Mining: Refinery Grade and Missions

[Lazerus Artificial]

We all know that mining isnt finished, that we still miss Ice and Gas Mining, that the Belts are not how they were planned, that the Ressource market isnt how it was planned and all those things.

During the last season (1), some missing features got implemented.
We got drones to collect materials, we got drones to scan and increase the yield of asteroids, but there is still space for improvements...and thats where i want to talk about the Refinery and Missions

A while ago i suggested a different ressource distribution, Materials distributed into Metal and Mineral, different layers to allow scaling with bigger mining lasers.

Now i want to suggest a different Refinery System

Refinery
Currently the only difference between sizes and grades is the amount of bins. a 3A Refinery has 8 Bins, while a 4C Refinery has 7. a 4E has the same amount as a 1A. the 4E is just cheaper. But is that a good system? I dont think so.

What if a bigger sized Refinery would increase the bin count, while a higher grade has a better Refining quality?
The Refining quality could come in the usual 6 steps:

Module Grade	Prefix	Description	Value
E	Ore	Basically no Refining at all	-50%
D	Impure	Refined with some traces of other Material that needs some further processing to be used in other products.	-25%
C	Regular	Thats the normal stuff you can buy, just with a tag in front of it to indicate its mined origin.	±0%
B	Refined	Refined Material that doesnt need further processing	+25%
A	Pure	Pure Material without any other waste materials	+50%

Bin Count could be unified to this:

Module Size	Bins
1	4 Bins
2	6 Bins
3	8 Bins
4	10 Bins

Missions
Well, in the DA it was like this:
Mined materials are not on the regular market, you would have a special tab for them.

Currently this fits for 3 out of 25(?) Materials
Those 3 materials can be found in Metallic Rings.
So, if the Refinery would produce the mentioned materials, you could create a mission system on it.
For example, a mission asks for 25t Gold.
You cant just buy it from the market, since it misses the Mined Tag.
The Mission Reward could be like it is now, i think its currently around 3x the Material Price, so delivering Pure Material would give a better reward than raw Ore.

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

I also think that refineries need different class definitions its a endless manual pain to do any mining in the lower tiers of ships. Any refinery below clas 3 is pointless annoying with the current system.

And the best would be we could "set" the refinery to extract only a specific materials and auto flush the others out. That way even lower tiered refineries would be useful by removing the heavy manual task to throw away every piece not fitting in.

And mining missions should have a LOT longer timeframe, especially those painit ones. In fact I would like to see special "mining contracts" offered by stations where they demand a set of X different mineable metals and minerals and to eahc a demand. So that you then can go and furfill these needs with some extra payment ontop of usual market prices. because currently the majority of mined components isn't worth their value.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

I think the OPs refinery idea could work well, with some modification to make it a little easier for starter miners and to make some materials more worthwhile to them.
Gold takes significantly less effort to refine than most other metals, so a refinery would count as two classes higher (max A). Titanium is one of the most difficult metals to refine, so counts as two classes lower (min E).
Also, D or lower grades of materials would be the mineral equivalent. So rutile could only be refined into titanium using a class A refinery, gold will always work with an E.
Additionally, allow the ability to stop refining certain minerals, so if you have a mission for bauxite you could choose to stop there rather than refining into alluminium.
.
This would have several benefits;
1. Some materals, e.g. gold, would be attractive for miners with a lower budget.
2. More of the metals become available to a miner, especially for missions.
3. Mining in rocky belts becomes more attractive.

 

[Lazerus Artificial]

I think the OPs refinery idea could work well, with some modification to make it a little easier for starter miners and to make some materials more worthwhile to them.
Gold takes significantly less effort to refine than most other metals, so a refinery would count as two classes higher (max A). Titanium is one of the most difficult metals to refine, so counts as two classes lower (min E).
Also, D or lower grades of materials would be the mineral equivalent. So rutile could only be refined into titanium using a class A refinery, gold will always work with an E.
Additionally, allow the ability to stop refining certain minerals, so if you have a mission for bauxite you could choose to stop there rather than refining into alluminium.
.
This would have several benefits;
1. Some materals, e.g. gold, would be attractive for miners with a lower budget.
2. More of the metals become available to a miner, especially for missions.
3. Mining in rocky belts becomes more attractive.

interesting, basically some kind of progression through different "tiers"?
combined with a changed droptable (one that makes sense, and not just "ignore everything else") this could be an interesting way to mine

refining of minerals into their metal equivalent would be interesting too, like you mentioned Rutile=>Titanium, Bauxite=>Aluminium and whatever else there is.

but even then, mining in rocky wouldnt be that attractive, since you wouldnt get that much there.
asteroid belts would need a total overhaul, rocky belts could for example contain different types of rock that you can sell...or as i mentioned in another topic a while ago...Gems.
and as described in my layered topic, Metal Rich should turn into Mineral Rich where you find mostly Minerals (Painite as top tier), so the individual minerals are worth less...but painite is the best selling thing. Ideal for selective mining or newbies with a small cargo.
Metallic would then contain the "good stuff", but nothing that is totally out of the line like painite. that would then be the place for those with a huge cargo to fill.