Avian Gamers Network

I read about all of you in your various money-making operations, and it reminds me of SWG. To me, SWG mining/harvesting felt like work... log in at least twice a week, check your harvs, find places to put them, sell them, repeat. There was no adventure to any of it, b/c well, you could go anywhere you wanted without any real danger. The only fun thing about harvesting was the money and working with other Avians to sell the items for CR.

In SWG, the economy was horrible. After 3 months of harvesting I had 10 million credits and nothing to spend them on.

So I am assuming things are different in EVE, but how? What makes all you guys want to mine? Is it just the money, or is it actually fun? and how? And also, are there things to spend this money on, or are you already able to get whatever you want?

Thanks. This game sounds interesting, but these questions about it have been stirring in my head for quite some time.

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TheMole
Section 5
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Now Playing: WoW
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Well, yeah... the money is good. And it's a lot like when SWG first started and we all used to mine together. It's not exactly exciting, but it's not too unbearable. And yeah, there are always things you can spend the money on, whether it be new ships or ship equipment, skills, investing in trade... there are a lot of things to buy. And while I consider making 4 million from a night a mining to be good, you have to remember that there are some high-end things that are priced in the billions, such as Titan-class ships, space stations, moon mining platforms... just to name a very few.

I don't ever think I'll run into a problem with not having anything to spend money on.

Mining in EVE requires active participation (we won't get into macro miners). Basically, you need to get to an asteroid field, target the asteroid/asteroids you want to mine (this is based on their composition which is singular in mineral type, but those minerals do yield multiple metal/resource types).

Thus, you can't just fire up a land plot and walk away. Is it a fun activity? Not really, it's fairly repetitive and requires frequent interaction. This can be every minute, up to several minutes depending on what type of ship you have and how you outfit that ship. the fun is being in a social situation, but the activity itself is fairly quiet.

Now, there are different sectors you can get in to, to go mining. Our rag-tag team is somehwat limited in where it chooses to mine, but it suits our needs for now. There are dangers while mining in PCs and NPC RATs that will target your ships. PC interaction is almost non-existant at our current level, but in lower security space it IS an issue.

It makes good money (called ISK) and there is not lack of things to spend that money on at this time (for me). Once we get established somewhat, the game will start to poen up. The game has some things you can do, but it will literally take more people than we have and probably a long time to even think of achieving at our current rate.

The Universe is enormous and there's no lack of direction a character can go (with skills). they say it would take 3+ years to learn every skill in-game so far. The game is complicated initially and very daunting, but you can take it in small bites and move on from there. everyone is very helpful and looks to be a "winner" in my book. In many ways this game has planety more to offer than SWG.

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Dalaran: Arindel - Frost Mage (Mining/Alchemy)
Dalaran: Roran - Paladin (Weaponsmith/Blacksmith)
Dalaran: Baine - Rogue

That was at the beginning of the game. They've added more to it since then. Current estimates believe that it would take over 7 years to learn every skill there is.

Mining in EVE is definatly a group activity. You can do it solo, but to be effective you need at least 2 people.

Also to date we have only done high security mining which is very easy and low risk.

There is also low sec mining which brings in a host of tactical, political and logistical challenges.

Mining is also not the only way to make money. There are a variety of missions both combat and non-combat as well as a whole host of trade options. A savy (an suffeciently boring) player could litterally run a whole trade Empire in a region of space without ever leaving a space station.

The EVE economy is simply the best economy of any MMO anywhere. By leaps and bounds.

Mining may be a repetative activity in itself, but by no means is it boring if you have a group working together. And I am quite certain that once we are ready for low sec mining that we will doubtless increase the excitment factor.

But to truly understand EVE you must experience it. Get a 14day trial and come play..come to EVE.....surrender to your curiosity...

-LA

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"Do not try and make the enemy respect you, try and make them think you are a joke. Because it is much easier to shoot them in the dark when they are laughing."

Hehe... you gotta love LA... she's like a EVE spokesperson... only without the pay.

Everything above is true. Right now I can only add the following:

Good team-mining requires teamwork. You need some guys mining, you need some guys who haul the ore to the station, and you need some guys who can defend the group. The beauty of it is how we have to work together as a team. Specialized ships filling specialized roles. It is exciting… not really, but the teamwork is beautiful when the cans are in the best location, and the miners are 1.5k away from them mining the asteroid belt and the hauler pulls up to empty the can. One day I zoomed out and that is what I saw. It looked like a perfectly executed plan.

The following are the roles as I see them:

MINING
The guys who mine target the right kind of asteroid, activate their miners, and watch the ore come in. Small ships like mine don’t have much of a cargo hold, so we create “cans” in space which we drag and drop the ore from our cargo hold to the can. Even the big guys empty their ore into the cans because all of us are mining much more than we can fit inside our mining ships. Thus we are dependant on haulers to take the ore from our cans, and ship it to the station to be processed.

HAULERS
Haulers have big ships designed to have very large cargo holds. They constantly take the ore our of the cans, once they get full they ship the ore to the station. Haulers are not very strong, so they need people to defend them. Their ships are not designed to equip many high end miners, so they depend on specialized mining ships to extract the ore from the asteroids.


DEFEND
Right now where we mine is relatively safe. However NPC pirates spawn and cause trouble. That is when we need someone to defend us. I am still a noob, so when I mine I remove my guns in favor of miners. Therefore I can not fight back. The big guys like Obo and Amy usually can defend me over large distances, but my point is at this time I am dependant on others to protect me.

Deeper in space it is less safe. We don’t go there yet.

You always run the risk of another player flying up and stealing ore from our can. So there is excitement when a stranger enters our asteroid belt. Deeper in space, where it is PvP free for all, some corps (guilds) are territorial, and will attack strangers mining their belts. When we are ready for deep space mining, we will need good ships, good equipment, and good tactics to survive.