Friday, May 19, 2006

Mining in EVE

I've been playing EVE Online on and off since around the beginning of the year. I'm told the pvp is great, but I've been really attracted to the trade aspect of the game, so I've been spending a good portion of my time and skill training towards mining endeavors.

In EVE, you mine for ore in order to get the minerals needed for tradeskilling. It's not tha different than grabbing nodes in EQ2 or WoW, but you have to be sufficiently trained and have the right equipment to do this efficiently.

Everything in EVE is about having the right combo of skills and equipment in order to get the job done. Everything factors in. The particular ship I fly happens to have a mining bonus, which I couple with my mining skills, my personal skills, and the quality of my mining equipment. On top of all that, I have to find the "good stuff" out in space and keep myself from being blown up by other players and "rats" (npc ships).

Sounds like it might be exciting right? It can be when you are with your corporation buddies forming a gang doing a mining op. It feels very social when you all are working together, with people using their haulers to warp in and out of the asteroid field to haul the load back to base. In more dangerous space, it gets especially intersting, because generally, you will require an escort of a fighter ship just to keep alive.

The problem I have with the game is, I live on the west coast playing a game that is based in Europe. I pretty much fly alone. A mining op might be one of the lonliest things I can do, with the rare player flying in to check to see if the field has what the want and porting back out. These are the only real exciting moments for a solo miner, because you get that twinge of fear wondering if they are going to swoop in and blast you to bits (my mining ship is outfitted with mining lasers, I can only barely defend myself with missle bays) or just fly in to your mining canister and steal your ore.

Last night I made about 1.4 million isk on my solo mining op for about 2 hours of work, but all the while I'm watching Armaggeddon on TV (funny, a mining movie in space) and reading the DaVinci Code at the same time.

I wonder if they will ever introduce a mechanic with which you can actively aim the lasers yourself using some sort of "ore sensor" where you see the actual rock and what is in it, directing the laser around the rock manually to get the maximum yield.

I think being zoomed in and concentrating like that all the while someone can come in and blow me up might be exciting, and keep me busy while mining instead of the periodic check I do to see if my hold is full enough to transfer the rocks to my jettisoned bin.

Im heavily considering starting my own west coast US corp in the game, just to try and get people that play at the same time all on in the same place. I just don't think I play enough to manage the task.

6 comments:

The Dread Pirate Guy said...

It's an interesting concept. I think MMOs are amazing games, but the addictiveness factor (and the horror stories of those who get pulled in too deep) keep me from trying more than one every two years or so.

I'm strongly contemplating Phantasy Star Universe as my next continuation, or the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean MMO. If you can entice me to play something with you, I may be willing to try.

Oh yes, I added a new entry to my blog. I'm planning one or two "feature" series. Let me know your thoughts or suggestions.

CrazyKinux said...

Hey there Steve!

Glad you're enjoying EVE. But I'd like to remind you that there much more to it than mining. You can do low level missions which you get from agents; you can manufacture goods to sell at a profit; you can buy stuff from afar and sell it elsewhere, again for a profit; and you can even privateer if you fancy that! More much than mining I tell you.

As for finding gaming buddies; though the game server are in the UK, and the Devs in Iceland, there's a ton of USA based corps; east coast, west coast and in between! Take for instance (Phoenix Propulsion Labs (PPL, the corp that I'm in at the moment: most of us are from the east coast, though we do have a bunch of mates who are on the west coast. So there's someone logged in most of the time. Heck, we even have some in the UK.

So my advice is use the EVE forums and find your self a good corp that fits your needs and expectations, and then go mine in a low sec system.

Good Luck!

P.S.: check on my blog for a list of good corps and alliances.

Anonymous said...

Hey, i'm primarily mining and production in EVE right now, and I belong to a corp thats mostly russians and east coasters. I keep weird hours so most of my missions are with only a few others, but i'm living in california now and seeing as that i'm trained for mass mining ops (foreman to 5, director to 4) i'm sometimes wasting my time. Let me know if your up late and want to mine, or if you get that west coast corp together.

In game - Riame

CrazyKinux said...

So have you had a chance to start that corp of yours?

Oh and by the way, did you get a chance to read the E:ON article on Moon Mining in issue #005? If you haven't, then you'll appreciate the info.

Keyhole said...

That was a good read. I've just started playing eve myself, I have one character in a pvp Corp and I'm gonna set the other for mining / haulage.
I quite enjoy the mining aspect as it's nice and peaceful :)

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