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Topic: Add two more beta only minerals

Right now, trading is functionally irrelevant to the biggest beta organizations. If you have one, you pretty much just need titan (which you can get yourself) and you're golden. Market whar?! This potential for the creation of autarkic models of corporate production is currently taking a giant dump on the game and on new players. It is double plus ungood.

Adding two more minerals and splitting each of the now three beta minerals so that they're only found on two of the six islands would nigh on require trade as you'd have no way to be completely self sufficient from an industrial standpoint.

If beta corps have to trade, we'll see more industrial activity all over the place and, more importantly, more people transiting between alpha and beta -- haulaz ***. We'll also see a rise in the importance of nic, as straight 1 for 1 trades of minerals would be irritating to pull off. A good thing!

Another thing that should be added, but isn't strictly speaking necessary, is a way to transmute titan into each of the beta minerals via an extremely inefficient process. While it might seem silly to make it possible to dodge past the beta requirement, it's critical that there be some sort of route for avoiding bottlenecks of one kind or another. EVE is currently going through a technetium bottleneck, and it has made some players fabulously rich (and spread rumors of illegal RMTing of the unlimited in game wealth fountaining out of tech moons) due to an error in usage calculations by the developers. So having an alternate path is probably a good thing, even if it costs two arms and a leg to pull it off.


tl;dr: increase the number of beta only minerals from one to three, and make each one exclusive to two beta islands. This will increase trade and make impossible a single island system of autarky as currently exists.

  • MORTE
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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

Why not go all the way and make each beta island have its unique ore?
This should spice things up!

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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

Stainless wrote:

Why not go all the way and make each beta island have its unique ore?
This should spice things up!

Think about it. In a situation where a single participant can gain by restricting output and cannot be undercut by another party, they will do so. If they can be undercut, it's not viable.

A system where two islands can produce the same resource is inherently less stable than one where each island produces a unique one. It's also more trade friendly than one where a single resource is required by every high end item and is available everywhere.

  • CIR
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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

An alliance between two of Islands to boycott the third could result in the same thing.

It would be better to extend the idea of transmutation to the beta only material too.

That is 1x +1y = 1z material.

Less efficient like you say, but would prevent monopolization of a single material, plus give alpha buyers more options if the supply of any single resource was cut-off.

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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

Arga wrote:

An alliance between two of Islands to boycott the third could result in the same thing.

It would be better to extend the idea of transmutation to the beta only material too.

That is 1x +1y = 1z material.

Less efficient like you say, but would prevent monopolization of a single material, plus give alpha buyers more options if the supply of any single resource was cut-off.

That seems like another good idea.

  • BKK
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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

I hav requested that already many times - factional ores. you can life and fight without them, but you cannot produce the higher tier factional stuff that is not native on your island

eg. stermonit is a main ore in laser/thelodica equipment. what if it could only be mined on daoden, shinjalar, hokko and *place laser beta two here*.
Ontop of that, t3+ laser items would need a comoditiy that is refined from stermonit, but can only be refined on laser beta refineries?

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  • CIR
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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

Making commodities trade-items would be more interesting from a hauling stand-point, which if something can only be refined at certain locations would introduce.

But it needs to be more than just one island, or you get the situation where the corp on X Island just doesn't refine that commodity, while thier opposite does, so they stop too, and then eveyone gets starved out and it becomes some kind of game of chicken.

As long as it's refinable at 2 factional locations, it would take a lot more coordination to create that scenerio.

  • BKK
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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

there are 2 terminals and 5 beta outposts on two beta islands per faction - that should be enough locations for specialized refining.

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  • CIR
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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

This would be an issue with lore though. Aren't all the Nian factions at war with each other? Seems like they wouldn't setup shop on Islands that didn't have the minerals they needed.

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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

Arga wrote:

This would be an issue with lore though. Aren't all the Nian factions at war with each other? Seems like they wouldn't setup shop on Islands that didn't have the minerals they needed.

Can be easily handwaved away with the industrial faction. They're independent and focused on trade, so they'd presumably be behind the transport. And as only mechs or above require beta only minerals it's still lore friendly as they can independently produce lower level bots.

SHAZAM.

  • CIR
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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

I'm a little wary of any beta only processes though, now that I think about it. Beta minerals is one thing, as they can be ninja mined/farmed, but putting a requirement that you have to be able to dock at a beta post to do it yourself would be an entirely new mechanic.

And no, allowing indy with the correct rep to dock would break the control system and add another damn requirement to the indy grind.

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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

How ever logically you would expect a planet to have some of all the resources avalible on the entire planet.

Granted some areas might have more and some have less but the basic resources are almost always avalible on the entire planet unless that resource is specific to a region, If that was the case the Epriton would only be avalible on 1 island...

  • CIR
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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

I know I brought up lore, but sometimes you have to suspend disbelief, and lore is never a good idea to do or not do something, because you can simply change the lore to fit the new mechanic if needed.

  • M2S
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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

Completely with Arga on this. Factional ores would add a nice flavour, but still have to create alternative sources (or the transmutation suggested), otherwise we'll get ridiculous trade barriers. The idea of having to refine at a beta station is very, very bad, it would be yet another thing to block independent producers from doing anything.

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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

Arga wrote:

I'm a little wary of any beta only processes though, now that I think about it. Beta minerals is one thing, as they can be ninja mined/farmed, but putting a requirement that you have to be able to dock at a beta post to do it yourself would be an entirely new mechanic.

And no, allowing indy with the correct rep to dock would break the control system and add another damn requirement to the indy grind.

No, you misunderstand me. There are four factions, not three, in the lore. The fourth is the industrial faction, and they aren't aligned with the other three. Lore wise, they'd be able to move between them.

That has no bearing on the humans who aren't aligned with any of the robo factions.

  • CIR
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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

Is it really necessary to artificially force trade between corporations?

Doesn't this just encourage self sufficient mega alliances?

  • CIR
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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

Were spitballing ideas but,

Its a sandbox game yeah, so a meta-alliance could form up to do anything. The design idea should put enough pressure on the siutation though, so that Meta-Gaming of things are dynamically unstable. If you give too many tools, then you make it too easy to maintain, too few and you can't come together when needed.

The environment should always be pushing. It doesn't have to shove, but if it keeps up constant pressure, then it will eventually topple meta-gaming without constant adjustment.

18 Reply by GLiMPSE (edited by GLiMPSE 2011-08-04 02:06:45)

  • CIR
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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

Arga wrote:

Were spitballing ideas but,

Its a sandbox game yeah, so a meta-alliance could form up to do anything. The design idea should put enough pressure on the siutation though, so that Meta-Gaming of things are dynamically unstable. If you give too many tools, then you make it too easy to maintain, too few and you can't come together when needed.

The environment should always be pushing. It doesn't have to shove, but if it keeps up constant pressure, then it will eventually topple meta-gaming without constant adjustment.

I guess I just don't see where anything would be gained... if i want to not trade *** to the market and remain relatively self sufficient i'll expand via my alliance to consume the necessary islands to get the resources I need without having to go through the extra capitalist hardships of the open market.

I don't see how this does anything but encourage people that want to live this way to group up and make bigger conglomerates/alliances for closed market trading...

I don't think this is good for the game. You can't force people to trade to the market by game mechanics... When enough capitalists get their feet planted onto beta the market will come alive.

  • Rawr
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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

I like the idea of three materials spread across the betas, so long as the two native to any individual island can be cross-refined with themselves and other ores without the necessity of the third and the factional items built from those two will not require the third, either.

The idea of any beta-only refining is just a 'come here and die to build' for the rabid dogs.

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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

+1 for unique Beta/Factional ores or materials.
+1 for the ability to synthesise them with an efficiency penalty.
-1 for restricting refining to the Beta islands.

AeonThePiglet wrote:

Can be easily handwaved away with the industrial faction.

These are not the droids you are looking for?

Arga wrote:

I know I brought up lore, but sometimes you have to suspend disbelief, and lore is never a good idea to do or not do something, because you can simply change the lore to fit the new mechanic if needed.

Is that you George Lucas? tongue

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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

+1 for unique Beta/Factional ores or materials.
+1 for the ability to synthesise them with an efficiency penalty.
-1 for restricting refining to the Beta islands.

I would say like this:

each faction ore has high concentration on Beta and low concentration on Alpha islands of the respective factions. We should get into a state where the combined Alpha production of faction ores is not sufficient to cover the demand, thus creating a need/lure to go to Beta.

in addition refining the specific ore can only be done efficiently from higher (t2+) modules.

  • CIR
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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

Transmuting is a new mechanic that is a new tech that we could discover, and a reason why opposing factions would set up factilities on islands that didn't have the material that they needed.

It fits as part of the refining process, but not really with the way the GUI for that is designed. It would make more sense and useability for transmute to look like the RE window, where you just drag and drop the ore in fixed amounts with fixed output, and the output is time based. That would add another layer of complexity to the process and ensure that using the right mineral each time would always be a better choice, because now its ineffcient in both materials, time, and possibly a NIC fee.

I suppose it would also be good to add in a transmute extension too that increases the fixed output.

I had 2/1 above, but with the time and NIC costs, it could start around 60% with 10-2% extensions up to 80% efficient.

And just to throw Anni a bone, these facitiltes are only available on beta with 75% or more stability.

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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

I disagree with limiting it to beta, but I'm totally cool with it being something that would require a CT and a built transumter module if the process was reasonably efficient.

  • BKK
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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

... horadric cube of NIA. Will have to kill Decard syndic Kain to get access to it?

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  • CIR
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Re: Add two more beta only minerals

AeonThePiglet wrote:

I disagree with limiting it to beta, but I'm totally cool with it being something that would require a CT and a built transumter module if the process was reasonably efficient.

I wasn't thinking of it as a factory line, but that would make more sense, and use existing GUI/setup. Create transmute CT from 'some componentes' or maybe they drop from articacts like mk IIs, install that CT into factory. The materials would be 2 of the 3 beta minerals, and the output would be fixed per run; say 100K units. The better the CT % and factory ME, the better the material ratio would work out to be. This would add the time and cost without needing anything new.

Also, what if it was only 1 more new beta ore, and the second ore was new to Alpha. That would be (2) beta ores spread over 3 factions, creating a 2/3 overlap to reduce easily monopolizing, plus allowing access to the 'transmute' ore would be availble to all corporations to basically eliminate the monopolizing.

The transmute ore would be required for to turn X into Y and for Y into X, but have no production value on it's own. Like the new material that is being added for mining missions?