It shows predators and prey and how their numbers develop. If there is much prey, the predators increase in numbers and almost eat all the prey. But without a source of food, the predators decrease in number. As a consequence the population of prey recovers, which again triggers the number of predators to rise... etc.
Prey= miners.
Predators = people that harm miners.
Now, in nature the system works fine (okay, not everywhere), but genereally yes.
In Disco it does not. Sadly.
Status Quo: Where we are at the moment
Predators do not die (like in the diagram) once their prey is gone, they just "rest". And get even more hungry (the player gets bored). That's all those pirate accounts that you made during the Gold rush and while mining was really profitable, when there were many miners and when it didn't matter for a miner to be pirated 2 times for 2 million.
Miners "died" with the ore crisis, meaning: they stopped doing it and don't start it again (because they turned to trading). Only a small number remained. The trading animals are no prey any more, they are fast, they move and most predators are lazy and only go after easy prey.
Consequence:
You log a miner in one of the 3 mining areas and a bored predator player awakens his long-asleep account and pirates the miner, then gets back to sleep.
This predator can't be motivated to hunt for the fast running, lane-using trader animals because he is lazy and his skill is only refined enough to catch the fat immobile Hegemon animal in the obstacle-ridden asteroid field.
Consequence:
It's nearly impossible for mining to recover because the numbers of active miners are very very low. Believe me, I tried hard to make it work but even a Skype channel that tries to bring miners & haulers together didn't create anything sustainable. Even with the price buffs on some commodities, people tend to stay away.
So you have your solo miner (he doesn't have friends because there are few and Disco is huge) and you have tons of players just waiting to "interact" with him... in one way only.
And that sucks. Not the action of pirating or shooting miners itself, that's fine.
It's the frequency with which this happens at a moment when there are way too many predators and not enough prey.
Consequence:
Even if we assume a positive tendency in the recovery of the prey, the huge number of predators kills every positive trend.
Consequence:
Pirate players, please let your prey recover before you hunt it down. It's more fun for you, it's not that frustrating for the miners (they don't get hit every time) and recovery will be faster if you just refrain from logging the predator to get the guy that has just logged in.
I know you are only playing your role, but the decision to log in the predator character is a player-based decision (most often triggered by meta-gaming = checking the O7, T23, Dublin online-player list).
If you could at least sometimes refrain from harming the prey with the ruthless efficiency, I think it would result in a more positive gaming atmosphere and perhaps a recovery of the mining part of Disco, which could again lead to more prey for predators, etc...
If you don't believe me... look at the population of Dublin and T23 (07 is special atm) the activity status of Mollys or any other Pirate faction that specialised in juicy miners, the activity of BMM, the number of QQ of rather new miners about being pirated just every time, the inactivity of Merc factions (while all the anti-miner bounties are still open)...
Be a bit nicer predators? Is that possible? =)
P.S: I don't write that because I was pirated and want to QQ on the forums. =) I don't mine for money any more and I don't care for the losses. So you don't need to be nice to my mining chars. They re all IMG|. Just spare the indies a little... hunt me instead. =)
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