The Mining discussion thread.

[Aewarin Jameson]

I suspect the best way to handle this mechanic and keep it fair, is if the miner machine has been loaded into another players memory (by virtue of them being in the sector it's within), then it stays present for an hour after the owner logs off. If the owner logs off and no-one is near the miner machine, then it disappears immediately.

Again, a fair counter proposal for automated mining.

Looking interesting so far - hope FD are watching our threads

 

[Kerrash]

I suspect the best way to handle this mechanic and keep it fair, is if the miner machine has been loaded into another players memory (by virtue of them being in the sector it's within), then it stays present for an hour after the owner logs off. If the owner logs off and no-one is near the miner machine, then it disappears immediately.

Or, like player ships, is replaced with an NPC equivilent?
The miner's ore doesn't increase whilst he is offline, but the NPC rig continues to accumulate so the pirates can still loot it?

But what to do when the Miner comes back into the group/online?

 

[Harbinger]

MB4 information from the "Frontier: Elite II" manual:

SURFACE MINING

Once you are established, this type of mining is a more predictable means
of getting ore. It does, however, demand a large initial outlay in order
to acquire the installations and possibly a larger ship (minimum of 30
tonnes of free cargo space) to transport them The only recommended device
is the MB4 Mining Machine which, alas is still not widely available. The
MB4 is impressive in that it not only mines but also refines the material,
so you put it in place, leave it and come back to pick up the results. The
MB4 can mine, separate and refine minerals, alloys and even on occasions
precious metals and gem stones.

The disadvantage is the risk of mining others' claims, resulting in an
aggressive response to your activities. In some areas it is illegal to mine
and police, depending their mood, may not be too interested in maintaining
a public image of fairness and understanding and may blast you to pieces.

SETTING UP YOUR MB4

Choose a mining site with a temperature below 200 degrees Centigrade. The
most likely suitable locations will be on systems' inner planets which are
more likely to be mineral rich. Ones which humans have hardly touched are
more likely to be mineral rich as machines like the MB4 and its
predecessors are very thorough, and will have scoured most of the surface
of core worlds by now. To test the composition of the crust, you need to
land.

Land at the chosen site and select the Weapons Control Panel by clicking on
the Scanner

Activate the Unload Rig icon (Fig 78) which will cause the mining rig to be
unloaded whereupon it will analyse a sample of the crust and relay the
results to your on board computer. If the prospects are good it will bed
itself in and begin drilling immediately. You may then take off and come
back later once it has mined the full capacity of 10 tonnes.

FINDING THE MB4 AGAIN

All the mines have a beacon which has your own coded signal allowing the
computer to pin-point its position. If you pick up someone else's rig,
your computer will automatically register the code of the owner. All other
rigs belonging to them in this star system will then be shown on your
inventory page. This means that stealing ore is possible however the same
can be done to you. A safeguard is to avoid placing numerous rigs in one
system, so that they are not so easily found should one of your rigs be
purloined. Your beacons will use a different code in each system.

Select the Inventory icon F3 and cycle through until you come to the Mining
Installations page (Fig 79). It will list your rigs and their location.

Fly to the Star system in which a particular rig is situated.

Set up the Mining Installations page again and use the button next to the
rig you wish to find.

The on-board computer will then set it up as your current target. You may
then fly to it manually or with the Autopilot. You can deselect the target
as before by placing the pointer away from the target and using the left
hand mouse button.

COLLECTING THE ORE

Land near to the installation and select the Load Rig icon (Fig 80) with
one click. this will remotely instruct the machinery to off load ore into
your hold until it is full. It will be no more than 10 tonnes at a time
because that is the maximum capacity of the MB4's hopper.

If there is no ore to collect the first selection of the icon will load the
rig onto the ship if you have space.

Your cargo inventory (Inventory icon F3) will show the minerals on board

COLLECTING THE MB4 MINING MACHINE

Land next to the installation and click on the Load Rig icon twice so that
the rig and the contents of its hopper are taken on board.

As stated above, the rig will be loaded after the first click if there is
no ore in the hopper

The rig may be left for further mining. There is no need to bring it on
board if you intend to Deposit it in the same place.

If you want to move the MB4 to another location on the same surface because a site is 'mined out', it is worth moving it a good distance. This is
because the MB4 probes quite a large area with its underground drills.

If your MB4 had found a rich seam of minerals, Do not move it as the seam
may be a long way below ground and the MB4 may not be able to find it
again.

Disagree with this bit - not very "realistic" if your rigs miraculously turn invisible when you are offline. What if you've spent ages hunting down someone's rigs to rob only for them to suddenly disappear? How do you explain that IC?

I definitely agree with this, if it's a persistent universe then your MB4 machines should not just vanish into thin air when you go offline. They should be able to be looted by other players, just as you should be able to loot the machines of other players. In a galaxy of billions of stars you just need to find somewhere well off the beaten path to hide them.

If your MB4 is looted, you should be informed and the MB4 should take a photograph of the ship that looted it to allow the owner the chance to lie in wait for his inevitable return if they so choose.

I guess this is a bit of a moot point until we have planetary landings but I for one would like to see the return of the MB4 mining machine, perhaps even an MB5 mining machine which has built in self-defence mechanisms to attack looters.

 

[Kerrash]

I definitely agree with this, if it's a persistent universe then your MB4 machines should not just vanish into thin air when you go offline. They should be able to be looted by other players, just as you should be able to loot other the machines of other players. In a galaxy of billions of stars you just need to find somewhere well off the beaten path to hide them.

If your MB4 is looted, you should be informed and the MB4 should take a photograph of the ship that looted it to allow the owner the chance to lie in wait for his inevitable return if they so choose.

I guess this is a bit of a moot point until we have planetary landings but I for one would like to see the return of the MB4 mining machine, perhaps even an MB5 mining machine which has built in self-defence mechanisms to attack looters.

Yes I suppose you are right. That's a risk you take with mining I suppose and space is very big, if you rig is found it should be fair game.

I am in favour of keeping it simple, no need to make things really complex.

 

[Kipper]

I suspect the best way to handle this mechanic and keep it fair, is if the miner machine has been loaded into another players memory (by virtue of them being in the sector it's within), then it stays present for an hour after the owner logs off. If the owner logs off and no-one is near the miner machine, then it disappears immediately.

I was going to suggest exactly this; the game should not create instances that contain your mining rig when you're offline, but if you go offline, any instances that are already in existence that contain it remain until they have a reason to disappear (ie, they are empty).

Although no new ships should probably get let into that instance - to prevent a high traffic area basically keeping someones mining rig in permanent existance.

All of this does mean that the further out you go to place your rig, the safer it should be. Like looking for a needle in a haystack. If you try to mine Venus, expect no yield (mined out) and everyone to see your rig and steal it.

More emergent gameplay; black market trading of MB4 co-ordinates that are not your own. So you can discover them and sell the 'rights' to steal from them ;-) (or, selling the deeds to your own rigs... so you can work as a prospector/explorer, plant them and sell them to miners).

 

[Zebarmy]

Or, like player ships, is replaced with an NPC equivilent?
The miner's ore doesn't increase whilst he is offline, but the NPC rig continues to accumulate so the pirates can still loot it?

But what to do when the Miner comes back into the group/online?

That could work. (And when they appear, the hardcore pirate player has been sat there for 39hours non-stop ready to pirate them of course).

I guess it begs the question - how far do you go with the persistent universe notion. If DB's mindset is around system ownership by faction/government, population growth and expansion internally across systems, and externally into other systems, the notion of the MB4 is particularly small in that context, and not something you'd want to track (in my mind anyway) for each player, as frankly the tiny amounts we're talking about shouldn't have an overarching bearing on the universe persistence. Do your MB4's become illegal if a planet becomes populated when it was already there?.

If you do focus on persistence of these smaller objects though, do you impose a limit of total concurrent ownership of say 2, or 4 if you have the (specialist mining controller module - 30 units) fitted? If you have persistence, how long before we see the harvester wasteland like we had in the SWG beta before buildings needed maintenance and you had a deployment cap. Someone would find a good spot to mine for instance copper and stick a harvester on it, and then everyone else would try and get a slice of the action too, such that you'd end up with clustered together as far as the eye could see into the distance. They need some kind of maintenance cost, they need to be destroyable (perhaps not easily).

A moot point perhaps - we already know that planetary landings won't be in at launch

Z

 

[bassman]

I get the feeling it's one of those thing that worked really well in single player (mining could be so dull!!) but it would just paint a big target on your back for ED.

20 pirates hiding in nearby 'roids, just waiting for you to come and collect their payday for them.

...Mind you the fire fight if the pirates were all independents would be hillarious!

I worry about the ramifications of scalable passive income on the multiplayer economy.

There needs to be some counter balance to stop it being too scalable because otherwise players will be able to get to the stage where they can rake in vast amounts of game money by having hundreds of rigs on the go. DB himself said in the video diaries that no one activity should be disproptionately profitable so I hope this aspect of mining has been thought about.

I guess if they have a suitable level of vunerability such that it was not practical to have more than few on the go at once then that would take care of it.

 

[Kipper]

A moot point perhaps - we already know that planetary landings won't be in at launch

Good to have the discussion though because we want planetary landings that have meaning, so the more things we can find for people to be able to do on surface than they can't do in orbit, the better they will be

 

[Zebarmy]

Good to have the discussion though because we want planetary landings that have meaning, so the more things we can find for people to be able to do on surface than they can't do in orbit, the better they will be

Absolutely, MB4's were (are?) one of my favourite things, if they don't eventually make it in I will be a sad panda

 

[Carsten]

I can see it now.
My Mining corp drops a ton of Mining Rigs and let it slip in chat by mistake the some Rich Minerals have been found.

Soon pirates show up to grab some free loot but its a trap all aranged by the bounty hunters

Oh the good times to be had.

 

[Kerrash]

I can see it now.
My Mining corp drops a ton of Mining Rigs and let it slip in chat by mistake the some Rich Minerals have been found.

Soon pirates show up to grab some free loot but its a trap all aranged by the bounty hunters

Oh the good times to be had.

That is completely evil! Where do I sign up for your group?

 

[Harbinger]

I worry about the ramifications of scalable passive income on the multiplayer economy.

There needs to be some counter balance to stop it being too scalable because otherwise players will be able to get to the stage where they can rake in vast amounts of game money by having hundreds of rigs on the go. DB himself said in the video diaries that no one activity should be disproptionately profitable so I hope this aspect of mining has been thought about.

I guess if they have a suitable level of vunerability such that it was not practical to have more than few on the go at once then that would take care of it.

I'm not so sure it would be that profitable because at the end of the day you have to land on the planets surface in the vicinity of the machine, this in itself was quite tricky as I recall. Especially on larger planets.

Even if you had lots of these machines, each holding 10 tonnes of gems, precious metals or minerals you'd have to land at each site and then transport them to a system where you can sell them. Your MB4 sites would also have to be well off the beaten path and potentially spread over many systems so you may have to make many jumps to get back to a system where you can actually sell them.

I can see this being a very time consuming venture and not very profitable for the amount of legwork you have to put in. I think MB4 machines would probably come into their own, more as a way to support a new colony.

 

[Doomdark]

I think you should be able to put up defence turrets around your mining machine that recognise your ship, if its not you thats approaching then they start attacking whoever is in the vicinity.

 

[Kerrash]

I think you should be able to put up defence turrets around your mining machine that recognise your ship, if its not you thats approaching then they start attacking whoever is in the vicinity.

It is possible, I suppose the question is whether they should be separate objects or just considered part of an upgraded mining machine?

 

[bent]

To me, Elite is all about a Commander and his ship. If we have all manner of mining rigs and other installations external to this it instead becomes a game about a CEO and his mining/trade empire. I am unconvinced that this would be particularly satisfying.

I think that the way to do mining in Elite is primarily to have to come across the occasional pure metal asteroid that you can blast apart with your mining lasers and scoop up for sale back at the station.

For finds that require more industrial means of extraction, I can see you surveying the site and selling the information to NPCs back at the station. Those NPCs could then decide it's a viable deposit and start generating supply missions to set up a mining operation, once the operation is in place there would be freight missions for ore back to the station etc.

 

[HenryS]

I suppose the question is whether they should be separate objects or just considered part of an upgraded mining machine?

Surely they should be separate objects. If things go this way, then you've already got the infrastructure of sensors, logic to determine who to shoot at or not, all the questions of who gets a bounty if an automated turret shoots someone innocent, what does innocent even mean here and is trespassing a crime? At this stage it only makes sense to allow sensor and turret networks defending bases.

 

[Gen-Han-Solo]

Pirates v Naval or Mining Support Ships') changed

Hello all ALFA backers and those already in Game . Moderators Please do not move this Thread . Please read all the posts very carefully .

Dev's this may be a way to show case Elite Dangerous ALFA . We plan to use the 79 network link server for this event .

I have an Idea for a combat test it has been said the only way to chose sides in combat at the moment is in contested space .
Well that's not right you can form groups in combat simply by talking .

I have an idea for a large scale combat that should be possible Pirates v Miners in the asteroids .

Pirates would use one channel in teamspeak Naval or Mining support Ships would use a channel .

The Pirates would need a flag ship ? Commander Blackley .

I would like to push the networking software so we can test and help the developers , we also need to stream and record the combat so any ships not deploying weapons should not be fired at . Because they may be streaming the battle .
Unless they try and take the cargo canisters .
But it would also be interesting if some can stream from each side of the battle while being in combat . This may work simply because you are in your sides chosen Live Video channel , if not then all those trying to stream would simply not deploy any weapons .

Please Discus and if some one can add a pole and set up a vote for combat date and time From Sunday though to Tuesday . I am available all through these three days .

We need volunteers to help stream the battle .

 

[ZeeWolf]

so how would you know who to shoot at?

 

[Gen-Han-Solo]

so how would you know who to shoot at?

In teamspeak you simply chose the side you want and display your in game name or ALFA backer number we have already tested this it works .

 

[Gen-Han-Solo]

I have been asked to set up the Pirate v Miners & support Vessels for Sunday 20th April late afternoon or evening .
So that any one interested in joining the fun can get organized .

The aim is for the pirates to start the combat by attacking the mining Anacondas , and then any one wishing to help support the npc ships would jump in to the battle shortly after the fight starts . So maybe Pirates attack at 8pm GMT standard UK time and the Miners support vessels jump in at 8.05pm .

Any one not sure how you all meet up how about if we all try and log in using the network linking server number 79.-------------

I also suggest just for this battle all use the same teamspeak or all Pirates use Han Solo's teamspeak all mining support ships use Kroy's

I do have too channels in the dedicated teamspeak for Live Video recordings or streaming . So it would be easy to identify what side Cmdrs are supporting .