Mining expansion suggestions

wstephenson

wstephenson
I was asked to repost my suggestions for the mining update coming later in Beyond, so here they are. Emphasis is on more ways to play while mining and more interesting surprises, rather than more credits/hr:


  • Visually distinctive valuable, rare 'golden egg' asteroids.
  • Visually distinctive ore/metal/mineral fragment models. Shiny!
  • destructible/voxel based asteroids with rare veins of ore/mineral pockets to target. Think Minecraft in zero-G. These asteroids have offset centres of gravity, due to their mass distribution, making them possible to identify visually.
  • Negative 'dirty' asteroids that contaminate the mining laser/refinery, reducing efficiency until repaired. Avoid by using prospectors or recognising dirty rocks.
  • An audio/waveform scan mechanism similar to SRV Wave Scanner that players can, with experience, use to learn to recognise the presence of valuable/negative enclosures within the above voxel rocks.
  • A pilotable Ship Launched Miner for exploiting ore seams effectively
  • A Claim Limpet that allows you to return to a profitable area (maintains distribution of minerals/metals in local asteroids) but tends to attract competing miners and pirates
  • Prospecting missions to place Claim Limpets on asteroids meeting a certain criteria ("3 Limpets with Painite > 40%").
  • A dynamic Mining Signal Source mechanism whereby the more intense (multiple ship) mining carried out in an area, the further it is visible in Supercruise and the more pirates it attracts.
  • More types of opposition - not just pirates, but rival factions' mining groups, demanding a share if mining in 'their' territory'. Reputation dependent.
  • Inbox missions for a mining commodity found in the ring I am currently in. "Commander, it looks like you are busy mining. Would you bring us 10T of Indite in return for 30000Cr?"
I'm sure many of them will have been made before, going all the way back to DDF days, but they got some recent upvotes on Reddit today.
 
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DARGAN

DARGAN
A pilotable Ship Launched Miner for exploiting ore seams effectively ? Frontier said he does not want fleet management.. rather an NPC (or player) crew that is piloting a mining ship ? hunter's bay ? miner's bay ?

Negative 'dirty' asteroids.. maybe corrosive fragments and other radioactive.. very hot fragment that make the ship heat up, or the opposite, carbon ice that cools the ship.

and I would also like to be able to mining in SRV.. terrestrial galleries to make the SRV underground.. an opportunity to do archeology underground and find fragments and Thargoid, and shining minerals of multiple colors that illuminate us in the darkness.

good suggestions.
 
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Winterwalker

Winterwalker
Excellent ideas above. Things that spring to my mind might be;

- Refinery automatically accrues damage through use. Means equipment needs maintenance of some kind, simplistically (as now) via station repair screen.
- Gas pockets in asteroids could be .. interesting!
- Similar to inbox mission offers; remote access to and acceptance to mission board mining missions, ie. from visited systems in 90Ly range of mining site.
- Tag commodities from refinery with 'mined' in cargo hold; I believe 'manual mining' (with limpets) should pay more than mining with machines when the time comes (or gold from other sources say) handwavium: craftsman's quality .. and mining of any sort should probably pay better, especially with the add of more maintentance costs / dangers.
- A miners' guild .. membership accessed by hours or tons mined, giving a general increase in mining mission payouts.
- Erratics .. rare but valuable finds in asteroids of the opposite compoition .. eg. ice rings very occasionally throw up a precious metal, and metal rings very occasionally return a low temp diamond (eg. geological history ... and might lead to one refinery bin being allocated to 'lucky dip')
- Stored refinery bins remember allocations; If you store the module (maybe even the ship) at the moment, when requipping all bins are reset to 0% but you might have had 90% painite in one bin when it was stored. (I tend to keep my bins organised in classes)
- Refineries could maybe draw a bit more power than they do, ie. encourages a power up and power down of plant equipment on arrival/departure of mining site.
- ED mud monkey, miner decal/ t-shirt and et ceteras. "We mine so you don't have to", "I have a hold of gold", “In case of fire, exit the area before tweeting about it.”

safety-sign-123_thumb.jpg
 

YinYin

YinYin
Winterwalker said:
- Refinery automatically accrues damage through use. Means equipment needs maintenance of some kind, simplistically (as now) via station repair screen.
- Refineries could maybe draw a bit more power than they do, ie. encourages a power up and power down of plant equipment on arrival/departure of mining site.
Click to expand...

Please don't suggest more risk without reward :(

Refinery damage? Only from mining corrosive ores.

Power down refinery? Feel free to do that already by equipping other power hungry modules or using a super low emission power plant (pirates won't spot you as easily).
 

Arkadi

Arkadi
I welcome anything that makes gameplay more interesting. Adding some risk to the game is direly needed imo.

However, I think NPC combat should be not greatly increased for the solo miner - becouse solo-mining can be a relaxing thing and I think it should stay this way.

But as soon as there are player wings involved, I think it would add some interesting gameplay to add more possible encounters to mining.

I think the idea of a mining beacon that is visible in SC when a wing of player miners is at work would be an intersting mechanic to enable PvP piracy gameplay and rivalling mining gameplay.

BUT...

The incentive must be big enough to actually mine in wings. That means profits, profits and more profits to be made!

And second, there also must be some safeguards for the miners against repeated pirate attacks. At least a good ATR-response and maybe some weaponized Megaships where miners can run to, to bring theire cargo to security...
 

wstephenson

wstephenson
If I want relaxing mining, I just take my Anaconda a couple of hundred LY outside the bubble. It doesn't take long. But I see what you mean - perhaps the spawn rate of NPC pirates could be adjusted in proportion to the system population? I find it jarring when I enter a ring away from a USS and every time, a pirate spawns in a couple of seconds after. I don't think you'll see ATR unless player griefers attack you. The megaship close to the rings idea is a good one, for mining in busy systems.
 
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