Well based on the fact that carrier jump times are as of now 35 minutes...and that most miners are likely to not even fill their carrier before they have had enough of the mining to go dump at the CG station, most of the carrier traffic is likely due to tritium filling and dumping...making a Mining CG not about mining for most CMDRs...
The goal of a CG should be either:
- Bring the community together to further the story arc of the universe. Creating the (possibly false) idea that players have agency in the outcome. ie: side with Aegis or Azimuth.
- Change the galaxy based on result, like adding the stations to the bridge to colonia, etc..
- Get new players to try new activities in the game.
I think the current CG falls in the 3rd category, it should be designed to get new players to try mining...and I think it failed at doing that.
Here is what I think a "Mining CG" should look like, hopefully FDEV see this and takes notes for next time.
Minerals requested should either be:
a) what we expect a new miner to keep mining if he chooses to go mining after the CG, ie: Platinum, so that the mining feeling is representative of how fast mining can be, having new players mine non hotspot minerals is going to take them much longer and feel much more boring than it actually is, making sure they don't go mining ever again.
b) Pick a ring type and request the 4 most common minerals, ex: Hydrogen Peroxide + Lithium Hydroxide + Methane Clathrate + Methanol Monohydrate all from Icy Rings, so that it's easy to find them and fill up cargo. making sure to not include buyable minerals and avoiding the high price ones, like Low Temp diamonds in this case, those would just be a bonus you can also grab for extra credits while doing the CG.
The price the CG should pay for minerals should be in line with actual mining, with maybe a slight cg bonus since it lasts only for a week. For example a) pay around 300-350k/t for platinum, and for example b) since it might be even faster to mine than platinum if you can mine the 4 most common minerals in the ring, then the price can be a little lower, like 200-250k/t.
Even if the minerals requested can't be bought at stations, requiring them to be "mined" to count for the CG is good, as it avoids people like me that buy Platinum near mining locations to resell when prices are high to just dump 20k Platinum on the first day of the CG to guarantee top 10%. it's a mining CG after all, not a I have a carrier CG.
A CG with Core mining could also be interesting to have commanders at least try it, there I would suggest cores found in Rocky rings, and should pay between 500k/t to 800k/t to align with normal core mining prices, a bit less if the cg reward is nice or more if there is not much incentives to participate other then the credits.
About CG rewards, throwing in a pre-engineered laser is fine, but unless the item is not available at tech brokers or is a unique paint job, or the galaxy/stations/story is going to be impacted, than there is not a lot of incentives to contribute a lot, I think the credits reward should reflect that, obviously if the CG is about something like hauling commodities and they pay 30k+ profits per ton, then the top participants are already gonna make loads of money, but if the CG is hauling commodities that you buy for 100credits and the CG pays like 3k then there is no good money to be made there (compared to hauling something else) so in that case the money reward should probably be something like 500Millions for the top 10% or top 25% participants at tier 5...
my2c.
