I have 5 main issues with the current mining role.
1. It makes no sense for privateers to mine bulk common materials that are effectively infinitely available and would be supplied by massive corporations (due to the massive quantity industry would need).
2. It has too much dead time between activity.
3. The vast majority of things you could mine for are completely pointless to mine because they're not worth any credits (and credits are all they're good for)
4. There are too many separate things you need to equip just to mine.
5. There is no real variation in the activity being done (if you're laser mining, you laser mine the same way each time. if you're deep core mining, it is the same thing each time.. etc)
Proposals..
issue 1, we get rid of all common ores and commodities. Instead, everything players interact with commodity wise are rare or hazardous items. Things that dont have the demand necessary to gain the investment from mega corps. The commodity board gets re-done with new items. Now some common manufactured things may still remain, as perhaps certain stations need immediate deliveries and so they would function as courier type items. But for raw ores and such, common is out. This builds into #2 and #3.
Issue 3 is sort of solved by resolving issue 1, all items you have the opportunity to mine for are now valuable, but in different ways instead of just converting to credits. Each station has a specialty for production (well, the non-tourist or vacation type ones) and there will be certain items that need specialty raw material. this production will be tied directly to player contribution of items by way of affecting the rate of production. There is a credit value that scales with how much demand like you would expect, but also the ability to steer the effective economic value of a station. These items produced are necessary items for the factions in power to stay in power. It's how they raise funds, gain backing by the people etc. This supply and demand of these particular specialty commodities directly impact the bgs by modifying the faction's max and min payouts for bounties and missions. Low production of this item in the faction's station, lowers these payouts and bounties, (though, player fines and bounties are not impacted). High production increases them, with no upper bound.
Issue 2 is resolved by the change created for 1 and 3, since you will not need to skip over available raw items in roids ...but we still want to make them somewhat uncommon, so they will be only found in hotspots and they may be core or subsurface deposits or surface deposits in addition to laser mining. Other visual queues to the sharp eyed will be helpful in avoiding wasting time prospecting roids that dont have what you want, such as the usage of the pulse scanner for all types of mining, as it will be modified to allow you to specify the specific type of raw material you are looking for. Once selected, visual queues will tell you the type of deposit and the general strength of the signal will tell you the potential yield. Prospector limpets can then be used to enhance the effectiveness of the method being used.
Issue 4 is resolved by the following:
a. consolidating limpet controllers to just the multi-purpose limpet controllers and removing the stupid limitations currently put on them and eliminating the solo controllers entirely. The new limpet controller will have 3 separate limpet programs associated (so there would still be different types of multi-purpose limpet controllers), and there would be no penalty in life span or distance or how many active limpets of a given type given that particular size controller's max active limpet limit. The issue with prospector limpets for instance would be resolved by prospector limpets immediately dying once their roid is depleted or destroyed (deep core mining) or the player requests self destruct via comms (which would be a new thing when you have a prospector selected).
b. Consolidating mining scanners. The pulse scanner will work at multiple power levels based on the scope needed. In SC orbit, to find hotspots, the pulse scanner emits a massive ping and observes the reflection based on what's in it's cone of detection. It can detect multiple types of ores in this mode at once. This must be done a few times to fully map a ring but once mapped, you effectively get what the surface scanner provides without needing to equip a surface scanner. Once in normal space, the pulse scanner works at a lower power to be more fine tuned and can detect up to 3 different ore types at one time (so the pulse output is not to busy with how to represent the different ores to the user). The normal surface scanner still exists and could still be used the way it is now. It's just not necessary if you have a pulse scanner for the purpose of detecting hot spots.
c. Consolidating mining hardpoints. Subsurface and deep core is really just a difference in depth and explosive charge. The same physical thing could deliver both. So we make that part of the mechanic combining the way both work into a new setup, selecting not just the depth the burrowing bomb/drill is using, but the charge we'll be setting. Surface ablation will be combined with laser mining, only instead of shooting the chunk, you have to fill it in with laser beam, cutting the chunk away. Missing any bits will lead to it remaining stuck to the roid and it cools down such that if you dont get it all done quickly, you have to start over. So now we have two hardpoints (different sizes of course) that we need to equip to do all manner of mining.
With these changes, you now need 5 modules to do all manner of mining, instead of like 9 to do the whole role. And doing the whole role is intentional because mining should be the whole thing...not just picking a subset of it at a time or having to sacrifice everything just to fit all this crap into one ship. Your mining ship will still be a mining ship, but now you can actually experience all mining has to offer in one outing without needing the largest of ships or having no room for anything else, like some way to defend yourself from pirates or cargo space to actually store what you're mining.
Issue 5 is resolved by adding some spice to certain kinds of raw resources you'd mine. some ideas:
a. Some raw ores could become unstable when disturbed. If you're careful and mine it correctly (efficiently) , we'll say the % chance it becomes unstable is very low. But botch the job a bit or be lazy about how you mine it, and maybe it explodes the roid and damages you along with it (or kills you).
b. Some roids that aren't targets (or maybe are, who knows), carry large electrical charges that can be disturbed if a ship gets near it with shields active, causing a bit of lightning to disrupt your ship systems temporarily (gotta pay attention to roids that dont ping back in the pulse scanner at all as statically charged roids absorb the signal)
c. The debris from other miners could temporarily pollute the space in a hot spot with hazardous dust that either confuses instruments or alters the power level of your equipment (be that the setting of the charges to your explosive burrowing drill guy or laser. Maybe it increases the effectiveness of either (though precision explosives would see this as a negative)...or maybe it reduces it...
d. certain periodic events such as when a roid is in the shadow of a planet or moon can improve mining devices as it cuts down on background noise to sensors and this improves the distance that sensors and limpets can function, while in the shadow.
e. non-pristine rings / belts can have ...leftovers present on roids that malfunctioned (old mines / explosives etc).. Pay attention to the roids to make sure that's not the case, or it could interfere with your efforts in explosive ways. These need to be destroyed directly at a safe distance with standard weapon fire if found.
f. rare relics may be exposed when exploding roids or even just during the course of exploring around them. These relics can be traded in certain systems for high grade engineering materials.
g. Each roid can be sub surface mined, abrasion mined, laser mined, and different types of roids (ice, rocky, metal rich, metallic) has an optimal order (though if it's deep core capable, deep core is always last) that this should be done in for the highest yield. Not all ore type rich roids have all the different kinds of deposit options. But each ore rich roid of a given type will have a pattern of what kind of deposits are available ...they may always have core and subsurface but maybe not surface (surface deposits or laser)... they may have all options.. or they may only have surface options. It will depend on the ore type as to how it's roids are generally found.
h. the yield of roids is not uniform. Different sized roids yield different amounts of chunks for any method of mining. Smaller roids, smaller amounts, bigger roids. bigger amounts. There will also be rare roids that can yield significantly more than a normal roid of the same size. This will depend on all of the different ore types found in the roid. An undisclosed ratio range of specific ores will make the roid much more productive. This means belts might actually be functional for mining as they generally have the largest roids. The special ratio will be different for each majority ore type. These roids have a cool down similar to exploding a roid that is shared across instances. So it is suggested that you not share their locations if you want to make use of them. They will be rare, and they will be very productive. After a cool down period, the player who first interacts with the roid in any way triggers the cooldown for every other instance immediately and they have 10 min (or if they leave the instance) from their own instance before it stops yielding anything and starts the cooldown. These are coveted rarities across the galaxy and worth the effort to keep them secret. Of course, mapping their location is up to you...since there is still no way to tag a particular roid in any in game map.
1. It makes no sense for privateers to mine bulk common materials that are effectively infinitely available and would be supplied by massive corporations (due to the massive quantity industry would need).
2. It has too much dead time between activity.
3. The vast majority of things you could mine for are completely pointless to mine because they're not worth any credits (and credits are all they're good for)
4. There are too many separate things you need to equip just to mine.
5. There is no real variation in the activity being done (if you're laser mining, you laser mine the same way each time. if you're deep core mining, it is the same thing each time.. etc)
Proposals..
issue 1, we get rid of all common ores and commodities. Instead, everything players interact with commodity wise are rare or hazardous items. Things that dont have the demand necessary to gain the investment from mega corps. The commodity board gets re-done with new items. Now some common manufactured things may still remain, as perhaps certain stations need immediate deliveries and so they would function as courier type items. But for raw ores and such, common is out. This builds into #2 and #3.
Issue 3 is sort of solved by resolving issue 1, all items you have the opportunity to mine for are now valuable, but in different ways instead of just converting to credits. Each station has a specialty for production (well, the non-tourist or vacation type ones) and there will be certain items that need specialty raw material. this production will be tied directly to player contribution of items by way of affecting the rate of production. There is a credit value that scales with how much demand like you would expect, but also the ability to steer the effective economic value of a station. These items produced are necessary items for the factions in power to stay in power. It's how they raise funds, gain backing by the people etc. This supply and demand of these particular specialty commodities directly impact the bgs by modifying the faction's max and min payouts for bounties and missions. Low production of this item in the faction's station, lowers these payouts and bounties, (though, player fines and bounties are not impacted). High production increases them, with no upper bound.
Issue 2 is resolved by the change created for 1 and 3, since you will not need to skip over available raw items in roids ...but we still want to make them somewhat uncommon, so they will be only found in hotspots and they may be core or subsurface deposits or surface deposits in addition to laser mining. Other visual queues to the sharp eyed will be helpful in avoiding wasting time prospecting roids that dont have what you want, such as the usage of the pulse scanner for all types of mining, as it will be modified to allow you to specify the specific type of raw material you are looking for. Once selected, visual queues will tell you the type of deposit and the general strength of the signal will tell you the potential yield. Prospector limpets can then be used to enhance the effectiveness of the method being used.
Issue 4 is resolved by the following:
a. consolidating limpet controllers to just the multi-purpose limpet controllers and removing the stupid limitations currently put on them and eliminating the solo controllers entirely. The new limpet controller will have 3 separate limpet programs associated (so there would still be different types of multi-purpose limpet controllers), and there would be no penalty in life span or distance or how many active limpets of a given type given that particular size controller's max active limpet limit. The issue with prospector limpets for instance would be resolved by prospector limpets immediately dying once their roid is depleted or destroyed (deep core mining) or the player requests self destruct via comms (which would be a new thing when you have a prospector selected).
b. Consolidating mining scanners. The pulse scanner will work at multiple power levels based on the scope needed. In SC orbit, to find hotspots, the pulse scanner emits a massive ping and observes the reflection based on what's in it's cone of detection. It can detect multiple types of ores in this mode at once. This must be done a few times to fully map a ring but once mapped, you effectively get what the surface scanner provides without needing to equip a surface scanner. Once in normal space, the pulse scanner works at a lower power to be more fine tuned and can detect up to 3 different ore types at one time (so the pulse output is not to busy with how to represent the different ores to the user). The normal surface scanner still exists and could still be used the way it is now. It's just not necessary if you have a pulse scanner for the purpose of detecting hot spots.
c. Consolidating mining hardpoints. Subsurface and deep core is really just a difference in depth and explosive charge. The same physical thing could deliver both. So we make that part of the mechanic combining the way both work into a new setup, selecting not just the depth the burrowing bomb/drill is using, but the charge we'll be setting. Surface ablation will be combined with laser mining, only instead of shooting the chunk, you have to fill it in with laser beam, cutting the chunk away. Missing any bits will lead to it remaining stuck to the roid and it cools down such that if you dont get it all done quickly, you have to start over. So now we have two hardpoints (different sizes of course) that we need to equip to do all manner of mining.
With these changes, you now need 5 modules to do all manner of mining, instead of like 9 to do the whole role. And doing the whole role is intentional because mining should be the whole thing...not just picking a subset of it at a time or having to sacrifice everything just to fit all this crap into one ship. Your mining ship will still be a mining ship, but now you can actually experience all mining has to offer in one outing without needing the largest of ships or having no room for anything else, like some way to defend yourself from pirates or cargo space to actually store what you're mining.
Issue 5 is resolved by adding some spice to certain kinds of raw resources you'd mine. some ideas:
a. Some raw ores could become unstable when disturbed. If you're careful and mine it correctly (efficiently) , we'll say the % chance it becomes unstable is very low. But botch the job a bit or be lazy about how you mine it, and maybe it explodes the roid and damages you along with it (or kills you).
b. Some roids that aren't targets (or maybe are, who knows), carry large electrical charges that can be disturbed if a ship gets near it with shields active, causing a bit of lightning to disrupt your ship systems temporarily (gotta pay attention to roids that dont ping back in the pulse scanner at all as statically charged roids absorb the signal)
c. The debris from other miners could temporarily pollute the space in a hot spot with hazardous dust that either confuses instruments or alters the power level of your equipment (be that the setting of the charges to your explosive burrowing drill guy or laser. Maybe it increases the effectiveness of either (though precision explosives would see this as a negative)...or maybe it reduces it...
d. certain periodic events such as when a roid is in the shadow of a planet or moon can improve mining devices as it cuts down on background noise to sensors and this improves the distance that sensors and limpets can function, while in the shadow.
e. non-pristine rings / belts can have ...leftovers present on roids that malfunctioned (old mines / explosives etc).. Pay attention to the roids to make sure that's not the case, or it could interfere with your efforts in explosive ways. These need to be destroyed directly at a safe distance with standard weapon fire if found.
f. rare relics may be exposed when exploding roids or even just during the course of exploring around them. These relics can be traded in certain systems for high grade engineering materials.
g. Each roid can be sub surface mined, abrasion mined, laser mined, and different types of roids (ice, rocky, metal rich, metallic) has an optimal order (though if it's deep core capable, deep core is always last) that this should be done in for the highest yield. Not all ore type rich roids have all the different kinds of deposit options. But each ore rich roid of a given type will have a pattern of what kind of deposits are available ...they may always have core and subsurface but maybe not surface (surface deposits or laser)... they may have all options.. or they may only have surface options. It will depend on the ore type as to how it's roids are generally found.
h. the yield of roids is not uniform. Different sized roids yield different amounts of chunks for any method of mining. Smaller roids, smaller amounts, bigger roids. bigger amounts. There will also be rare roids that can yield significantly more than a normal roid of the same size. This will depend on all of the different ore types found in the roid. An undisclosed ratio range of specific ores will make the roid much more productive. This means belts might actually be functional for mining as they generally have the largest roids. The special ratio will be different for each majority ore type. These roids have a cool down similar to exploding a roid that is shared across instances. So it is suggested that you not share their locations if you want to make use of them. They will be rare, and they will be very productive. After a cool down period, the player who first interacts with the roid in any way triggers the cooldown for every other instance immediately and they have 10 min (or if they leave the instance) from their own instance before it stops yielding anything and starts the cooldown. These are coveted rarities across the galaxy and worth the effort to keep them secret. Of course, mapping their location is up to you...since there is still no way to tag a particular roid in any in game map.
