We could always remove charges entirely and have ore miner and liquid miner modules.

Anni- You say unified fields are not so good, but then contradict yourself somewhat

I agree with this one. I would go a bit further and not pull mining charges from the game but if they are used to mine a specific ore and you use the charge for it then you get a better yield.

So you can mine with out them or mine with them.

The problems is, if you are entertained a lot whilst mining every one will do it and it's value will just plummet. For items ingame to have a value time and grind gives it that value.

A T1 argano mining for an hour with low to medium skills can get 500k+ NIC per hour, that can buy you a light bot with T1 fittings to go pvp and or maybe an assault. That's pretty basic pvp setup, but most want the big mechs and t4 fittings then they have to spend more time grinding. My point is the opportunity is there to pvp cheaply with numbers for a minimal grind. I still agree travel time and material volumes is still a problem.

Mixed resource tiles just simplifies the whole ordeal of scanning and find what you need specially with the ore fields moving locations from time to time.

Mixed resource tiles won't change the underlying issue of mining, that the most effcient way to mine is for long periods, with multiple accounts.

This holds regardless if your on beta or safe on alpha.

I didn't imply anywhere, that PVP players with single accounts would be mining for NIC, since they could make more NPC farming. Also, new players have enough EP issues without splitting them between mining and combat skills.

As for "cheaply with numbers", you're going into a whole different side of the game, corp pvp.

Regardless of where the ore comes from corp miners or purchased off the market, in the end SOMEONE is mining that material.

What happens to the game if players just stop mining? Obviously, not everyone will stop, because the price of ore would go way up and up until it was more profitable to mine then NPC farm. But that will also inflate the cost of produced goods.

Making mining faster(easier), ore becomes more available, raw prices drop and cost of goods drops. As raw ore prices drop, players stop mining, prices go up, and the coaster continues until it stablizes.

But, with the new system, they can also control the volume of ore available. So, in the end faster mining doesn't actually produce more raw material, it just means miners spend less time getting it, and don't have to sit around watching TV.

What's a miner to do with the 'extra' time they would have normally spent mining? Transport.

Hauling will never be a stand-alone profession (a few dedicated players could do it, but in general 3-4 hours of hauling is too mind numbeing). But give players the tools to combine hauling and mining, then they can spend a 4 hour session doing more than 1 thing, which by any definition is MORE entertaining then doing the same thing.

+1, well written.

Packing up and moving between fields makes mining much more like harvesting is now. The current plant requirements in production are significantly lower than minerals, because they are harder to collect. And because of the moving in harvesting, significantly less players do this resource gathering.

@ville, I noticed that, but was too lazy to correct it )

Historically, every change to mining has resulted in fewer miners. 1 in 100 players mine because it's 'fun', the other 99 mine for profit. Make mining less profitable and we can reliably predict from previous experience what will happen.

To spell it out. Mining is only productive when your lasers are cycling on a tile. Moving, relocking, relocating, and searching for tiles all result in less output, and less profit.

For corp miners, longer hours online to accomplish the same goals, means more burnout.

Last year I had an arguement, err discussion, with NEX about mining-drones/towers that gather materials without player interaction (I was, am, against it).

What's happening with mining is exactly that, but instead of mining towers they're paid accounts, but the result is the same, the bot is mining while the player is off doing something else.

So, I understand what zoom/devs are trying to do, by adding in the randomness of discovery and making it less automated, and I agree with it at one level.

It feels like they wanted to make mining less repetitious and more enjoyable, but didn't take into account that entire corporation effectiveness hinges on their resource gathering. That is, making mining more entertaining is terrific, but it can't be done by sacrificing productivity.

The combination of the scanning, fragmentation [field size/volume], and accessability are going to be huge contributing factors in productivity. It's all good to tell miners to just spend more time mining, but changing game dynamics doesn't reduce a irl 60 hour workweek or make change the celestial clock to 26 hours.

If anything, I've been pushing (since those converstations with NEX) to have miners get more ore per hour, but have less ore available. Small, but dense fields, spaced far apart, with faster mining cycles. This is 'almost' what they've given us, which means the changes to make it 'work' are minimal.

Off with my head.

ZOMG Necro!  Prepare the Dev Zoom ban bot gogogogogogogoggogogogogogogogogogogogoggogogogogogogogogogog!
I was aganist this system, but I think it might be more enjoyable then this *** mining system we have now.  Oh those were the days... when fields were fields and devs balanced things properly... long ago were those days.