That is nasty.
Any plans to Improve Mining?
- Thread starter seawolf230
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Laser mining is a relaxing activity for me. I have a system with a platinum hotspot in to mine when I get the itch. I scoop up other stuff as well. Why not? When I need to fund the carrier for another year (I try to keep up the yearly income) I can sell stuff off. The other way I can make credits big time is by selling Odyssey materials gathered over the year.
Steve
I think laser mining is fine but I would agree that laser mining could do with a visual refresh, having a voxel deformation layer, or asteroids fully constructed from voxels would provide much better visual feedback on content and actually mining. However, I feel like implementing such a thing would cause GPUs to melt, given the scope of the average asteroid belt around a gas giant, which is probably why Frontier chose the core mining as a way to improve it. But recently the new Distant Horizons mod for Minecraft uses a clever dynamic skybox LOD method to allow for some crazy draw distances in Minecraft whilst keeping performance reasonable. I don't know if a technique like this could benefit Elite when considering planetary terrain and asteroid fields? Probably not so much asteroid fields as the asteroids are constantly rotating which conflicts with a static skybox, but at the same time, maybe the draw distance would be enough that it wouldn't be noticeable. It is one area where I think Empyrion/Space Engineers really works when it comes to mining in general.
Yes they fixed that ages ago.
OT: no i don't want elite to be like eve thank you.
Talking about removing mining is super weird; just don't do it instead.
_
The biggest problem with mining isn't with mining, it's with what you do after mining. There's just no depth at all, what you see is exactly what you get, which means the only way to improve is to do stuff like mapped mining.
When I first started, I thought I could do stuff like mining water for factions in drought, or haul mined metals to stations under repair. You know, actually participate in the universe. Instead, I haul increasingly obscene amounts of painite and platinum to stations that inexplicably demand it.
The entire underlying economy needs to be revamped, creating a system that best rewards active participation in the background universe.
Let me outfit and engineer a ship specifically for mining water, so I can run around to droughts and make Bank supplying them with their needs. Let me specialize in mining tritium, so I can supply carriers deep in the black. Let me specialize in mining basic metals and ores, so I can support infrastructure projects or help recover after terrorist attacks.
That's the sort of stuff they should be focusing on, not mindless credit farming.
When I first started, I thought I could do stuff like mining water for factions in drought, or haul mined metals to stations under repair. You know, actually participate in the universe. Instead, I haul increasingly obscene amounts of painite and platinum to stations that inexplicably demand it.
The entire underlying economy needs to be revamped, creating a system that best rewards active participation in the background universe.
Let me outfit and engineer a ship specifically for mining water, so I can run around to droughts and make Bank supplying them with their needs. Let me specialize in mining tritium, so I can supply carriers deep in the black. Let me specialize in mining basic metals and ores, so I can support infrastructure projects or help recover after terrorist attacks.
That's the sort of stuff they should be focusing on, not mindless credit farming.
Which would be a whole lot more relevant if you couldn't just buy the needed stuff from another station.
Usually you can't. Methanol Monohydrate, Lithium Hydroxide, Osmium etc.
Kind of missing my point, I think. Mining is, at best, Skin Deep. When neither pays any better than the other, why take the one that is 10 to 100 times slower, when instead you can just go buy the needed stuff from another station? And for that matter, when neither type pays particularly well, why bother doing either, when I could just go mine platinum? And for that matter, when even mining Platinum doesn't pay particularly well, why bother when I can just go farm a spire site?
It really depend on what you want from the game. If credits per hour is the only metric, then there will only ever be one activity worth engaging in at a time as Fdev fight a losing battle to balance activities. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see some more market depth, reaction & interaction, surrounding all activities, not just mining, but that's ultimately not the game we have, nor can I see it changing any time soon.
For now, we all know credits are relatively immaterial in the long run, and we also all know Elite is a sandbox that is what you make of it. If you want to mine water and deliver to drought systems to satisfy your personal narrative, then do it, same goes for any other idea a player may have. The less you worry about credits per hour the more fun you can have from doing what you feel like doing, rather than just doing what the current meta credit maker is.
For now, we all know credits are relatively immaterial in the long run, and we also all know Elite is a sandbox that is what you make of it. If you want to mine water and deliver to drought systems to satisfy your personal narrative, then do it, same goes for any other idea a player may have. The less you worry about credits per hour the more fun you can have from doing what you feel like doing, rather than just doing what the current meta credit maker is.
Hmm, I think I missed your point because it moved. If you prefer Spire sites to mining there's no need to mine. If, however, you prefer mining, Spire sites are irrelevant. If you're like me your preference may change from one game session to the next anyway.
Credits are definitely a bad metric, but it's not the only metric we have. Rep and INF are also viable metrics, but mining does not particularly stand out for either.
My viewpoint is not so much that mining should necessarily be the best paying thing, though I certainly think it should at least be competitive in that regard, but more that payout is basically the only reason to do mining at all right now, and since it is no longer the premium money maker, it leaves no reason to mine at all.
What mining needs is to have its niche in the game solidified. Why do it? Personal narrative is not sufficient. That is enough to motivate me to go out and mine for about 1 hour in a thousand.
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No, you definitely missed it. What is my incentive to mine? If it's rewards, then why bother doing the more difficult mining mission, when I can just go buy the needed Commodities from a station for the easier one? If any mining Mission can be completed via purchased commodities, it invalidates all mining missions.
Mining gameplay is not terrible, but it's certainly not compelling enough to do purely for its own sake- at least, for everyone save for that small group of players who play the game more according to their internal fantasy than actual reality.
The problem is that in any open world sandbox game, personal narrative is often the only thing left when trying to ignore the meta, be that credits, influence, reputation, etc. If my goal is to get credits and raw materials at the same time, ship based mining is a good call, or Exobilogy suppose. If I want credits and manufactured materials I'm better off bounty hunting. Sure, there are more efficient ways to get exactly what you need, but sometimes it's nice to mix it up. Everything gets boring eventually, no matter how well interconnected and naturally it's coded. The reason to mine really does boil down to enjoying mining as an activity. There's no objective reason to explore if you're not into it; if you have no desire to put your name on a planet or system, then it's waste of time as there's quicker ways to gather whatever resource you need, yet people play this game doing almost exclusively that regardless.
Its enjoyable, do you think i need to mine with 20billion + on my fleet carrier?
Nope, mining is one of the best things in Elite, no other game comes close to the way they implemented it.
I don't like auto mining (i can do that in X4), i like to be out there drilling/cracking every rock then looking for the best place to sell it.
If you want to buy the materials (some you have to mine), then that's just trading, something else i don't have to do but enjoy doing.
O7
The fact you can get materials from mining certainly helps a little bit, but the rate is very slow, so it's basically just a little bonus, not a reason to actually do mining in and of itself.
The same is, honestly, true of bounty hunting. It's nice to get a few materials here and there, but it's not fast enough to be worth focusing on.
The way you make these things worth participating in is by couching them in a larger narrative. The thargoid war is a perfect example. You've got plenty of people out there with more credits than they ever will know what to do with, but they continue to participate because it makes a difference in the war.
Even when it comes to just credits, it's possible to create systems that encourage different activities over time. The problem is, right now, bgs states are common enough that you can almost always find a desired state or combination of States somewhere in the bubble. If you might only find the desired combination once a month or less, then you could have a much wider variety of lucrative activities that temporarily pays the best, creating a ongoing series of gold rushes, encouraging Progressive changes in activity as time passes.
It's fine, but for me and many others, activities can't just be enjoyable, they also have to be meaningful. For example, Canyon flying is an enjoyable activity, but unless I am doing it with others, it just isn't the sort of thing I can go do for hours on end and enjoy.
That is too rigid a stance for my taste, but I see what you mean. I would disagree if I bothered doing missions.
I think you are underestimating the number of players who do that.
I'm not sure I necessarily agree regarding incentives. I know people who are interested in the narrative of the Thargoid war, and then plenty of others that still look it at it and go "why, what's the point? I'd rather be out in the black!" One person's incentive is another's pointless activity. I'll gladly bounce around lots of activities in the game, simply because I enjoy doing them. The game already provides me enough incentives to engage in pretty much everything.
I do, however, agree that more verisimilitude and interaction across the board would be a wonderful upgrade for everyone and everything, but I don't feel it's necessary to make an activity interesting, or worthwhile spending time doing. In it's current state every activity in the game has it's champions and naysayers, so fairly well rounded out from what I can see. Focusing on mining as the one that needs more incentives seems a little odd to me, as it doesn't provide any less incentive to bounty hunting, etc when taking resource gathering out of the equation.
It seems to me that you're asking for a more interactive and responsive galaxy to benefit the game activities across the board. While I can't see it ever happening to Elite Dangerous, I can see why that's an attractive proposition.
When you get right down to it, what I really miss are the old Borann days. Hundreds of people mining in one system, big Wing mining groups working together to maximize their efficiency, dedicated Prospectors and haulers. I don't think people need to be mining like that all the time, I would just like circumstances that would cause it to happen at least some of the time.
While this certainly could come from a large scale rework of the underlying systems, I think some rudimentary changes could achieve much of the same effect with far less effort. For example, a while back I suggested very rare bgs states that would increase the value of random minerals. Once every few weeks, you have a new mineral to mine, you have to find new hot spots, you have reasons to get the gang back together, Etc.
I would also like to see rebalances made in tritium mining, specifically. That's a place with infinite demand, where mining could be a permanent activity, were it not for the fact that mining is something on the order of 5% as fast as just buying the stuff. At present, it's so bad that there is nowhere in the entire galaxy where it is more efficient to mine tritium, than it is to just jump back to the bubble and refill. I've done it before, but all the while it gnaws at me that I could be doing something better with my time.
And that's the Crux of it, really. The solution could be elegant or ugly, simple or complex, but the basic problem is, mining just isn't worth my time.
While this certainly could come from a large scale rework of the underlying systems, I think some rudimentary changes could achieve much of the same effect with far less effort. For example, a while back I suggested very rare bgs states that would increase the value of random minerals. Once every few weeks, you have a new mineral to mine, you have to find new hot spots, you have reasons to get the gang back together, Etc.
I would also like to see rebalances made in tritium mining, specifically. That's a place with infinite demand, where mining could be a permanent activity, were it not for the fact that mining is something on the order of 5% as fast as just buying the stuff. At present, it's so bad that there is nowhere in the entire galaxy where it is more efficient to mine tritium, than it is to just jump back to the bubble and refill. I've done it before, but all the while it gnaws at me that I could be doing something better with my time.
And that's the Crux of it, really. The solution could be elegant or ugly, simple or complex, but the basic problem is, mining just isn't worth my time.