I agree with you right up to the point where you claim, "... high-end mineral prices ruin the enjoyment of most other activities in the game."
HOW?!?! If you aren't into mining, then high mineral prices have zero effect on your gameplay. If you choose to mine nonetheless to build up the credits to build up your combat ship, explorer, trader, whatever, then it's a means to an end that can fund the ships you need with relatively little effort. Yes, it would be nice if you could do it entirely in your preferred gameplay style, and that is what should be addressed, but no one gains by further nerfing mining.
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We don't need to further nerf anything, we need to buff other activities - no one would ever argue that combat pays PITIFULLY little, for instance.
I've had this debate too many times now. Short version, mining prices break suspension of disbelief, and require too much cognitive dissonance to accept.
I was looking at the mining board tonight and saw a mission; "45t of Osmium, 5m credit reward!". Pfft. What a joke, when I can mine 45t of Painite more easily and get paid 40 million. That's what it does, for Every. Single. Activity. Many, many activities require substantially more effort than mining, and the
only outcome of those activities is credits.
Knowing how ridiculously high mining pays out, it's impossible to not interpret the pathetic payouts everything else receives by comparison as nothing more than a kick in the proverbial from the person requesting the work.
If you
really think that I shouldn't be concerned about the excessive payouts of mining, then these folks:
One the other hand, if you're a player who doesn't want to engage in combat or exploration (and there are quite a few, it would seem), and like being out in planetary rings quietly flying around, then a deliberate nerf of your gameplay to try to force you into other forms of play, like combat, is actually a push away from the game, so I would argue that nerfing mining yet again is harmful to the game's enjoyment.
... should have absolutely no problem with a nerf. They're doing it for the love of it, right, just like I should be?
Unless, y'know, payouts matter. Which they do, and knowing how much mining pays out means every time I do another activity, the mediocre payout is just a limp and uninspiring ending to the days activity. That's how it ruins my enjoyment of the game.
Mining pays too much, and other activities cannot be appropriately balanced without completely throwing the progression of the game out of whack. Nerfing it is inevitable.
Take CGs for example; 7 days of concentrated effort for a weak 80m payout at the end. To even remotely be competitive with mining, you're looking at something like a 1b payout per person for say, the top 50%? Might as well just remove credits at that point.
EDIT: It's not just mining that's on the nerf table, rememeber. Let's also talk about massacre stacking. That can net you 150m/h if you stack right, averaging 5m per basic ship kill. So where's that leave Threat 5-6 Pirate Activity? I rate those ships at 4-5 times the effort, so 25m per kill sounds like a good place to start, to base it around what massacres currently offer.
I rekon with some effort, I could spin about 1b an hour under those circumstances. That'd be a broken mess. So you can't realistically balance Threat 5-6 Pirate Activity sites until you nerf massacre stacking. The same needs to get done to mining and all the other outliers.
