Scrap Metal Thread # 1 000 000

[Karst]

So the buff or whatever you wish to call it to Premium Scrap is now over.
There's no denying it was one of the most popular money making activities before, but now that it likely won't be is a good time to re-evaluate the whole business, again.
Obviously what follows is mainly the perspective of ALG and therefor lawful sell points.

Without further ado, let's look at the cold, harsh numbers:

6000 credits at Singapore Shipyard
4500 at Yokohama Shipyard

for Premium Scrap. The shortest trip to Singapore is from New London, and the shortest to Yokohama is from Texas.
As is plainly visible from these numbers, hauling Premium Scrap is pretty bad business for us.

In fact, with the illegality of us carrying premium scrap within Liberty and the longer trips necessitated by this for the Texas route, and the incredibly slow Prem Scrap mining in New London, those routes don't even compare favorably to regular commodity runs. And yes, I realize house laws have little influence on economic balance. Bear with me.

Why not simply stick to regular scrap then? From Munich, it's a mere two jumps to Dortmund, as opposed to the five necessary to get from Texas to New Tokyo. Not only is it less than half the distance, the drops are also absolutely obscene. And the sell price of 3193 is 70% of the Prem Scrap price in NT. That one's a no-brainer.

Or, let's take it further. New London. Four jumps to Singapore, one very short, the others very, very long. But even without getting into details: the atrocious drop rate is enough to discourage mining Prem Scrap in New London, but regular scrap?
It's just three jumps, albeit very long ones, to Antikythera Shipyard in Cayman, which pays a whopping 6784 credits for regular scrap.
So it's shorter, mines faster, and pays better. Pretty obvious choice right there, again.

Now, disregarding the comparison with regular scrap, which already shows the the complete lack of balance regarding premium scrap prices, where it really loses out is against regular ore.
InRP-logical routes for ALG such as Beryllium ore from Cambridge to New Berlin are shorter and pay better.
Asking someone to quickly mine some real ore is a matter of minutes and frankly, the payout is just much better.

I can only assume that scrapping is so terrible for lawfuls is the Golem and its capacity to mine.
The problem with that approach is that it leads to the half-assed "semi-ore" balancing we see now that just isn't worth engaging in at all.

Regular ore mining operations can make up for the lack of cargo space on their mining vessels by simply separating miners and haulers - which promotes, no, necessitates teamwork - but we have no way of making up for the low selling prices with teamwork.

If the mining capability of the Golem is the thing holding back ALG/lawful scrapping, then for god's sake get rid of it. Solo mining of any sort isn't something that should be encouraged in the first place.
Leaving the Behemoth as the largest mining vessel we can use means we can have normal prices, with its cargo hold between the Kamome and the Salvager.

Frankly, I'm sick and tired (as I'm sure are many Junkers) of constant and often massive changes to (premium) scrap mining which never seem to take the positions and opinions of to the factions they actually affect into consideration. Scrapping is the life blood of some of us out there and it's really frustrating to see it be brokenly good one moment, unusable the next.
If premium scrap could just be made a regular ore-type commodity with associated prices and mining bonuses that would just be super duper, even if it means giving up the Golem's mining bonus.

Thank you for your time whoever got this far.

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[Jack_Henderson]

Make Premium Scrap like a real ore.
5-6 systems + 1 or 2 bottlenecks between origin and selling location.
9,something k seeling price.
And yes... solo mining in large transports is a major issue.
Therefore, transports should lose their ability to mine with a bonus.

All ore fields should have a standardized drop / rock (like 1-6) and a standardized spawn rate. Identical mechanics, no "best spot", no "bad ore, OP ore" any more.

So... ye. Karst has it.
But I think the mining mod would take a lot more attention before this can be done. :/

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[Wildkins]

Make Premium Scrap like a real ore.
5-6 systems + 1 or 2 bottlenecks between origin and selling location.
9,something k seeling price.
And yes... solo mining in large transports is a major issue.
Therefore, transports should lose their ability to mine with a bonus.

All ore fields should have a standardized drop / rock (like 1-6) and a standardized spawn rate. Identical mechanics, no "best spot", no "bad ore, OP ore" any more.

So... ye. Karst has it.
But I think the mining mod would take a lot more attention before this can be done. :/

Pretty much. Currently, premium scrap's good sell points are so far from its mining location that it's impossible to make good profit anymore compared to stuff like Silver and Platinum Ore.
EDIT:
Graph

This is profit per second of all ores assuming closest mining field with drop rate 2 or 3 and density 20+ to best sell point, assuming 4k cargo hold and battle transport speed.

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RP Feedback

[FynnMcScrap]

Did anybody get a reason for the nerf ?
As far as I gathered prices were said to be permanent, then there was discussion, now its changed...
But so far I miss any explanation.

PremScrap and Scrap are currently unbalanced towards each other, and unbalanced toward other mineable commodities.
As far as I can see the only effect was to cut off trade to Singapore and Yokohama ,
and I see no sense in that.

THX for the graph.

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FynnMcScrap, Foreman of Tinkers Haven

[Vulkhard Muller]

Therefore, transports should lose their ability to mine with a bonus.

All ore fields should have a standardized drop / rock (like 1-6) and a standardized spawn rate. Identical mechanics, no "best spot", no "bad ore, OP ore" any more.

Right so, For this, the only problem is that the Hege would be removed and though I hate it. It is a life line for many Inde miners who are not in Official factions

So whats the point? What would be the point of mining anything? Literally people would join IMG (inde/Official) and never fly anything else because if all ores are the same there is no point to haul/mine more then 2 ores. For example: Niobium/Copper I think it is? Not to mention the smaller runs associated with them ( Mining Machinery from Dort/Narita)

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[VinitS]

Guys Golem Supports Individual Mining...thats a character..if someone is playing a "one-man army" type character......someone who doesn't trust anyone type miner...

also..with Hold Size....Golem Sacrifices the turn rate...so quite difficult to mine....

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VinitS#1081 - Discord

[Jack_Henderson]

@Solomining:

Please do not make the mistake to compare those 3 solo miners with each other.

Hegemon has 2,750 cargo and is outrageously bad in everything. It can't enter lanes properly, it is impossible to miss, it even fails as a mining platform because it gets stuck in rocks and the stats are overall bad.

Salvager: more cargo hold. No lane issues. Amazing defense capabilities. A true allrounder and thus A LOT better than the Hegemon.

Golem: 4700 cargo hold. Good stats. Hard to hit model. Very good handling in lanes. A real moneytrader with mining bonus.

Now some tried to justify solo mining capabiliy of these ships. They ignore that there was a decision to buff group activity over solo activity. It was a conscious balancing/gameplay decision.

Try to find a Berryl miner during the Prem Scrap buff? No chance. Why? Solo mining was all the business. Need to cooperate? Little to zero. Flexibility? Perfect. Addition to interaction, teamplay and multiplayer feeling in a multiplayer game? Little to none compared to teammining.

The solutions are on the table. Kruger proved that it is possible to get mining bonus on a different ship. The transports need to lose their bonus. Small miners (like the Arrastra) and medium miners (like the freighter/small transort miners) and a lrge so miner (like the Hegemon) should be proposed by Junkers and Alg.

In combination with a push to equal drop rates across the board, every faction would get the same opportunities. I think that's where the future of the mining mod should be going.

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[Karst]

Okay, so after the original post laid out why premium scrap is currently not a viable commodity to trade for us, here are some concrete numbers on how it could be improved.

These are two typical ore runs, one fairly long and the other unusually short.
I've picked these two because they make sense for ALG, involving bases owned by ourselves or allies. Trip times are calculated directly from the mining fields.

Beryllium Ore
Cambridge - Dortmund Station, New Berlin
11 min / 8222 c/u

Helium-3
Okinawa - Aland Shipyard, Omega-3
16 min / 8873 c/u

Assuming our premium scrap importers will remain Yokohama Shipyard and Singapore Shipyard, here are the numbers now:

Premium Scrap
Texas (Pequena Negra) - Yokohama Shipyard, New Tokyo
15 min

Premium Scrap
New London - Singapore Shipyard, Tau-44
17 min

As we can see, the trip times are pretty comparable to other ore runs while the profits obviously are not, at the moment.
Two other factors to consider:

- Mining in Texas is incredibly fast
- Mining in New London is very slow

Honestly it would likely be easiest for balancing if the yields were simply reduced to normal. If that were done, we could realistically have prices something like this:

Yokohama shipyard: 8200 credits
Singapore shipyard: 9500 credits

This is only an approximation and would also obviously require the Golem mining bonus to be removed, since it would be far too easy to make money solomining otherwise.
I'll post some more on the subject later probably, gotta go do things for now.

Junkers, please feel free to post your own estimations of what would be balanced numbers for your importers.

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[FynnMcScrap]

+1

Seems fine to me, treat PremScrap like any other ore, perhaps even seperate Scrap and PremScrap with two different yields and different sell points. Fine.

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FynnMcScrap, Foreman of Tinkers Haven

[Jack_Henderson]

Honestly it would likely be easiest for balancing if the yields were simply reduced to normal. If that were done, we could realistically have prices something like this:

Yokohama shipyard: 8200 credits
Singapore shipyard: 9500 credits

This is only an approximation and would also obviously require the Golem mining bonus to be removed, since it would be far too easy to make money solomining otherwise.
I'll post some more on the subject later probably, gotta go do things for now.

Sounds good to me.
However, pick another drop off point than the IMG Guard base Singapore in Tau 44 that is just an unused, stupid place. I'd suggest Jakarta (Tau 39).

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