The devs released a blog detailing more information about the upcoming Refinery structures and the changes to moon mining:
For anyone looking for a TL;DR here’s your convenient summary:We can look at the provided information and make some predictions.
Refineries coming this winter
New Moon Mining Paradigm
Must extract ore from moon to space, mine and reprocess it to get the moon materials
Refineries use exclusive moon drill service module to extract ore from moon to space
Only one Refinery can mine each moon at a time
New Ores
20 New moon ores that are mined from moon extraction
Reprocessed into 1 main moon material and other minerals (moon or regular)
Only available in asteroids created from moon drill process
Moon Composition and Distribution
Moon composition to be a percentage of different ores
Mix of moon ores and existing ores
Full reset of moon distribution on Expansion Release
Moon Survey Improvements coming in August
Friendlier looking UI for results of Moon Composition
“Copy to clipboard” function
Indication of probe missing target
Timer for results from each probe
1) The current profit centre of buying raw moon material and refining it in a POS to resell on the market for a profit will cease to exist for all intents and purposes due to the ease and security of setting up a Refinery. No more dealing with POS mechanics like setting them up, fueling them, and silo micro management. When ease of production comes into play, profit margins decrease.
2) The redistribution of moon ores will cause some upheaval in null and low sec space, not only because the location of valuable moons will have changed, but moon mining operations requires actually miners to extract the wealth for refining, thus alliances will need to be close enough to guard the structures and pilots using them.
3) Small groups (alliances/corps) making money from moons will be more difficult as the number of trusted people needed to run a moon mining operation increases. I.e. operational security is easy when its two people running it, but loose lips/spies will make it harder to extract the wealth without more cost.
4) It will be easy for smaller groups to get into low end moon mining as mid range value moons will actually be profitable. Right now a moon is either valuable or not, but the new model where many ores of different types and amounts will make more moons feasible for mining.
I plan to exploit this moon land rush by building as many of the refineries as I possibly can this winter.
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My prediction is that Survey Probes will rocket if they haven't already. Discovery probes seem to be popular in the last few days. All those new moons need to be found.
ReplyDeleteAt current prices there are only 3 x R4 moons that are unprofitable to a small POS. The change almost guarantees a solo player without several alt accounts will be unable to mine.
I am not sure if this is a good change or not, but I do support the redistribution of moons and the move away from passive collection.
I am not sure why you need more people to moon-mine. 1 person owns the moon mining array and brings his existing clone army of Rorquals to mine when he chooses the rock to emerge from the moon. Alliance assures operational safety by intel channels etc. Basically, now mining, refining and warehousing can be done by one guy in one place. What am I missing?
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