That Dirty Thing Called Mining

 My, my so many things to talk about....

 So anyone that has read the CSM minutes, or been involved in the Eve "community" for a while knows that there has been a great deal of talk on the lack of incentives to mine anywhere but high sec, and the most insulated regions of true null. If you take a look at all the rocks floating around in Low, NPC, and true 0.0 you know this is a real fact. There are vast resources that go untouched. However, if we're going to talk about improving incentives I think we better talk about some serious game mechanics issues at the same time. One of those is mining ships.

 Take a look at any T1 or T2 mining ship. They have decent armor, shields, and hull strengths but their slot load out is awful, and their CPU/PG pathetic. Even under the best circumstance how do you protect these ships? The answer right now is: You don't. There is absolutely no way -no amount of logistics that can keep these ships alive. I know this from personal experience not as a miner, but as a responder. Worse yet, they don't even have the tools to defend themselves. Its impossible to fit any kind of shield or armor tank, and fitting guns isn't do-able either.

 Mining could be made the most interesting and isk producing activity in all of Eve and under the current system the only result would be mining ships exploding by the thousands. So what am I hoping for? I'd like to see groups of miners be able to fit guns, remote repair, and a heavy enough tank that they could give a disorganized group of invaders a run for their money, or least have a chance of staying alive until support can bridge in or arrive from a few systems away. Every other ship in Eve can do this. Why can't mining ships? Under the current system mining ships have such weak tanks you can bring logistics and a large defense force in and your enemies can still wipe your whole mining fleet away right in front of you.

 Next time I'll take a look at some other topics around low/null sec.