Mining shuttles

[Themurloc]

Multi crew is a feature that could really use some love. One aspect it's kind of tedious in is mining. Sure you can do it, but...will you really? So what do I think would help with that? A couple variations of new craft to fill in your fighter bays when going out mining, some kind of small shuttle equipped with either a mining laser and subsurface missile, or Abrasion Blaster and Seismic Charge launcher, similarly to how fighters have their own variations with different weapons and utilities available to them.

This would offer, not only some welcome involvement for players mining with a multi crew, but also new ways to outfit a ship for solo mining, like opting for a fighter bay to be filled with mining shuttles, while the mothership remains armed with weapons in its hardpoints.

Hell on this note you could probably do some other variations of small, short range craft as well, if anyone has ideas. Maybe some time in the far future when walking gets introduced, some boarding pods to forcibly board an enemy ship? Who knows, it could open up a world of possibilities having fighter bays not being restricted to just fighters.

 

[MarKr The Real One]

It would surely make the hangar bays that can store two types of SLF more appealing (one mining craft one combat craft). However, I can see that it would also make the mining even more boring than it is now. When you blow up a core asteroid you at least need to come close with your ship and use the abrasion laser to get the ore chunks. If you get a mining huttle which can be used by your crew to use the abrasion blaster then you'll spend even more time just wainting for the limpets to do their job.

On the other hand it would be player's decision if they want to use the shuttles or not so the "it would make mining more boring" is not really a strong argument against it.

I think that simply a shuttle with an abrasion blaster would be the easiest to implement because the AI would simply "hunt" the surface chunks off of asteroids. It might be harder to theach an AI how to use mining lasers or it would require also adding some system that would allow you to tell the AI which asteroid to mine.

But that is just my quess I have no idea what it takes to code a new thing into the game.

 

[Themurloc]

It would surely make the hangar bays that can store two types of SLF more appealing (one mining craft one combat craft). However, I can see that it would also make the mining even more boring than it is now. When you blow up a core asteroid you at least need to come close with your ship and use the abrasion laser to get the ore chunks. If you get a mining huttle which can be used by your crew to use the abrasion blaster then you'll spend even more time just wainting for the limpets to do their job.

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I think that simply a shuttle with an abrasion blaster would be the easiest to implement because the AI would simply "hunt" the surface chunks off of asteroids. It might be harder to theach an AI how to use mining lasers or it would require also adding some system that would allow you to tell the AI which asteroid to mine.

There's nothing stopping the player from having the mining shuttles AND an abrasion blaster, so they can go in and help with the MC shuttles, and make things even faster. You'd just need to make sure you shell out for a good limpet controller to keep up with the shuttles.

As for the AI, I think the fighter orders should handle that just fine, like having Fire at Will set them to mine the nearest asteroid, or attack my target setting them to mine whatever you're mining.