Mining is one of my favorite activities, so when it was added as a power play activity for earning merits, I was very excited. Unfortunately, there are several frustrations with the current system that make it confusing, frustrating, and sometimes completely useless.
As far as we have been able to discover so far, there are only two ways to earn merits via mining.
1. Mine and sell in one power system.
2. Mine in a fortified or stronghold system, and sell in an acquisition system.
The problem is, the vast majority of systems do not have good mining opportunities. This can lead to several very strange Dynamics.
1. It can be much better to not own systems rather than to own them, since if you don't own them, you can sell there from a nearby system with much better mining opportunities, but which probably has zeroed out demand because of said mining opportunities.
2. If you do decide to take that system, or it just happens incidentally, it suddenly becomes much harder to sustain, since you lose the ability to use that powerful mining lever. This can result in a system constantly being taken and lost repeatedly.
3. Price bonuses offered by a power only work within your power's space. This directly disincentivizes players from attempting to acquire acquisition systems, since selling in those acquisition systems sacrifices a huge portion of your potential profit.
That being said, I don't dislike the idea of needing to mine locally, it's just that the incentives as they currently stand end up working against your power, rather than with it. I have a simple alternative I would like to propose:
50% of mineral merits go to the system in which they were mined, and 50% go to the system in which they were sold, so long as it is within the sphere of influence of the mining location.
This achieves the desired result of encouraging local mining, but also allows mining to be used practically even in systems where it is not available. It also removes the perverse incentives around acquisition systems, as you no longer lose the ability to support exploited systems by mining Imports.
If no local mining is available, you can still achieve similar results(albeit divided between two systems) by mining in a nearby system and selling in the Target system. Even better, if you want to retain your profitability, you could instead mine in the Target system and sell in the power system, resulting in both merits and in retaining the Profit bonuses of your power. And, if a distant system has some combination of bgs states which causes exemplary prices, even if it is out of range, you could still sell there and at least get 50% of your total merits(the ones which go to the mining system), only sacrificing the delivery merits.
Overall, I think this would just be a lot more intuitive and work a lot better, while being simpler to boot.
Any other miners feel like this would be a big improvement?
As far as we have been able to discover so far, there are only two ways to earn merits via mining.
1. Mine and sell in one power system.
2. Mine in a fortified or stronghold system, and sell in an acquisition system.
The problem is, the vast majority of systems do not have good mining opportunities. This can lead to several very strange Dynamics.
1. It can be much better to not own systems rather than to own them, since if you don't own them, you can sell there from a nearby system with much better mining opportunities, but which probably has zeroed out demand because of said mining opportunities.
2. If you do decide to take that system, or it just happens incidentally, it suddenly becomes much harder to sustain, since you lose the ability to use that powerful mining lever. This can result in a system constantly being taken and lost repeatedly.
3. Price bonuses offered by a power only work within your power's space. This directly disincentivizes players from attempting to acquire acquisition systems, since selling in those acquisition systems sacrifices a huge portion of your potential profit.
That being said, I don't dislike the idea of needing to mine locally, it's just that the incentives as they currently stand end up working against your power, rather than with it. I have a simple alternative I would like to propose:
50% of mineral merits go to the system in which they were mined, and 50% go to the system in which they were sold, so long as it is within the sphere of influence of the mining location.
This achieves the desired result of encouraging local mining, but also allows mining to be used practically even in systems where it is not available. It also removes the perverse incentives around acquisition systems, as you no longer lose the ability to support exploited systems by mining Imports.
If no local mining is available, you can still achieve similar results(albeit divided between two systems) by mining in a nearby system and selling in the Target system. Even better, if you want to retain your profitability, you could instead mine in the Target system and sell in the power system, resulting in both merits and in retaining the Profit bonuses of your power. And, if a distant system has some combination of bgs states which causes exemplary prices, even if it is out of range, you could still sell there and at least get 50% of your total merits(the ones which go to the mining system), only sacrificing the delivery merits.
Overall, I think this would just be a lot more intuitive and work a lot better, while being simpler to boot.
Any other miners feel like this would be a big improvement?