Large asteroid mining: Bringing the team dynamic to rock-breaking.

[hammer326]

Hello!

So I was originally inspired by a thread on a similar topic I believe over at the elite miners subreddit, so must credit that unremembered user with the original idea I am about to expand upon. Anyway, I love this game and have mined for the majority of my career. It is everything I was pretending EVE's mining was for however many years I played. That said, there's room for expansion and improvement.


The idea is founded upon massive asteroids, perhaps even comets if 3302-era tech is equipped/equippable to land on them, my cosmology's not the best so correct me at will there. So you have these rocks of either form, they could hide in planetary rings, orbit worlds likes moons, float around systems, whatever. The most lucrative ones would have a finite lifespan. I haven't thought too much about numbers. Their lifespan concludes with them breaking apart, in the case of them being in rings...perhaps they then become more "regular" asteroids? That'd be cool to watch huh? They could even cras into the sun, a planet, blast apart in a billion directions, whatever. The point is that they're not around forever. So you have these big rocks you have to mine, quickish, maybe even land on....queue proper surface mining and an SRV specifically for the task, but that's another thread... and work as a team to strip the thing as much as you and your wingmen can before it goes critical.


That's about as far as I've got. As I said, I love mining currently, but it's foundational in a lot of ways. For all the fun it is, to go from its current state that is a lucrative and lax activity, to an alternative way to partake that could only be describe as...re-enacting the final scenes of Armageddon (the 1998 film) a couple nights a week with a few wings of friends...tell me that wouldn't be a frakking blast. Intentional pun, because the super-asteroid eventually blasts apar--.... I'll end it here, feedback appreciated Commanders!

 

[Leadfoot]

The most lucrative ones would have a finite lifespan. I haven't thought too much about numbers. Their lifespan concludes with them breaking apart, in the case of them being in rings...perhaps they then become more "regular" asteroids? That'd be cool to watch huh? They could even cras into the sun, a planet, blast apart in a billion directions, whatever. The point is that they're not around forever. So you have these big rocks you have to mine, quickish, maybe even land on....queue proper surface mining and an SRV specifically for the task, but that's another thread... and work as a team to strip the thing as much as you and your wingmen can before it goes critical.

That would certainly bring a good amount of adrenalin to bear if that really, really [item] rich asteroid was heading for a crash into a planet or sun. Five or six of them could possibly be made into recurring community goals to retrieve the stuff before said rock was destroyed by a collision with another heavenly body.

Not sure if it would happen soon, considering the items on Frontier's plate right now, but yeah, it would certainly bring some pulse-pounding to mining.

 

[The Geth]

I love the idea of being able to land on large mineral-rich asteroids and mining them in the SRV. Comets would be even cooler, taking a fair amount of coordination to even land on them (not dissimilar to Mitterand Hollow, perhaps). And the idea of having a limited amount of time during which to mine before the asteroid's destruction makes the whole thing even better. Everything suggested here would certainly add more multicrew potential to mining.

An additional suggestion: what if other players, like pirates, would be able to increase the entropy of the asteroid field through artificial means? Shooting asteroids with specialized sonic weapons, for example, might cause them to tumble into each other at higher rates, in turn disrupting mining operations and forcing miners to abandon cargo on cue. Of course, using this tech too often would cut the supply of mined minerals entirely, so that pirates would be hurt by it as well as miners. Players and NPCs would have to use the technology sparingly, just to cause enough chaos for them to gain an advantage over their miner prey.

 

[Gravi0us]

Ha, you have a massive asteroid boner!

I have to say that I'm still only a few weeks into mining (thanks to you) and still at times sit there looking at the asteroid fields and the individual rocks and thinking how lovely they look. Aaawww.

So developing what we can do with them would be cool...

 

[Leadfoot]

Ha, you have a massive asteroid boner!

I have to say that I'm still only a few weeks into mining (thanks to you) and still at times sit there looking at the asteroid fields and the individual rocks and thinking how lovely they look. Aaawww.

So developing what we can do with them would be cool...

Well, I've done my share of mining in the past (mixed with bounty hunting of NPC's and trading stuff back and forth) but I like the idea of some really important asteroid heading either for a planet or star that needs to get as much stuff out of it as possible before that happens (some really, really mineral-rich thing, almost every other rock has something valuable in it). The fact that there's a time limit on how much can be gotten from it coupled with possible character death if you're still on it when it (1) burns up in an atmosphere, or (2) burns up in a star, just adds the right amount of tension to mining that would make it one of those teeth-gritting situations we've all seen in our heads somewhere. I just like the idea.

 

[hammer326]

@Leadfoot: I think Grav was roasting me, the OP, as opposed to you who simply replied right before he did haha. Nevertheless, I agree and am glad you see where I'm coming from. I believe every profession should have that high-risk, high-reward alternative that trade does in the form of long range smuggling. This is my first thought on that front, homing in on mining, my favorite activity I've also spent the most time doing. But yes, I quite like what I have so far. There's just something so stupidly appealing to me especially when surface mining, different SRV's (some you can mine with), ship launched fighters (that could theoretically be programmed like better limpets and fitted to mine) and ships with multiple actual players crewing them, all landing and working together, then scrambling to retrieve all their equipment and of course minerals, continually pushing the envelope every run to maximize profits irrelevant of how many team members have moderate heart attacks. This is definitely an idea that could drop tomorrow if the resources were there to realize it, but the expansion opportunities as Horizons itself expands is where the idea really shines.

There's so much room to improve, but god do I love this game and hanging out with its playerbase lmfao.

 

[NeilF]

Hello!

So I was originally inspired by a thread on a similar topic I believe over at the elite miners subreddit, so must credit that unremembered user with the original idea I am about to expand upon. Anyway, I love this game and have mined for the majority of my career. It is everything I was pretending EVE's mining was for however many years I played. That said, there's room for expansion and improvement.


The idea is founded upon massive asteroids, perhaps even comets if 3302-era tech is equipped/equippable to land on them, my cosmology's not the best so correct me at will there. So you have these rocks of either form, they could hide in planetary rings, orbit worlds likes moons, float around systems, whatever. The most lucrative ones would have a finite lifespan. I haven't thought too much about numbers. Their lifespan concludes with them breaking apart, in the case of them being in rings...perhaps they then become more "regular" asteroids? That'd be cool to watch huh? They could even cras into the sun, a planet, blast apart in a billion directions, whatever. The point is that they're not around forever. So you have these big rocks you have to mine, quickish, maybe even land on....queue proper surface mining and an SRV specifically for the task, but that's another thread... and work as a team to strip the thing as much as you and your wingmen can before it goes critical.


That's about as far as I've got. As I said, I love mining currently, but it's foundational in a lot of ways. For all the fun it is, to go from its current state that is a lucrative and lax activity, to an alternative way to partake that could only be describe as...re-enacting the final scenes of Armageddon (the 1998 film) a couple nights a week with a few wings of friends...tell me that wouldn't be a frakking blast. Intentional pun, because the super-asteroid eventually blasts apar--.... I'll end it here, feedback appreciated Commanders!

This would need FD to start introducing a more stateful galaxy. Ultimately, ut would be fabulous if your efforts could locate a resource rich area/asteroid, where you could leave a beacon and could return to mine away at the resources there until they were gone.

I'd love it a group of use could try and hunt for such location, and once one of us found one, we could all go and mine it togethor.



If instead the game randomly created dedicated "large asteroids" in certain systems which would diminish as players mined them (and just over time too as NPC mined there)... fair enough. It would offer some mining variety too

Your suggestion would seem to be a simpler mechanic, still offering some variety to mining. So I'd be up for it. Just as long as the game did reduce the asteroids resources as players mined it.

 

[hammer326]

Of course said asteroid would deplete as it was mined, Neil. That raises a good point though that I was a bit vague of my ideal scenario in the original post, I think I'll get an edit done incorporating all of these great ideas tonight. Thanks for the constructive response!

 

[Howard o Pato]

I was mining for years EVE and now I am also in mining Elite. And I was always enthusiastic about a more realistic mining, because I believe that space mining would truly be a development in the least extraordinary and not just shoot lasers at pebbles. Since I played DEAD SPACE, dream with the release of a ship truly made for mining as the Ishimura. With future updates to Guild / Companies that when they reach a certain level of power, could acquire this ship mining. This in turn would own different modules and unique scanner for this function, such as mining bases and gigantic machinery of excavation. This ship could find the best place to anchor on the surface of a moon, for example, and a multi-crew start disembarking this equipment riding really a giant mining company based incandescent boilers and refinery, making tunnels and huge craters to extract the best possible mineral resource. Taking at least a total of 24 hours to fill their monstrous cargo compartment, to then be able to collect equipment and go out to negotiate their ores, or use of cargo ships for the function.