Mining and Legions

Tahquil

Isn't that just making the positive feedback loop worse? From what I am reading your saying that people who can keep their troops alive for longer get bigger buffs - which is already happening.

Sarapis

Aerek said:

A thought that's crossed my mind is whether gold cost is an effective balancing factor for the folks that the system should be worried about. Obviously the system is designed so that you won't make a profit if you mismanage your resources or lose too many troops taking a mine, but I doubt that mining is anyone's primary source of income. Bashing is and will always be the primary gold-generating activity, and so I have to wonder how many of our already-wealthy demographic participate in mining just because they enjoy the mini-game and aren't terribly worried about losses and profits.

To pull an example out of a hat, do we really think that Proficy is carefully managing troop costs, carefully selecting lodes, and carefully choosing targets to make sure his bottom line is positive? Or does he just enjoy Pokemon battles and has plenty of money to spare from his UW/Annwyn bashing trips? If the latter, the "profits" of mining are really just a "bonus", compounded by the lure of exotic minerals that help with his other primary interest: fighting. To a player like that, the costs that are supposed to be a balancing or gating mechanism for mining aren't really a factor, he could sustain serious monetary losses for long periods of time and not really care, because profits aren't why he participates. (Thought they don't hurt.)

Now, to a degree, this is just capitalism in action and not really "broken", but that does run the risk of falling victim to the same problems that actual capitalism has run into, where small cabals of magnates are simply too rich to be unseated, and develop a de facto monopoly on the market until they get bored or go dormant. On one hand I feel the system was intentionally designed that way, to be cutthroat and give rise to a few powerful mining magnates rather than something anyone and everyone gets to participate in, but at the same time, it does seem unreasonably difficult to break into the game, given that some players already have the head-start and will just have no regard for the costs they have to pay to remain on top.

It's no different from PK: A new player starting today feels like she will never catch up with the top PKers. Gotta spend shitloads of time bashing first, potentially save up credits to buy arties, etc. The reality is the player can get to that point, it will just take a lot of time and effort. 

This system is similar, albeit without the ability to spend money to get better (which may or may not be the case forever, but not interested in introducing mining-related arties for now).

Melodie

I have to say, I'm not really a fan of this trickling-in spawning of lodes. It takes literally under 10 minutes (and more often under 5) for them all to be swooped up, and the only way to give yourself a chance is either to be exceptionally lucky, or prospect twice an hour or so, the latter of which is going to be done by those people with too much time and less things needing to get done, IG or OOC. SURVEY REGION being bugged isn't much of a help either.

I've generally had few complaints about mining, and most I've kept to myself, but the present way of spawns (where there's anywhere from 2-12 lodes spawning and nothing else - and that bigger number is generally going to only be when two types of lodes spawn, like just now with stone and iron) is kind of tedious at best, and hair-pulling frustrating at worst.

As always, I'll stick it out, this is just a perspective of having gone through various shifts of the system already.

Skye

Unlike PK where you can still somewhat pick and choose your fights, the pool of lodes and mines is now so small that it's more like dropping non-PKers into Annwyn/UW with flashing lights and world announcements.

Of course there are some of us who generally restrain from snatching up other people's mines, but just like in open PK areas there are also people who will attack other people just because they can.

Now, I suppose you'll think that the amount of attacking a person can do is limited by squad attrition and numbers, but I also know that some of these aggressive miners took to simply attacking and later abandoning mines  (hence the scattering of half-mined lodes that littered the areas at the start), forgoing the necessity for anything more than their designated army legion.

All this leaves new miners with is... basically nothing at the end. What they really need more than the level of the mining squads is the experience of the guard squads.

The only way I can see this happening is if you purchase an excess of guards and repeatedly rotate your guards every couple of hours while praying to the Gods of Mining that nobody wipes your first guard rotation out first. Given the amount of experience you generally gain per mine, that's like half or a quarter of a level per large mine on a reasonably sized lode for a guard squad. And then after that, you pray you're lucky enough to find another lode to do it all over again.

Unless more lodes and mining camps are opened, this is going to take a very, very, very long time. Even then it's still going to take a terribly long time.

Siduri

Skye said:

Unlike PK where you can still somewhat pick and choose your fights, the pool of lodes and mines is now so small that it's more like dropping non-PKers into Annwyn/UW with flashing lights and world announcements.

Of course there are some of us who generally restrain from snatching up other people's mines, but just like in open PK areas there are also people who will attack other people just because they can.

Now, I suppose you'll think that the amount of attacking a person can do is limited by squad attrition and numbers, but I also know that some of these aggressive miners took to simply attacking and later abandoning mines  (hence the scattering of half-mined lodes that littered the areas at the start), forgoing the necessity for anything more than their designated army legion.

All this leaves new miners with is... basically nothing at the end. What they really need more than the level of the mining squads is the experience of the guard squads.

The only way I can see this happening is if you purchase an excess of guards and repeatedly rotate your guards every couple of hours while praying to the Gods of Mining that nobody wipes your first guard rotation out first. Given the amount of experience you generally gain per mine, that's like half or a quarter of a level per large mine on a reasonably sized lode for a guard squad. And then after that, you pray you're lucky enough to find another lode to do it all over again.

Unless more lodes and mining camps are opened, this is going to take a very, very, very long time. Even then it's still going to take a terribly long time.

^ This.
This is why, from being in the top 16, I quit mining after being literally snuffed out, without a chance to get back in.

Inuad

I think another big difference with PK is that unlike PK, you can't really learn what you're doing wrong and improve. There is no data out there if you attack a mine successfully. There's no data if you lose in an attack. So there's no real way to tweak your legion combination for the best possible effect. You can't really improve your legion situation while waiting for lodes to show up.

And the people who already have squads who are higher level have an advantage that is very difficult to bridge. Experience is gained per commodity produced, which means higher level squads (from players who have been around longer, typically) will produce more experience (from commodity bonuses given from level/spec), meaning they can train legions faster.

Meanwhile, someone just starting out doesn't have that advantage. They can't just 'go bash' or 'grind credits' or so forth, because there is no mechanic in place for mining to replicate that. There's no way to improve your miner squads without a mine. There's no way to improve your soldier squads without a mine. And unless a top ranked miner royally screws up, goes dormant, or decides they are over the whole mining thing, they aren't going to lose that advantage.

I don't really see how time and effort can bridge that gap, at least not with the current extreme scarcity of lodes.

Inuad

Melodie said:

I have to say, I'm not really a fan of this trickling-in spawning of lodes. It takes literally under 10 minutes (and more often under 5) for them all to be swooped up, and the only way to give yourself a chance is either to be exceptionally lucky, or prospect twice an hour or so, the latter of which is going to be done by those people with too much time and less things needing to get done, IG or OOC. SURVEY REGION being bugged isn't much of a help either.

I've generally had few complaints about mining, and most I've kept to myself, but the present way of spawns (where there's anywhere from 2-12 lodes spawning and nothing else - and that bigger number is generally going to only be when two types of lodes spawn, like just now with stone and iron) is kind of tedious at best, and hair-pulling frustrating at worst.

As always, I'll stick it out, this is just a perspective of having gone through various shifts of the system already.

Very much this.

Even with the changes to prospecting, it can still take 30-45 minutes to prospect every room (presuming you don't spend money to survey the region first). Random spawn times (which I'm totally fine with, by the way) mean that even if you are consistently checking, you could just miss a lode spawning.

And it ties in a bit with the whole idea of new people getting edged out: if lodes spawn in low frequency, infrequently, you'll end up with a lower chance that someone new has a shot at grabbing a new lode before it's snatched up by someone bigger.

I understand that the entire idea is to reflect a production rate that you/the Garden feels is appropriate, but it seems like the current method for doing so isn't working (or at least, is frustrating and doesn't really allow for much participation). Even something as little as increasing the frequency of small and medium lodes, and increasing the number of those lodes (versus a small number of large/massive) would probably help alleviate a fair bit of this frustration (and provide more opportunity for new/low rank miners to get into it).

Tahquil

I think if you attack a mine and defeat the people inside the miners that escape should sabotage the mine and cause it to collapse behind them.

-Attacks on mines would need more strategy from the attacker.

 Attackers will have to ask themselves 'is this lode really worth my time building a mine on?' Hopefully it would have the affect of the larger lode sizes being the only tactically viable targets to be attacked and leave the smaller useless ones to those who are trying to sneak in to the minigame.

-At the moment only the poor sap who HAS to build a mine is being hit with the heavy costs of mine construction. This makes it so an attacker also has to pay the cost for mine building.

People how take over mines only lose a few thousand gold with legion lost, which they now have a handy place to train up new legions so it evens out. People who are just starting lose hundreds of commodities, thousands of gold just because they are disadvantage already of not having a mine before. These starters have to make this potential sacrifice to get started in the business since they themselves don't have the option to be an attacker.

-Stops people circumventing the 2 mines a player cap by taking over other mines.

Technically taking over a mine isn't the same as building a mine so if a player had the troops they can have 2+n mines where n is the mines they are able to take over.

Sarapis

Melodie said:

I've generally had few complaints about mining, and most I've kept to myself, but the present way of spawns (where there's anywhere from 2-12 lodes spawning and nothing else - and that bigger number is generally going to only be when two types of lodes spawn, like just now with stone and iron) is kind of tedious at best, and hair-pulling frustrating at worst.

Well, we could, instead, spawn twice as many lodes half as often.

A lot of people want to mine. Ok. But there's still only going to be X amount of comms every Y period of time we're going to let the system produce, and so it's going to get competitive. Otherwise, we don't have any kind of economy, and we have what boils down to herbs, which is not the idea here at all. This is about players owning businesses that have to figure out how to allocate resources based on imperfect information, and there will be tears as a result as well as some players who figure out how to make more good decisions than bad ones.

Klendathu

So what you're saying, @Sarapis, is life isn't fair? Dreams crushed.

Rangor

Mining brings out the good old achaea feelings of frustration, rage and drive to succeed against all odds. I do kind of like it. It is however very time consuming and hard to get in on in the early stages.

Since the commodities has to be regulated, I greatly prefer it over the old harvesting where you'd have to check every forest and hope that a new plant grew up somewhere so you could pick it.

With mining you just do a quick lap of prospecting, if you find a lode you construct a mine, place your legion as wisely as you can and that's it. You don't have to spend hours on hours on hours on hours of doing tedious work.

summary:
I love the system, super hard to get into, maybe attacking noob miner mines is too rewarding.

Inuad

Sarapis said:

Melodie said:

I've generally had few complaints about mining, and most I've kept to myself, but the present way of spawns (where there's anywhere from 2-12 lodes spawning and nothing else - and that bigger number is generally going to only be when two types of lodes spawn, like just now with stone and iron) is kind of tedious at best, and hair-pulling frustrating at worst.

Well, we could, instead, spawn twice as many lodes half as often.

A lot of people want to mine. Ok. But there's still only going to be X amount of comms every Y period of time we're going to let the system produce, and so it's going to get competitive. Otherwise, we don't have any kind of economy, and we have what boils down to herbs, which is not the idea here at all. This is about players owning businesses that have to figure out how to allocate resources based on imperfect information, and there will be tears as a result as well as some players who figure out how to make more good decisions than bad ones.

Players can't really figure out how to allocate resources when there's nothing for them to allocate towards.

The last few rounds I've gone prospecting it seems like most of the mines are built on large/massive lodes. Many of them are a low % mined out, so they aren't typically relics from a previous spawning of lodes. Instead of spawning twice as many half as often, why not twice as many with smaller lodes? I don't know the exact numbers, but it seems like a massive lode can generate between 3-5x as much as a small lode. That's 3-5x the number of lodes available.

That doesn't have to be every spawn, it just seems as though if the system favors small lodes versus large/massive lodes, there would be more lodes overall without requiring the frequency to be adjusted overly much.

At this point, there definitely are chances for players to make good decisions more than bad ones. However, a very large part of it is just being lucky enough to be around when a lode spawns, and having the time to spend the 20-30 minutes checking every camp (SURVEY REGION is still bugged, so you can't just rely on that) for spawns.

Kez

Regarding the issue of new miners getting stomped into the dirt by experienced ones, I had a thought that could either be really great or really bad, and I'm too tired to parse it, so have at it.

When defending soldiers attack assaulting soldiers, they have a 2% chance to convert a squad into the defending owner's legion (but not the mine) instead of killing it. Over time, someone could build up enough converted attackers to get their foot in the door if they're patient.

Morthif

Why not just take the names of the owner off the mines so there is more risk in attacking?

Kez

Bah can't edit.
Or introduce siren squads that can convert instead of kill. Lower success rate than soldiers of course.

Aerek

Sarapis said:

It's no different from PK: A new player starting today feels like she will never catch up with the top PKers. Gotta spend shitloads of time bashing first, potentially save up credits to buy arties, etc. The reality is the player can get to that point, it will just take a lot of time and effort. 

This system is similar, albeit without the ability to spend money to get better (which may or may not be the case forever, but not interested in introducing mining-related arties for now).

I would say it's a little different from PK, because while PK takes a large investment of time and money to bash up to 80 and save up for artefacts, that's personal progress that cannot be taken away from you. Folks can't steal the credits you're saving up for artefacts, and folks aren't allowed to gank you down to level 20 to keep you from participating. In mining, folks can gank all your mines as soon as you build them, and without owning mines, you can't train up soldiers to take them back or take others, so it feels like a feedback loop that can keep you completely shut out of the system.

Rangor essentially said what I was thinking in fewer words. Mining looks fun because it is high-stakes, and is competitive, and not everyone's going to be able to do it, but I agree that ganking new miners is too easy and too rewarding, and it's possible to systemically prevent new folks from entering the arena, as it were. The mini-lodes that exist solely for soldier-training purposes still sound like a good idea. (Even though a hypothetical jerk could still gank those to prevent new competition)

Delios

Also, can I buy some explosives for my escaping miners to plant on their way out to collapse the mine? That'd be stellar. If it wiped out any remaining attacking forces, that'd be great, too. K, thanks, bye!

Tael

Unless I'm mistaken, it seems like the primary problem here is that it remains profitable to attack small mines even when you're operating a bunch of large mines - if anything, the cost becomes even more negligable.

It seems like the solution might be something like some mechanic whereby holding more and larger mines makes the army-unit-per-resource return of attacking smaller, worse-defended mines worse. So if you have large mines and are training your massive army relatively quickly, you can still use it to go around stomping on every small mine, but it would be way more efficient to spend those soldiers trying to take medium and large mines. Maybe that's already the case, but if so, it doesn't seem to be a strong enough incentive.

Is there a limit to how many assaults you can make each month? That might help in a way similar to how the limit on mines held by an individual heavily incentivises the bigger miners to largely ignore the smaller mines.

Or maybe a gold cost to launch an attack.

Kez

You can only assault as many times as you have the soldiers for. They all die, you're all done.

Xinna

Mining isn't -supposed- to be the same as PK. There's no limit on how many people can participate in PK. Mining has to have a limit. Any time anyone gets a mine, other people don't get that mine. You just have to wait until you find one. Literally everyone goes through this, and the people who spend more time looking get more mines.

Attacking has a -huge- risk and cost to it already. As someone who has attacked a lot, and talked to others who have attacked a lot, we've all had our armies wiped multiple times. It happens. Then you have to start over just like everyone else.

The only potential problem is the protection RANKINGS MINING affords those who have higher points, as mentioned. If you have below a certain number of points, people know for certain that you don't have high level guys and won't resist. Once you have a certain number of points, everyone has no idea how strong your guys are because we don't know how long you've had them.

The risk inherent in attacking mines of anyone who has above a certain number of points is seemingly being ignored by most of the people complaining, though. My legion can very easily be wiped trying to take a single mine, because I don't know what level troops are in it. And attacking mines of others isn't "being a jerk." It's playing the game.

I like mining. I don't currently have any mines because I haven't yet found one, but I'm sure I will again soon enough. I just think people are expecting too much in terms of "Must have a mine right when my other mine collapses and without taking one from someone else." That's just not possible with the limited number of mines, but Achaea still has -everything- else it had before mining existed. Occupy yourself with something else in the meanwhile.

Kez

I want an army of sirens seducing soldiers

Sarapis

Morthif said:

Why not just take the names of the owner off the mines so there is more risk in attacking?

Now that's an interesting idea.

Sarapis

I think some of you might be surprised at how weak the soldier squads of high-ranking miners are btw. Was just looking through them.

Xinna

I don't like the idea of removing names from mines at all. It takes a lot of the strategy out of things, as well as any potential for politics, alliances, agreements, etc. I don't want to assault other Mhaldorians' mines, and I think it's perfectly legitimate to say "This person just took out my mine, I'll pay someone to take one of his/hers," which you can't do if you have no idea who you are attacking. It is and should be risky to try to hold five mines at once (because you can't fill them with troops), but it wouldn't be if no one could -see- who has five mines at once. It is and should be risky to attack someone strong and lose all your troops, but it wouldn't be if no one could see which mines are yours to attack you after all your guys die.

I understand the reasoning, but I don't think I'd like it with names removed. I'd rather do something to RANKINGS MINING so you simply don't know how much any given person has mined, such as having it only show the top X number of people.

Alternatively, make it so if you have below X number of mining points, you get to ask Barakus for some kind of special help with your mine, where he essentially "lends" you high level soldiers to defend your mine, but they leave as soon as you reach a certain amount of points. A one-time deal that makes really low points people dangerous, but probably wouldn't have a huge effect on mining overall, since it only applies to people who have never mined before.

Kez

Remove rankings mining?

Sarapis

We have removed names from new mines! We'll see how it goes.

Kez

You read what is written on a small wooden sign:

This is a medium coal mine.

Might as well remove the sign entirely and save on item generation. Can see that with prospect.

Medi

I'm sure Medi is going to feel real sane telling Mhaldor his mine is at 2345 instead of 'Amid the dunes'

Xinna

I really think removing names from mine signs takes a lot out of the mining system, as noted above.

There should be consequences to taking on more than 2 mines, wasting all your soldiers in attacks, etc., and there aren't if people don't know who owns what mines.

Sarapis

Yep, we'll see how it goes. Easy to change back if we don't like it.