The value of a mineable rock...selling a mining location.

[Thalstan]

The other day I was out mining in my MOLE. I had just about filled up when I came across two rocks containing large amounts of quantanium. Both rocks massed around 5000 (5100 and 5200 or so) and one had 35 percent quantanium and the second 45 percent quantanium. Together, those rocks were worth about 650k aUEC when refined and sold.

It got me thinking. If someone could prove that they found a rock like that (say, through a live stream, etc.) Is that something people would value and pay money for provided they are already on the same server?

• How much would you be willing to pay?
• What assurances do you need?
• Other considerations?

This is for the current state of the game. Not a time in the future when we can store and sell coordinates, but a way to allow people to sell mineable resources

My thoughts:

• Rates would be somewhere between 10-40 percent of the refined value using the method that has the highest yield. Patches with great stability get priced higher, patches with high numbers of 30k are lower or I just won't sell/buy the info.
• Rock needs to be minimum 100k refined value.
• Seller need to be able to prove that the resource advertised is as described (live stream with the scan values and with chat visible to compare.)
• At least some payment needs to be up-front, before you get an invite to the party, but after the seller proves the rock exists in real time.
• Seller need to remain on the stream at all times until you get there.
• Buyer need to be able to move on the info almost immediately. Not going to wait 30 minutes while the person changes from their BH ship to their mining ship.

What are your thoughts?

 

[Raven_King]

Great question. It'd be tough to get a reliable way for this to work at the moment, because of the obstacles. None seems insurmountable, but together they add a lot of friction to the process.

• Finds like that are very rare. (My best ever was a trio of rocks, one 45% quant, two at 28%. My mole was empty and I mined them all solo, filled my MOLE's 96 SCU with >95% quant plus rubbish and made something like 750,000 aUEC (after refining and delivering to Area 18) in a ~25 minute round trip plus whatever share of the run to sell the refined quant would be. Say another 20 minutes pro rata for that. But that happened once in I guess 40-50 hours of solo MOLE mining. For all I know it may never happen again.
• On those rare occasions you find one you (or your team) can't take yourself, your target market is primarily people currently on the server (40-50), who have a MOLE (<10%?), who are confident mining quant and equipped for it (not all, don't know what percentage) and who are currently free to come to you.
• When those conditions can all be met, you then have to agree terms with the other miner. I think the conditions you describe might be too challenging for a lot of players to meet, as the finder. For example, I've never streamed. I guess I could figure out how, but not quickly enough to bother trying while any viable alternative was an option. I think you might be better off just announcing your find in the general chat, and hoping someone will be honourable enough to give you say 10-20% of the value there and then, when they arrive at the rock. No guarantees either side wouldn't cheat the other.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but this seems too difficult to pull off, most of the time with random strangers.

Now, if TEST members were to be in the habit of agreeing an informal time to go mine - as a group or solo, on the same server, the odds of getting agreement go up a lot and mining at an advertised time doesn't cost you a lot of inconvenience. We could set up a sort of lightly-moderated reputation system among miners. Both org members might have some reputation level in the org which is at least partly at stake in each keeping their side of the bargain, eBay style. To maintain or gain rep, the finder must really have found a great rock or cluster they can't mine themselves, advertise that in a clear way, party up with the other miner, and wait around until the other miner comes over. The the other miner (seeker?) must pay attention, and agrees to pay the finder a fair price (30% of refined value seems fair to me) to show them the rock's location, and must come reasonably promptly and pay the agreed fee equally promptly, before starting to break the rock. The fee must not be conditional on anything else, e.g. their success or skill at breaking it - that's entirely the seeker's risk. Failing to follow the agreed rules should lead to a negative feedback.

All that is still quite a faff. It might become much more viable if we could drop a 'secret' beacon and leave, but share that beacon with other players, or if we could have thousands of players on the same server (or all current players seeming to be in the same universe together with server meshing).

 

[Cugino83]

Interesting, last week I found a player doing exactly that.
He was ROC ming and found, or claim to, a cluster of quantanium rock, it put it at bid on the pubblic chat, I think for a 30k starting value...
Final agreement end up with a 50% pay upfront and the remaining when the buyer arrive at the rock location and can verify them, not a bad thing to do in the current patch and it could be the very first interation of explorration and data trading we'll have and compleately driven by player initiative.

 

[Black Sunder]

I would pay 5%-10% depending on the rock and its overall value. Frankly the opportunity cost for the scanner is quite low and doesn't justify anything over 10%

Until CIG gets contracts into the game where you can sell verified info(done by scanning the rock) and have coordinates with it, then this kind of thing will always be sketchy and a pain to do.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

Frankly the opportunity cost for the scanner is quite low and doesn't justify anything over 10%

Can you explain what you mean by "opportunity cost"? Has anyone come up with an average time it takes to discover a find on this order? How common is it?

 

[Black Sunder]

Can you explain what you mean by "opportunity cost"? Has anyone come up with an average time it takes to discover a find on this order? How common is it?

"the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen."

The person finding these has it quite easy compared to the mining ship(s) which are much slower at.....everything. For each good rock, that 5%-10% adds up quickly. With multiple mining ships around, the scanner person flitting one rock to the other, 'any' good rock will be mined and hauled back. With refinery ships coming in the future, even that chain will be much shorter. The scanner isn't losing out on much after splits happen for mining crews, escorts, etc that divide the total haul up. And frankly, any people I have going around to scan rocks are also some of the escort/recon. They're paid to do that job, this is just a bonus.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

I take it you're hiring Carrack's to scan but you still have to haul the blow-me-upian ore back with the Mole? You can't transfer it safely?

 

[Black Sunder]

I take it you're hiring Carrack's to scan but you still have to haul the blow-me-upian ore back with the Mole? You can't transfer it safely?

No......the carrack doesn't have any function at this time and can't do anything else a fighter can't do as far as scanning.

Still have to truck the quant back before it explodes. For now.

 

[Thalstan]

I would pay 5%-10% depending on the rock and its overall value. Frankly the opportunity cost for the scanner is quite low and doesn't justify anything over 10%

Until CIG gets contracts into the game where you can sell verified info(done by scanning the rock) and have coordinates with it, then this kind of thing will always be sketchy and a pain to do.

I am talking about someone who just goes out for scanning (maybe all they have is a DUR), or they run across a huge rock filled with quantanium when they are almost full, and again, selling the location (and sticking by the location until the other person gets there.). Not just from another Test member, or someone on your scanning squad.

I am thinking 10 percent of the refined value is the minimum, 40 percent is the high, but 20 would be about right.

If I saw a test member on (and a mining competition was not going on), then I would probably just give it away currently, it if they chose to “tip” 10 percent of the find, I would be very happy (no more). - During a competition, I would ask for 30 percent of the value to be attributed to me =)

For a random player on the server, I am thinking 10 percent minimum, 20 percent is where I would want to be. (Smaller rocks, smaller commissions, minimum 100k refined rock).

If I have to wait around for them to gather up a crew, change ships, and get there, it’s 10 percent for me to stay, another 10 for the invite and a final 20 percent when they get there for 40 percent. I would want a minimum of half up front, but I would show a stream of my game…maybe on a discord server, etc. with chat showing so they could see it was “live”, then get the down payment, invite to the group and get paid the rest once they arrive. If they get a 30k after that, that’s their issue

if someone asks me to stick around and scout for them after buying a rock from me, it’s an even split between me and the mining crew they have, paid per rock I find. So if they have 4 people in their crew, I get 1/5 of the value. If they find the next rock, I get nothing. They start to mine without paying, I leave and never scout for any of that crew again.

 

[Vavrik]

I am talking about someone who just goes out for scanning (maybe all they have is a DUR), or they run across a huge rock filled with quantanium when they are almost full, and again, selling the location (and sticking by the location until the other person gets there.). Not just from another Test member, or someone on your scanning squad.

I am thinking 10 percent of the refined value is the minimum, 40 percent is the high, but 20 would be about right.

If I saw a test member on (and a mining competition was not going on), then I would probably just give it away currently, it if they chose to “tip” 10 percent of the find, I would be very happy (no more). - During a competition, I would ask for 30 percent of the value to be attributed to me =)

For a random player on the server, I am thinking 10 percent minimum, 20 percent is where I would want to be. (Smaller rocks, smaller commissions, minimum 100k refined rock).

If I have to wait around for them to gather up a crew, change ships, and get there, it’s 10 percent for me to stay, another 10 for the invite and a final 20 percent when they get there for 40 percent. I would want a minimum of half up front, but I would show a stream of my game…maybe on a discord server, etc. with chat showing so they could see it was “live”, then get the down payment, invite to the group and get paid the rest once they arrive. If they get a 30k after that, that’s their issue

if someone asks me to stick around and scout for them after buying a rock from me, it’s an even split between me and the mining crew they have, paid per rock I find. So if they have 4 people in their crew, I get 1/5 of the value. If they find the next rock, I get nothing. They start to mine without paying, I leave and never scout for any of that crew again.

I'm just looking at this from a business perspective. Here's the question - would you pay 30% of the value of the find under those conditions? Personally, I might pay 5% as a finders fee under normal circumstances, or 10% in a drought. Not more, especially to someone not willing to assume any risk.

 

[Thalstan]

Considering you can go for hours without finding a good rock, or find one in 5 minutes, a certain payday might beat trying your luck. Remember, this person just shortened your time to make a profit by a considerable margin. 30-60k for a 300k rock is not a bad price. If you want to pay 15k (5 percent), I get more certain returns running delivery missions. At 5 percent, my ROI is too low to find you a rock that would make you several hundred thousand aUEC.