Read thru a number of the other posts, and I haven't really found anything that does any more than add a bit here and there to some of the points in my head.

--My experience, not entirely relevant to the idea--
First,  a bit about me. I have one combat pilot, and four miners, which can all run rivelers, or lithus. I have spent a fair few hours mining, as well as many hours running survey scans on alpha, and beta islands (Norhoop, and Hokkogaros). I have mined extensively in other games, as well as partaking in industrial parts of those games as well, and hold a decent understanding of real life economics. I do not profess to know everything, but with this experience, just know that my opionions are not of a new miner having spent 30 minutes, before being frustrated.
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--A diagnosis of the situation--
Fact: It is possible to make an equivelant amount of isk, running hauler missions back and forth on alpha islands, in a sequer, when we take into account the amount of time spent finding a decent epriton field, mining it out, bringing it to a place to sell, and the occasional loss collecting the epriton.

Fact: On alpha and beta islands, many very large stretches of the islands are completely devoid of minerals and liquids, with them only appearing in VERY sparse very small patches in these barren sections. Some outposts have alot of different minerals near them, some have practically none.

Fact: There are large areas that are completely unused, for lack of worthwhile resources, or targets to be hunted, serving little other purpose, than artifact scanning.

How does this affect the game?

Players will be drawn to what is profitable, and accessable. Considering it is far less skill intensive to do hauling missions, and contains a VERY low level of risk, many players are drawn to hauling missions, which add nic to the gain, but provide no other benefit to the economy, or game itself. As they do not leave alpha islands, they do not provide targets to pvpers. As they do not deplete ammunition, or lose bots, they do not feed from the market. As they do not produce new materials, components, or finished products, they do not add to the market, or economy. Hauling missions are the real world equivelant of mints printing additional money.

----The cures!----
Did this serve a place in the game? Yes, it did, at first, to have industrialists help put initial money into the game, so that people could start to afford stuff, get their first termis', sequers, etc. However, now, hauler missions are a singular benefit activity. Whislt bringing nic into the game, which is good, they also make people bored very quickly, those that ARENT botting doing it (Which you cannot argue that people do not do, as I have heard people admitting to doing so). As such, I would argue that hauler missions do more harm, then good, to perpetuum. People do them instead of combat missions, or mining, get bored, then find a fun game. Eliminate them. People will get by just fine with survey missions, mining missions, and the other variety of combat-like missions.

Enough about hauler missions. Wether or not you remove them, should mining not be more profitable than them?
Yes! Dont be crazy, of course it should. a more skill intensive, time intensive, attention requiring, higher risk activity should pay out way more than hauler missions, on a scale increasing as each of those factors are higher as a point of comparison. Thus, it is reasonable to say that mining titan or HDT on an alpha island should only be slightly more profitable than alpha island hauling missions, but something like stermonit or epriton mining (both rare and valuable minerals) SHOULD be vastly more profitable. There are three main approaches to this. The first approach, the one that has been taken, is to reduce the supply and accessability of minerals, so that less people will collect them, and that they are harder to collect. Thus, less are on the market, and in theory, demand with reduced supply should dictate higher prices. In theory, I suppose this could make sense, if you didn't really think it through. In actuality, this is horrible. It does not increase the value of minerals, but rather, starves the market of them. This leads to a chain reaction, that kills the entire game.

This is the current cycle we are on.

1) Mineral fields are relocated, to be farther from outposts, and less bountiful. (This is what I found based on EXTENSIVE scanning done before, and after the last mineral field -shifting)
2) Less people can find minerals, and have a harder time aquiring them. Those that continue to mine, bring in less, wheras other miners switch to now-more-profitable activities, like hauling and combat missions
3) Less minerals reach the market, meaning the list of buy orders becomes longer, and the list of sell orders becomes shorter and shorter. Less people are able to aquire the materials they need for their building projects.
4) Less production occurs, less supply shows up on the market, less variation of what is available, and less competition, meaning higher prices, when people take the risk to post new things up. Products like medium weaponry and ammo are unreliable for purchase, and thus, people dont even bother training for them.
5) The market becomes even emptier, and more expensive. People cannot find the stuff they need, and are forced to comprimise.
6) The game continues into a spiraling degenerative cycle.

The second approach, that could be taken, to make mining more profitable, is to do the opposite of what has been done, that being, to increase the availability of minerals. Bring back minerals near outposts that are devoid of them, put them back in decent quantities, that we are able to find, but also, that are worth mining. Why do 0.4% and 0.8% imentium patches even exist 3000m from outposts on alpha islands? Now I'm not suggesting that we flood alpha islands with minerals, and take away the point of going to beta, but rather, im suggesting that we propogate higher quantities of low end minerals near alpha outposts, but only certain types near certain outposts, whereas on beta islands, higher quantities of higher end minerals would be seeded. Keep only a couple select types near each outpost, say, HDT and Titan near one, Liquizit and Stermonit near another, Imentium and Epriton near another. Why? This forces people to trade, or move around. It makes it so that an alliance cannot serve all it's needs from one small places, nor can industrialists. As for improving the quantities, how could this possibly make it more profitable? Well, as I illustrated before, removing minerals, leads into a degenerative cycle of decay, so the inverse logically will be growth. Providing more materials will mean more builders are aquiring the resources they need, at cheaper prices with the competition. We will see a healthier market, more people having money from their sales to buy fancy toys to play with, and with all these extra miners moving around picking up the increased mineral deposits, there will be more for the pvpers to do. Its a circle, like nature. You don't make it stronger by taking the basic elements away, you make it stronger by reinforcing them.

The third option, is the most potentially radical. Keep in mind, it would likely be neccessary to increase the amount of minerals present in the game, as outlined in option 2, for this to work. I propose, that there are item buy orders up on the market, by NPC corporations. Perhaps availability would be affected by standing, but payout would NOT. An example of a buy order would be say, 20 kains, at ICS Beta outpost. Buy orders would vary, and while the same ones would reoccur from time to time (not on a fixed schedule neccessarily), the same buy orders would not always be available. Industrialists would be encouraged to diversify their portfolio. Buy orders would be similar to contracts, in that the value assosciated would be calculated off of mineral trading averages, designed to keep minerals up at reasonable prices, but not drive them up so high as to cause it to be un-profitable to sell to other players. Player purchases should ideally drive the market, and for the most part, dictate prices of materials and the process, however, this would supplement demand in the market, which is currently quite pitiful. Producers would also occasionally be stuck with product they would like to sell, as an order was filled before they could sell to it, so their would be much more variety on the market. As a sub-enterprise, you would find people putting up buy orders for various goods, to transport them from various hubs, to where the buy orders pop up, as such, you are creating a GOOD type of hauler missions. A player driven one, that rewards them for ingenuity, and removes some of the risk from producers. While some might argue that we should add npc buy orders to the base minerals to the game, instead, I feel that cuts producers and other industrialists out of the equation, instead of helping to stimulate our economy, not to mention there are already tons of buy orders.

At the end of the day, there are simply not enough minerals being mined, because it is not worth your time to do so.

I have one other solution, that may help with this. Why not have a change in the terrain, that reflects minerals are present in relative close proximity?Currently, the fastest way to explore for minerals is to drive around with universal scan charges and drop one every 80m or so. Yes, you can still miss smaller fields, but it is much faster and more efficient than going over a large area 7 or 8 times with different area scanner charges. Im not asking for giant protrusions showing a specific material, but at least slightly bulbous discolourations in the soil or rock, maybe liquid puddles, or something visual of the sort, so that we would know minerals are nearby, and dont have to blindly map out ever square block of an island just to finally find some minerals in a small quantity after 2 hours and 400 universal charges.

Thanks for reading. Hope you agree. If you do or don't please reply. Always looking for new ideas.

Good thing there isnt a character limit...

Hacksaw