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| Move over PVP, time to violence some rocks! |
Today I decided to head out into the belts and figure out why no one mines in lowsec. Admittedly, I haven't mined since about 2004 on my previous main character that was sold that year. Fortunately, mining is like riding a bike, and one does not simply forget how to do it. Also as a bonus, when I was running high sec Incursions some 3 years ago, I trained up for an Orca so I could get my multiple incursion ships transported around Eve a little easier. A few industry skills came with that.
While I have Mining Barges to lvl 5 thanks to that Orca training a few years ago, getting a mining barge into lowsec is a tricky business... more so if you're a blinky pirate like myself since I am told they take forever to align, meaning Concord would likely dice me up assuming some players didn't take the opportunity for themselves. As luck would have it, I did have the skills to fly a Venture and equip it with T2 mining lasers, so that seemed like a good enough idea.
Mind you, before starting this venture today I had a pretty good idea why no one comes to lowsec to mine, it was really just a question of how bad the mining out here really is. I started working the belts in my home system of Nennamaila, a 0.3 system in Black Rise. I hit several belts with a survey scanner and came up with all fairly common stuff, obviously Veldspar, Scordite, Plagioclase, Pyroxeres, and Kernite as well as some fancier sounding versions of those ores. I mined a variety of stuff, and my 5000 m3 ore hold picked up around 950k ISK worth of ore with some of the fancier stuff, 850k ISK with the Scordite, and 666k ISK with the Veldspar.
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| Pristine Jaspet? Don't mind if I do! |
Overall, I wasn't very satisfied with my mining sample in a 0.3 system, so I headed out to the most "dangerous" of dangerous lowsec space (0.1 Security Status) to see if the pickings were any better. Of course I put quotes around "dangerous" because in reality the average person is FAR less safe mining in a place like Nennamaila than they are in some hole in the wall 0.1 system in the middle of nowhere. That's one of the problems with lowsec, where the supposed value of content is regulated by the security status of a system, only taking into account the risk involved against the local NPCs, not the players.
Once I hit a belt in 0.1 space I was almost immediately excited. Omber and Jaspet began appearing on scans, so I burned over to those rocks and began violencing them while my hobgoblins took care of a couple of NPC destroyers. 15 minutes later with my hold full, I headed back for home. While en route, I moused over my sparkly stack of Pristine Jaspet ore to find it was worth... less than 1 million ISK.
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| While I was out filling my venture at 4 million isk per hour, these alliance mates were busy getting lap dances from the loot fairy in 2 million ISK derp frigs. |
On top of this, who would dream of bringing in a gang of Mining Barges or dare I say Exhumers to actually work on extracting large amounts of ore? While I see some value in using Skiffs or Procurers as baiting ships, this is no place for such things without some very serious protection, and protection can't be justified or paid for with a bare 10% increased income over relatively risk free highsec.
To put this in perspective, a member of the Gallente Militia right now can spend 10 minutes running a novice plex in a stabbed frigate and pull in 10,000 LP which can be cashed out for around 20 million ISK. That's 20 million ISK in the same (or less) time it would take that player to fill a Venture's hold with ore in lowsec for less than 1 million. While it can be said that belt mining right now might be less risky than running a FW complex, it's certainly not 20 times more risky.
Possible Solutions:
I do see a couple of fixes here. The most obvious one is some seriously more valuable ores to make lowsec a far more profitable place to mine. Profitable enough so that pilot in a Venture could hire someone to scout, provide protection for them, and still turn a better profit than they could in highsec. The reward should reflect the risk involved to the player from other PLAYERS, not NPCs.A second idea I have, though I would certainly like to solicit some feedback before pressing this towards CCP, would be allowing Mining Barges and Exhumers to make use of Black Ops jump bridging capabilities, allowing them to be dropped directly into a belt in lowsec (or nullsec). They could then be extracted back out by jumping to a lowsec border system where they could warp to a highsec gate with their spoils and get out. There would certainly still be risk involved, but not the sort resulting from 20 seconds of align time at every star gate they come across.
Your thoughts?
Risk vs reward is always going to be the issue in Low Sec. Generally its safer to mine in 0.0 in the middle of a ocean of blue systems where neutrals are reported from 5 jumps away. The 'jumping' exhumers might be an idea however I think most would JF barges into systems. The issue is how do you stop those horrible pirates (like me) ganking your expensive barge? If you buff income for low-sec you might need to buff null mining too. If you make null mining too profitable you'll hammer the high-sec bears who make up a lot of accounts. Damn this is too complicated with man-flu, I need a lay down just thinking about this.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, it's tricky. Doesn't null sec have an upgrade system to get better mining though? My thought on the mining barge is that you'll obviously need some protection, and the income should be able to support paying for that along with increased profits and excitement over doing the same activity in high sec.
DeleteWe're already talking about bait tanking procurers and skiffs with possibly blops support + fast tackles in system to see if we can catch people. Not too feasible right now since no one is mining, meaning not many people are looking for miners.... plus blinky pie in a skiff might be too obvious.
DeleteI'm thinking newbro initiation now.
Here's a better test:
ReplyDeleteGet a procurer. Tank it up. Get to any Ice Belt System (Hallanen, Pavanakka, or Fliet if you want somewhere with solid Gallente security in the form of an active militia corp in-system) and fill up your hold with Glare Crust and only Glare Crust.
That was one of the recent changes to mining that's worked in Lowsec's favor - all the lowsec icebelt systems get Glare Crust now, whereas it used to be that the 0.4 systems (like Pavanakka and Hallanen) got the same crap as highsec.
I'm not saying the ratio is going to be in favor of mining when you compare it to Faction Warfare, but in all seriousness NOTHING in the game has as good a risk/reward/time ratio as Faction Warfare, so comparing mining to it really isn't fair.
Check out of the ice income, though. Compare it to ice mining in highsec. By my math, a meh-skilled ice-miner in lowsec (flying a single-laser, tech1, <10 million isk Procurer) can make almost twice the money in an hour as a higher-skill, two laser, 165 million isk+ tech2 Mackinaw can in highsec, for a paltry fraction of the investment.
Hmm. I'll give that a shot. I put up a buy order for a procurer in Nennamaila for 28 million and I think there's an ice system nearby. I have some basic skills for ice mining, like enough for a t1 harvester plus the barge. It still doesn't solve the issue of getting barges in and out though.
DeleteGetting barges in and out is easy. I have a standard package of a Procurer + modules & crystals that I keep in a cargo container that fits nicely in my Prowler. I also keep 2 expanded cargohold IIs in because then I can put nanos in both low slots of my blockade runner. The only problem with that is that I can't fit rigs in the Procurer, so as I wander across low sec looking for ore sites I'm mining in a ship that is kind of gimped.
DeleteFor my favorite systems (.1-.2 sec systems + ice belts) I just keep a Procurer fit in a station where I have the standings for maximum refine. I can then fit rigs for either more output or for more agility to get me off grid faster, because someone always comes looking in belts.
Currently, I try to base out of stations whose owners I have 6.67 with so I can get max refining. Moving processed goods around is a lot easier than the unrefined ore/ice. Of course, that calculation is changing with the upcoming changes in refining.
Ok, I managed to find a friend with a procurer in lowsec to lend me, and I hit one of the local ice belts. I did a full hold of both White Glaze as well as Glare Crust. Glare crust was worth 12% more than the white glaze. That's really not enough considering the extra risk.
DeleteFor solid numbers, on mouse over the 12 units of Glare crust are worth 3.95 million, vs 3.47 million for the White Glaze.
Delete"more so if you're a blinky pirate like myself since I am told they take forever to align, meaning Concord would likely dice me up assuming some players didn't take the opportunity for themselves."
ReplyDeleteLast I checked Concord ignored blinky pirates. The faction police however seems to care and come in and try to destroy them. Shouldn't a CSM candidate know the difference? ;)
I would know, except I've never been caught, nor have I ever stuck around long enough to see who shows up.
DeleteThere are several problems with mining in low sec. You covered risk vs reward well in your post, but there is another major problem: lack of incentive to group up.
ReplyDeleteNo matter where you mine, the options are the same. You can either be in a mining ship (barge, exhumer), a hauler (industrials, hauler fit Orca), or a mining booster (Orca, Rorqual). It makes more sense to multibox those roles than it does to bring more players along. What if there were more meaningful roles for players to fill? I have a lot of ideas about this, but frankly, nobody takes miners seriously enough to listen.
Throw some ideas at me, I'm all ears. This is the first time I've even tried to mine in almost 10 years, so I Can't say I've got all the answers for mining as gameplay.
DeleteNo one and I mean NO ONE is going to bring their mining assets to frigin lowsec. Christ it's safer to mine in wh or 0.0. Lowsec is utterly usless for that. I would rather CCP buff industry in 0.0 because quite frankly it needs it and the cord needs to be cut from empire!
DeleteThis statement just made me laugh... the cord needs cut from empire... how would you do that if you don't have ways of reliably getting your minerals into the now buffed industrial low sec?
DeleteTroy hit on it on his last sentence. No one takes miners seriously. Which is crazy because mining is where a majority of our ships and modules come from. We couldn't do the PvP we love without the mining fleets across New Eden.
ReplyDeleteIt's like people laughing about people working in retail or fast food. Is it a glamorous job? Does it make you rich? Is it risky? None of the above. However, if no one worked those jobs, how would we buy things? Where would we go to get a burger?
Mining does need an overhaul and I think the tweaks this summer will start that snowball rolling. I agree with Bacon that jump bridges would lower the risk just enough for more miners to justify going out to low/null sec. There has to be reward to justify the risk and right now it feels all risk.
I have to agree. While I don't mine much anymore I wouldn't even think about mining in Low just because of the target it paints on your head out there. Let alone trying to get a massive mining op or multi boxing the op yourself. You're just begging to get shot and for what? Just to get shot at? If I want to just get shot at, I'll just go into low with a combat ship so that at least I can shoot back!
DeleteOne of the tweaks that might intrigue me is to make Grav sites have to be scanned again instead of being blatantly there with the dumbscovery scanner. I'd insist though that the dumbscovery scanner go away in w-space first or with that change. Then, MAYBE you'd get some low sec mining ops running but that's a big if :(. Along with this change, to reduce that if, if the grav/ore sites could spawn rarer minerals based on the number of ship/pod kills in the system and surrounding systems, now I feel like we're starting to get somewhere.
Well, you've got my vote now since you're the first and only person I've ever seen talk about this seriously. The problem, in my opinion, lies not in the risk/reward but in the binary nature of mining outcomes in Lowsec. You can tank the crap out of a Procurer or a Skiff or anything else, but when you get scrammed and all it takes is one cruiser to pop you, why would you mine anywhere but High Sec / Blue Null? The tank on those ships is completely wasted. I'd prefer a solution where they had enough tank and drone space to handle belt rats (up to say, Battlecruisers, but not Battleships) but where also granted a warp bonus similar to what Interceptors have but that would effect targeted disruption rather than bubbles. Design the hulls so they can only fit strip miners so they don't become overpower cyno ships and limit the regular cargo holds so they can only handle a few crystal reloads. Let them be vulnerable to infinite scram hictors so there's still some risk involved and a co-ordinated gang can still pop them. But right now, mining outcomes in Lowsec, if you're in a barge, are totally binary. You make out marginally better than you did in high sec or you get blown to pieces. There needs to be a viable way for a mining vessel to escape once engaged.
ReplyDeleteWarp stabs can be fit on mining vessels too, you know. Asking for them to be all but immune to targeted disruption from 90% or more of the ships in the game is beyond ridiculous.
DeleteIf you are an economically rational entity, fitting warp stabs to a barge or exhumer makes no sense. If you run a fully mining fit Retriever/Mackinaw in high sec while harvesting Pyrox, Kernite, and Scordite, you make substantially more money, money you can use to buy Zydrine and Noxicum and etc.. That you're likely getting Orca boosts in high and not in Low only makes high sec even more lucrative.
DeleteStabbing a Procurer/Skiff then having to warp out every time someone drops into belt, not to mention being screwed when someone brings two fast tackles or has officer grade scrams, drops your M3/hour to a pitiful level. It's a complete waste of time and a potential loss of ISK. Feel free to suggest alternatives but fitting warp stabs to mining vessels in low sec is, in your own words, beyond ridiculous.
You can't make lowsec mining profitable enough to overcome the risk-reward ratio without seriously overbalancing nullsec or crippling highsec. Yes, you can tank battleship rats in your procurer. But you can't tank a roaming bunch of folks with that barge. At least in nullsec you can depend on intel channels.
ReplyDeleteWhen my R&D agents send me through lowsec, I usually do the run in a venture and mine something on the way back. I've had a few folks try to pop my ship. And my corp's HQ is "located" in a lowsec system, so folks think I'm bait.
There's no way to calculate risk/reward by security status as each system is different. 50m/h mining is fine in the random lowsec pocket no one visits, but not for Amamake.
ReplyDeleteThe only way to get non-roleplayers to lowsec is to have a dynamic ISK/h. And it's logical. No one accepting your missions? You increase the reward until someone does. No one destroying your pirate hideout? You expand it until someone does. No one mining in a belt? The belt slowly grows until someone does.
You would get more ISK in Solitude than next to Jita and more ISK in lowsec than higsec. You could also see interesting things like a mining corporation hire or recruit PVPers to defend their mining operations in places like Amamake and still make a good profit!
Well, I can think of a few solutions: More concentrated ore variants that only appear in lowsec/nullsec, lowsec specific ores, or that commonly thrown around idea that belts should grow larger and/or more concentrated if they're mined infrequently, to the point of being more or less goldmines. Adding that and even more concentrated ore variants (Say, +20% to +30% variants, when the current max is +10%) might be enough to provide some incentive for going out there. This may have the sad side effect of lowering mineral prices some, but that may also drive down the price on goods since manufacturing costs will be lower.
ReplyDeleteIncreasing the yield of some ore will only push down the value of mining overall.
DeleteTo increase the value of low sec mining, you need to take something away from hi sec, such as hedbergite & hemorphite in anomalies. And then take away some more, such as replacing the Nocxium in Pyrox with a lot of Pyerite. This will mean that only low and null have Nocxium, so the value of low sec mining will increase.
Exchange null and low sec ores. Makes low sec the only place where mercoxit and the ABC ores are found.
ReplyDeleteBut I don't think there is a way to get people to mine in low sec. It will never be worth it, miners will choose to mine in high sec or in null. Low sec is pvp territory with some pve opportunities. High and null are pve territory with some pvp thrown in.
High sec has the low effort afk mining.
Nullsec mining has the highest rewards for mining.
Lowsec mining has the risk.
I think much of the value of mining remotely is not in the value of Isk in minerals, but the value of production that can come out of what you can pull in.
ReplyDeleteI've mined in Oicx back before we took the warzone. I made navy vexors and frigs next door in Villil and brought stuff in with an Imicus (mods, guns, rigs). I did it all without needing a jump freighter. I even built another Ret with those same minerals. Yah... A lot of time was invested that I could have made - and paid - to have all that moved in. In a way though, no place will ever feel more like home than when I didn't think about highsec when I needed a small-med hull.
Buffing station services and refine yields is how you will do it. Give us time efficiency and discounted manufacturing costs. Maybe I'd do it again.
Specifically, remove half the new Extra Materials for lowsec and that again fully for Null and that alone would move a lot of production into that space. Maybe the Tier could affect the total benefit?
DeleteAnd flag every non-fw pilot as suspect upon entering a FW warzone system! I would like that very much. :)
You were doing it wrong. Low sec mining is only worth while when coupled with exploration. You can easily reach any ore you could want from low sec. Want to do some gas harvesting? You can find drug gasses in normal low sec and null sec space or you have worm hole space to extract gas from too. Want to mine ore? You can VENTURE (you see what I did there) into the hidden belts for some of the lesser 0.0 ores to appear in low sec or you can head through a wormhole to either mine in the wormhole or bridge through to normal null sec for mercoxit. You can also find ice in much the same way. There is nothing that is not available to you.
ReplyDeleteBuffing the reward side with more valuable lowsec ores is certainly a step in the right direction. But I think one of the best things that could be done to revitalize lowsec mining is to give mining barges a utility high slot. If I can park in a belt with a barge and cloak up when someone enters the system or has probes out, that minimizes the risk of bringing an expensive barge to low. Especially considering that it's not feasible to jump out and back in a barge with the long align times every time someone pops in system and still maintain any kind of mining throughput.
ReplyDeleteApologies for being late to the conversation...I'm an FW pilot and use to mine in Black Rise between FW fleets. I mined Hedbergite in the belts & Ore Anoms for Gneiss & Crokite. I mined in 2 systems exclusively...I used the belts off scan from gates and the station. I flew a tanked Procurer with a single WCS and Nano in the lows. Rigs had 2 LF Nozzle Joints. I kept up a 5 AU scan. Being Militia eliminated a third of the hunters. I warped to station when Neuts & Gals hit my 5 AU scan. My align time was 7s. I had one loss in six months. I'd mine for hours uninterrupted; finding a quiet system was critical & not hard with DOTLAN. I refined my ore in the State Pro station & hauled it out in a Blockade Runner.
ReplyDeleteIt didn't make me space rich but supported a Frig/Dessy PVP habit. I hauled in the LS minerals and bought the HS minerals off the mkt. I'd build Frig/Dessys for sale and personal use. It kept costs down and gave me a steady income.
In my experience, LS mining does not lend itself to large mining ops like HS & Null. But small groups of 3-5 miners or solo miners can make a decent profit. Keeping your signature small reduces overall mining efficiency but in exchange you get greater security. Thus you can mine the more valuable ore types Hedbergite, Hemorphite & Jaspet in peace. In time, you will learn your neighbors habits befriending some & avoiding others.
LS mining is not for AFKers, requires greater planning and with the changes since Crius (my experience is pre-Crius) offers worthwhile opportunity. If you're bold enough & smart enough.
The best thing to do for LowSec mining, is make it VENTURE friendly.
ReplyDeleteHigh Value ores (Same as Null), Gas, but in small Venture sized quantities.. Nothing that would really benefit a larger barge or ops team.
That's it.. keep it small and agile with a fun profit opportunity, something between what a level 3 and level 4 mission would pay per hour.
Realistically, it needs to be a full skilled venture can make 30 million or more an hour in Low Sec doing stuff that is easily accessible on scan or at the belts. Not requiring exploration skills, etc.. as that just cuts the value down due to time.