Void Opal Hype is Real, but what about low value mining commodities?

[EWanderer]

So the Opal Hype is real and if I remember correctly FDev doesn't intent to touch it yet. And they better not do it in the future. Anyway, I just threw my T10 Miner with 4 Lasers and one of each new mining tool in Exchange for a Clipper, with just a Seismic Charge and an Abrasion Blaster just for Void Opal Core Mining. Which asks the question:
What to do with all the old and new materials we could also gather?
I mean money wise it doesn't make sense, which is sad for a number of reasons primary, that of now I miss out on the Dispersal Missile Mini-game. And with that I would like to give you a few ideas:

• Alliance, Federation and Empire all are enveloped into a subtle although constant struggle for dominance over new systems. BGS is underlying reflection of the power balance. But the worth of a system in terms of Industry Size, Special Production Capabilities, Military Installations of all sorts is kinda constant, if there isn't a specific community goal, which not always are for miners. Each superpower could have 1-3 permanent ongoing construction efforts, that miners could contribute towards. Whenever such a goal is completed a Installation, Outpost or other Structure is added to the game and a new goal is started in a different place. The reward for contributions would be Ranking up with the specific superpower.
• Powerplay could have a mechanic in a similar vain, to boost the value of low CC systems with a low risk of being stolen by the enemy. Mining Stuff could be provided to construct temporarily Multipliers for a Systems Population increasing the CC. Their locations would of course change and a Multiplier would only last for 1-3 Cycles during which, a system takeover would mean, that another Power could profit from it. As an reward Miners could get Merits.
• Seeing how the bubble is starting to burn again and so many stations falling under the threat of requiring extensive repair efforts, I could imagine, that the Superpowers would setup a permanent system to provide relief efforts. For this I would setup a Megaship, that would buy mining stuff, track it and giving out heavily reduced goods required to repair Megaships over time or to avoid exploits, giving out specific Transports Missions towards damaged starports, that would aid the repair efforts.
• As far as I know new ships are not made from void opals, but metal, electronic components and friendship. So why not give Miners the ability to earn a discount on a module or ship buy, by slowly turning in required mined usually low value materials. Of course they would still have to pay for labor, but I could imagine, that you could cut down up to 40% of the price. This way being a low value miner, you don't slow your ship progression, without having to increase the market value of such commodities. Bonus: If you could earn rebuy discounts this way.
• As someone who sometimes engineers, the collection of Manufactured Materials is always a pain for me. Not only that, but my beloved heat sinks also require manufactured Mats for Synthesis. And I know, that you could do missions to gather materials, that would require mining, but with the removal of Board Flipping and the super bad exchange rates, I would love to have a more elegant solution. Each Manufactured Material has a recipe of mixed mined commodities, which could be turned in at a new contact to gain those. Note I said Manufactured Materials only, not Data or Minerals
• And last but not least some speculation around Fleet Carriers, that have yet to be revealed. Construction and Upgrading could be done with mining materials or supplement a buy, such as with my ideas to build ships and modules above.

With that you have now a bunch of ideas, that don't require you to play with the Commodities Market values, that could actually feel rewarding for a player.

 

[Ranualf]

Lots of good stuff there
But there is a LOT of stuff we have no idea about...as FD are notoriously tight lipped
The new BGS will even itself out(FD confirmed) and there will be new gold rushes to be made.

As for the price of the modules, hmm, the A4 refiner is a bit pricey, but given that you can earn multi millions now in a small mining ship, paying for itself several times over... the prices seem fine.
Unless you are new to the mining lark, then it is a big jump up in cost. But that said, even making money off the mission board is simple now, a monster improvement on what it was a few years ago, so overall the "pick a career path" is not as strict as it used to be, and FD and myself say go try out all the stuff.

Fleet carriers, we got some hints earlier this year about what may happen with them, here is my take on them:
1. Buy the base carrier(lots of creds- estimated of 1 billion CR+)There may be several variants, such as pad starter sizes S/M, and a few different module type of "class"
2. Carrier can be upgraded for landing pads, size and number, as well as facilities, rearm, repair etc.
3. You need x items to get this upgrade, be careful as they are going to require a fair bit of work-think of a mini cg.
4. Modules are limited, due to the "small size" of the carrier..careful what you choose.
5. Owner of the group(the boss) gets to pick where it goes, and maybe once per week/ month it will shift, but this is a lot of work for FD, and i expect it will be carefully monitored to prevent senseless griefing.. Imagine this, your group loves to play in open, and "hey guys, we got this big carrier.. lets hop to noobville and pick em off bois!" Only to discover there is 5 other noob clubbing carriers in the same system.. So yea, probs a limit on how many carrier per system, and some starting systems may be locked out for carrier to prevent seal clubbing, a fine balance that i am sure FD will get correct 1st time...(i am using my sarcastic voice at this juncture)
6. Carriers may be a part of the emerging gameplay structure... or to simply put a target of opportunity...we see this currently in game with the mega ship attacks- help the pirates or the defenders... So your nice shiny sparkly mega ship may be able to be trashed, requiring a some repairs, as in "some" massive amount or various commodities to repair.. we shall see.

Overall if FD even remotely follow some of the above points, the game play will be superb, and so will the "grind" to kit out the mega ship asap, which leads us to... GOLD RUSH..
Yes, imagine on a given date- say Feb the 14th that mega ships become available, and you can kit them out...
All kinds of stuff will be needed, and you can see fleets of transport vessels grabbing every last ounce of computer component in a 100ly radius... yes, the investment phase is going be great!
Take 1000000000000000000 tons of stuff from here to station x- why, because they sold out and demand MORE!!!

This can easily happen- feast / famine for commodities, causing a gold rush to get stuff to the systems that are demanding it, the BGS is going to be going nuts!

All it takes is a little imagination, a serious set of programming skills(i have none) and to work for FD, and let the fun happen!

Fly safe

 

[EWanderer]

As for the price of the modules, hmm, the A4 refiner is a bit pricey, but given that you can earn multi millions now in a small mining ship, paying for itself several times over... the prices seem fine.

I understand, that you could just follow the current Mining Goldrush, such as with the current Void Opals. The intent was to have low value commodities have a reason to exist and to be mined at all. Not because of balance, but rather as a tool for immersion or if you are tired(because of pirates)/uninformed with the latest rush-locations. Or just to have a reason to not just do core mining and disregarding other mining tools.

As for your ideas with FC, we have to see what FDev comes up with, which is why I only made it a small bonus.

 

[avow555]

The current Void Opal thing seems quite odd to me at the moment.

Seems like fdev are bumping their user figures up over the holidays for some reason.

 

[StalkerMac]

can you get void opals from just using a mining laser or do you need to blast for them. Just curious as I am out in the black exploring and I am finding an awful lot of opal deposits

Fly safe Cmdr's
o7

 

[EWanderer]

Void Opals are Core Only, so you need to break them up with Seismic Charges and then chip away the opened surface deposits with Abrasion Blasters. So sadly you need the new tools.

 

[moorison]

If I am not mistaken, the very early BGS tests required lower grade commodities to create higher grade ones at the specific markets. Obviously that would create a lot of problems if the economy is only player driven. Lower grade commodities are still part of missions and are in the holds of NPCs. There are still a few "classic" commodities only available through mining. It would be nice if the less valuable commodities were in demand more often, but it is fine right now.

As with other activities, many are simulated by the game, it will work even without input from players, but players want to have a sense of impact and these transactions are a lot more influential than the simulated ones and new or updated game features have always a noticable boost on release to encourage players to try them out. They will be adjusted over time anyway.

 

[Daynen]

The problem is simple: no commodity has any use but as credits. The occasional engineer turn-in notwithstanding, we do the same thing with every single commodity we get our hands on: turn it in for credits. Whether by mission or market, it's all just money in the hold. If some of those things had USES for us other than money, this would be an entirely different story. Materials answer this situation, but I honestly feel like we didn't need them. We had enough different commodities between minerals, metals, manufactured goods, etc etc etc. that we could've easily just had engineers require THOSE instead of these new magically weightless materials that can be an absolute chore to acquire.

 

[EWanderer]

The problem is simple: no commodity has any use but as credits.

I agree, but I see mined commodities and those, you can only gain from station production as 2 separate issues, which require different approaches. Mined resources are not a product of the BGS, but rather a personal "achievement". As such I see it valid to allow them be used for non credit based progression, such as earning discounts, gaining materials for engineering (although having a way to easier gain heatsink synth mats would help with the Thargoid Defense Efforts).

When we talk about other commodities, I made a post about the new Installation, which have usage all sorts of commodities(https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/469181-Value-of-Installations-Ownership, see point 1), although I didn't make a case for Low-Value commodities there, because it wasn't the scope, but it gives a direction.

If I am not mistaken, the very early BGS tests required lower grade commodities to create higher grade ones at the specific markets. Obviously that would create a lot of problems if the economy is only player driven. Lower grade commodities are still part of missions and are in the holds of NPCs. There are still a few "classic" commodities only available through mining. It would be nice if the less valuable commodities were in demand more often, but it is fine right now.

As with other activities, many are simulated by the game, it will work even without input from players, but players want to have a sense of impact and these transactions are a lot more influential than the simulated ones and new or updated game features have always a noticeable boost on release to encourage players to try them out. They will be adjusted over time anyway.

The problem is, that this impact on Production is invisible, if it even exists. And I appreciate, that there are so many types of commodities in circulation. It just bothers me, that all is just a simple breakdown of profit, since that is all Elite currently has. I wanted to address solutions for this problem from a miners perspective. Regular BGS produced commodities, are just as said above, a different problem.

Also this

It would be nice if the less valuable commodities were in demand more often, but it is fine right now.

doesn't make sense in my eyes. Because less valuable commodities should always have a purpose for the player other than looking at them. That is the reason for Idea 1 + 2, where you would have a constant intake for these commodities.

 

[EWanderer]

So VO rush is still going strong and low-value mining is still not a thing in the wider community, because there lacks a reason to do so. I don't even have a ship with subsurface missles in my main storage as AFAIK.

 

[Kissamies]

I just did a couple of mining missions for water and methane clathrate. I did this for BGS manipulation. Accidentally discovered some core rocks and cracked them open as well as I was mining for those normal minerals. Having the low-value minerals have some other value besides credits sounds like a good principle to get more people do varied kinds of mining.

Also, my old idea for Displacement Missile is that the deep deposits should occasionally have those valuable core minerals. Even if it's not a core asteroid.

 

[space voyager]

In RL the price of iron rises pretty high when it is scarce... If the game had real market simulation, void opals should probably plummet by now and common minerals rise.
Sooner or later miners would come to an equillibrium of mineral availability (time spent)/price and void opals wouldn't be the so utter meta.

That said, I'm glad I got some 400 million credits in a relativelly short time. But others shouldn't!

IMO FD is letting the mining shine for now. It is the most perfected gameplay in the game right now so it should have its time for glory.

 

[Ipecac]

At this point, void opals should be costume jewelry.

 

[dxm55]

VO mining is currently one of the main reasons why some players who left the game out of boredom earlier, returned.
They can finally make a lot of cash and then buy and fly the more expensive ships which were previously out of reach to them.
Not sure why some people still talk about Painite. Far less value. Perhaps it's just more commonly found.

Plus the game mechanics of core mining is at the very least somewhat interesting and requires some measure of actual skill and constant interaction.
And it's not some inane grind monkey activity like laser mining, honk exploring, or running cargo for CGs.
Plus it comes with a big reward for all that work.

So, as it stands, core mining? Good job FDev.
It's a big win.

 

[CMDR Slee Piboi]

Not sure why some people still talk about Painite.

Because Painite gives me a steady 100M/hr or better, without the wide RNG fluctuation of VO mining.

 

[dxm55]

Because Painite gives me a steady 100M/hr or better, without the wide RNG fluctuation of VO mining.

Of course there are more consistent ways of getting VOs.