The New Order is pretty much an altruistic roleplaying PvP organization. Definitely not the kind of place where a selfish industrialist would place himself. Even if it succeeds it provides no profit for the participants, the only beneficiaries are the active miners. A selfish, objectivist individual would only care for his own good and the New Order provides me nothing. Yet I see it a crucial part of "winning EVE" and I suggest every business- and winning-oriented players to join. Why?
Theoretically EVE is not a WoW clone. In WoW if you play totally incompetently, do whatever you desire in the moment, ignore planning and thinking, you still get every possible in-game rewards. "Failure" is not defined in WoW, even a literally AFK/autofollow player can complete raids and you can gain every item for justice/honor points next patch. WoW is the ideal socialism where the "government" (The Horde and Alliance NPCs) shower everyone with everything regardless effort or merit. In such environment making effort or gaining skill is wasting time. I left it for EVE in hope for a competitive environment.
Theoretically failure in EVE has consequences: you lose your ship and maybe even impants (skillpoint gain). In this environment only the strong survives. This idea fuels the ego of the EVE players who consider themselves soooo much better than WoW players. However what I found is lolling, random Arathi-basin bridge like PvP, horribly incompetent players (I'm sure you can find less spirit geared warriors in WoW than ships with unbonused guns in EVE). I gained the price of a titan as a few months old newbie. I had 10% of the income of 10000 men alliances. I was in WoW again, with racism and porn in the chat. Wonderful.
The only real resource in a video game is time. If you lose a ship, you must spend time re-grind it. To manufacture a Rokh, you need about 15M units of minerals. That's about 500K m3 ore. An OK exhumer takes about 17003/minute. So if you lose your Rokh, you have to watch mining cycles and move ore from your hold to the Orca or Jetcan for 5 hours. Add fittings and you are close to 7-8 hours of farming to get that lost Rokh back. That's pretty harsh, right? Losing a cruiser means an hour of boring farming. EVE is harsh, forcing players to do boring grind as punishment for a single mistake that lead to the loss of the ship. Obviously you don't have to build the ship yourself, there is a market, but you have to provide some service to the ones who build it. Assuming everyone farms with the same ISK/hour (which is true by definition for the average player), you must farm an hour for your cruiser and 7-8 for a battleship. Soon the bad players will be out of ships, right?
Wrong, because you don't have to spend time farming. Your computer has to, while you are AFK. The minerals and ice products are practically free of time investment as they are gathered without player interaction, either via a bot or simply by AFK farming. Mining ores is 2-2.5x more profitable than mining ice. Still people mine ice, because that is easier AFK.
The problem:
So, despite I'm fully aware of its weirdness, I joined and fully support a funny roleplay-religious altruist group and I suggest you do the same unless you want to watch the same guys who fought in the Arathi Bridge lol around in spaceships forever. Every AFK/bot you take out is a bunch of ore that a lolkid will have to farm himself.
So you were right, I joined the New Order to grief. But not the mining bots (can you grief a bot?), nor the AFK miners (who can avoid being griefed by not being AFK) but the mineral users. I want to drive up mineral/ice prices so losing a ship would mean "omg I now have to farm hours" instead of "gf lol". I want their tears!
PS: to put some numbers behind these: an average, casual highsec missioner in an OK-ish mission boat can take 40M/hour. If mining is forced to be active, it will reach the same ISK/hour. A similarly casual miner (T2 crystal, T2 strip miner Mackinaw, redocking, no other boost than himself having a Mining Foreman 4 skill) can earn 1300m3/minute veldspar. With spending 4 minutes/hour redocking, and +5% from "elite" veldspar, it's 76400m3/hour. 1m3 veldspar yields 30 units of tritanium. So 2.29M trit should be 40M IS, so one trit should be 17.4 IS. 3x higher than today. If we clear out AFK mining from highsec, all ship costs can be increased 3x higher. That would be impact!
Theoretically EVE is not a WoW clone. In WoW if you play totally incompetently, do whatever you desire in the moment, ignore planning and thinking, you still get every possible in-game rewards. "Failure" is not defined in WoW, even a literally AFK/autofollow player can complete raids and you can gain every item for justice/honor points next patch. WoW is the ideal socialism where the "government" (The Horde and Alliance NPCs) shower everyone with everything regardless effort or merit. In such environment making effort or gaining skill is wasting time. I left it for EVE in hope for a competitive environment.
Theoretically failure in EVE has consequences: you lose your ship and maybe even impants (skillpoint gain). In this environment only the strong survives. This idea fuels the ego of the EVE players who consider themselves soooo much better than WoW players. However what I found is lolling, random Arathi-basin bridge like PvP, horribly incompetent players (I'm sure you can find less spirit geared warriors in WoW than ships with unbonused guns in EVE). I gained the price of a titan as a few months old newbie. I had 10% of the income of 10000 men alliances. I was in WoW again, with racism and porn in the chat. Wonderful.
The only real resource in a video game is time. If you lose a ship, you must spend time re-grind it. To manufacture a Rokh, you need about 15M units of minerals. That's about 500K m3 ore. An OK exhumer takes about 17003/minute. So if you lose your Rokh, you have to watch mining cycles and move ore from your hold to the Orca or Jetcan for 5 hours. Add fittings and you are close to 7-8 hours of farming to get that lost Rokh back. That's pretty harsh, right? Losing a cruiser means an hour of boring farming. EVE is harsh, forcing players to do boring grind as punishment for a single mistake that lead to the loss of the ship. Obviously you don't have to build the ship yourself, there is a market, but you have to provide some service to the ones who build it. Assuming everyone farms with the same ISK/hour (which is true by definition for the average player), you must farm an hour for your cruiser and 7-8 for a battleship. Soon the bad players will be out of ships, right?
Wrong, because you don't have to spend time farming. Your computer has to, while you are AFK. The minerals and ice products are practically free of time investment as they are gathered without player interaction, either via a bot or simply by AFK farming. Mining ores is 2-2.5x more profitable than mining ice. Still people mine ice, because that is easier AFK.
The problem:
- AFKers and bots generate lot of minerals/ice
- Minerals and ice products are cheap
- As they are the basic level of manufacturing, everything is cheap
- So it's cheap to replace losses
- So losses don't hurt
- So playing bad and generally being dumb, drunk or irrational has no more consequences than in WoW: frustrating other people who wanted to win
So, despite I'm fully aware of its weirdness, I joined and fully support a funny roleplay-religious altruist group and I suggest you do the same unless you want to watch the same guys who fought in the Arathi Bridge lol around in spaceships forever. Every AFK/bot you take out is a bunch of ore that a lolkid will have to farm himself.
So you were right, I joined the New Order to grief. But not the mining bots (can you grief a bot?), nor the AFK miners (who can avoid being griefed by not being AFK) but the mineral users. I want to drive up mineral/ice prices so losing a ship would mean "omg I now have to farm hours" instead of "gf lol". I want their tears!
PS: to put some numbers behind these: an average, casual highsec missioner in an OK-ish mission boat can take 40M/hour. If mining is forced to be active, it will reach the same ISK/hour. A similarly casual miner (T2 crystal, T2 strip miner Mackinaw, redocking, no other boost than himself having a Mining Foreman 4 skill) can earn 1300m3/minute veldspar. With spending 4 minutes/hour redocking, and +5% from "elite" veldspar, it's 76400m3/hour. 1m3 veldspar yields 30 units of tritanium. So 2.29M trit should be 40M IS, so one trit should be 17.4 IS. 3x higher than today. If we clear out AFK mining from highsec, all ship costs can be increased 3x higher. That would be impact!
31 comments:
Not convinced. Here's why.
From what I understand, Eve is a sandbox game. In which everyone makes their own goals.
Now, it could be that they do not give a flying rat's arse on what *your* definition of winning is. Hell, since you started the blog, you've had about what...4...5(?) definitions of winning Eve. One could actually conceive that there are definitions of "winning" that you would find dumb...then again, remember the people laughing at your One True Empire idea? Yes, exactly.
Now, on to the real point. Everyone loses ships in Eve. Or so I'm led to believe. Some people lose more, others lose less, but still, everyone has to eventually replace their ship(s). This means, that, at some point everyone profits from reduced ship prices, except maybe miners who are at the keyboard.
Now, cutting your own nose to spite your face is a terrible, *terrible* business strategy, and I'm shocked that someone has to point this out to you. This means that, for people whose 'winning EVE' goals do not fit in your arbitrary 'ways of winning EVE' box, your argument is both ridiculous AND harmful. For someone who used to advocate Thorstein Veblen's books, in which he scorned people keeping up with the Joneses, you sure have done an 180 in this particular case. For the small person not caring about 'relative power' it is a small comfort that others have to grind a jillion hours for their ship when he has to spend 5 hours grinding for his, when he, formerly, only had to do it for, say, 1 hour.
Then, there are the people who are under the influence of the Dunning-Kruger effect, who think that they are invincible and lose less ships than they actually do, and that 'others' get hurt more by killing 'bots'. They are one of the biggest demographics, I think, that may be seduced by your philosophy. Elitist, disdainful, 'l33t'. You are empowering these people.
Hardly a worthy demographic to be empowered, that.
@Andru: in a video game there is no objective well-being like in real life. An in-game item has no inherent value, it can only be defined as rarity, compared to the "Joneses". If you absolutely want to avoid that, you must not play MMOs.
Also, while everyone will be hurt by high ship and fuel prices, losers will be hit significantly more, creating the difference between winners and losers.
"The New Order is pretty much an altruistic roleplaying PvP organization."
Oh, come on. We all know it's not altruistic - it's a typical extortion scheme. If it was altruistic, there would be no 10m mining permits. Now, I support ganking bots. I've paid 10m and I'm happy you guys do what you do. But, for God's sake, don't try to make it something it so obviously isn't. I know this whole idea is for ISK and tears, not for "saving highsec". The same thing goes for AFK miners. The only reason you gank them is because there is no way for you to know if someone is a bot or just AFK. There is no higher cause to this, no philosophy - just a technical problem. Gevlon, please, don't post such nonsense - you're slowly reaching the point of being the M in your M&S.
To summarize - ganking bots is good, adding some RP elements is good (I'm leaning toward RP myself), but posting such nonsense for the n-th time is definitely NOT good. It all looks like your trying to justify what you do. Why? Just say: "we like to kill botters, but we can't distinguish them from AFK miners and we need ISK to finance our operations and cause tears". It's so simple. Keep up the good work killing them, but maybe come back to your market posting - it really had value.
Must I? Wow, I've been playing MMOs all this time, and I had no idea that I had to care what the other did, so long as it was not affecting me.
Sarcasm aside, there is a very good reason why I am dismissive of this reasoning. I am not playing Eve but I played Wow for quite a long time. In that time, I collected mounts, pets, achievements, raid boss kills, reputations. If you can name it, my character probably has it, or has done it. Not once did I feel like I had to keep up with anyone, nor did I feel slapped in the face that someone could get it for almost no effort in two years time. Good for them, I did it when it was challenging because I liked it.
Point is that you are simply ignoring a segment of the playerbase that does not care about winning or losing in such sn arbitrary, limited way. I cannot say how big that segment is...but it is there.
@Gevlon
Thank you for this post it explains a few unanswered questions. However as the New Order will only ever be able to effect a few systems at a time their effect will always be marginal.
There is no 'scorched earth' in Eve when the New Order moves in intelligent miners reship (athough the skiff isn't a terrible ship to use all the time) or move. The New Order other than a bit of economic damage and a few of nice posters have shown no real threat to anyone.
Less people mining = highher mineral prices = higher ship prices = less pvp/conflict because pvp-ers have to grind isk to pay for pvp.
What I don't like is how people hide behind the idea of 'war on bots/afk' while it's a simple miner extortion scheme.
I also admit I don't see a problem with afk mining. When I mine I never just mine one one account. I do other stuff as well. Like scanning a system for exploration on a second account, looking at mnaufacturing/invention or running/salvaging a site. I am not afk, I am at my keyboard but only looking at my miner/intel chat every minute or few minutes.
Just as the NO stays within the eula with their actions so do afk miners.
The problem with your logic is that it is ultimately not the miners who set ship prices, it is CCP. For whatever reason, CCP (the game company with on-staff economists) has tweaked the economy such that current ship prices are what they are, in part by making AFK mining possible. (Quite likely this is done to ensure that horrible players do not leave the game en masse)
Even if the new order succeeds in destroying every AFK miner in high sec (good luck!), CCP will impose some changes to crash mineral prices back to their original level. Perhaps they will buff the mining barges' tanks (again). Perhaps the ore extraction rates will rise. Perhaps they will simply ease off on their bot-banning campaign to allow more minerals into the system.
As you should have learned from your WoT experience, gaming companies will do whatever it takes to keep large numbers of (often incompetent) players entertained and subscribed. Your enemy in this price war is CCP, not the individual miners. Until you recognize this fact, your efforts will be moot.
@Monkeytroubles
At the moment, the assumption is that having Eve as an actual real world where player decisions matter is an important part of Eve marketing. Fixing the ship prices in the way you describe goes against that philosophy and - while it certainly will generate some short-term interest - can easily completely nuke any long-term allure of Eve.
@Gevlon
The question that i find interesting here is how much resources would it actually take an organisation like New Order to be able to police the entirety of Eve in that way.
How many people on how hard of a schedule are needed to keep a system clear from afk-miners and bots for perpetual time periods?
How much financial support do these people need to replace all potential spendings and losses?
How much information support do these people need and what it will cost to provide it?
How many systems are interesting for afk-miners or bots?
The difference between pirate extortions and police job is that police is actually helped and hired by citizens, and thus is able to mobilize a lot more resources (often of purely social nature) to cover all the necessary areas.
By asking for a one-time money benefit, New Order shows that it is less of a police and more of an extortionist.
I see a very simple fallacy in this whole scheme.
You want mineral prices to rise so ship prices will rise so it will take more time to grind for a ship.
So people who often lose ships, and are considered bad players because of this, will fall behind people who rarely lose ships ("good players" according to this logic).
You are obviously considered a good player according to your own standards, as you are no m&s, who keeps losing ships all the time.
The problem comes here: you have to invest an awful lot of time and effort to make a 3x rise in mineral prices. This time an effort is much greater than the advantage you would gain from losing less ships and having to grind less.
So you are not winning EVE at all with your current setup, as instead of working on keeping your ship in one piece and destroying others to create a difference between good and bad players (since when are you interested in kill-loss ratios anyway?), you are working towards making a minimal difference in favor of other good players, while not being one yourself, as you are busy ganking miners.
So, how is PI, Manufacture, research, trading (and such) acceptable to you as they are obviously afk activities. Or do you mean to have them 'nerfed' as well?
You cannot win eve - it is a sandbox. Your argument is predicated on winning something which is by design cannot be won. To clarify: CCP deliberately designed a game with no end game conditions and no concept of "winning" the game as a whole. You can win a fight, win a market war, take territory, but you can't ever win.
You also seek to define AFK players in a particular way, yet you cannot idenfity a few simple things:
1) why AFK miners are any different from active miners? An AFK miner has to do exactly the same things as an active miner at exactly the same times. Mining 'activity' for the miner only happens at the end and beginning of a miner cycle.
2) who are the AFK miners? ignoring people in local and refusing to talk to the "agents" or comply does not indicate AFK. Even if they are not ignoring, the average mining multiboxer will have a few hulks to tinker with, an orca to sort out and a hauler to move goods back and forth just to keep themselves busy during the cycles - not much time for answering internet hardmen...
To "sandbox" people: While EVE itself cannot be won, everything else (except market PvP) needs ships. If you lose ships, you are losing the objective you are after (by definition: losing in the game) Currently losing ships is a trivial issue and mostly ignored. I've yet to see an alliance lose its land because they can't afford ships.
To "too hard" people: ganking first drive off casual AFK-ers. People who don't AFK-farm in a scheduled way, just let their computer run while they watch TV. A few losses will make them log off. They are uninformed, they are unable to measure risk. We can also make some botters move to mission botting.
This will cause mineral price increase and help active miners. As soon as there is a significant active miner community, the system is self-serving: the miners themselves police their belts against the AFK competition.
PS: to put some numbers behind these: an average, casual highsec missioner in an OK-ish mission boat can take 40M/hour.
Citation needed.
If mining is forced to be active, it will reach the same ISK/hour.
No it wouldn't. The 2 are totally different - the demand for their output is completely different.
So 2.29M trit should be 40M IS, so one trit should be 17.4 IS. 3x higher than today. If we clear out AFK mining from highsec, all ship costs can be increased 3x higher. That would be impact!
2 faulty assertions leading to an faulty conclusion. You also forget that if trit prices do read such stratospheric prices, the number of people mining will increase and the price will drop down again. The prices you indicate are utterly unsustainable.
Who will start mining?
Missioners? Then the ISK supply will decrease and everyhing becomes more expensive, including minerals.
PvP-ers who can't afford ships go mine? Op success!
@Gevlon
The miners will never police the belts themselves. How/why would they?
Should they use barges to bump other barges? No, too slow and limited by laser range (unless not mining at the same time, which would be stupid).
Should they take faster ships and bump players? No, that would take time => less ISK from mining.
Maybe an alt for bumping? Unlikely - effort + probability of being ganked by you because of being AFK in the barge.
Self-policing is a dream. I would like to see it, but I doubt it will ever happen. When I have the chance, I bump a nearby miner to check him, but that happens maybe 1-2 times in a week. Maybe CCP someday makes belt rats bumping, but till that day, policing the belts will simply not happen.
BTW. Please read my previous post, if you haven't, and think about it before you post something new.
@Maxim Preobrazhenskiv
The New Order has no intention of capturing anything but a couple of systems. Gevlon has pointed out several times that they need better ships and fittings to reduce the man hours per gank and yet alot of them still fly the cheapest ships with the cheapest fittings. Many of them fail to understand why this is so bad.
Gevlon has tried to educate them on this matter however the cheap T1 catalyst pilots will continue to infect the New Order. While we may laugh at poorly fitted mining ships the New Orders T1 fleets are worse, they just don't get kill mails posted. If the New Order can barely afford catalysts at their current value how are they going to afford them if the are triple in value?
random idea:
nerf highsec in a way that makes being AFK totally unsafe.
example:
concord destroys pirates/gankers only in a certain distance from stations, gates, poses etc.
but in a belt or a mission site, instead of concord destroying the offender they would only send you a warning like 'a () is warping to your proximity'. now if you watch your screen you have plenty of time to warp out, cloak etc.. and if you're AFK the ganker easily kills you and only losses sec status.
"altruistic" - False
"roleplaying" - True
"PvP organization" - True
The tell tale proof that New Order are just tear farmers is that you've stopped spending any time trying to tell if a miner is a bot or afk and just shoot anything without a 'license' and if the day does happen that you run out of non licensed targets you'll move on to other pastures or conjure up some excuse that targets are now in violation of their 'license'.
While I do find yours and james blogs entertaining reading, I have to say that its getting tiresome reading your entries in trying to justify your activities. Minerbumping does a better job at staying on subject and just telling the story. Don't insult our intelligence by trying to put logic to your actions when those actions speak volumes of your true motivations.
The stories are fun, the emergent gameplay is interesting but don't kid yourself into thinking that you're much different than these "bot-aspirants" / "lolkids" the new order scheme just as no risk an activity. There's nothing competitive about it.
THERE ARE NO TEARS.
The miners say nothing because they are AFK. Sometimes we get a "u r 12" letter but that's all
How much financial support do these people need to replace all potential spendings and losses?
About 2M per catalyst. Where I mine, that is less than the bounty on 2 battleship belt rats, or about 3-4 cruiser belt rats.
How many systems are interesting for afk-miners or bots?
Generally ice systems. Less often, systems with large numbers of belts. Yarebap (30 belts), Miah (5 belts plus ice) and Kamda (13 belts plus ice) are 3 such systems. Oddly enough, Finid (20 belts) which is ajacent to Yarebap is almost always empty. You'll find huge differences in populations during the day: much higher in prime-time (6-9PM local time) for eastern europe and less so for prime-time US time.
I don't think the afk miner ganking will change anything as you have it on your mind.
As someone already pointed out higher trit price will drive more ppl to trit generating activities and the price will drop again. That includes reprocessing of mission loot. Where many just blitz missions now they will just start looting as soon as it's worth the extra effort.
I also don't think that a limitation if trit supply is good in any way for the game and the enjoyment that people get out of it on average. Your goal is to have the same amount of ppl fight over less ressources. And as a trader you should know that the fight over these ressouces already is quite fierce.
To "sandbox" people: While EVE itself cannot be won, everything else (except market PvP) needs ships. If you lose ships, you are losing the objective you are after (by definition: losing in the game)
No, you are by definition losing ships. Not the game. The game can neither be won or lost. You can be more or less successful at it but you cannot ultimately win or lose it (in any sense of the term)
Currently losing ships is a trivial issue and mostly ignored. I've yet to see an alliance lose its land because they can't afford ships.
You've not been around very long, and you are making things up to fit your argument. A key factor in the failure cascade is making the lives of your enemy's line members hard by targeting their ability to make money whilst simultaneously engaging them in continual fights - the net result is losses that the enemy cannot sustain. Ergo they lose their 'land' because they cannot afford their ships (more so their SRP)
To "too hard" people: ganking first drive off casual AFK-ers.
You are not the first group of people to target miners and you wont be the last. Despite years of harassment there has never been a single player initiative which has made a solid and lasting impact on miner behavior or the price of minerals.
People who don't AFK-farm in a scheduled way, just let their computer run while they watch TV. A few losses will make them log off. They are uninformed, they are unable to measure risk. We can also make some botters move to mission botting.
You need to still provide proof that they are botting. Or even AFKing. Neither of which you have been able to (or I believe ultimately can be able to) achieve. If you suspect people of botting, report the bots. That is the most effective way to remove botters from the game. AFKers are not botters, and they are not doing anything different to active miners (which has been proven countless times by countless people replying to you).
This will cause mineral price increase and help active miners.
It wont, because there is no difference between an active and a non-active miner.
As soon as there is a significant active miner community, the system is self-serving: the miners themselves police their belts against the AFK competition.
Wont happen. There is no competitive pressure in ice belts. Asteroid belts *maybe* but there are so many of them that finding belts to mine is trivial. IF CCP altered the supply (via the belt respawn mechanics) you might be on to something, but basically there is always an abundance of self replenishing minerals out there and thus no competition for rights to it.
I remember a somewhat similar project of Gevlon in WoW: sticking it to the numerous Horde of Aggamagan-EU playing for the vastly under-represented Alliance, and forcing them out.
"The naysayers" said back then that while it is certainly possible to have fun playing for the under-represented faction (eg, ganking is very easy and rewarding), it is not going to be possible to "force" anything. Gevlon brushed that off.
End result? The naysayers were right. Gevlon and his team had fun regularly holding the PVP zone of the then-current expansion, but other than that... the Horde never noticed them.
The active miners are limited by their real life time. People can't mine 10 hours a day actively. AFK-ers can
@Last anonymous: Wintergrasp in WoW was an optional PvP battleground, so those hordies who didn't care didn't have to care.
Here we gank farming PvE players destroying their T2 ships (bad insurance). They'll care.
The active miners are limited by their real life time. People can't mine 10 hours a day actively. AFK-ers can
Nope, AFKers can absolutely NOT do this. They need to interact with their spaceships exactly the same number of times within a given hour as a non-AFK miner.
If you AFK in your barge for 10 hours, the barge will mine until the hold fills up then stop. The remaining hours will involve the barge sitting there waiting for someone to come and empty it out and restarting the lasers.
This is precisely the same level of interaction that an 'active' miner contributes.
A 'bot' is entirely a different thing. There is no distinction either in terms of interactivity or earning potential between an AFKer and an active miner.
There is really no difference.
You seem to have forgotten you are playing EVE. If mineral prices go up, the price of everything goes up, including the price of PLEX. Is CCP going to sit back and watch the purchasing power of PLEX erode? How many times have they changed game mechanics to stabilize what, on average, PLEX buys?
By all means continue your crusade, but I am waiting for you to realize that you are pointlessly fighting against the waves:
* CCP could fix AFK mining with three lines of code, but choose not to.
* CCP will keep mineral costs static because it's better for their bottom line.
* Mining gangs being the only way to mine will simply encourage M&S leeching.
* In-game social structures always decay, moving back to equilibrium.
You aren't playing to win anymore, Gevlon. You are playing to "fix the game so you can play to win later."
The active miners are limited by their real life time. People can't mine 10 hours a day actively. AFK-ers can.
This argument continues to be ridiculous. Is a miner no longer "active" when they have in-game browser open? Is a miner no longer "active" when they have their 2nd (3rd, 4th, etc) account open and scouting or whatever? Is a miner no longer "active" when they are browsing forums on their smartphone while at the keyboard?
I suppose we should all actively watch our water boil too, lest we be bumped out of the kitchen, eh? "If you walk away from the microwave, I'm canceling the timer and putting my own food in."
"Nope, AFKers can absolutely NOT do this. They need to interact with their spaceships exactly the same number of times within a given hour as a non-AFK miner."
I didn't play EVE, but got curious because of this blog and the running arguments so got a trial acc and started a "miner character". Yesterday I succesfully AFK mined while doing my usual daily routine (check forum, blogs, webcomics), and do a 4 hour HC raid session in WoW (and not even mine ice, because my char is too young for that, so I had to check frequently). There was some downtime (mostly because the asteroid got depleted), but not too much (I calculated theoretical ore volume). So I "played EVE" from 17:00 till 24:00.
If I couldn't mine AFK (if I would have to check on EVE in at least 1 min intervals), then I could only mine for 1 or 2 hours. And especially I couldn't have been able to mine while raiding (I had to minimize EVE to don't have low FPS in WoW).
@Cathfaern
I think you're missing the point of the "They need to interact with their spaceships exactly the same number of times within a given hour as a non-AFK miner." part of what you're quoting. You said "if I would have to check on EVE in at least 1 min intervals" but that ignores that there's nothing about "active" mining that would force you to do that. Your interaction while doing other activities was exactly the same as it would have been if EVE had been the sole center of your attention.
That's why people like that Anon and myself keep saying there's no difference to the gameplay from someone who mines 7 hours going afk between emptying ore holds and someone who mines for 7 hours staring at EVE, at least as far as it affects their mining output.
@Cathfearn
If you are AFK mining, or at keyboard mining, you need to interact to empty your hold.
If you are "at your keyboard" by definition of some parties, you are staring at your screen until it puts you into some zen trance state, then clicking when your hold is full.
AFK mining does not = floating in an icefield/asteroid belt for hours with a full hull, rather, it is that during the time it takes for my hold to fill, I am
a) on another client doing something else
b)watching a video
c)running a dungeon in another game
However...there is not really a way to tell if I am AFK or not, as if I am at keyboard, then I may have auto-reject convo on, or I may have local closed, and if I am AFK, then I probably know exactly how long it is between full holds, so I can tab back in for the X seconds it takes to click the buttons, then tab back out again.
That is what is meant by "AFK mining", not "set up, then disappear for the day", that is usually the preserve of station traders, who even get to make isk while logged out and sleeping, so the ultimate in AFK isk/hr!
@Gevlon "no loss penalty"
Wrong in this generality. It may be true for the large alliances and sponsored hi-sec gank squads with their ship replacement programs; but the people I interact with do have to "farm hours" replace their losses.
At the same time, most of the same people also put a 'gf' into local even after a lost fight, because they have manners.
"I've yet to see an alliance lose its land because they can't afford ships."
Sangre Azul: participated in the big land grab in Delve 2009, got backstabbed/ambushed by a Goon gang and lost all their caps in the process, never recovered and closed doors soon after.
Nulli Secunda: Lost sov in Summer 2012, and went into FW for while specifically to farm the funds to replenish their stocks.
"THERE ARE NO TEARS."
I see you finally found the tears section on minerbumping and contributed to it with that mail you received... Or are you just being matrix metaphysical on us ('there is no spoon')? :)
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