Legends
Elite
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2006
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- Dirty Dingos
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- Inherent Marxus Legends
I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately; could the mining profession be radically different, but also in some respects be able to maintain the current system where miners engage in essentially carpet-bombing the landscape in search of markup?
The short answer is, I think Yes, it could be. The Mining profession could be taken to the next level in UE 5, without it becoming something that will look totally foreign to the current miners.
First of all, let me just say, I think mining has been and always should be about “Towers”, and that part would not change in the new model I am proposing below. Surveying (carpet-bombing the landscape in the hopes of hitting it big) would also continue, pretty much unchanged from its current iteration. The biggest change I’m going to propose is to overhaul the Extraction (resource harvesting) part of it to make it much more dynamic, engaging and rewarding.
The inspiration for these proposed improvements (or evolution of the mining profession) is real-life itself, where parallels can be drawn with the mining industry in the real world. On Earth today, any junior mining company can go pretty much anywhere and with the right permits, drill out some cores and perform some geological surveys to see what’s in the ground there. If they find the mother load, they get rich, if they find squat, then it’s on them. That part of it is fine, in EU, miners just grab some probes and go drill the landscape in search of something valuable, fine. But in the real world, setting up a Mine to perform the extraction and refining of valuable resources is very capital intensive; so it tends to be the better established mining companies that do it, not the juniors.
Billiton, Rio-Tinto, Glencore, and countless other major mining firms have the bankroll, the expertise, the equipment and the customers requisite in order to be able to setup a Mine that will then extract and refine a resource for years and bring it to market. In Entropia, it doesn’t work like that at all. Any miner can do it, the “Mine” is only there for a few minutes in most cases, the equipment used for extracting is just a handheld device (very unrealistic); there is a big disconnect here.
I think the first thing that needs to happen is to de-couple Surveying/Prospecting from the actual Extraction; make it into 2 distinct professional/skill paths, or make it into a progression in a miner’s career, where Surveying/Prospecting is available to everyone right from the beginning, but Extracting can only be done successfully by established miners with a minimum skill threshold.
Surveying/Prospecting:
Miners’ activity at the beginning of their careers would look very similar to their activity today; they would grab probes from the TT and go around and carpet-bomb the landscape in search of something valuable. The main difference here would be that the paper claim is what these miners would sell, not the resource itself. That resource would have to be extracted from a more skilled and better equipped miner.
If there are certain resources that MA wishes to keep at an mu of between 100% to 105%, then these select few (like for example Crude Oil) could still be harvested using a handheld device by anyone. But the majority of mining resources would only be harvestable with a Harvesting Rig (Tower), which can only be setup efficiently by a high-level miner.
Claims should have a “countdown” in their item info that shows how many months/weeks/days are left before the Claim expires and Extraction can no longer begin. As long as that countdown hasn’t hit zero, Extraction operations can begin. Once operations begin, they can continue to exhaustion of the resources.
Resource Harvesting/Extracting:
When a miner has reached a minimum threshold of skills in mining, they can branch off and specialize into Resource Harvesting/Extracting, or not, it’s totally up to them. Moving up into Harvesting/Extracting has many interesting advantages such as more stable returns for the miner, more dynamic gameplay, leveraging game knowledge and contacts more efficiently and perhaps some other advantages too.
It’s still all about the “Towers” (harvesting rig). You see, for a miner to begin the Extraction process, it would be necessary that they place a Harvesting Rig (a Tower) on the Claim to begin the process. Eventually, other modules could be attached which could provide various advantages, but let’s just keep it simple for now, I only wanted to point out that this concept leads to very engaging and dynamic gameplay given all the possibilities.
Once a Tower has been configured and placed on the claim, the Tower begins collecting the resource which the miner can collect and take to market every 6 hours if he/she wishes, or just leave it there to accumulate for a few days before emptying the rig (this part dictates the level of activity required - log in frequency - of the miner, I should think that once or twice per week should be fine, but ultimately that would be up to MA to figure out).
And this is the point at which a miner can now declare he or she has now entered into the big leagues; he or she is now officially operating a Mine, which is harvesting a resource, and placing that resource on the market. This experienced, veteran miner becomes an asset to the economy by providing a service that no one else can provide; bringing raw claims online and then bringing the resources to market. This veteran miner would need the new miner in order to be able to operate efficiently, by finding quality claims, the new miner keeps the veteran miner focused on Extracting, without too much interruption in productivity.
Of course the veteran miner could still go out and Survey/Prospect to try to find new claims him or herself, but that would be similar to a veteran, high-level crafter making their own Standard Plates or Basic Filters; it can be done, but their time would be much better spent clicking something else with higher skill requirements and value. In other words, becoming a professional Harvester/Extractor doesn’t mean you can no longer go out and carpet-bomb the landscape anymore, it just means that there’s a new aspect of mining that has now opened up for you, making the mining profession as a whole much more dynamic, rewarding and engaging.
The mining profession as a whole becomes much more fleshed out (developed). For example, a whole new market for Harvesting Rigs would come into existence. These Harvesting Rigs would have stats which would make them very different from one another and from which value could be derived. There could be towers optimized for EnMatter and some for Ore, others could be much faster but ultimately more wasteful, some could be incredibly efficient but only capable of producing a trickle flow of raw resources (perhaps the only way to harvest something like Redulite profitably for example).
Here’s a short list of opportunities the above would create:
1. A market for paper Claims
All of the lower level miners being Surveyors/Prospectors and being unable to Extract the resources themselves, they will be looking to sell these paper Claims to miners who can Extract them. Veteran miners will forge relationships with Surveyors/Prospectors (lower-level miners) for the long run in order to secure a steady supply of new Claims to Extract. An entire market for paper Claims will result (regardless, it should be possible to TT paper Claims, especially at the beginning, in the event there is no takers).
2. A Market for Harvesting Rigs (Towers)
In order to do well as a professional Extractor you will need to have very good, valuable equipment. Crafters can make some of these basic Towers, but better, more configurable Towers are available as Event prizes, Upgrade missions for Miners, etc.
3. Make Resource Gathering skills more valuable
Do any of these skills (Driller, Miner, Archeologist) even have any value right now? They sure will in this new Mining profession model, because good Towers will need good skills to use.
4. An end-game for Miners
Right now, a level 85 Miner has absolutely no advantage whatsoever over a level 60 Miner; there is no incentive for anyone to level any higher than level 60, nothing to look forward to. In this new Mining profession model, there is lots to look forward to, a lot of reasons to skill higher.
5. More stable returns for high-level miners
Revenues and Costs become much more predictable once you become a professional Extractor because you can control how much you pay for Claims. You can also leverage your game knowledge and contacts in order to create a reliable cash-flow for yourself going forward.
6. Opportunities for miners to develop their avatars further
As I stated above, the Mining profession as a whole is a dead-end right now with absolutely nothing to work towards after level 60. By contrast, this new Mining profession model is one that is very dynamic and engaging, where Miners have to evolve to play different roles and perform different activities as they grow. Hunting is like this, Mining and Crafting needs to be like this too.
The loadout for a professional Mine operator could be optimized for EnMatter, Ore or both; optimized for Quantity over Quality and vice-versa; it could be optimized for reducing the Input costs, and therefore profitability, etc. All of a sudden various buffs can be imagined that could help the Mine Operator be more efficient in what he or she is extracting, various new Skills can be created to help with this, new Modules that attach to Harvesting Rigs to improve things like storage capacity, waste mitigation, fuel consumption, etc.
How long a Mine should last is an interesting question. If you think about it, a Claim should probably have 3 basic parameters: 1. Resources found there, 2. Total amount which is possible to be extracted and 3. Maximum rate of extraction that is possible.
I can easily imagine Belkar and Narcanisium Mines that could exist for months without disrupting the economy, as long as the rate of extraction is appropriate. But is it worth the Tower that’s on it? Should Towers all be (L)imited, Unlimited, or both? What are the costs to Extracting which then become built into the MU of the resources which are ultimately placed on the market? Do they vary from one resource to another, or are they flat extraction costs across all resources and all planets? Would we have planets which are more Miner friendly in this new Mining model? What happens to Indoor Mining rules? Can I setup a contract with another player and allow them to collect the resources from my Towers directly? Can a Tower located in PvP be attacked by a rival Mining Society? What happens then?
Anyway, I hope I’ve been able to clearly and precisely explain the concept I have for how I think Mining could be taken to the next level. I think the most challenging thing in how to do this successfully is 1. How do you do that without changing Mining so much that it alienates all of your professional miners, and 2. How do you modernize the Mining profession properly in a way that makes sense for Entropia but also takes advantage of new game engine tools and features? I think the above accomplishes both of these things very well and to be honest, I’m not sure there is any other way to do this without Mining becoming something vastly different than what it is today.
Thanks for reading,
Legends
The short answer is, I think Yes, it could be. The Mining profession could be taken to the next level in UE 5, without it becoming something that will look totally foreign to the current miners.
First of all, let me just say, I think mining has been and always should be about “Towers”, and that part would not change in the new model I am proposing below. Surveying (carpet-bombing the landscape in the hopes of hitting it big) would also continue, pretty much unchanged from its current iteration. The biggest change I’m going to propose is to overhaul the Extraction (resource harvesting) part of it to make it much more dynamic, engaging and rewarding.
The inspiration for these proposed improvements (or evolution of the mining profession) is real-life itself, where parallels can be drawn with the mining industry in the real world. On Earth today, any junior mining company can go pretty much anywhere and with the right permits, drill out some cores and perform some geological surveys to see what’s in the ground there. If they find the mother load, they get rich, if they find squat, then it’s on them. That part of it is fine, in EU, miners just grab some probes and go drill the landscape in search of something valuable, fine. But in the real world, setting up a Mine to perform the extraction and refining of valuable resources is very capital intensive; so it tends to be the better established mining companies that do it, not the juniors.
Billiton, Rio-Tinto, Glencore, and countless other major mining firms have the bankroll, the expertise, the equipment and the customers requisite in order to be able to setup a Mine that will then extract and refine a resource for years and bring it to market. In Entropia, it doesn’t work like that at all. Any miner can do it, the “Mine” is only there for a few minutes in most cases, the equipment used for extracting is just a handheld device (very unrealistic); there is a big disconnect here.
I think the first thing that needs to happen is to de-couple Surveying/Prospecting from the actual Extraction; make it into 2 distinct professional/skill paths, or make it into a progression in a miner’s career, where Surveying/Prospecting is available to everyone right from the beginning, but Extracting can only be done successfully by established miners with a minimum skill threshold.
Surveying/Prospecting:
Miners’ activity at the beginning of their careers would look very similar to their activity today; they would grab probes from the TT and go around and carpet-bomb the landscape in search of something valuable. The main difference here would be that the paper claim is what these miners would sell, not the resource itself. That resource would have to be extracted from a more skilled and better equipped miner.
If there are certain resources that MA wishes to keep at an mu of between 100% to 105%, then these select few (like for example Crude Oil) could still be harvested using a handheld device by anyone. But the majority of mining resources would only be harvestable with a Harvesting Rig (Tower), which can only be setup efficiently by a high-level miner.
Claims should have a “countdown” in their item info that shows how many months/weeks/days are left before the Claim expires and Extraction can no longer begin. As long as that countdown hasn’t hit zero, Extraction operations can begin. Once operations begin, they can continue to exhaustion of the resources.
Resource Harvesting/Extracting:
When a miner has reached a minimum threshold of skills in mining, they can branch off and specialize into Resource Harvesting/Extracting, or not, it’s totally up to them. Moving up into Harvesting/Extracting has many interesting advantages such as more stable returns for the miner, more dynamic gameplay, leveraging game knowledge and contacts more efficiently and perhaps some other advantages too.
It’s still all about the “Towers” (harvesting rig). You see, for a miner to begin the Extraction process, it would be necessary that they place a Harvesting Rig (a Tower) on the Claim to begin the process. Eventually, other modules could be attached which could provide various advantages, but let’s just keep it simple for now, I only wanted to point out that this concept leads to very engaging and dynamic gameplay given all the possibilities.
Once a Tower has been configured and placed on the claim, the Tower begins collecting the resource which the miner can collect and take to market every 6 hours if he/she wishes, or just leave it there to accumulate for a few days before emptying the rig (this part dictates the level of activity required - log in frequency - of the miner, I should think that once or twice per week should be fine, but ultimately that would be up to MA to figure out).
And this is the point at which a miner can now declare he or she has now entered into the big leagues; he or she is now officially operating a Mine, which is harvesting a resource, and placing that resource on the market. This experienced, veteran miner becomes an asset to the economy by providing a service that no one else can provide; bringing raw claims online and then bringing the resources to market. This veteran miner would need the new miner in order to be able to operate efficiently, by finding quality claims, the new miner keeps the veteran miner focused on Extracting, without too much interruption in productivity.
Of course the veteran miner could still go out and Survey/Prospect to try to find new claims him or herself, but that would be similar to a veteran, high-level crafter making their own Standard Plates or Basic Filters; it can be done, but their time would be much better spent clicking something else with higher skill requirements and value. In other words, becoming a professional Harvester/Extractor doesn’t mean you can no longer go out and carpet-bomb the landscape anymore, it just means that there’s a new aspect of mining that has now opened up for you, making the mining profession as a whole much more dynamic, rewarding and engaging.
The mining profession as a whole becomes much more fleshed out (developed). For example, a whole new market for Harvesting Rigs would come into existence. These Harvesting Rigs would have stats which would make them very different from one another and from which value could be derived. There could be towers optimized for EnMatter and some for Ore, others could be much faster but ultimately more wasteful, some could be incredibly efficient but only capable of producing a trickle flow of raw resources (perhaps the only way to harvest something like Redulite profitably for example).
Here’s a short list of opportunities the above would create:
1. A market for paper Claims
All of the lower level miners being Surveyors/Prospectors and being unable to Extract the resources themselves, they will be looking to sell these paper Claims to miners who can Extract them. Veteran miners will forge relationships with Surveyors/Prospectors (lower-level miners) for the long run in order to secure a steady supply of new Claims to Extract. An entire market for paper Claims will result (regardless, it should be possible to TT paper Claims, especially at the beginning, in the event there is no takers).
2. A Market for Harvesting Rigs (Towers)
In order to do well as a professional Extractor you will need to have very good, valuable equipment. Crafters can make some of these basic Towers, but better, more configurable Towers are available as Event prizes, Upgrade missions for Miners, etc.
3. Make Resource Gathering skills more valuable
Do any of these skills (Driller, Miner, Archeologist) even have any value right now? They sure will in this new Mining profession model, because good Towers will need good skills to use.
4. An end-game for Miners
Right now, a level 85 Miner has absolutely no advantage whatsoever over a level 60 Miner; there is no incentive for anyone to level any higher than level 60, nothing to look forward to. In this new Mining profession model, there is lots to look forward to, a lot of reasons to skill higher.
5. More stable returns for high-level miners
Revenues and Costs become much more predictable once you become a professional Extractor because you can control how much you pay for Claims. You can also leverage your game knowledge and contacts in order to create a reliable cash-flow for yourself going forward.
6. Opportunities for miners to develop their avatars further
As I stated above, the Mining profession as a whole is a dead-end right now with absolutely nothing to work towards after level 60. By contrast, this new Mining profession model is one that is very dynamic and engaging, where Miners have to evolve to play different roles and perform different activities as they grow. Hunting is like this, Mining and Crafting needs to be like this too.
The loadout for a professional Mine operator could be optimized for EnMatter, Ore or both; optimized for Quantity over Quality and vice-versa; it could be optimized for reducing the Input costs, and therefore profitability, etc. All of a sudden various buffs can be imagined that could help the Mine Operator be more efficient in what he or she is extracting, various new Skills can be created to help with this, new Modules that attach to Harvesting Rigs to improve things like storage capacity, waste mitigation, fuel consumption, etc.
How long a Mine should last is an interesting question. If you think about it, a Claim should probably have 3 basic parameters: 1. Resources found there, 2. Total amount which is possible to be extracted and 3. Maximum rate of extraction that is possible.
I can easily imagine Belkar and Narcanisium Mines that could exist for months without disrupting the economy, as long as the rate of extraction is appropriate. But is it worth the Tower that’s on it? Should Towers all be (L)imited, Unlimited, or both? What are the costs to Extracting which then become built into the MU of the resources which are ultimately placed on the market? Do they vary from one resource to another, or are they flat extraction costs across all resources and all planets? Would we have planets which are more Miner friendly in this new Mining model? What happens to Indoor Mining rules? Can I setup a contract with another player and allow them to collect the resources from my Towers directly? Can a Tower located in PvP be attacked by a rival Mining Society? What happens then?
Anyway, I hope I’ve been able to clearly and precisely explain the concept I have for how I think Mining could be taken to the next level. I think the most challenging thing in how to do this successfully is 1. How do you do that without changing Mining so much that it alienates all of your professional miners, and 2. How do you modernize the Mining profession properly in a way that makes sense for Entropia but also takes advantage of new game engine tools and features? I think the above accomplishes both of these things very well and to be honest, I’m not sure there is any other way to do this without Mining becoming something vastly different than what it is today.
Thanks for reading,
Legends
