more frequently. Making activity more widespread.

Travelling around with a cargo worth 50mil is quite dangerous. No one wants to loose such cargo to a pirate. Pirates in return know that the cargo has a high value and then ask for 5-10mil tax. Problem however is that a mining/trading ship is usually used to make money to repair/equip/finance an other ship/faction. Thus, it is frequent that those traders will quite frequently transfer money over to their own ships to pay their things. Thus you have a noticeable amount of miners flying around with less money than asked...and a 50mil worth cargo... Death guaranteed (frustration included).

Solution: Reduce value of total cargo -> Transporting the Ore becomes as dangerous as transporting any other normal commodity. Thus, pirates do not ask for high tax, Miners get less frustrated upon cargo loss. Again, miner has to make more trade runs to make money, thus more activity in other systems.

We currently have seventeen systems that feature a mining bonus. Although, only 3-4 of those are being mined (Dublin, Tau-23, Penn, O-7), which brings me to the conclusion that the remaining nearly unused systems are not as profitable as those. Thus, Every miner, pirate and lawful are jammed in the same systems.

Solution: Re-balancing the unused mining areas. As a result, activity would spread itself to these other systems, spreading players everywhere. Giving more RP to other factions that might want to invest into mining. Pirates that do not operate in Tau-23, penn, Dublin or O-7 will get more activity.

EDIT Also! (woops) I believe more ore drop points would be needed. If you end up with Silver... You're forced to go to Narita...But what happens if you're hostile to Kusarians? You can't mine that ore. Thus, what I could propose best is to add drop points in each house capital systems. 2 per systems more precisely, that is one in the system on a lawful base, the other on a junker base for unlawful players. Also, we might need to add other drop points for special factions like Xenos for example. I would make those added drop point 25% less profitable maybe.

This is a great solution to improve the server.
It's basically what Montizuma mentioned on page one yet further detailed.
Nice bit of thought King.