Player owned Automated Mining Extractors.

[IiliI PEL IiliI]

We've all seen them on planet surfaces (and if not, allow me to bring you up to speed), little "mini-drills" that burrow into the surface and harvest a certain type of material into cargo containers.

My proposal is this...allow us to buy these things, take them to a planet surface and set them up, leave them for a while, fly off and do something else, then come back later on and collect the full containers of our specified materials (provided they are within the planetary bodies geological make up that is).

Say i want arsenic....i buy some of these things, set them down, off and return once an in game message tells me they are full/finished etc. Pick up the cargo but leave the drills...once theyre done, theyre spent, useless, unreusable (its a real word...i swear lol).

It would save both time and frustration driving around beige-ness for ages searching for outcrops or mesosorioserderite....umm...that stuff.

They obviously would be relocated using nav panel targeting akin to surface installations etc.

What dya think??

 

[Nero Tacitus]

I think some poeple would be fans of the idea, however as mentioned in other threads regarding automating certain aspects of the game, FDev aren't fans of it.
If you wants mats, you're going to have to farm for them, and I don't expect FDev to change their minds on that any time soon.

 

[Captain Willard]

Never going to happen. Elite is 1 pilot 1 ship.

 

[Wedgetail]

MB4 mining machine was a piece of equipment in FE2, which functioned pretty much the way you describe

However given the way the ED handles instancing (and lack of persistence) I don't know how they'd implement it without a major overhaul

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

FE2 had the MB4 mining machine, we should have such things again as automated mining extractors.

Longer term I would dearly love players to be able to start their own BGS faction, and manage that organization and its assets, with more than just ships to invest in and automatic mining extractors would be a great asset to invest in / lose money with if (it turns up nothing of value / it gets robbed looted or vandalised).

 

[Arthur Z.]

I had a similar idea, only a bit more complicated and it's more on the "base building" side.

For example, you could build an extraction system but in order for it to be functional, you need to craft and build several modules. For example you can place a couple of extractors, then you will need a "packing machine" which in turn has to be provided with metals in order to pack resources into containers and maybe some sort of docking bay in order to transfer all this to your ship/SRV.

Also, you would need to place a couple of scramblers in order for it to be hidden from other players/NPC. The more scramblers you place, the less visible your base is to others (you need to fly closer), and in turn less chance that someone will steal your stuff and destroy your base.