Extending new mining tools to planetary surfaces

[CMDR Yates]

Wouldn't it be cool to have large outcrops, pockets and seams of minerals on some planets that we could mine?

I know passive income with mining rigs like in FE2 has been discussed, and I know there's issues with that, but at the moment I'm just thinking in terms of the existing mining tools we now have.

It could look something like this:

• You scan a planet in the FSS
• A new property in the system map and FSS discovery screen -- Surface Mineral Aggregation: high/medium/low/negligible (from the planet type and composition, and a little experience, we should have some inference as to what minerals these might be)
• Probe the planet and get visible hotspots to search, just like in rings (if surface/near-surface minerals are present)
• Once planetside, activate the pulse wave scanner and fly close to the surface to find the deposits -- the pulse wave scanner has a shorter range for surface deposits
• Deposits are mostly embedded in the walls of cliffs, canyons and craters, having been uncovered by geological processes, so there is a need to get up close and personal with the terrain (at speed, if you want to cover a large area)
• Mine near-surface deposits with the subsurface displacement missiles, naked surface minerals with the abrasion blaster
• Although doing this takes longer than deep core blasting, a single aggregation would a great many individual deposits, equivalent to several subsurface asteroids, so we can spend maybe a solid ten minutes constantly mining the seam piece-by-piece with blasters and missiles once we find it, without further flying around (offering some balance against the greater accessibility, lower risk and immediate loot hit of asteroid popping)
• Collecting the pieces might involve either updated collector limpets to pick up the goodies from the ground, or a new cargo-hauling SRV
• The risk of rock avalanches from the disrupted cliffsides would be a cool addition, if technically possible
• The tremors produced when using sub-surface displacement missiles planetside should have a small chance of attracting NPC pirates and be visible as a PoI to commanders in the vicinity of the planet, in order to encourage combat in canyons and craters, which there is not nearly enough of

Aside from the obvious, I think it would also give the subsurface displacement missiles something to do, a solid niche, in a galaxy where seismic charges really are king for asteroid mining.

 

[Leadfoot]

Agreed and I think that might be some of the upcoming stuff, probably a DLC (or hopefully a core update). Might require new SRV's and whole piles of new mining equipment. Would also be great if you could leave an automated thing there mining, and mining, and mining until you return. Unless some other player discovers it and haz yr stuf.

 

[BinakAlgo]

I've done very little mining but I would like to see "ground" mining on planets, maybe the possibility to build a small outpost to store materials or some kind of refinery. No background income nor anything like that but just a "spot" to come back until the vein is depleted, maybe invite your friends or wing to that same spot and of course, it should be vulnerable to piracy from NPCs and Players alike.

 

[CMDR Yates]

Would also be great if you could leave an automated thing there mining, and mining, and mining until you return. Unless some other player discovers it and haz yr stuf.

That would be cool. It's been brought up here before, and word is Frontier are worried about passive income, but the feature was in Elite 2.

I've done very little mining but I would like to see "ground" mining on planets, maybe the possibility to build a small outpost to store materials or some kind of refinery. No background income nor anything like that but just a "spot" to come back until the vein is depleted, maybe invite your friends or wing to that same spot and of course, it should be vulnerable to piracy from NPCs and Players alike.

That would be great. I suspect they're holding off on letting us use planetary bookmarks because they want us to be able to use them to stash stuff and come back to it. IIRC there was some talk about caching materials on surfaces way back when Horizons launched.

 

[BinakAlgo]

It could also give some incentive to scan the surface of "cheap" planets like Icy Bodies, the 2,500 incentive for doing so isn't convincing enough for players with millions, giving surface mining hotspots would be a great incentive and it could also increase the value of the information sold.

I'm on board with your proposal.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

+1

I suggested using subsurface missiles on planets more or less as soon as beta ended. Lol

It'd be fun to blast materials and ores in to the air and hope your collection limpets can catch them all before they land, this forcing you to land and get the pesky SRV out. Lol

 

[Sea_Kerman]

Sounds like a great idea.

 

[SpaceScania]

Yeah there are some great ideas here, I hope they make it onto FD's backlog

 

[CMDR Yates]

It could also give some incentive to scan the surface of "cheap" planets like Icy Bodies, the 2,500 incentive for doing so isn't convincing enough for players with millions, giving surface mining hotspots would be a great incentive and it could also increase the value of the information sold.

Agreed. Icy planets are the most striking environments in the game currently, especially the ones with canyons and outgassing fog, it would be great to have more gameplay reasons to actually go there.

 

[Justinian Octavius]

Maybe; I'd need to think about it some more. However, the Elite franchise already has a surface mining mechanic using mining machines (see MB4 Mining Machine), and these can already be found on planet surfaces in the form of the Automated Mining Extractor. I'd personally prefer this approach but that could just be nostalgia talking.

CMDR Justinian Octavius

 

[CMDR Yates]

Maybe; I'd need to think about it some more. However, the Elite franchise already has a surface mining mechanic using mining machines (see MB4 Mining Machine), and these can already be found on planet surfaces in the form of the Automated Mining Extractor. I'd personally prefer this approach but that could just be nostalgia talking.

CMDR Justinian Octavius

They don't have to be mutually exclusive.

A beefed up version of the Automated Mining Extractor could be used to slowly leech large volumes of regular (lower value) metals from the crust over time, on any planet you care to place it on. The subsurface missiles and abrasion blaster would be used on specific high-value mineral extrusions, only present on some bodies. In other words, the automated rigs could be the "mining laser" of the ensemble, albeit one that keeps working while you're not around.

Having said that, I think the reason we haven't been able to use Automated Mining Extractors long before now (the models and everything exist) is that FDev have concerns about how passive income would affect the game. I don't profess to be an expert on the theory and reasoning behind that decision, though.

 

[WillardTFoxx]

This sounds like an absolutely fantastic idea. Pair with a couple new types of SRV (Light Recon fast Quad with better boost but no Cargo Cap and a heavier Crawler Type with less speed/boost and larger Cargo Cap, adds to Wing Mining Possibilities) and I'd happily go surface and ring mining alternately for funz.

Pulse Wave Scanner fits straight off the bat.
Mining Tools would be exclusive to certain types of SRV, or possibly the first Modular SRVs?

I like this a LOTTLE (its like a little but a lot).

+1000

 

[CMDR Yates]

Pair with a couple new types of SRV

Yeah, some of the early concept art for SRVs had them pulling trailers and even dragging long snakes of attached canisters behind them. That idea could be dusted off for a future mining collector SRV, I think.

I was mostly thinking about the actual mining being done from the ship itself, with maybe a special SRV to pick up the loot, but I wouldn't complain if they also added SRVs with mining hardpoints.