76

(50 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

I for one think that 'mining' or 'farming' is a bad game mechanic. Rewarding someone for being bored or AFK isnt good for the game as it isnt fun. I get your point about some people enjoying it which is why I said doing it by hand should bring in far more reward, and I get your point about 'auto' being bad which is why I said the timer should be 3 or 4 hours (long enough so you have to actually dedicate some time to it, but not long enough so you can set it up log off and go out for the day). It also frees the player up to go and actually DO stuff during that 3 or 4 hours (like PvP).

If you combine it with non-static ore fields (something someone asked for in another thread) it becomes a great tool to combat the macro miner (which we don't currently have, but as the game expands WILL become a problem like it has in every other MMO ever invented).

77

(50 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

Guns nButter wrote:
Lana Torrin wrote:
Guns nButter wrote:

I have been on 8 hour mining ops that have supplied our corp with battleships for an entire month of war in eve. Give me hard numbers or you're just spewing more bullshit to fertilize the troll field.

Please o please can we have a discussion without this turning in to personal insults.

Where did I make things personal? You said that bots make the eve economy run. I said prove it.

How can it possibly NOT be the case when they ban 4000+ accounts for being macros and no noticeable drop in either ice miner bots or 0.0 ratting bots was felt. Go fly through drone regions, almost every system has a single pilot running around in it 24/7. Drones don't give bounties but do give massive amounts of minerals. The number of 24/7 bots must be well in to the 10,000+ area and you are claiming they have no effect on the economy?

I guess my argument is prove that they don't, but as this is supposed to be a thread on my proposal to buff industry in this game rather than the pros and cons of macro ratting in eve im not going to bother.

78

(50 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

Guns nButter wrote:
Lana Torrin wrote:

*snip*
Thirdly, despite what CCP tell you, the exact oppose is true. Macro miners in eve keep the economy running. Without them there would not be enough minerals mined and prices would skyrocket as normal humans cant mine for that long or in those numbers so supplies would quickly get used up. If you removed every macro from eve tomorrow supplies of minerals would dry up in a month and prices would skyrocket. (And I'm not just talking miners here, mission bots as well contribute a huge amount of minerals to eves market)

*snip*

I have been on 8 hour mining ops that have supplied our corp with battleships for an entire month of war in eve. Give me hard numbers or you're just spewing more bullshit to fertilize the troll field.

Please o please can we have a discussion without this turning in to personal insults.

Arga wrote:

*breaths deeply* Check post #26 for additional information on how targeting works, in answer to post #27.

I know exactly how targeting works, but that doesn't mean it couldn't work better. For example, if I only have 1 target locked could it PLEASE be set as primary for me?

80

(13 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

Also, against passive mods because the active ones already have a good passive bonus.. (And an absolutely amazing active bonus)

81

(50 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

Rodger Wilcoe wrote:
Guns nButter wrote:

Pure, utter failure of an idea.

I concur. Risk is the point. If you are on a Beta island you should have people with you or a sufficiently equipped bot to survive.

There were always such threads in the EVE forums, wanting to reduce/eliminate risk or make the game practically play itself. Sad to see them start here.

I'm sorry you feel this way as I do only want this game to grow. This game will not grow while there is no functioning market.

Also, I resent the argument that you are trying to make. Perhaps you do not know me very well, but I am an ex eve player. I spent much of my life in eve in lowsec and am possibly the least risk adverse person in existence. Lowsec in eve is dead for the exact reason that it is TOO dangerous and any attempt to change that gets met with exactly this type of comment.

Standing in a single spot on a beta island for several hours is going to get you killed. No one is stupid enough to do it. My first day in this game I got my little noob bot and went on a world tour and do you know what I saw? I saw absolutely no one outside of the main hubs. 12 islands, 6 of them beta, and all the people logged in were congregated around 3 outposts.

82

(50 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

Guns nButter wrote:

Pure, utter failure of an idea.
1) Risk-free epriton mining = fail
2) Mining is already fairly mindless.
3) Take a look at EVE to see what mining bots did. Fail.

First off its not risk free by any stretch of the imagination. You still have to go and retrieve the can that's been sitting out in the open for 3 or 4 hours. Enterprising people would be sitting there waiting for you to return.

Secondly, this is pretty much the main motivation for doing this. Mining is mindless and boring. Unless there is a major mechanic change it will always be so.

Thirdly, despite what CCP tell you, the exact oppose is true. Macro miners in eve keep the economy running. Without them there would not be enough minerals mined and prices would skyrocket as normal humans cant mine for that long or in those numbers so supplies would quickly get used up. If you removed every macro from eve tomorrow supplies of minerals would dry up in a month and prices would skyrocket. (And I'm not just talking miners here, mission bots as well contribute a huge amount of minerals to eves market)

And lastly, making something 'easier' in a controlled way will usually increase its activity. You still have to go and run around on a beta island, you still have to go back and collect the goods, but you can do something in the 4 hours of not standing around looking at a nice red laser.

83

(12 replies, posted in Open discussion)

Neoxx wrote:

I highly doubt we'll see a "Former WoW players raid Perpetuum!" thread.....

You have got to admit though.. how epic would that be!

84

(50 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

So after reading a few threads on how the economy is going and not being very happy with the conclusions I have decided to try and put my 'unique' problem solving skills to task with a fix.. The most common issue I see is with the lack of the rare materials getting on to the market (and not enough of the common ones). Rather than fiddle with numbers and NPC buy orders to encourage people to put the items on the market, I have decided to attack the difficulty in obtaining them in the first place.

And so steps in the auto-miners..

How I propose these little things work is that you go out in your bot or mech and find a good mining site. Once you have located it you drop your little auto-miners and set them to task. These tiny automatic spider type robots bury themselves in to the soil and start to extract the materials they have been programed for, accumulating them in to a container on the surface. While slow, they allow the user the freedom to leave them and walk away, coming back in a few (to be balanced) hours to cart off the materials.

The details in point form:
- They are produced as a single unit just like everything else. From a game point of view the 'little robots' are for animation purposes only as they bury themselves underground to stay safe.
- They can only extract 1 ore type (either programmable when deployed or pre-programmed when being made, depending on which balances better).
- They are single use and once the timer expires they go dead, trapped beneath the earth.
- The can is on the surface and is detectable and destroyable. This needs to be balanced so they are hard to find, but not impossible.
- Only 1 group of auto-miners can be used per person at a time. There should be a skill to use it and its level can adjust the area the bots can extract from. Again depending on balancing, this could be expanded later on with other skills.
- The extraction rate and timer will need to be balanced so they extract at a much slower rate to someone standing there and extracting by hand. I would say about 1/4 the rate at a guess. The timer should be set to something like 3 or 4 hours.

So why again?

Basically this will allow people to drop an anto-miner on a beta island to mine the rare stuff and not stand there themselves risking their bot. The miner still needs to find the spot, get it in to position, start it and then come back in a few hours to collect the ore so its not 100% safe.

It also has the added advantage of allowing people on alpha islands to mine while they do something else. Plus it takes the boring bit (standing around) out of mining...

It should be noted that the rate of extraction should be significantly low enough that mining by hand produces a much better income.

85

(7 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

As the owner of a 7 button mouse.. I too agree..

(I would also like Perp to not run as admin so it doesn't steel my mouse button for vent, but that's a different issue)

I honestly didn't expect this to work but I thought it was worth a try anyway.

I'm getting an error on start that my video card doesn't support SM2 and then the game fails to initialize DirectX. The problem is, according to wikipedia (the source of all knowledge) the GMA950 DOES support SM2.. Its even supposed to support SM3 in software mode but I wouldn't touch that with a 50ft pole..

Is this something worth trying to fix? My framerate will be lousy anyway because of the lowend system, but it would be nice to pop in and update market orders or run a few courier missions while on the go..

Is wikipedia lying to me?

87

(6 replies, posted in Q & A)

Geochem 4 and T2 geoscanner crew checking in.. Yeah it takes a few more probes but its not that hard even with massive deviation..

Now all I need is ECCM, a demob and some masking so I can stop costing myself more than I make..

Eta Carinea wrote:

Deploy has crashed my system now a couple of times, the bug reporter snaps into action and uploads the crash to the server.

Same, excep the bug reporter also seems to crash on my system.....

GIX wrote:

Game needs auto next target primary. Really seems weird that you can have something locked activate your guns and not shoot because you didn't re click something as primary.

Just adding to this, this is in fact the ONLY thing in the game I find annoying.. First thing I target should be primary and then hold on that until it dies or I say something else should be primary. Double clicking on something new currently makes it primary which is not what I wanted to do.

I have worked out how to get around this (lock the first target using the red lock symbol, lock the rest using the white one) but it feels like a work around for bad design rather than a fix..

I hate to say it but eves locking is easier to work with.. I would love to see 'ctrl+click = lock' and 'hold ctrl = freeze overview' make it in to this game.

Other than that im absolutely loving this game!