so what exactly does the high intensity relate to in "high intensity resource extraction zone"?

[Lasse B.]

so what exactly does the high intensity relate to in "high intensity resource extraction zone"?

I'm asking because even if I manage to get into an instance where mostly big ships like Pythons, Dropships and Clippers spawn, the combat is anything but intense. Well, except for the one in like 10000 spawns where you see a wing of three pirate Pythons.

So what exactly is it that is of high intensity in these high intensity resource extraction zones? Is it high intensity wellness? Is it high intensity making out? High intensity 'roid admiring? Or really just (as in "exclusively limited to") the mining? Because whatever is supposed to be of high intensity in these zones, combat is not it.

Beyond that we will have low and high intensity resource extraction sites. At low intensity sites there is lower output for mining, but also a heavier system authority presence and lower pirate presence. For the high intensity sites this is reversed, so is more dangerous with more pirates and less security, but also greater rewards for mining there.

Haven't been to any low intensity RES', but high intensity ones regularly spawn two system security Anacondas and / or a wing of fighter ships that keep anything that smells of pirate busy while most of the times the pirate amount and quality is miraculously unfitting for a HI-RES.

Now if you're thinking "well, then let's reduce the amount of system security forces", please don't. Don't reduce anything. These security forces are currently the only thing quickly filtering out the low quality pirates making way for new spawns so you don't have to constantly chase after the small fish yourself going mad in the process.



Here's what I'd like to see in high intensity resource extraction sites:

• The bulk of pirates should have a combat ranking of Dangerous and higher.
• The bulk of pirates should pilot ships fitting their combat rating. Elite in a Sidewinder? Seriously? Give them Vultures, Fer-de-Lances (where are these anyway? Have yet to see an NPC pirate flying an FDL), Asps (pirate Asps also don't seem to exist in RES) and Anacondas (also a ship no longer used by pirates in RES)
• Make RES spawns more plausible and less random, which means that e.g a high system security level repels less skilled pirates and attracts higher ranked ones. Metallic pristine reserves? Pirate (and subsequently bounty hunter) heaven!

I fully realize this would put miners into greater danger. But there are solutions:

• Since there are exploration, combat and general purpose ships, why not have mining vessels as well? These could be put into mining mode which could disable the frame shift drive and boost shield strength, shield recharge rate, turrets tracking ability and firepower. Make these ships slow to maneuver and give them enough internal slots that can only be fitted with any kind of limpet controller. Add extraction limpet controllers. Allow mining vessels to select / target asteroids and to fire prospecting and extraction limpets at these selected / targeted rocks even if not directly facing them.
• Implement automated mining via mining drones as explained in the design document. Set them up, leave, come back some time later and see what's been mined.

Most people have jobs and little to no time to waste on guessing games and trial and error when trying to figure out aspects of the game. Reduce the randomness. Increase the plausibility. I'm certain it'll go a long way with folks and would make for a far greater gaming experience.

 

[Psycho Romeo]

I really hate it that big time bounty hunters have adopted RESs. I really think they should be a place for miners, or for small time/entry level bounty hunters.
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I much preferred it when RESs were broken and bounty hunters ran around in supercruise. That's really how it should be in my opinion.

 

[Tinman]

Michael have said this:

It's fair to say that the resource extraction sites aren't working as expected at the moment. The following changes were made for 1.3:

- Added in the new ships for each of the archetypes that spawn into RES locations. There are now between 4-7 different ship types that each of the 3 spawn maintainers can choose from. There’s also a nice selection of different scenarios for each scenarion to choose from.
- Smoothed out spawning by delaying some of the ships. Same number of ships will eventually appear after approximately 30-90 seconds, it was merely added in to reduce any heavy load slowdown when you first arrive at a RES site.
- Made high, normal and low intensity also mean high, normal and low skill for the ships that spawn into the RES site.
- Balance of high intensity is in favour of pirates and security ships for low intensity.

At the moment it seems that these are sometimes working and sometimes not so we're investigating why this is the case.

Michael

Since that quote there have been some minor improvements made, but there are still issues as far as I know. Haven't played around to much with this personally so I can't say for sure.

 

[Lasse B.]

@Psycho Romeo
Well, miners are prey for pirates and pirates in turn are prey for bounty hunters. The way I see it, the huge problems that miners have is that they're mostly sitting ducks, so they need a way to hold their ground that other professions don't have.

 

[Riedquat]

I really hate it that big time bounty hunters have adopted RESs. I really think they should be a place for miners, or for small time/entry level bounty hunters.
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I much preferred it when RESs were broken and bounty hunters ran around in supercruise. That's really how it should be in my opinion.

I agree, they are just farming zones, I dont like how they have been implemented at all.

This also links closely to my main issue with the game, which is the magically spawning Npc's.

Maybe they should be abandoned and just make the entire ring a single RES, make the hunters really work to find the pirates

 

[Psycho Romeo]

@Psycho Romeo
Well, miners are prey for pirates and pirates in turn are prey for bounty hunters. The way I see it, the huge problems that miners have is that they're mostly sitting ducks, so they need a way to hold their ground that other professions don't have.

Right. And I think the perfect ones for the job would be the local police force and entry level bounty hunters.

 

[marktay]

There is a food chain in place; Miners farm Metals and Minerals, Pirates farm Miners cargo and Bounty Hunters farm Pirate for bounties. That makes perfect sense to me - and as I understand it, the allegedly 'High Intensity' RES provide much more valuable Metals and Minerals, which in turn should attract big-time miners, and therefore bigger pirates and higher skilled bounty hunters. In theory, this sounds like a well balanced design. However, the current reality doesn't seem to match this. I don't mine so don't know if high value metals and minerals are accessible at High Intensity RES, but I do know that the pirates that spawn there are typically in small ships (although often with descent combat ranking) that are usually handled efficiently by the 2 cop Anancondas and other attendant smaller cop ships that usually turn up (I thought there was supposed to be less cops at High Intensity RES?), so there seem to be less challenges for Bounty Hunters looking for valuable or challenging pirate targets.
OP - good idea for a Mining Mode for ships

 

[Apos]

I don't know, but as far as mining goes, I haven't seen any significant perk to high intensity when it comes to output. And if there is some, the RNG factor of mining completely throws it out of the water.

Not that I have any trouble mining in high intensity RES, as soon as you reach dangerous status every pirate that scans you is like "sorry bra, didn't mean to startle you".

 

[Fireclown]

I don't know, but as far as mining goes, I haven't seen any significant perk to high intensity when it comes to output.

Same here.
Tried some mining in Hi RES and then did some in some rings that weren't associated with any RES site at all (was totally on my own, no other ships).
Got more platinum and painite and stuff in the non RES place.

 

[Tacheel]

As other people are saying the high intensity is supposed to relate to mining mineral spawns - in order to start the food chain off with pirates feeding on miners and bounty hunters then coming into play.

For this to work you need more miners than pirates and more pirates than bounty hunters or else the food chain breaks.

I don't feel they or mining are rewarding enough to get players going in there to mine in sufficient numbers to start this off. So we end up with relying on the npcs and they just devolve into npc pirate farm zones for bh's.
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edit: I also think that RES sites should be generated dynamically by player activity alongside the random ones we see. If there is enough activity somewhere that isn't a spawn the amount of activity should make it generate as a low or high res visible from SC.

 

[Sgt Doom]

I wouldn't mind RES in secure systems being not as profitable for bounty hunting if A: anarchy systems were much more dangerous and B: a wider variety of more lucrative combat missions (particularly ones that give reason to go into conflict zones) were available. Trading shouldn't be the only way to make decent money, especially when one takes into account the greater risk in combat for a living. Bounty hunting in SC is much slower and most of the times causes hull damage to yourself.

 

[Zhang]

There is a food chain in place; Miners farm Metals and Minerals, Pirates farm Miners cargo and Bounty Hunters farm Pirate for bounties.

Sounds good, in theory. Cept it needs a lot more tweaking. FD needs to make it to be so much more than this blind farming.

Resource rich zones, once discovered, should naturally attract Miners. Both AI and PC. So players should initially have a relatively peaceful time mining. Then after some time word gets to the Pirates (AI and PC) about the fat pickings there. So Pirates start showing up. In greater and greater numbers. There must be some correlation with numbers of X vs Y. Then Bounty Hunters should come a calling. And thin out the Pirates, and the Miners return. And then it cycles, until the resources run out, and the Miners flock to the next system, and the whole sequence repeats. Right now it's just farmland.

- - - Updated - - -

And there's no incentive to Miners. So.

 

[Gray Lensman]

I like the RES implementation as it is thank you. Please do not mess with it. Keep reality (artificial) stable. Nothing kills immersion more than fundamentally revising the laws of the universe.

 

[Lasse B.]

Right. And I think the perfect ones for the job would be the local police force and entry level bounty hunters.

Which would go well together with entry level mining in low intensity RES.

 

[Soopyyy]

I really hate it that big time bounty hunters have adopted RESs. I really think they should be a place for miners, or for small time/entry level bounty hunters.
.
I much preferred it when RESs were broken and bounty hunters ran around in supercruise. That's really how it should be in my opinion.

Fine, give me pirate lords worth a few million credits then. Otherwise I am spending 30mins in supercruise to make 150k. No thanks.

 

[Fireclown]

I don't understand why anyone would go to a RES to mine.
I suppose it's slightly easier to fly to than other parts of a set of rings but apart from that I can see no advantages unless you like being engaged by pirates from time to time.

 

[Derath]

High intensity = Master/Dangerous/Deadly rank NPC's, low is the competant/novice/around there brigade.

 

[Lasse B.]

Fine, give me pirate lords worth a few million credits then.

Nice one.



Another idea I had was that there could be zones around stellar bodies and even entire systems that are pirate strongholds. As you move closer to the center of their operations you encounter larger and larger pirate ships that also increase in combat ranking.

This would require pirate factions to have a presence on Galnet where news is broadcast as soon as a new pirate faction emerges, what the current state of existing pirate factions is (expanding, in the process of being wiped out, holding the lines, stuff like that), what pressure existing pirate factions put on their victims, how dire the situation is for the civilians and system authorities surrounding these pirate strongholds, and of course bounties that scale with all of that. The most skilled bounty hunters could even be made heroes of the system they helped defend or liberate.

 

[ChubbyBunneh]

As far as I can tell high intensity just makes the pirates and miners have a higher combat rating.

In the regular and low zones you see a bunch of novice or mostly harmless ships. In HIRES you alnost never see any NPC lower than expert. Have seen a few competents but for the most part they are expert - deadly.