Nerf Mining - Or Make Everything BUT Mining More Profitable

[GKhan]

All of the below aside from selling Painite were copied from the same Faction providing the missions, at Maximum Reputation;

• 100 Tons of Painite = 75,000,000+ Credits
• 
  
• Transport Passenger 7,738.90LY = 16,490,992 Credits + 2-3 Million More Credits Exploration Data
• 
  
• Deliver 42 Units of Grain = 390,723 Credits
• 
  
• Source 576 Unites of Polymers = 1,156,355 Credits (Wing Mission)
• 
  
• Wetwork (Combat Mission) = 421,572 Credits
• 
  
• Surface Recovery of Geological Sample = 74,628 Credits
• 
  
• Take Down Known Pirate = 1,150,262 Credits

I enjoy this game thoroughly, and play very often. I love doing cargo missions, and wing missions while listening to music and chatting with other commanders, but I also enjoy having credits. By having mining so much more profitable, it is essentially forcing players to play in a way they may not find very enjoyable, and burn out trying to keep up with the mining meta. I dont want the game to feel like a second job being forced to mine to reach end game content in a sensible timeframe.

 

[Ca$hback]

I agree with you but what people keep telling me is that "it's not about the credits". This is showing another symptom to a disease I dont know what to call. The symptom is "end game currency" instead of figuring out how to scale the currency.
Impatience and high expectations are too normalized.

 

[GKhan]

I agree with you but what people keep telling me is that "it's not about the credits". This is showing another symptom to a disease I dont know what to call. The symptom is "end game currency" instead of figuring out how to scale the currency.
Impatience and high expectations are too normalized.

It more about the time spent doing the activity. I would have to do 191.951 Grain Delivery missions to make 75 Million, if each of those missions took about 15 minutes, it would take me 47.98 hours. Mining, you can make 75 Million and more in 1 hour.

Doing the math for the other missions, it is pretty severely unbalanced. Even for the best paying missions, it would take hours and hours to match what these groups are making by mining, in 1 hours time.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Even for the best paying missions, it would take hours and hours to match what these groups are making by mining, in 1 hours time.

The best paying mission I saw recently paid 22 million credits to move 120t of Tritium to the next system over. That mission can be done in at most ten minutes. Another one slightly before that paid 30 million credits to bring them under 100t of Tritium. Easy money. Your estimate of what "the best paying missions" are is way off.

Of course, you don't tend to get enough of those missions showing up to do six an hour ... but the 10 million credit Palladium/Gold variants are a lot more reliable, and with the right stations and systems you can definitely take several of those an hour, maybe even more than one per trip.

You're comparing optimal mining situations with the missions on offer at an unoptimised station. That's not a fair comparison.
- If you sell your Painite at the first station you come across, you'll probably only get 200k/tonne for it, so your 100 tonnes gets you 20 million credits. A single good mission pays more than that and takes much less than an hour.
- If you pick the right stations for your missions, then passenger, cargo hauling and combat massacre missions can all easily pay in the 50-100 million credits per hour range.
(Now, there isn't a service like EDDB which tells you "where the good missions are" without requiring you to think or get lucky, in the same way that it does for "where to sell Painite" - but that doesn't mean it's not possible to do)

Mining does pay a lot when done right ... but missions also pay a lot when done right, it's just a bit more thinking to figure out how to do them right.

Salvage missions are a bit underpaid, I'd agree ... smuggling and piracy missions massively so ... missions in general, no. But then, mining Palladium or Osmium won't get you huge amounts of money in a single hour either, and mining Lepidolite will barely pay for the limpets you use. So does mining need a buff so the Lepidolite miners can get rich?

 

[limpetdwarf]

They need to fix mining. When I go to a hotspot, I expect to find the mineral that is indicated by the hotspot in significant amounts. Instead, when I go to a hotspot, there is all kinds of minerals in small amounts and usually none of the mineral that is indicated by the hotspot, or if anything, there are only trace amounts. A couple hours later, I have maybe 10t of minerals that aren't even really worthwhile selling, and it tends to cost more than it pays. So why do it at all?

Mining just sucks. They keep changing it all the time, and after you finally found a place worthwile mining, the next day the place is like all the other so-called hotspots. And that doesn't even mention that you have to jump across half the universe to sell your cargo. This is ridiculous.

Automate mining! Noone should be forced to do it, yet it is the only way to make some money so you can start playing. It's just bad.

@Ian Doncaster:

Where do you find missions paying that much? You can't say it's about doing missions in a smart way when there aren't any missions that would pay so well. And where do you get 100t Painite??? Have you you recently tried to get Painite at a Painite hotspot? It took me about 2 hours or so to get the 10t required to get access to an engineer.

 

[theBreadSultan]

I really really don't get why people complain about painite mining so so much.

If it hurts your feelings or breaks your immersion, here's an idea, don't use 3rd party websites to find double painite hotpots and then mine them in solo.

I gave in to the double hot-spot a while a go and have done a few runs - oh no, it will only take 10 hours of mining + another 5 hours of ing about.

Just to fully upgrade a single ship.

I really don't see it as game breaking. If you want to chase a meaningless number then sure, mining double hotpots you have found on the Internet in solo will make that number go up at a pretty rapid rate, but if you do the same thing over and over, you just end up creating a grind for yourself.

I've found that doing a session or 2 is enough to give me enough cash to buy the ship I want and fit some good modules, at which point I'm not mining, I'm doing other things that are more fun (though I do enjoy mining in and of itself)

I think it's a bit much for people to ask for painite nerf, after they have used it.

My only request would be that any painite nerf, is applied retroactively with cash removed from players depending on how much you have mined.

You still want it nerfed when the resulting nerf puts you 10billion in the red and every rebuy screen into a sidewinder?

 

[GroG79]

Back to 4 months to get a Python!

 

[Maymo]

All of the below aside from selling Painite were copied from the same Faction providing the missions, at Maximum Reputation;

• 100 Tons of Painite = 75,000,000+ Credits
• 
  
• Transport Passenger 7,738.90LY = 16,490,992 Credits + 2-3 Million More Credits Exploration Data
• 
  
• Deliver 42 Units of Grain = 390,723 Credits
• 
  
• Source 576 Unites of Polymers = 1,156,355 Credits (Wing Mission)
• 
  
• Wetwork (Combat Mission) = 421,572 Credits
• 
  
• Surface Recovery of Geological Sample = 74,628 Credits
• 
  
• Take Down Known Pirate = 1,150,262 Credits

I enjoy this game thoroughly, and play very often. I love doing cargo missions, and wing missions while listening to music and chatting with other commanders, but I also enjoy having credits. By having mining so much more profitable, it is essentially forcing players to play in a way they may not find very enjoyable, and burn out trying to keep up with the mining meta. I dont want the game to feel like a second job being forced to mine to reach end game content in a sensible timeframe.

But then what is a sensible timeframe?

Your own interpretation of a sensible timeframe is likely very very different to mine...

Knowing what I do about ED’s endgame content (there is none) I’d personally like to exist in a galaxy that initially takes me over a month to go from Sidewinder to Python, and maybe three months to get an Anaconda by playing 3-4 hours a day.

For me, that would be a reasonable playthrough for this huge online game where ultimately every activity you do earns credits.

Because IF every activity we do in the game earns credits having too many credits diminishes every activity in the game.

Mining profits should be nerfed in my opinion, but you have to be careful what you wish for because FD usually hit these things with a very blunt hammer.
I have no wish for mining to get nerfed back into the obscurity it used to suffer...

The games overall economy, including commodities, missions, aliens, combat needs some very special person at FD to sit down with a bottle of whiskey and revalue everything....

....taking into account risk/reward, timeframes, system states, ship and module prices, commodity value, Powerplay, exploration data, bounty hunting....

It’s a huge task.

 

[RamirezKurita]

Nerfing mining will do very little except punish those that haven't already abused it to hell and back; if you reduce its earning rates to 1/20th of its current value then the players who are sitting on 20+ billion credits will simply yawn and ignore it as they already have enough money to last them for the next 10 years of playing, no matter how wasteful they are.

However, simply buffing other earning rates to match mining would just perpetuate the problem that credits already have in that they are mostly useless. We need to be making credits relevant, rather than simply pushing them even further into irrelevance.

So how do you solve both problems? Balance mining against other activities while also restoring balance between earnings and outgoings? Simple, you buff all activities to mining's levels of earning while also rebalancing costs to keep in line with the newly enhanced earning rates. If earnings are 20x what they used to be, then all prices need to be increased by a factor of 20 to match (except fleet carriers, which probably would need a softer touch as their price looks like it might have partially accounted for a post-inflation economy).

I still remember fondly when I started playing (early Horizons), where ship progression and module upgrading was actually a major thing. I often didn't bother A-rating things, I'd hunt for LYR discounts, I avoided rebuys and I even used hand-me-downs on a lot of my ships - all in the name of saving credits and trying to maintain the best possible performance on a tight budget.

 

[theBreadSultan]

But then what is a sensible timeframe?

Your own interpretation of a sensible timeframe is likely very very different to mine...

Knowing what I do about ED’s endgame content (there is none) I’d personally like to exist in a galaxy that initially takes me over a month to go from Sidewinder to Python, and maybe three months to get an Anaconda by playing 3-4 hours a day.

For me, that would be a reasonable playthrough for this huge online game where ultimately every activity you do earns credits.

Because IF every activity we do in the game earns credits having too many credits diminishes every activity in the game.

Mining profits should be nerfed in my opinion, but you have to be careful what you wish for because FD usually hit these things with a very blunt hammer.
I have no wish for mining to get nerfed back into the obscurity it used to suffer...

The games overall economy, including commodities, missions, aliens, combat needs some very special person at FD to sit down with a bottle of whiskey and revalue everything....

....taking into account risk/reward, timeframes, system states, ship and module prices, commodity value, Powerplay, exploration data, bounty hunting....

It’s a huge task.

Here's the thing....

When you go to a 3rd party website to find a double painite hot-spot, and mine it in solo - you can't complain.

Sure if you could just Bumble around the galaxy and find that kind payout sure, but if you are tapping into an out of game community of players who have found the spot for you, AND found the place to sell this 70k average price commodity for 700-800k, then I don't see the complaint angle.

The whole point of mining is that spots like the double painite spots exist.

My only change to mining would be this... Make 10,000 'mining profiles' that determine where the hotpots are and you get dropped into a random one.. So yea, there is big money in double painite hotpots, but you gotta find your own

 

[Old Duck]

Personally I would prefer that mining be nerfed, but then replace it with random "gold rushes" like the good 'ol days. This way normal gameplay feels balanced (where it takes a few months to go from Sidewinder to Anaconda) for people like me, but for people who really want that Anaconda in a week, there is a "run this rare good in this specific system while the planets are aligned" get-rich-quick trick they can do. In fact, I wouldn't mind a few different "gold rush" opportunities covering different game mechanics.

Speaking of, it's too bad there are not "gold rush" community goals. Hauling food for refugees isn't a narrative where I would expect a gold rush, but protecting Princess Duval from pirates, well that should reward me enough gold to buy my own fully-outfitted Anaconda (at least if I'm in the top 10%). This would be much more immersive to me than the current mining meta, and more enjoyable too!

 

[Maymo]

Here's the thing....

When you go to a 3rd party website to find a double painite hot-spot, and mine it in solo - you can't complain.

Sure if you could just Bumble around the galaxy and find that kind payout sure, but if you are tapping into an out of game community of players who have found the spot for you, AND found the place to sell this 70k average price commodity for 700-800k, then I don't see the complaint angle.

The whole point of mining is that spots like the double painite spots exist.

My only change to mining would be this... Make 10,000 'mining profiles' that determine where the hotpots are and you get dropped into a random one.. So yea, there is big money in double painite hotpots, but you gotta find your own

My feeling is that it just shouldn't be possible to encounter a location in the game that allows you to acquire credits so rapidly at the cost of every other activity, using apps or not.

Especially as it's so low risk...

Apart from anything else, just mining the same commodity over and over is so damn boring, there's absolutely no surprise or discovery involved in visiting a spot on a ring that clearly states 'get rich in an hour hotspot' and
if the market fluctuated like it should we'd see more variety in the demands of various systems.

I feel core mining was also a missed opportunity, I like the idea that a core asteroid is the same as opening a kinder egg with a variety of commodities inside, you don't know what until you bust it open so it builds up a little suspense/surprise...

 

[theBreadSultan]

Personally I would prefer that mining be nerfed, but then replace it with random "gold rushes" like the good 'ol days. This way normal gameplay feels balanced (where it takes a few months to go from Sidewinder to Anaconda) for people like me, but for people who really want that Anaconda in a week, there is a "run this rare good in this specific system while the planets are aligned" get-rich-quick trick they can do. In fact, I wouldn't mind a few different "gold rush" opportunities covering different game mechanics.

Speaking of, it's too bad there are not "gold rush" community goals. Hauling food for refugees isn't a narrative where I would expect a gold rush, but protecting Princess Duval from pirates, well that should reward me enough gold to buy my own fully-outfitted Anaconda (at least if I'm in the top 10%). This would be much more immersive to me than the current mining meta, and more enjoyable too!

Yea deffo plus 1 this,

My only caveat would be that it's found in game. Perhaps mission linked as a reward for getting a specific faction to full allied status. They give a tip based on their faction type, that's good till the next tick.

 

[theBreadSultan]

My feeling is that it just shouldn't be possible to encounter a location in the game that allows you to acquire credits so rapidly at the cost of every other activity, using apps or not.

Especially as it's so low risk...

Apart from anything else, just mining the same commodity over and over is so damn boring, there's absolutely no surprise or discovery involved in visiting a spot on a ring that clearly states 'get rich in an hour hotspot' and
if the market fluctuated like it should we'd see more variety in the demands of various systems.

I feel core mining was also a missed opportunity, I like the idea that a core asteroid is the same as opening a kinder egg with a variety of commodities inside, you don't know what until you bust it open so it builds up a little suspense/surprise...

I like the kinder egg idea, especially as roid cracking is pretty awesome

But when it comes to the 'boring painite mining grind' - just don't do it

The game does not, require you to do this. You can get every module and every ship in the game without going near a hot spot.

Does the money you get from painite take away from other activities? IMO no it doesn't.

I don't blow up other ships because I want to become a bounty hunting Millionaire, I do it because they have 'violated the law'

And its fine that bounty hunting does not pay that well.

Bounty hunters are not rich. They exists on the fringes of society doing a job that's not nearly paid well enough for the risks involved.

Yea, mining is the best way to get credits, but wake scanning is the only way to get wake data, salvage the way to get certain materials, finding guardian sites the only way to get their stuff.

The mining isn't game breaking

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Alot of mistakes were made that led up to the "corrosive gold rushes" and exploits.

The way it should have been at V3.0 release :

• instead of Faction States multiplying certain Commodity prices by the lazy factor of 2, that multiplicator should have rather been something like +25% (that would have avoided the very first 1.6M Cr Void Opal rush but also prevented all other overpriced Mining outcomes)
• alternatively, the new "rare ores" should have been made actually and increasingly rare depending on their value... requiring a logistical effort to explore, locate and exploit these (i.e. no rare ores at all near the core of the bubble (depleted reserves) with some very rare ones being only present in certain areas of Deep Space, similar to the distribution of i.e. Biologicals)
• an automation System should have been implemented to connect all prices and Credit rewards (Balance Sheet), after which changing any single element would have auto-adjusted all other prices/rewards all by itself (which would have maintained a desired/set relative balancing across all professions and activities, preventing the observed massive imblances of any singular activity)

Those key factors could have prevented the vast majority of the problems and Hyperinflation that went into effect, while leaving behind a huge unregulated rat tail and a whole army of oversights the Devs apparently have long lost track of.

MMO balancing 101...
That said, though... there's been quite a few points where FDev ignored MMO balancing 101, so maybe they don't care or intentionally wish to experiment with the detrimental effects of being off the mark by a full order of magnitude once in a while.
Proper finetuning and balancing has never been a strong point of ELITE for all I can tell.

 

[mkizub]

The problem with profitable mining is not it's too profitable, but it's INSTANTLY too profitable.
All rich mininh rings in the human's bubble shuould be concidered fully exhausted.
One must find a good mining spot far away outside of the bubble (at least ~1500 ly).
And it must be completely worked out in a few runs.
The journey to sell painite must be long enough, so that it's not that much proftable over exhausted spots withing the bubble.
And of cause, the market must be saturated by huge amount of goods.

So, the problem is that economics and physical model are bogus. Normally, if those painite spots were exhausted by massive mining and markets get saturated with huge amount of painite - there whould be no need to nerf the mining.

And to fix a problem one must fix the reason of the problem, otherwice, if the root of the prblem is not fixes - he will have wrong resulting effects again ang again.
So, FD must fix economics and physics, and then the problem with mining will dissapear by itself.

 

[GroG79]

The problem with profitable mining is not it's too profitable, but it's INSTANTLY too profitable.
All rich mininh rings in the human's bubble shuould be concidered fully exhausted.

You have no idea on how big rings are. No way a million cmdrs can clear the old Borann in 100 years.

Perhaps hotspots were a bad idea to begin with. I doubt Fdev considered overlaps or even triple overlaps were going to be a thing.

 

[mkizub]

You have no idea on how big rings are.

No one have. How big and how condenced are deposits.

No way a million cmdrs can clear the old Borann in 100 years.

That's just your guess. A good guess for a situation when every asteroid is refreshed every few hours.

 

[Maolagin]

No one have. How big and how condenced are deposits.


That's just your guess. A good guess for a situation when every asteroid is refreshed every few hours.

It's not a guess. To quote myself -

Ah, but while it's rather unrealistic for thousands of players to repeatedly mine out the same rock (or is it, they are the size of mountains after all...) it's also a bit unrealistic for players to deplete a ring in any reasonable amount of time too. On a lark, I measured the dimensions of the inner, maximum yield portion of the LTD3 overlap in Col 285. 88 million sq. km. For reference, that's about twice the land area of Asia.

Even if every asteroid was depleted permanently and globally after being mined, it's highly implausible that game activity would ever deplete more than the very highest traffic areas of the highest traffic rings. There's just too many of them.

And keep in mind, for reference, there are only a handful of "depleted reserve" systems in the core of the Bubble, representing systems that have been mined out by centuries of activity. You don't even have to get out of inhabited space to find pristine systems. Space is just really big.

 

[Defacto]

It's not a guess. To quote myself -

Even if every asteroid was depleted permanently and globally after being mined, it's highly implausible that game activity would ever deplete more than the very highest traffic areas of the highest traffic rings. There's just too many of them.

And keep in mind, for reference, there are only a handful of "depleted reserve" systems in the core of the Bubble, representing systems that have been mined out by centuries of activity. You don't even have to get out of inhabited space to find pristine systems. Space is just really big.

You didn't answer their questions - how big and condensed are the deposits?
Total ring size is irrelevant. Or are you mining water ice and silicates?

There is a correct answer by the way - the concentration and size of the deposits are whatever is appropriate for gameplay. Mining in this game is fantasy anyway.