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Mining/ore field behaviour change


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Hi all,

just wanted to let you know that the way ore fields behave will be changing slightly after the next restart.

The respawns for roids will be done individually, so that if you mine a particularly large field by the time you come back to where you started the first asteroid you mined may have already respawned.

If however, you clear the field completely you will still get the field clear bonus. So some fields will probably need good teamwork to clear before the respawn to get the bonus.

Please note that changes like this aren't designed to punish anyone, or anything like that, we just want to get our E&B running as well as possible for everyone. If it's not working out please just drop a line and say why if possible.

This change will keep the bonuses in for the big mining groups as well as allowing solo players to stay in the same field, mining if that's what you like to do.

cheers,

TB

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Hello,

1. Ok, so is the timer still 30 min?

2. Can the timer be changed it the sector editor now?

3. If a player or group is unable to clear a field before roid #1 respawns do they still get the clear bonus?

4. If #3 is no, should I go in and make the fields smaller?

inquiring minds want to know! lol TTYL :-)

Merlin

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Ok, at the risk of getting busted in the chops here, I gotta ask.

Just how exactly will this work for solo miners, in as much as most mining types have a higher mining capability than they do a combat ability, and that almost every field is guarded by MOB's that would typically reqire a miner to be grouped in order to mine them before the timer resets, it looks to me like the solo miner is a thing of the past. I have only found a small hand full of fields that arnt guarded, now this may not be a major issue for a PS, the poor JE is and will be shafted out of the bonus if the field respawns before its cleared. When you figure that any mining is interupted when attacked, and the time spent for the player to fight off the attacking mob(s) it almost looks to me like all solo mining is pretty much toast. Or have I missed something? Are you guys doing away with solo mining completly, forcing everyone to group weather they want to or not?

Hopefully I made my point here without being to inflamitory, let the jaw busting begin

Fox

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I think that ths item by Merlin:

3. If a player or group is unable to clear a field before roid #1 respawns do they still get the clear bonus?

should be set to allow for a field bonus when all the original roids were cleared from field.

Not sure if this is the case, but I was mining out in Antares last night and (I think I) got a field clear bonus with one roid left (assuming that this other roid was the beginning of the respawn cycle.

Also, how will this affect the time computation of the bonus (where the bonus is higher for the long a field has not been cleared? )

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It does come across as punishing solo players IMO. I run solo 99% of the time so am a bit sensitive to this change. Forced grouping is not a great idea considering the low server population at this time. If this is the way your gonna go than yes Merlin will have to shrink/separate roid fields.

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Before I make too many comments/criticism about this change, I would like to see the answer to Merlin's questions, specifically 1 and 3 (and as a result of 3 possibly 4). I can definitely see that Merlin is always on the side of the miner, so I would assume that if 3 is no, then some of those huge fields will be reduced.

I think this could be a good thing as long as there is an even split among the fields. For example, if a field has a timer that is too short for a solo miner, there should be a smaller field with the same ores in it that can be solo mined.

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Some things people need to consider are....

A) This is closer to the way it was in live and in live there was no clear field or clear roid bonus for people. The goal of the EMU project is to get the game as close to live as possible.

B) When you're nearly OL150 you need the ores far more than you need the XP.

C) When you get close or are at max lvl of prospecting, it takes very little time to clear a field on your own and you're either left waiting or you need to move to a different location.

D) This is not a nerf. If you consider how big the bonus is in most cases compared to how much time you need to spend after clearing a field moving on to another one and clearing it out or waiting for your field to respawn, you could have mined that bonus and then some if the fields are continuously repawing. At least now your time spent waiting or search has been reduced.

... and that almost every field is guarded by MOB's that would typically reqire a miner to be grouped in order to mine them ...

I personally think you need to explore more. There are plenty of fields that do not have mobs that are difficult to get rid of out there. Yes, some fields in areas that already have higher lvl mobs do have more difficult to kill mobs (like Antares, BBW or Cooper) but in general it's pretty easy to find fields that aren't filled with difficult to kill mobs that still have high lvl ores in them.

It does come across as punishing solo players IMO. I run solo 99% of the time so am a bit sensitive to this change. Forced grouping is not a great idea considering the low server population at this time. If this is the way your gonna go than yes Merlin will have to shrink/separate roid fields.

See A & D above. It's already insanely easy to get EL 50 and TL 50 from mining. Yes as an explorer, it should be easier to get EL 50 but it should not be easy. Look at any combat class and what they have to do to get EL and TL, or any trader class and what they need to do to get to CL and & EL. As a miner you've pretty much got it made to get EL and TL 50 because not only do you have an easy way to obtain EL through mining but you get great XP from trading and refining what you've mined to raise your TL.

Edited by JoshuaChr
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D) This is not a nerf. If you consider how big the bonus is in most cases compared to how much time you need to spend after clearing a field moving on to another one and clearing it out or waiting for your field to respawn, you could have mined that bonus and then some if the fields are continuously repawing. At least now your time spent waiting or search has been reduced.

I personally think you need to explore more. There are plenty of fields that do not have mobs that are difficult to get rid of out there. Yes, some fields in areas that already have higher lvl mobs do have more difficult to kill mobs (like Antares, BBW or Cooper) but in general it's pretty easy to find fields that aren't filled with difficult to kill mobs that still have high lvl ores in them.

I just had to point out that you kind of contradicted yourself on the bold and underlined portions (added by me). If the field doesn't respawn quickly, and you want to constantly mine, then you have to explore to find more/better fields. By having them respawn more quickly, you'll actually be reducing the impetus to explore by allowing people to sit in one place for long periods of time...

My miner has maxed out on all mining skills, so at this point I'll just start cherry picking what I want out of fields. /shrug

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Some things people need to consider are....

A) This is closer to the way it was in live and in live there was no clear field or clear roid bonus for people. The goal of the EMU project is to get the game as close to live as possible.

Really? I could have sworn I had read other posts by members of the Team that this was not actually the goal. Do you have a reference as to where this goal is stated that you could point us to?

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I just had to point out that you kind of contradicted yourself on the bold and underlined portions (added by me). If the field doesn't respawn quickly, and you want to constantly mine, then you have to explore to find more/better fields. By having them respawn more quickly, you'll actually be reducing the impetus to explore by allowing people to sit in one place for long periods of time...

My miner has maxed out on all mining skills, so at this point I'll just start cherry picking what I want out of fields. /shrug

Eh, I really don't see it that way considering that they're used in different contexts, but I'm not going to get into banter with you on semantics.

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Really? I could have sworn I had read other posts by members of the Team that this was not actually the goal. Do you have a reference as to where this goal is stated that you could point us to?

It's been said a number of times throughout the forums. They've also said it in in-game chat.

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It's already insanely easy to get EL 50 and TL 50 from mining. Yes as an explorer, it should be easier to get EL 50 but it should not be easy. Look at any combat class and what they have to do to get EL and TL, or any trader class and what they need to do to get to CL and & EL. As a miner you've pretty much got it made to get EL and TL 50 because not only do you have an easy way to obtain EL through mining but you get great XP from trading and refining what you've mined to raise your TL.

So if i understand you correctly, your confirming that solo mining is being nerfed to make it as difficult as possible for a miner to not only get combat, but EL and TL as well, in short solo mining is toast and we group wheather we want to or not,,,so a simple yes or no to my earlier question would had probably been more effective that al the reahtoric.

Well,, that clears a lot up

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If clearing a field is going to be made impossible for solo-ists... and if the goal is to replicate Liveâ„¢ as much as possible...

..then I suppose we should just eliminate the field clear bonus altogether, and perhaps double the per-roid bonus to compensate?

Or shall we go for the totally purist route and nerf all mining bonuses, and go back to the cherry-picking wars in Glenn... and while we are at it, do a partial player wipe of anyone playing one of the three classes (TS, PP, JT) un-released in Liveâ„¢ ...?

Granted, Joshua is right in that none of these bonuses existed in Live (at least not that my fading memory of things 8 years gone goes)... but still - I hope that the method of any stated or unstated goal to "restore Live" is not to discourage solo play in any form whatsoever.

Bear in mind that many - if not most miners - tend to work solo, or duo-box a miner alongside an ore cart toon.

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Oh, and lest anyone mistake my poking about partial p-wipes or trashing clear bonuses as anything serious, I give you this snippet from the OP:

Please note that changes like this aren't designed to punish anyone, or anything like that, we just want to get our E&B running as well as possible for everyone. If it's not working out please just drop a line and say why if possible.

This change will keep the bonuses in for the big mining groups as well as allowing solo players to stay in the same field, mining if that's what you like to do.

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So if i understand you correctly, your confirming that solo mining is being nerfed to make it as difficult as possible for a miner to not only get combat, but EL and TL as well, in short solo mining is toast and we group wheather we want to or not,,,so a simple yes or no to my earlier question would had probably been more effective that al the reahtoric.

Well,, that clears a lot up

What would ore field respawn rates have to do with "requiring" you to group? It certainly does not slow down the rate at which you collect ore; if anything, that would increase since the asteroids are respawning. Possibly getting the field-clearing bonus less often is far from being a game-breaker, and if you are that concerned that fighting off ore-field mobs (instead of, you know, cloaking or moving to a different area of the field), go explore. There are quite a few out there that are lightly guarded and completely unguarded.

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The goal of the EMU should not be to get as close to live as possible. It should be to improve on live. The original EnB was fun but it still could have used a lot of improvement.

The Dev's have doing a great job with making the Emulator really fun to play.

Im not sure if this respawn change is a nerf or a buff. It may actually make more asteroids available than previously.

The field clear bonus is nice at low levels but by the time u get to mining L8/9 asteroids you get more xp from the mining than the bonuses.

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Hello,

Guys-guys-guys! Before everyone gets all freaked out and think solo mining is being nerfed, think again! I have made it so that atleast 75% of the ore fields I have done can be solo'ed and if Tienbau has changed it which he has and after he answers my questions I will make sure that players can still solo the fields. It is true that about 80% of the fields do have guardians in them, but I made sure that the guardians could be dealt with by a solo miner that would be mining the ore at that field. Also, almost all the gaurdians have a 30 min respawn timer on them so you go in, kill the guard, then you have 30 minutes to clear the field.

Starfox my old friend, there are fields out there in the sectors I have done that are very nice and have no guardians! They are out of the way and if you do alittle exploring you will find them. I think almost all the sectors I have done do have these kinds of fields. Fox, next time you log on and see me in the game, put down the chicken you are eating and give me a pm and I willl show you 1 or 2 of them.

Now everyone has to remember that there is still parts of the ore fields that are not in yet like the pop rocks. I am waiting for this to be fixed and have some nice plans for them. If you have followed my posts on them then you already know some of my ideas on the pop rocks. You also have to remeber that there are still "ALOT" of sectors I have not gotten to yet and will hopefully soon. Right now I am working on the Sol system and the sectors Earth, ABB, ABG & Akerons gate are done and on the play server. The sectors Jupiter, Mars & IO are also done, but will be in the next push. For those of you that might have missed my other posts, here is a recap of my guidelines on the ore fields I have done:

1. There are 5 types of ores in the game, Asteroids, Glowing Asteroids, Crystals, Hydrocarbons & Gas Clouds. All the ores in the groups Asteroids, Crystals & Hydrocarbons have been split into 2 sub groups. You will find that each sector only has 1 group type in it so that miners can mine longer without have to run to a station every 20 min's to unload.

2. Each field has only "1" ore type in it. Example, you come accross a field that has Asteriods, Crystals & Hydrocarbons in the field. You will know that instead of one field it is really 3 fields over lapping each other. I did this so to make it easier for miners to clear a field and get the bonus.

3. I think the phrase "Making it just like Live" needs to be replaced with "Useing Live as a guide line"! Everyone here knows that it would be next to impossible to try to make the Emu exactlly like live so I say, Way even try! When it comes to the ore fields my main goal is to make sure that players can find all the ores in the game, but not find them all in one or 2 sectors. Who really cares if in Live you had gold in Freya, Cooper & Mars? As long as the ore is out there and you can find it, it dosn't really matter if all the fields are just the way they were in live or not. With that said I am making sure the main fields players remember are there like the gas fields in Glenn. Everyone who ever pulled a rock in Live knows about the gas fields in Glenn right? I fixed them as close as I could to the way they were in Live so now instead of clearing the whole Gas field in 15 mins (which I could do with my scout), to now it takes a bit of work and a group effort to clear all those Gas Clouds.

4. When I am done you will only be able to find lvl 1 type ores in the starter sectors and there parent sectors. Example: in IO you will find Sub group 1 and in Jupiter you will find sub group 2. I am useing the way it is with the lvl 1 comps in that you can only find them at Earth, Mars & Jupiter. So lets say you need Copper, Iron, Lead or Zinc ores which are lvl 1 Asteroids, sub group 1, you know that you will find them in the start sectors of the miner. If you need Crude Nickel, Magnetite Ore or Mordanite which are in sub group 2 you will find them in your parent sectors. I will post a new Orelist.txt later as I did make a change with one of the ores in that I move lvl 1 Iron from sub group 2 to 1.

5. Problie my main goal and the reason I even wanted to do the ore fields was to make it so if you hated to prospect, you would kind of like it. If you kind of like it you would like it, if you liked it you would really like it & if you really liked it you would love it! I have some ideas for the ore fields that will turn mining from being something you have to do, to something that you look forward to do! I want it so that the way all the combat players out there look at combat, that all the miners out there can look at mining the same way. Here are some of my ideas whcih may or may not be done:

a) Ore fields will be effected by grav shifts and will move around the sector from time to time.

:P Pop rocks will not always spawn mobs that attack you, but some of them will spawn mobs that want to be your friend and guard you while you are mining! (more on this later)

c) Making most all of the ore useful instead of just mostly vender trash as it is now.

d) Making it rewarding to explore a sector to find nice ore fields!

e) Getting Hulks into the fields and making hulk grave yards so to speak.

Well I susposed I have borred you guys enough for now! lol But before freaking out about something remember that I have always tryed to be a player first and a Dev 2nd (which gets me in trouble some times) and I will always try to make Prospecting as ballanced as possible, but guys, I have just really just started and it will take time to get all the fields done, but as you have noticed with the sectors I have already done mining as gotten not only more fun, but something that is not a grind. I am always open to ideas the players have and if any of you get stuck in the game in finding an ore field and you see me in the game just give me a yell and I will be more them happy to point you in the right direction and speaking of pointing someone in the right direction, my wife is pointing to the car as we need to go buy fish food so my Pharnia don't eat each other! lol TTYl :-)

Merlin

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Starfox my old friend, there are fields out there in the sectors I have done that are very nice and have no guardians! They are out of the way and if you do alittle exploring you will find them. I think almost all the sectors I have done do have these kinds of fields. Fox, next time you log on and see me in the game, put down the chicken you are eating and give me a pm and I willl show you 1 or 2 of them.

Ok kewl, sounds good, and ty for clearing it utp, ya had this cantankours old furball worried, oh and ummm, when have ya ever seen me put down a chicken?? other than down the gullet?...soooooooooooooooo anyway, a exploring fur em i will go, can ya point me in the right direction, its a big universe.

Fox

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Sheeeeeeeeeeesh! I was a PW...mobs got tougher loot was changed, I thought no worries I’ll play a PS. Now...the field bonus is being messed with. I know it is said that this is not really designed to force grouping, but from where I am sitting it sure does look like it. As I said in another post solo play days are coming to an end, first for combat now to mining. Soon I can see needing a full group of level 150s to open a trade dialog with the npc to sell what meager loot/ores you obtain.

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It's been said a number of times throughout the forums.

If so, I don't understand why you can't provide the requested link.

My understanding is that is NOT the goal - the Team has set their sights much higher. If it is to be just like Live then won't we need to . . .

* remove the TS, JT, and PT?

* remove the field clearing bonus for mining?

* remove the new sectors that were added?

etc.

So, I'm just asking, if you are certain that the Team has actually stated that the goal is to be just like Live - where can one find that statement?

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Hello,

Ok once again here is what is & is not going to happen to the ore fields:

Is "Not" going to happen:

1. Nerf solo mining

2. Be exactlly like it was in live

3. Be a jumbled mess where every ore for each lvl will be in a field

What "Is" going to be done to the fields:

1. Only use "Live" as a guide line

2. Make about 60% of the fields for solo miners and 40% of the fields for groups.

3. Make atleast 2x the amount of fields that were in live

4. Make mining fun!!!

Everyone has to remember that we are still a long way from going "Live" and there is alot of things that has to be done yet. It would be nice iwe could wave our magic wand and make everything happen over night, but in the real world it is going to take a lot of trial & error to gets things running smoothly. I like the idea of each roid having it's own timer and you can rest asure that I wll make what ever changes that needs to be made to make the solo miners happy as I am also basiclly a solo miner my self. I do group once in awhile, but for the most part I and problie most miners do solo miner 85% of the time.

As a closeing thought, "Everyone" has the right to his or her ideas and I do not want anyone coming down on anyone for expressing their ideas. So from now on when it comes to mining posts, flaming will now be allowed as I want to keep my little peice of the pie a friendly place. Sure some ideas my not fly with others and believe me this is an area I know well! lol So everyone be happy and I do promise to do my best to make both solo & group miners happy. TTYL :-)

Merlin

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Really? I could have sworn I had read other posts by members of the Team that this was not actually the goal. Do you have a reference as to where this goal is stated that you could point us to?

I have seen posts and in-game chat stating this. In live there was a small bonus for each individual asteroid you cleared not for the whole field.

to return to being "like live"--- get missions in place, mobs in place, loot in place. There are still many missions/raids/items missing that the devs are working on getting into place. like live doesn't mean literally like live it means as close as they can get. Some of the greatest parts of this game for me personally was the exploring to find those off the path fields, everyone working together towards a single goal, and the non pvp enviornment.

There are other games *cough* WoW *cough* that if you look at the forums and how the game is now you can see the history of knee-jerk changes to try and keep people happy; it is now plagued with imbalance/hackers/cliques and a lot of not so happy people. Is that what we want this to become?

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What "Is" going to be done to the fields:

1. Only use "Live" as a guide line

2. Make about 60% of the fields for solo miners and 40% of the fields for groups.

3. Make atleast 2x the amount of fields that were in live

4. Make mining fun!!!

Ummmmmmmmmmmm....i dont suppose u can some of thos roids drop like say a few,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,(wait for it).................................chickens?

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What "Is" going to be done to the fields:

1. Only use "Live" as a guide line

2. Make about 60% of the fields for solo miners and 40% of the fields for groups.

3. Make atleast 2x the amount of fields that were in live

4. Make mining fun!!!

Merlin

Great stuff, Merlin, thanks for all you've been doing.

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