Mining and Legions

Grandue

Make the name on the sign a toggle. So if you want your name to be known, you just CONSTRUCT SIGN or something.

Inuad

Medi said:

Sarapis said:

Inuad said:

I think the main difference is with things like bashing or questing (or fishing, or so forth) is that bashing or questing will always yield something. You're going to get essence, experience, or gold spending time doing that. You aren't necessarily going to get the same from prospecting, unless you get lucky.

 was to counter @Sarapis suggesting that success in getting lodes requires hard work and/or playing smarter.

As in life, much of what appears to be luck is simply someone working hard such that when the opportunity arises, it can be taken advantage of.

Someone who devotes themselves to finding lodes is going to get "lucky" a lot more often than someone who casually looks. Of course, it's not luck over the long-term, it's predictable - work harder, do better. The working smart comes in how you decide to allocate your resources to mining lodes, when to allocate them to attacking (and when and on what lodes/mines), and when to take a stronghold.  

tl;dr Sleep is for the weak!

Damn, and I was really starting to enjoy sleep.

Draekar

So this is probably why mines not having signs is annoying.

I take a mine, no idea who owns it, come out to this...

You leave your mine.

Top of a steep incline.

A deep-blue valerian plant grows here. A hardy blueberry bush is growing here. The entry to a mine 

looms here, its great arched doorway worked in grey stone. A small wooden sign is here. Bloated with 

blood and flesh, a frenzied bloodworm sets its beady eyes on you. Dripping with blood, an inverted 

pentagram floats in mid-air. The shadows bend and contort to the form of this nightmare, red eyes 

glaring from out of the darkness. A sigil in the shape of a small, rectangular monolith is on the 

ground.  Hands of rotting flesh and white bone push up from the ground. Vanquisher Medi Dracrotalus 

is here. He wields a wicked-looking daegger in his left hand and a morning star in his right. The 

Black Dragon Entaro's imposing form looms.

You see exits leading northwest and down.

...snip gank spam...

You have been slain by Entaro.

you bastards all need to read news announce 4384

Also sorry @Taraus I took your mine Bring back signs! (or at least tell me in the msg I took a mine off Mhaldor so I know not to walk out next time)

Tharvis

that has nothing to do with signs and more with people wanting to violently discourage others.

Draekar

Well to be fair to Mhaldor, I do feel like I deserved the death icly. I just don't like I had no way of telling who owned the mine even in the message when I took it, obviously the other person gets alerted with my name though, seems like something that needs to be fixed?

Tharvis

Nope, the announce news specifically states you can't take your mines being attacked by someone as RP reason to kill/attack them, so you did not deserve that death icly

Melodie

Draekar said:

Well to be fair to Mhaldor, I do feel like I deserved the death icly. I just don't like I had no way of telling who owned the mine even in the message when I took it, obviously the other person gets alerted with my name though, seems like something that needs to be fixed?

This definitely seems like a huge oversight. It's 100% uncertain for the aggressor who you're attacking at any point of the process, even after you take the mine. You have no idea, yet they do. Very fishy.

I am also of the camp of having signs returned.

Ruth

Just make it so you get to know who you take the mine from if it's successful.

Draekar

Melodie said:

Draekar said:

Well to be fair to Mhaldor, I do feel like I deserved the death icly. I just don't like I had no way of telling who owned the mine even in the message when I took it, obviously the other person gets alerted with my name though, seems like something that needs to be fixed?

This definitely seems like a huge oversight. It's 100% uncertain for the aggressor who you're attacking at any point of the process, even after you take the mine. You have no idea, yet they do. Very fishy.

I am also of the camp of having signs returned.

I have taken a few mines previously and sent the owners some credits as compensation, because I am generally a nice guy but this was the first one I have taken after the sign change and all I got as the aggressor was the following

Message #28622      Sent by Achaea

8/14/11:51 Your army has taken the mine at Top of a steep incline! There is currently 248 impure ice in storage and this large mine sits on a large lode that is approximately 0% mined out.

I don't know what they get, probably 
Message #1      Sent by Achaea

8/14/11:51 Yo mine just got jacked by Draekar, that dirty bastard.

Be nice if it was leveled out one way or the other?

Delios

Digging the no sign thing. My legions are no longer being attacked when I throw large mines on small nodes (and yes, this used to happen, repeatedly, within a few days), and that was just the longest I've ever held a mine.

You can always throw a poster or something at your entrance if you want people to know it's yours. People can copy you, but imitation is the greatest form of flattery.

Greys

@Delios posters have the maker's mark.

Sarapis

Ruth said:

Sarapis said:

That was a nasty bug alright. Should be fixed.

I just had a massive lode with a large mine constructed on it and it collapsed, depleted of resources in less than 24 hours. It was more like 19 hours with level 5/6 miners. I spoke with someone about it, though, and the lode size seemed to correspond with the amount of commodities that it produced. This means it is normal, yeah?

Yep. Sounds like it was probably a lower value comm like coal or something.

Grandue

Make signs optional. If you want a sign allow the mine owner to CONSTRUCT SIGN. You could even make it cost 100 wood or something. That way others can't claim to own a mine they don't and those who want signs don't have to resort to posters or pennons with their coat of arms dropped outside the mine with a flame sigil on them only to have to go mushroom them when it collapses. The higher tier miners are going to make their mine ownership known to dissuade people from attacking, why make it such a pain in the ass to do so. 

Delios

I think a benefit of making ownership signals mushroomable is pretty clear.

If it's worthwhile for a new miner to remove all signs of ownership from all mines, because it increases the chance of holding on to a mine for more than a few hours, they'll spend the time and money on mushroom sigils.

If you really care a lot about ownership being known, you'll spend your time and money creating and maintaining those items.

Tharvis

I prefer @Grandue 's solution about spending some wood to construct the sign outside your mine, making it optional, without involving mushrooms. This'd also make it a slight commodity sink

Xinna

I'm just waiting for the signs that are already there to show names again. It shouldn't be a matter of choice. There should be disadvantages of spreading yourself too thin or killing off all your troops, or attacking too many people and making enemies, in addition to being able to allow citymates to know whose mines belong to their citymates.

There's pretty much one person in Achaea who actually likes the signs as is (sorry Delios) and his problem could've easily been fixed in other ways (mercenary soldier defenders for first-time miners!).

What even is this talk of pennons/mushroom wars? You're kidding, right? This is mining, not sign wars.

Atalkez

Sarapis said:

Greys said:

 Personally, I find its a lot easier to manipulate things at the delos commshop end instead.

As a player, I suspect I'd spend a lot of time and energy manipulating the comm market for fun and profit.

I made a million gold in 20 minutes doing this. It is more fun to me as well.

Tharvis

Atalkez said:

Sarapis said:

Greys said:

 Personally, I find its a lot easier to manipulate things at the delos commshop end instead.

As a player, I suspect I'd spend a lot of time and energy manipulating the comm market for fun and profit.

I made a million gold in 20 minutes doing this. It is more fun to me as well.

only a million? Aim higher damnit, you can do better!

Delios

Putting the signs back seems totally fine if there's another solution for people with all level 1 legions to get started. Some reasons for displayed ownership are very valid, and very beneficial for RP and strategy purposes.

I was totally serious about the poster wars. It's the best way to allow the market to decide an equilibrium point. Economics in action.

I'll point out that 'dissuading people from attacking me because I'm highly ranked' is the flip side of the 'encouraging people to attack me because I'm lowly ranked' - also, apparently not a great reason, as Sarapis mentioned higher ranked miners aren't keeping their high level soldiers.

Draekar

See the other thing is that you have no idea if a mine belongs to your own city/order mates, friends, lovers, or enemies...

I know all these sub groups could start clans and everyone could log their mines and known mines of others but with mine turn over that sounds like as bad a work around as the sign wars does.

I have passed over attacking some mines previously because a Targ owned it, I don't really like that I have to roll the dice on this now.

Atalkez

Delios said:

Putting the signs back seems totally fine if there's another solution for people with all level 1 legions to get started. Some reasons for displayed ownership are very valid, and very beneficial for RP and strategy purposes.

I was totally serious about the poster wars. It's the best way to allow the market to decide an equilibrium point. Economics in action.

I'll point out that 'dissuading people from attacking me because I'm highly ranked' is the flip side of the 'encouraging people to attack me because I'm lowly ranked' - also, apparently not a great reason, as Sarapis mentioned higher ranked miners aren't keeping their high level soldiers.

The more they attack someone, the more losses they're going to incur and invariably they will become weaker by doing so.

Building a large mine, putting max troops in it, is really the best way to "get started". Sure it's a big up-front cost, but if anyone wants to attack it, they're going to suffer tremendous losses to do so.

I think the idea that you should be "guaranteed" a mine long enough to glean anything from it, is wrong. That's not how the system was designed. Not everyone is going to mine, or keep their mines, or be successful. Only by fostering alliances with people, ensuring you're keeping your troops filled up, and leveling them will you be able to "win" at mining. 

I don't think you should be able to build and keep a mine, just because you "want" to. It takes more than just grabbing some comms, slapping them together and walking away to count your gold 2 days later. It's not designed to be that way.

Disagree with the sign changes. If you can't keep your mine, that's a you problem, not a mechanical problem. Proficy might be ranked #1 but he has the same 1000 troops to work with as everyone else. He's not going to attack every medium mine he comes across, or else he'll wind up losing all of the troops he has leveled.

Shirszae

A solution would be for the system to let you know the mines of people who share orgs with you or some such. I am not totally against signs returning, but there has to be something to make it not so rewarding to simply attacking mining newbies.

Grandue

Delios said:

I think a benefit of making ownership signals mushroomable is pretty clear.

If it's worthwhile for a new miner to remove all signs of ownership from all mines, because it increases the chance of holding on to a mine for more than a few hours, they'll spend the time and money on mushroom sigils.

If you really care a lot about ownership being known, you'll spend your time and money creating and maintaining those items.

If you think it is difficult at all figuring out who owns which mine even without signs, you're sorely mistaken. After a single tick on the mine clock I could tell you exactly who owns which mines except in cases where two people own the same size mine on the same size lode

What happens when you start getting your troops up over level 10? You're going to have people with lower level soldiers attack your mine because they don't know it is yours, you'll probably keep your mine but you could lose 25% or more of your soldiers. That person may never have attacked you had they known how strong you were. Being anonymous may be nice when you're just starting out but it basically takes a large incentive out of NOT attacking when you get stronger. I probably have some of the highest level soldiers in the game right now. I haven't been attacking people and out of all the times I've been attacked I haven't lost a single soldier. So right now I have a large incentive to not attack people because I have a super strong defense that would be lost if I started attacking and there is a big incentive for people to not attack my mines because they would lose a large percentage if not all of their higher level army in the process.

However, if people can't determine which are mine they are inevitably going to attack my mines eventually and if I start losing soldiers at some point it will make more sense for me to start attacking mines to keep other people's armies dead which means it will be much more difficult for people to get started. For those who have been attacking a lot, it makes sense for them to level up to 4-5 and just dump all of them attacking mines of those who aren't stacked with level 15-20 soldiers. For those who haven't been attacking and have leveled up their soldiers, it makes sense for them to keep them for defense. 

With no names on those signs, you're eventually going to whittle away at those who have been saving them for defense and they'll become aggressive miners instead of passive ones. As someone who has only a little experience with mining, you don't really have a whole lot of data saved up to truly know what you're talking about yet. This isn't a case of the top miners trying to prevent others from getting there, this is a case of those who have hundreds of hours of experience and data stored away telling you what is going to happen if it continues like this. 

Aerek

Speaking as someone without any horse in the mining race, the sign change does seem undesirable, for all the reasons stated. It's rough to accidentally take mines from a friend, I think mining "conglomerates" between allies are part of the system, and I think you want to know who you're tangling with when you take a mine for a plethora of reasons. Signs not having names on them seems to introduce a lot of headache and difficulty into the system, but I'm not really in a position to see whether it's had beneficial effects.

Draekar

At Grandue above. Yeah you can data mine the "rankings mining (player) list/s" to see who is mining what and attribute this with some accuracy to the mines of that type and I am sure some players are doing that already. You can generally tell if they have a high soldier to miner mix based on how quick they are mining too, this isn't that hard and it identifies the easier targets over those who put fewer miners and more soldiers in their mines.

I would be alright if rankings was re-worked or removed alongside signs being brought back.

Grandue

Draekar said:

I would be alright if rankings was re-worked or removed alongside signs being brought back.

OR rankings could remain the same and signs be brought back and you could just level your miners and soldiers on small coal or another cheap commodity lodes with a large mine and high soldier to miner ratio and lose millions of gold leveling your legion up before attempting to take the more desirable lodes. I was about a week late to the mining game, I found myself in the same position as you, and this is exactly the strategy I used, which is why I'm #1 on rankings mining coal. I passed up iron and silver and platinum, etc. and any massive or huge lode because I knew those were the ones being attacked.

You're mistake is that you want to be able to jump right in and throw a mine on a massive lode of a desirable commodity and feel like you're entitled to not be attacked. This is mining, you have to play the long game, bro. 

Morthif

What if we went with a system where say denizen villages did the mining and then turned around and sold the comms in a shop in each village. They could fluctuate production and price based on how much and how often it is purchased.  

Draekar

Grandue said:

Draekar said:

I would be alright if rankings was re-worked or removed alongside signs being brought back.

OR rankings could remain the same and signs be brought back and you could just level your miners and soldiers on small coal or another cheap commodity lodes with a large mine and high soldier to miner ratio and lose millions of gold leveling your legion up before attempting to take the more desirable lodes. I was about a week late to the mining game, I found myself in the same position as you, and this is exactly the strategy I used, which is why I'm #1 on rankings mining coal. I passed up iron and silver and platinum, etc. and any massive or huge lode because I knew those were the ones being attacked.

You're mistake is that you want to be able to jump right in and throw a mine on a massive lode of a desirable commodity and feel like you're entitled to not be attacked. This is mining, you have to play the long game, bro. 

I think you are confusing me with Delios/Rangor et al. I support your argument/position!

Taraus

I won't repeat points that have already been made, but I will add my voice to the group:

Bring back signs!

And if the position is staunchly no on bringing back signs, then perhaps maybe a middle ground?
Give those who control strongholds a list of names of the individuals who hold mines in their territory. It doesn't have to reveal location or type of commodity, but name and mine size.
That at least allows for some level of mine identification, and gives strongholds a purpose beyond just latent commodity collection

Morthif

Taraus said:

I won't repeat points that have already been made, but I will add my voice to the group:

Bring back signs!

And if the position is staunchly no on bringing back signs, then perhaps maybe a middle ground?
Give those who control strongholds a list of names of the individuals who hold mines in their territory. It doesn't have to reveal location or type of commodity, but name and mine size.
That at least allows for some level of mine identification, and gives strongholds a purpose beyond just latent commodity collection

Not a bad idea or maybe put a guard out front of the mine with the person's city banner or something identifiable.