A Couple Engineering Special Effects That Would Be Great

[IndigoWyrd]

1. Refinery: Improved Efficiency

At the cost of increased Heat and Power Consumption You net a bonus to the percentage of Ore Refined per fragment. So, if you pick up a chunk of something that is 12% of an ore, it is processed like it were 20% ore, increasing the rate at which fragments become cargo.

2. Fuel Scoop: Reserve Particle Range Extension

At the cost of increased power consumption, you gain the option to store a White Dwarf or Neutron Star range boost for a period of real time. Once that time has passed, if you have not used that boost, the stored particle charge becomes depleted and is discharged with no effect. Using that charge has the same effect as using a White Dwarf or Neutron Star FSD boost. The charge is stored in the same manner as an FSD Overcharge, by flying through the jet cones of one of these Star types.

A stored charge would be activated by holding the same button as used to initiate a jump until the Operating Beyond message is displayed.

Storing a charge and making a second pass through a jet cone would overcharge an FSD as normal, but results in double wear on the FSD.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Good ideas!

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Fuel scoop one is good, but I really like the refinery idea. Despite having an engineer that only works with miners, there doesn't seem to be much love for any of the tools needed for mining in engineering. I'm sure we can do better than just improved integrity.

 

[60mm]

The Refinery effect would just be a flat-out Buff. Like a Mining ship really has to worry about heat/power.

The Fuel Scoop effect suffers a similar issue.

Neither of these would be experimental effects with a counterbalance, they would just become the norm as there is no reason not to use them.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

The Refinery effect would just be a flat-out Buff. Like a Mining ship really has to worry about heat/power.

The Fuel Scoop effect suffers a similar issue.

Neither of these would be experimental effects with a counterbalance, they would just become the norm as there is no reason not to use them.

Heat and power are concerns for mining. If you use mining lasers or lances these can both get you nice and toasty pretty quick. The new stuff, not so much. Power is also a concern. My T-9 runs at 99% fully deployed, with a G5 power plant + Monstered. It’s quite power hungry.

Explorers also tend to watch their power and heat carefully, and a time-limit on how long you can carry an extra boost keeps it from being easily abused. Combined with double integrity decay for storing and charging, this can also quickly become a limiting factor. Given, finally, that our only Fuel Scoop option is Shielded, for increased power consumption nearly any option would become more used.

 

[moorison]

Heat and power are concerns for mining. If you use mining lasers or lances these can both get you nice and toasty pretty quick. The new stuff, not so much. Power is also a concern. My T-9 runs at 99% fully deployed, with a G5 power plant + Monstered. It’s quite power hungry.

Explorers also tend to watch their power and heat carefully, and a time-limit on how long you can carry an extra boost keeps it from being easily abused. Combined with double integrity decay for storing and charging, this can also quickly become a limiting factor. Given, finally, that our only Fuel Scoop option is Shielded, for increased power consumption nearly any option would become more used.

I haven't yet experienced any issues with heat regarding new and old mining equipment, but maybe I haven't installed enough lasers for that to occur. I have experienced rather fast discharging power capacitors.

There is already the almost obligatory prospector limpet to increase the yield of asteroids, but that just increases the number of fragments. I can see why an increase in the value of each fragment sounds interesting, since collector limpets take their time to catch all fragments and some might have expired already. I seem to often max out the refinery bins in use, so an increase in slots would interest me more, but that is an issue of the classes/grades.

Storing neutron charges just increases the possible range beyond the boundaries Cmdrs can return from, a feeling of false security will set in and miscalculations will increase which leads to more support requests.