Surface Mining for Raw Mats

[DemiserofD]

Getting Raw Mats is one of those confusing things that makes people really struggle when they're first getting started. You need all this stuff, you have NO idea where to find it, you land on a planet that supposedly has them only to wander for hours never seeing anything...it's a bit of a mess to be honest.

And to make matters worse, the best advice anyone gives is to fly like a thousand lightyears to get to the crystal sites or the brain trees!

What if you could acquire them anywhere by mining?

Surface Mining​

The Maverick Suit would have an alternate mode on the cutting tool: Geological Scanning Mode. Scanning Mode would function similarly to the biological scanner, except focusing on mineral deposits instead. When you land on a planet, you could scan and it would generate a heatmap(randomly generated) around you. If you go to the brightest glow and use the cutting mode on the ground, it would slowly mine out materials based on the planet type!

Most of these materials would be low-grade, but you'd get the occasional mid-grade too, and very rarely, a high grade. After a little bit, the deposit would be exhausted and you'd need to travel on, looking for a new one. But the important part would be, these would be EVERYWHERE. Unlike meteorites and the like (which give high-grade mats and are very rare) these could be found just by landing and scanning.

With this change, I would actually rebalance meteorites as well. It never made much sense that meteorites(which come from, you know, anywhere BUT the planet you're on) give you the materials you detect on that planet! Instead, they should give you a random assortment of ALL types of materials, and should serve to compliment the specific types you get via surface mining.

Overall, this makes the Raw Mats much more intuitive to acquire. You locate a planet with the right materials, land, scan, and mine!

 

[Jack Brolin]

In fairness, meteorites are how planets get their varied mineral content, and I'd like to be able to find the materials the scan says are there, so I wouldn't change that bit. I'm all for making geology more rewarding though.

 

[metatheurgist]

I think a better idea would be more reasons to drive the SRV. Right now the only reason to do it is pretty much just to find engy mats for the sake of engineering, odds of finding a node or meteor while you're just doing a SRV mission (does anyone even do those anymore?) are kinda slim. We are also missing missions like "Get me 20 Carbon", as stupid as that mission would be.

 

[DemiserofD]

In fairness, meteorites are how planets get their varied mineral content, and I'd like to be able to find the materials the scan says are there, so I wouldn't change that bit. I'm all for making geology more rewarding though.

I'd like there to be a difference between Outcrops(which would broadly match the mineral content of the planet) and meteorites(which would have a wider variety). The idea would be that you could theoretically get anything anywhere, so you don't need to use Inara to find the exact planet 44ly away that has all 6 materials you need. You just look for the one you need the most, and then the others happen organically.

I think a better idea would be more reasons to drive the SRV. Right now the only reason to do it is pretty much just to find engy mats for the sake of engineering, odds of finding a node or meteor while you're just doing a SRV mission (does anyone even do those anymore?) are kinda slim. We are also missing missions like "Get me 20 Carbon", as stupid as that mission would be.

Honestly, I think the #1 thing you could do to make driving the SRV more appealing would be to make it better at its nominal job - which is to say, driving. Give it boost jets maybe, or a high-speed mode that makes it drive more smoothly. As things currently stand, it's so much more efficient to just fly your ship you never actually get the opportunity to drive around, and because meteorites and such never spawn in within a few klicks of your landing zone, you simply never see them.

They need to make it move faster and be faster to get into and out of, so that you can justify driving it around rather than just taking your ship everywhere.

 

[oblivionmanman 2476]

plenty of geo sites for raw mats around.

 

[Scarlette Starr]

I posted a possible solution to this. A Geo/bio pulsewave scanner that can scan out to 10k (or more) radius. that way you can fly to an area, scan, find the concentration of geo formations, fly to that area, land, get into srv and go geo hunting to your delight without having to spend hours (or days) driving around finding nothing but useless rock.

 

[Koma Pahu]

Honestly, I think the #1 thing you could do to make driving the SRV more appealing would be to make it better at its nominal job - which is to say, driving. Give it boost jets maybe, or a high-speed mode that makes it drive more smoothly. As things currently stand, it's so much more efficient to just fly your ship you never actually get the opportunity to drive around, and because meteorites and such never spawn in within a few klicks of your landing zone, you simply never see them.

They need to make it move faster and be faster to get into and out of, so that you can justify driving it around rather than just taking your ship everywhere.

I remember having this discussion during the EDO Alpha. Those of us suggesting we keep the easier to control model in some form lost the debate.

TBF, the Scarab is pretty fast, it’s just impossible to control at full chat.

 

[Shir]

All good suggestions, because they introduce gameplay. Especially when exploring, I like to break it up farming with the Srv.

But for bulk raw farming nowadays, nothing even comes close to the efficiency of the brain tree farming below, I did a tour last week preparing for a Colonia trip, and topped all Raw mats in a single afternoon. Didn't even bother with the details he talks about, I just used a big ship, found the places and kept firing flaks and limpets. Didn't follow coordinates either, just flew in planets and looked randomly for trees (they grow in higher elevation). Each grade 5 mat topped in like 5 minutes..!

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/197te60/updated_raw_material_farming_odyssey

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/197te60/updated_raw_material_farming_odyssey/

 

[Scarlette Starr]

its not about maxing out your mats in one trip like that, its about expanding the available resources to include new fun options. right now planet surfaces have very limited options. If they are doing basebuilding coming up there are going to be more resources needed and more options to get them. Farming a planet surface is a logical step. How do to so that increases gameplay without suffering grinding methods is also important question to answer. Personally i'd love to be able to scout planets with FSS, use a probe to find the densities and then a pulse scanner to find the hotspots of minable materials. fly down and use mining lasers on these spots like asteroid mining or use an SRV to mine. The options could expand a lot with this.

 

[gorankar]

I still laser mine from time to time and just trade for the higher grade stuff since filling your G1-3 raws bins is a side effect of laser mining. It's a rather organic gameplay method provided you occasionally laser mine.

 

[aRJay]

its not about maxing out your mats in one trip like that, its about expanding the available resources to include new fun options. right now planet surfaces have very limited options. If they are doing basebuilding coming up there are going to be more resources needed and more options to get them. Farming a planet surface is a logical step. How do to so that increases gameplay without suffering grinding methods is also important question to answer. Personally i'd love to be able to scout planets with FSS, use a probe to find the densities and then a pulse scanner to find the hotspots of minable materials. fly down and use mining lasers on these spots like asteroid mining or use an SRV to mine. The options could expand a lot with this.

Ignoring the big if*, in addition to any surface mining being difficult for players to turn into a grind and more important it shouldn’t be easy to turn into an AFK farm.


*Base Building the follow up to I/we want SpaceLegs

 

[DjVortex]

But the important part would be, these would be EVERYWHERE.

This would actually not be very realistic. Here on Earth, for instance, almost all of the most common minerals and metals are surprisingly hard to excavate and mine, even those that are most abundant in the Earth's crust.

Why? Because while a mineral or metal may be abundant, it tends not be clumped in veins and ores, but instead it's spread out as individual atoms and molecules among the myriads of other elements and molecules that form the crust. It's very hard if not impossible to isolate one particular element and get it separated from the rest of the junk. That's why mines are quite far and in between, and usually dig very deep into the ground, because veins and rich ores of a particular element appear only quite rarely. (They require a very special set of circumstances to form. Essentially a natural "forge" that melts them and causes the particular element to gather up in fissures and the like.)

There's a reason why eg. gold digging has historically been so hard and valuable. It's very rare to find veins of it.

 

[DemiserofD]

This would actually not be very realistic. Here on Earth, for instance, almost all of the most common minerals and metals are surprisingly hard to excavate and mine, even those that are most abundant in the Earth's crust.

Why? Because while a mineral or metal may be abundant, it tends not be clumped in veins and ores, but instead it's spread out as individual atoms and molecules among the myriads of other elements and molecules that form the crust. It's very hard if not impossible to isolate one particular element and get it separated from the rest of the junk. That's why mines are quite far and in between, and usually dig very deep into the ground, because veins and rich ores of a particular element appear only quite rarely. (They require a very special set of circumstances to form. Essentially a natural "forge" that melts them and causes the particular element to gather up in fissures and the like.)

There's a reason why eg. gold digging has historically been so hard and valuable. It's very rare to find veins of it.

A fair point, but do bear in mind, the most common thing you'd extract would be, like, carbon, silicon, iron, and so on. Those make up a large majority of the surface of our planet and are more or less everywhere.

 

[Scarlette Starr]

but while there are common trace minerals everywhere there are also pockets or hotspots of concentrated materials. And in ED we are not using normal methods to mine like digging and blasting, we have sophisticated mining lasers and other equipment that is used in space. So while we 'shouldn't' be able to just turn beams on any part of the planet, we 'should' still be able to mine hotspots or pockets of concentrated mining materials. And those materials should be based on the mineral content of the planet scanned.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

If I want to do some engineering and I'm short of a particular raw mats I'll go to a geological site, usually on the inner moon of a gas giant, which has the element.
Volcanoes can normally be spotted in orbital cruise and it doesn't take long to find stuff once I'm on the ground.