We're talking about hours and hours of mining here, hotswapping targets very frequently. Note that we're doing it in more or less maxxed pilots, in Riveler Mk2s.
Here's my conundrum - How long does it take to mine a quantity of Titan (a common, basic ore) that is "relevant" for the purposes of producing something?
Meaning, how long does it take for a newbie that just got started to mine a quantity of Titan that would get him anywhere? NIC-wise, a newbie would be better off doing missions?
What if a new corp forms in the game, how long do they have to mine in un-maxxed termises and rivelers to get enough Titan to produce something for their corp? And thats if theyre completely communist pooling everything?
I don't see how newbies can exist in the game without either:
- Depending on Veterans selling stuff on the market (for jew prices usually)
- Trying to mine it themselves (in arganos, termises, and generally low EP accounts)
Either way any newbie corp that comes into the game has NO CHANCE whatsoever of accumulating enough resources to get anywhere before investing at least 3 months (!) just into mining enough ore to start producing something at horrible refine yields.
Thats why I proposed the following:
a) Deployable mining towers that need to be fueled/emptied by player, can be plundered or destroyed by other players
Why?
- Because then players could spam some mining towers up instead of having to buy 6 accounts and dedicate them to mining then go insane with the amount of tile-swapping per second.
- Because players could use mining towers to supplement their active mining.
- Because other players could stumble upon mining towers and loot them.
- Because looting them would flag you for PVP, creating light-PVP content on Alpha.
- Because it would create a demand for mining towers and fuel that other players could produce and put up on the market.
- Because players who don't enjoy mining could mine and have fun at the same time.
b) Be much faster - instead of taking 4-5 hours to drain a field, it should take ~30 minutes tops to clear a field.
Why?
- Amount of ore per tile is too low and needs to be significantly bumped up to speed up the process.
- Denser fields would speed up the process even more.
- It's imperative to consider how fast an average NEWBIE mines when considering mineral balance, rather then balancing everything on Riveler Mk2's.