Mobile Mining Gun (CSM)

Stats

• Raised by: Erik Finnegan
• Submission Date: 2 Aug 2009
• Issue ID: tbd

Summary

When a new player join Eve-online, that player have most of the time a view on what he/she would like to do. Some do like to take risk and go to PvP and other don't like to take risk and usually ends up with Mining/PvE or other High Sec activity.

Most players decide what they would like to do, depending on what they can gain versus the risk level and they previous experience. At the current time most players seems to decide to stay in high sec, since most ISK earns there to a very little risk. Some players stays out in nullspace and gains a lot of fortune and loss it the other day/hour, and they like it. However the space between seems to have lost its player base. The main reason is that the risk versus profit is really bad. The risk is way to high compare what you can earn. Most of the time the earnings is much less than in high sec, to a higher risk. This is especially true for the so call carebears. One of the main reason is that carebears tend to fly haulers and/or Exhumers/Barge ships to mine the asteroidsbelt. The defense for such mining is a 50m3 drone bay and a drone bandwidth on 50Mbit/sec. That means max 5 medium drones as defense and no drone bonus. The enemy can arrive in all kinds of ship, and most pirates tend to use BC, BS, CS or Marauders. Which means that a mining op in low sec is more or less defenceless.

The solution is to try to gather PvP pilot to protect the actual mining op, and have a scout in nearby system if an pirate will arrive. In theory that sounds like a really nice idea. In reality it isn't, and the reason is pretty easy. Those pilots that like PvP don't like to wait for some action in mining belts. So most of the times they leave the belt for "roaming", with the promise that they will arrive if someone jumps into the system. That action will affectedly terminate the mining ops, and the miners flies back to high sec and do an mining op there instead.

So what should be done? So far the solution is that nothing have done to address the issue. This suggestion is about giving the miners some extra tools to protect themselves, instead of having to try to convince PvP pilot to stay in the belt, which have shown more than one times to be meaningless. The idea is not to give the miners the ultimate defense, instead to even out the battlefield a little so it could be an even match, instead of the unbalance that it is today.

Solution

The solution is to create an mobile guns that could be anchor in the asteroidsbelts. In order for example an mining op to defend themself against an foe that comes in a bigger ships. The Mobile Mining Guns (MMG) should have similar stats/attribute as POS guns have. They should come in the size of small, medium and large. So that if the enemy arrives in Dreads/carrier they should be able to defende against such strong enemy.

It should be possible to anchor zero to many MMG in a belt. There should be some limitation to make it balance.

Limitation

• Each MMG should not be able to anchor closer to another MMG closer than X distance * Size.
• Each MMG should have a fuel/cost per hour. The price should be size* (base cost/hour).
• Each MMG can not be anchor closer to the belt than 10 000m
• Each MMG can not be anchor further from the belt than 40 000m
• Every pilot can max use one MMG/ Corporation Belt Protection skills level they have.
• Only pilots that is granted the corporation right "Corporation Belt protection crew" can use the corps MMGs.
• When a pilot use one or more MMG, he can't fly his own ship, instead he has to fully concentrate on the action he takes with the MMG.
• MMG can not lock NPC pirates (the MMG is NOT an ISK harvesting gun for the mining belts)
• MMG can only be anchor in 0.4 or lower security.
• Fuelbay can not have more fuel than 3-4hours run.
• Ammobay can not have more ammo than 10-30 minutes fight.
• MMG takes 150 seconds to get online.

Anchor distance should be viewed as an limitation, since each belt can't have more than X amount MMG. Where x is determent by the length and height of the belt and that each MMG can't be put closer than 10 000 m and not further than 40 000m.

Also fuel cost should be consider as an effective limitation. Each MMG cost ISK/hour, so having a lot of MMG in the belt and have a 100% coverage will cost many ISK and make it unprofitable to use them. A true Carebear counts the ISK/hour versus reward all the time. Which means that having to many MMG would not be profitable at all.

That means that the mining ops officier have to decide how many MMG he/she is worth to put up and run. So that the MMG batteries don't empty the corporations profit from the mining ops.

Since both the ammo and the fuelbay is pretty small, there is an maintenance of using the MMG.

Attribute

These attribute could be viewed as an example what characteristic MMG could have.

Price

They should be price approximate the same as Mobile <size> Warp Disruptor I, or a little bit higher.

Skills

New equipment needs new skills. The MMG isn't different from that. Since they are mobile, they should have similar skills as Mobile Warp Disruptors. Except instead of Warp Jamming, they have a new skills called Mobile Mining gun. To operate the MMG another skills is needed called Corporation Belt Protection. For each level of the Corporation Belt Protection the pilot can use one more MMG.

Fuel

Conclusion

Good sides

• Give the corporation mining ops a tactical protection to harvest the wealth of low and null sec
• Carebears will begin to dare to fly in lower security than high sec.
• Can only be used as corporation assets and not for single pilots action.
• Similar to POS guns and Mobile Warp Disruptors, and could possible use some of the source code from those equipment (ie not so many manhours coding to implement this new toys)
• The MMG is well balance in the aspect of tactical benefit versus cost to use.
• Even if an mining op use MMG, they are not unbeatable. Instead there will be an fair fight instead of the unfair balance between carebears and pirates has today (in benefit for the pirates).

Downsides For the following reason, it is a drawback to use the MMG for mining belt protection.

• They cost ISK/hour.
• Every pilot that use them has to be in the same corp
• Max 5 MMG per pilot (if they have the right skill to level 5).
• In theory the belt could be an fortress.
• The pilots ship is not undestructable while using MMG, so the pilots have to decide pretty early if they are going to stay and defend or flea the battlefields.
• Each MMG has to be refuel every 3-4/hours, since the fuelbay can't have more than 3-4hours of fuel
• Each MMGs ammo bay have only ammo for a 10 - 30 minutes battle.
• MMG takes time to powerup (150 sec), so an corporation using them do not have time to power them up if an enemy is already in the asteriod belts.

Pros

• One step in adjusting the risk-reward-ratio of low-sec
• More toys to play with

Cons

• Opens up more possibilities for macro isk-farmers ?

Relevant Forum Threads

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1129601

Votes

• Dierdra Vaal - no
• Vuk Lau - no
• mazzilliu - no
• Zastrow J - no
• Erik Finnegan - yes
• Avalloc - no
• Omber Zombie - no
• Larkonis Trassler - no
• Meissa Anunthiel - no