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Saturday, April 27, 2013

Risk vs. Reward No Longer Applies?

I didn't feel well last night so I skipped the pub crawl and read the dev blogs that CCP Fozzie put out last night.  After reading them, my reaction was...

W. T. F. ?!

Why the reaction?  Because pilots no longer have to probe down gravimetric sites.  They can use the ship’s built-in anomaly scanning equipment.  This is important because now the new ore sites are just a little more difficult to find than asteroid belts.  As I do my mining in low sec, this is rather important.

At the same time the ore will contain extra low end minerals.  Here are the new mineral concentrations for the ore found in low sec sites:
  • Crokite: 38000 Tritanium (+37669), 331 Nocxium, 663 Zydrine
  • Dark Ochre: 25500 Tritanium (+25250), 500 Nocxium, 250 Zydrine
  • Gneiss: 3700 Tritanium (+3529), 3700 Mexallon (+3529), 700 Isogen (+357), 171 Zydrine
  • Spodumain: 71000 Tritanium (+67810), 9000 Pyerite (+8590), 140 Megacyte
Is that enough extra reward to make up for the increased risk for mining in an ore site?  I don't know, although I'm inclined to say no.  Perhaps that is because of the increased risk in mining in low sec belts with the "Tags4Sec" feature.  Apparently no one mines in low sec belts to CCP decided to just turn them into PvP areas where players can fight over the rats that drop the security status tags.  For miners, that is definitely a rise in risk with no increase in reward.  I guess those of us who mine in low sec belts had it too easy.

I guess I should be thankful that us low sec players will benefit from a feature put in for null sec players.  At least I'll can still mine the low end minerals in low sec and not have to go to high sec.  Of course, the changes don't help when I am mining to get ore to finish up a storyline mission.

I plan on attending the resource rebalance session today so I'll find out more.  I really want to find some way to work the new system because right now I think I may have to head back to high sec.  I really don't want to do that.  High sec sucks.

19 comments:

  1. Why are so many people seeing a problem in this? Most Tag farmers will use something like A Stealth Bomber for farming. A SB can´t attack a, lets say, procurer with aggressive drones without bombs . I see no problem here. And if he hops belt with something more beefy, you probably spot him ages before he hits your belt. That means unless you mine in top/bottom belt.
    This problems are wildly exaggerated and I say this as someone who regurlarly mines in lowsec.

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    1. "I guess I should be thankful that us low sec players will benefit from a feature put in for null sec players."

      People in null don't have problems with ss. They don't take ss hits there. So it's basically a low-sec feature for a low-sec type of players : pirates / pvpers.

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    2. @ second Anonymous - The feature I am referring to is the change in the mineral content in high end ore, which was specifically put in to make the lives of null sec industrialists easier.

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  2. Now, imagine how it will be in wormholes without local ^_^

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  3. All because miners don't know how to scan out the frigging gravi site. They are so lazy that they don't even want to move all day long. Can this kind of play-style driven into low/null by profit? I doubt it.

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    1. No, actually miners are the only ones who regularly do scan out grav sites. Grav sites are of no value to anyone else.

      The change is being made to increase the risk of mining the new, more profitable sites. Anyone, incl. gankers, can now quickly find the site, without having to fit and use probes.

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    2. Null miners liked the scannable grav sites. If anything this will make null mining in these new anomalies much more risky. It will be interesting to see if null miners will want to park their orcas in them.

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    3. You guys are right, I should make it clear that the HS miners I met don't have the habit to scan.

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    4. @Chband - that's probably because most of the high-sec miners you've met are belt miners.

      Even in high-sec, there are groups of miners who scan down and farm the larger grav sites. The smaller grav sites, however, aren't worth bothering with in high-sec - you make more profit mining belts.

      Also, in high-sec, miners usually don't need to scan down the grav sites. Exploration players will often drop BMs to any grav sites they scan down, since they have no interest in them.

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    5. @anonymous
      That should be the case. I've scanned within 10j from amarr with my alt for couple weeks in last winter.
      Unless I offered bm in local, the miners I met were not interested in those larger grav ones.

      I don't know why. Maybe the army of alts alrdy made them enough isk? Or the mining mechanism is alrdy so boring that they are afk doing it anyways?

      Can they be driven into low? I highly doubt it.

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  4. Tags4Sec won't be a problem for you, after the first month or so. Remember that (a) CCP wants to replace the existing sec status grinding mechanic with this new tag-based system, and (b) CCP wants to allow more (preferably, every) neg sec status players to be able to freely harass high-sec. Gankers will kill the ship, kill the pod, use tags to remove the sec status hit, and repeat the cycle... ad infinitum. This means that there will need to be a *lot* of tags made available, or the the new system will be inherently useless. In other words, there will be a large and endless supply of tags.

    The NPCs which drop each tag type will always drop the tag. There will be NPCs in every belt in low-sec. The NPCs will respawn after being killed. Pick a system with a large number of belts, and you'll be able to farm it for tags all day, if you like.

    In the beginning, there will be a gold rush for tags, to sell on market. So, the first tags will sell ridiculously high. Then, as supply increases, prices will drop, until they are as cheap as CCP wants them to be (which is very, very). As prices drop, there is less incentive for anyone, except low-sec residents, to mine the tags - everyone else will just buy them off market and stockpile.

    So low-sec numbers should spike, then fall quickly to current levels and you can return to your normal activities. :)

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    1. "There will be NPCs in every belt in low-sec. The NPCs will respawn after being killed. Pick a system with a large number of belts, and you'll be able to farm it for tags all day, if you like."

      Source? Cause that's not my understanding of this.

      Re the OP, there's already faction and hauler spawns in lowsec belts. That doesn't make lowsec belts "PvP areas" being lowsec makes them PVP areas. And I've never seen anyone in lowsec fight over a faction spawn (let alone that wouldn't otherwise be fighting because they see each other anywhere away from sentry guns)

      Dont take cues from Poetic; after the intial people going to lowsec to try out the feature T4S wont affect lowsec miners at all aside from a slight general lowsec population increase if the feature is successful.

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    2. "Source? Cause that's not my understanding of this."

      Did you ask? Did you run the numbers?

      As for revealing a source, sorry, but that would require a confidentiality agreement violation.

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    3. @Aleks - That was a cheap shot!

      I'll try to get a post out on Wednesday explaining my take on the situation after talking to some more people at Fanfest.

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  5. I agree with the article. Currently there is some effort and time involved for people like me to catch miners in anomalies. With these changes that's no longer going to be the case and as much as I enjoy popping miners, I don't think making it even easier to lose your ship is going to attract them to low-sec. But then I don't think this change is supposed to help low-sec miners, probably because there's only a handful of people crazy enough to mine in low and because you don't whine enough on the forums - instead this seems to be very much aimed at null.

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    1. When I mined in null, I wouldn't mine in a belt except to raise the industry level enough to generate the first hidden belt. Even when living in a low trusec system with named Merc and Arc in the belts, I would still mine nearly worthless Spod in a hidden belt over the highly valuable stuff in a very risky normal belt. Normal belts were just for the "weekend" miners looking to max their limited mining time.

      I understand CCP increased the value of ores and this grav change will increase the risk of mining them. But for me, this change to null grav sites would simply drive me out of null sec mining. I wouldn't risk a big fleet of exhumers with an orca and freighter hauler being so easy to find.

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  6. As a low sec dweller but not a miner yea, I give the life expectancy of a low sec mining barge after these changes about 3-5 minutes. Before when we would be roaming in small gangs we really would bother with someone in an anom since hardly anyone roams lowseec with a probe ship in gang. Now, hell any bloody solo rifter can find you and take a shot at you.

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    1. *opps typo on the internet. should be " we really would not bother"

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  7. that's exactly what eve needs. moar pyrat buffs. i guess carebears don't pay as much in subs...

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