Development Notice: Mining Update

[Karst]

Xeno artifacts are balanced differently because of their unlawful origin. Turning the commodity into profit requires two ships with different IDs, and trading them is essentially smuggling. In a news article dealing with the distribution of Xeno Relics among the blackmarket all governments are advised to put them as contraband. Alternatively, the profit at a houses capital can be tuned down if it's not treated as contraband.

Yeah I get that, I didn't mean to suggest it was a bug. Just informing other people how it compares.
Edit: If anything the ~8% or so bonus could even be a little higher.

And the mining time takes much longer indeed.
a) Asteroids are more difficult to hit.
b) Constant hazard if you're not limiting yourself to a very small arc in the mining area.
c) Mining area is very cramped and allows only one escape, making mining dangerous. Scanner interferences makes it unable to notice targets until they're sufficiently close to the mining area
d) Asteroids drop commodities half as often, and at 3/5 maximum yield compared to other fields if they do.

That sounds pretty terrible. Half the number of drops at 3/5ths yield would mean a mining time of 1600 seconds relative to the default 480, and that's not even taking the danger and all that into account - or the fact that top-tier bonuses are 3.0 rather than 4.0. Rough estimates suggest an intelligence faction with a 2x bonus could take 20-30 minutes to fill a big transport. I don't think the prices will make up for that.

Zoners are excluded from Azurite because they generally don't have the sufficient knowledge available to them. In that case, they can use the Order as substitute to gather it for them. IRG however is a rather special case, given that they are an official faction focused on research and roleplay. This makes them special enough to say that they have the knowledge to extract some of the Azurite without a doubt.

While I understand the RP justification, that seems extremely unfair to me. Factions like BMM and IMG had to submit faction perk requests to even get +1.0 on ores they already have, and IRG are getting a top bonus just like that? Does this mean that leaders can request ore bonuses for ores that specifically make sense for their official faction - like [ALG] for Iridium Ore, given their long history in the region and importance of Iridium for their smelters?

Or do you have to be an admin leader for that?

---