(disclaimer: After a couple posts in the 2.2 Beta Discussion area that haven't seemed to gain much attention, and further contemplation of how best to voice this idea that clearly would require too much work to fit into the 2.2 update, I decided to put this here.)
I believe ship launched fighters could offer a huge new interesting way to perform the activity of mining.
It would require the following things, as far as I can anticipate:
- Offer a fighter variant that can carry mining lasers (come to think of it, Torval's powerplay mining lasers that double as weapons might actually become viable for this)
- Allow ships that can carry a fighter bay (and are equipped for mining) to head into an asteroid cluster/belt, target an asteroid with an asteroid limpet, select that limpet while it's active, and order the NPC-controlled fighter to mine that asteroid (I figure that the prospecting limpet would be necessary to ensure the AI can differentiate properly between targeted asteroids vs. the hundreds of other asteroids in a given instance)
- Alternatively allow the player to fly and use the fighter to mine any rock of their choice while the NPC is ordered to stand still & use collection limpets (clearly pre-positioning the mothership before heading out in the fighter would be of high interest here)
- Duty of scooping and collection falls entirely on the mothership, no scoop or cargo racks necessary on the fighter: only purpose it need serve is to head to the targeted asteroid and blast it with its mining lasers
This would of course open up more opportunities once Multicrew comes around.
Possible complications I can forsee:
- AI being difficult to program to not crash into asteroids, to not target the wrong one if multiple prospector limpets are active (the one currently selected by the player should be the only one it mines unless told otherwise by the player), to stop mining once the asteroid is depleted even if prospecting limpet(s) is still active, to have proper reactions if there's an attacker & to not continue mining actions over the priority of defending oneself from an attacker & listening to orders from the player
But beyond making sure the AI behaves...I don't think there'd be any further trouble beyond making sure mining lasers work when slapped onto a fighter?
I wonder if it would be worth stealing a couple screenshots and making up a mock concept art of this in action via MSPaint or somesuch...(I'll give it a go if anybody comes here and tells me they'd like that!)
I believe ship launched fighters could offer a huge new interesting way to perform the activity of mining.
It would require the following things, as far as I can anticipate:
- Offer a fighter variant that can carry mining lasers (come to think of it, Torval's powerplay mining lasers that double as weapons might actually become viable for this)
- Allow ships that can carry a fighter bay (and are equipped for mining) to head into an asteroid cluster/belt, target an asteroid with an asteroid limpet, select that limpet while it's active, and order the NPC-controlled fighter to mine that asteroid (I figure that the prospecting limpet would be necessary to ensure the AI can differentiate properly between targeted asteroids vs. the hundreds of other asteroids in a given instance)
- Alternatively allow the player to fly and use the fighter to mine any rock of their choice while the NPC is ordered to stand still & use collection limpets (clearly pre-positioning the mothership before heading out in the fighter would be of high interest here)
- Duty of scooping and collection falls entirely on the mothership, no scoop or cargo racks necessary on the fighter: only purpose it need serve is to head to the targeted asteroid and blast it with its mining lasers
This would of course open up more opportunities once Multicrew comes around.
Possible complications I can forsee:
- AI being difficult to program to not crash into asteroids, to not target the wrong one if multiple prospector limpets are active (the one currently selected by the player should be the only one it mines unless told otherwise by the player), to stop mining once the asteroid is depleted even if prospecting limpet(s) is still active, to have proper reactions if there's an attacker & to not continue mining actions over the priority of defending oneself from an attacker & listening to orders from the player
But beyond making sure the AI behaves...I don't think there'd be any further trouble beyond making sure mining lasers work when slapped onto a fighter?
I wonder if it would be worth stealing a couple screenshots and making up a mock concept art of this in action via MSPaint or somesuch...(I'll give it a go if anybody comes here and tells me they'd like that!)
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