Now I know with out a doubt this acct was gifted.

I think this topic was started by pvprs who are crying they aren't getting enough targets and it turned into a how can the game be balanced thread. Bottom line is as a new player why try and compete when the vets have their own islands where they can mine infinite amts of mins and can produce anything in game. You don't. There isn't enough content to keep a new player. The same imbalance exists in EVE but they have enough content to keep new players interested long enough for them to think they are relevant enough to stick around.

Just so "Merkle the miner" knows, gamma islands have been "locked down" in the current state of the game. Having ore spawns that will spawn an infinite amt of times on said locked down island means that an infinite amt exists no matter what the logistics it takes to pull them from the ground.

Really this smells like the titan removal from beta back in the day, and then there was more complaints then i can remember ... everyone wanted titan back on beta so it would be worth living on. At the time most production was based on alpha II's because it wasn't worth hauling titan to the betas even tho they were only one jump away.

The gamma islands were and are being built because of the ore availability on them. You remove the valuable ores from them and they are worth orders of magnitude less. This doesnt mean miners will come off of gamma and go to beta to mine it just means they will stop mining on gamma until it comes back, or go to alpha.

I ask how many people even have a clue how much epriton and colixum it really takes to build a proper gamma base? if you say any thing less than 5 to 10 billion units then you dont have a clue.

The only thing that these changes will do is kill off the remaining active population we have left. At this point in the game I would find it hard to believe that anything but new content will bring pvp back.   

Why? because the people who still play this game are majority industrialists.

Why? because PVP died a long time ago due to slow development, no new bots mods or other things for  PVP driven players to achieve and play with. PVP driven players want to fight other PVP driven players and have personal goals on the side ie. new bots to get into through accrued EP, new builds to test by acquiring new mods.

Merkle: I appreciate the gift of your knowledge. The same access to mins from day one exist in both Perp and Eve. You can buy em and you can suit up and run the gauntlet to ninja some. Same *** diff game. We aren't getting players to join in clan numbers and we wont even after steam drops. We are lacking the content to offer players something to do past their 1 week trial. When the majority of the players spend their time playing the game in a particular way regardless of faction or alliances (ie gamma) then there is an imbalance. It exists everywhere. From the same op combo in WOW to the same ship set up on EVE. Im pretty sure the devs didn't create gamma for people to stop using beta. I personally don't care as I like the current state of the game but if i want to see growth then I know change is needed regardless if it changes my gameplay for better or worse.

Burial: At least you got some activity on the forums. Better than nothing.

My post wasn't about the 'ore' it's about breaking the stalemate that has developed.

It's about providing 'incremental' increases in power and material for each gamma island; it's also not about limiting resources, they are still infinite, they just aren't always where you want them.

Ideally, the game mechanic should create a situation where this string of events occurs repeatedly over a period of time;

1)A large corp, or alliance, puts a terminal down on gamma.
2)They fight for X amount of time, gain control of gamma.
3)Build defenses while they mine.
4)Hold off attacks until Ore is depleted.
5)Try to put terminal on another Island.
6)Rinse and repeat.

The strategy here is to have more resources after each cycle. This requires prudent planning on defeneses and not just spamming T3 everywhere, since it's unlikely that the base will be permanent. It also adds some depth into how you attack an outpost too, since you can reuse turrets from the loser, you save on your own resources.

If you miss manage, an alliance could end up taking a gamma, but get less material out than it cost to take it.

Remeber too, that there will always be say 1000B units of Epi, if all the gamma's are being mined, that Epi will gather up on the Beta islands, and stay there until it is mined out; like Zoom pointed out.

If a Corp decides to just 'hold' a Gamma, and wait while the other Islanders mine, they could end up with very rich fields indeed. But, the equation of war is much easier to balance when the target is rich; meaning that the Corps that are strip mining islands, will soon attack, and with much vigor. The defender didn't mine, which means they didn't have the ore to build 'super' defenses. Even if the defender has a huge mech fleet, they may not have enough bots/modules.

-PVP will be important, on both sides. Attacking and defending.
-Mining won't be 'horrible' because there's a limit to how much you can mine, and 'casual' miners can hang on alpha doing the lessor ores.
-Stockpiling on gamma won't happen, because you're always moving.
-Strategy will be important
-Poor leadership will result in massive losses
-Good leadership will be rewarded
-Needing 'bodies' will encourage recruitment
-Larger corps/alliances will form, which is good
-Miner 'burnout' will be less likely
-Beta Islands will see more action
-losing a gamma base won't be the end of the world
-Base designers will get better, as they will be able to refine on each gamma

This does leave the option open for Corps that want to 'hunker' down on gamma, and build a strong home base, they'll still need to come out and 'forage', meaning they'll need enough players to do offense and defense at the same time.

This type of play will need Devs to tweak the structures some, including adding in a decay when structures are unpowered, or not connected to command terminals.

As a side note: It's unproductive to compare with Eve, because Eve has an active and vibrant PVP community. Including a large group of players that will attack sht just for the hell of it; 'not worth it' isn't even in their vocabulary.

I use the Eve comparison because its a great base line game to draw experience from.

It is productive to compare the two as they are very similar in structure and game play, however, we dont want to look at its beginnings to see how they started out, to how this one is starting out. 

This is all coming around to a player and content problem then anything else.  We all want to run around the problem every month, attacking some other idea, and engaging in some theory that could work.  When I all comes down to, if there isn't players to engaging in game, doing whatever, PVP, PVE, farming, missioning, or just logging in, then all the amount of tweaks will not make a difference.

You pull players into the game by making more content, making stuff, bots, missions, new islands, just stuff.

Think of new ways to have fun in the game. 

This idea that all of a sudden Ores, and industry related stuff is broken is just crazy. 
We, all of a sudden, wish that beta's would become something more, some what of a battlefield.   Why?  Let beta's serve for what they were intended for, a no man's land of PVP.  We go back to our example of Eve.  Low sec is just that, a place for small scale PVP, not for massive attacks, just for staging, and small ganks, kills here and there. 
You dont see massive industrial empires based out of low sec, as it would be just insane to do so, there would be zero upside.

You wish to break the stalemate, bring in more stuff, content.  This will bring in more leaders and players, IF said content is of a high quality.

Guess its time to start mining my billion epi..... Stock up on colix, and move my miners to alpha.

I have no problems with changing the current ore system, if that's what is the best for the game. But Gamma has ZERO benefit for me, other than planting noralgis if I cant mine what I need there. There is no point for me to be there. That was the whole appeal of Gamma to begin with. High risk and High reward.

And this Idea of yours Arga, that by doing this Corps will build and move terminals around all over the gamma islands to mine is ***. Miners are gonna find a way to mine safely, they sure as hell aren't gonna wage wars to get epi.

Maybe this would be great for CIR who could just roam around griefing corps trying to get started on gamma. But it makes it much more difficult for small corps and new corps to do anything on gammas as they will have to build 3 or 4 gamma bases to get enough mats to be able to build any kind of defenses.

Not to mention it would destroy the market for epi, beacause no one would sell it with it being such a pain in the *** to get. Which makes it that much harder for a player who just wants to produce and/or pvp and not mine, to do anything.

Miners shouldn't be the sole reason for pvp. That is flawed game design....

Omg, scrap this idea and let's get some T5 and some shiney new goodness to put them on.

1) This is an excellent point. Large sweeping changes are never about A person, or even A corp. I even list as a benefit the formation of large corps or Alliances. There is all this talk about things that small corps can't do, but there is plenty that they can do; living on gamma shouldn't be one of them.

This isn't something 'new' that I've been saying, search back 3 years and you'll see my posts about too much fracturing of players. It's even worse as the population decreases and strong leaders leave the game, players get 'bias' to corps, and we end up with lots of 1 to 4 man corps trying to play a game that had 200+ corps battling for Beta outposts at launch.

I have no illusions that this change is going to have any impact on the CURRENT popultion. The hope (BTW, this is Zoom's Idea with a twist, not an Arga Idea) is that an inrush of new players off steam will come in and form up, like STC did at first, with a thirst for war.

2) Because you can't just BUY stuff off the market, ore is just the first step in the long logistics train that leads to a corp's abilty to PVP. Mining is not a reason to PVP, but production of which mining is a critial part, is intimately tied to PVP.

This is the way the game is designed, and why the game took such a huge hit when it lost the first wave of industrialists with the first resource change years ago. I supported those changes, because it had to be done, just as something needs to be done now.

The reason now works better than later, is people don't like change. If it's not implemented before the theoretical 'rush' of new players from steam, they will get used to unlimited mining, and feel like something was taken away (just like everyone else is thinking it now) and the game gets hit with another big exdus.

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I fully admit that I can't predict the impact that limiting ores on gamma will have, but I'm also not worried about how any person or group is going to be impacted by it. Technically, CIR is taking full advantage of unlimited resources, making those poor guys still playing actually work harder to get the same ore, is not going to be popular.

And finally, you can't directly fix PVP. PVP is not a mechanic that exists in the game, it's a consequence of the game mechanics. Resource gathering is a keystone, changing this 'piviot' point is going to have the greatest impact. Which is also why it creates so much attention here on the forums, even if people don't understand why, they know that it's important.

So, keep the feedback coming.

Point taken. I mentioned when all the Eve players came over, if they had not jumped into a single newbie corp, but had spread out to existing corps, we would have retained more of them for longer, but sadly we would still be in the same state of low population. The server was also plagued with issues from that mass influx too, so there's a real possiblity that with all the patches and changes, the server may again not be able to support more than 400 players online.

Time will tell.

I would agree with that, but doesn't change the fact that resource system still needs to be changed.