Asteroid Ore Table

General discussion about anything related to Transcendence.
george moromisato
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I ran a simulation to figure out the ore distribution in the game, and I got the results above.

The chart shows the total value (in credits) that could be mined (assuming 100% efficiency) for each ore type and for system levels.

For example, if you mine every single asteroid on every system of level 1, you will end up with 261 credits of cerallox ore (first cell in upper left).

The bottom of each column shows the total value of ore if you mined every single asteroid of every single system of the given level. For example, if you mine all asteroids in all level 1 systems, you will (on average) get 9,917 credits of ore (not counting selling discounts, etc.)

The right side of each row shows the total value of all ore of a given type in an entire game (on average).

This chart was created by averaging 100 different games (Core only, no CC) and adding up the ore spawned in asteroids.
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Song
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That curve is pretty interesting. It's pretty clear that low level mining is a heck of a lot less lucrative than it used to be.

There is an unfortunate second calculation that's impossible to get *accurately*, but might be possible to model: how much it costs to get that ore. At the lower levels in 1.5 (at least from my own experience) you're pretty much assured to run at a loss from fuel and equipment costs unless you get lucky, and since most people don't bother with midgame or lategame mining, we don't know when (or if) it swaps over to being profitable....let alone when it becomes worthwhile. But without either playing 100 games for an average, or having some very complex modelling (average reactor size at given level from multiverse stats, average power drain from non-mining equipment at X level, average time to mine X tons of ore using a mining laser, then work out the fuel for that + flying through an asteroid belt on thruster power for a long time (maybe time it ingame), convert to cost, and add the cost of equipment. Not accurate as such, but a start) it'd be difficult to work that out.


One critique of that curve is, as you've mentioned, that it assumes that all asteroids are both findable and capable of being mined by the player. Particularly remote asteroids will often not be visited (or even noticed) by players. But it's a useful average for the absolute maximum.

One question: What's the spread like on the data?
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Many of the asteroids in Eridani are remote, and I would burn a lot of fuel mining every last rock... unless I found solar equipment. I value solar equipment very highly, to the point of searching for it immediately and keeping it until I can take advantage of cheap fuel tricks easily late in the game. I view solar armor the only viable armor for most of the game, unless I was rich beyond belief.

Without solar equipment, I would probably spend thousands of credits in fuel strip-mining Eridani.

Player should probably turn off shields to save fuel while mining, but often, I forget my shields are off and I take damage from random encounters (because I thought my shields are on until I see my screen flash red). Money I would theoretically save by turning off shields to burn less fuel often goes to armor repair.
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PM wrote:Many of the asteroids in Eridani are remote, and I would burn a lot of fuel mining every last rock... unless I found solar equipment. I value solar equipment very highly, to the point of searching for it immediately and keeping it until I can take advantage of cheap fuel tricks easily late in the game. I view solar armor the only viable armor for most of the game, unless I was rich beyond belief.

Without solar equipment, I would probably spend thousands of credits in fuel strip-mining Eridani.

Player should probably turn off shields to save fuel while mining, but often, I forget my shields are off and I take damage from random encounters (because I thought my shields are on until I see my screen flash red). Money I would theoretically save by turning off shields to burn less fuel often goes to armor repair.
And honestly, players shouldn't need specific equipment combos or advanced power management in order to mine.

(And what's up with helium regolith's distribution? RNG fluke?)
Last edited by Song on Sun Jun 07, 2015 10:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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PM wrote:Many of the asteroids in Eridani are remote, and I would burn a lot of fuel mining every last rock... unless I found solar equipment. I value solar equipment very highly, to the point of searching for it immediately and keeping it until I can take advantage of cheap fuel tricks easily late in the game. I view solar armor the only viable armor for most of the game, unless I was rich beyond belief.

Without solar equipment, I would probably spend thousands of credits in fuel strip-mining Eridani.

Player should probably turn off shields to save fuel while mining, but often, I forget my shields are off and I take damage from random encounters (because I thought my shields are on until I see my screen flash red). Money I would theoretically save by turning off shields to burn less fuel often goes to armor repair.
My typical method is to upgrade to blast plate immediately, follow it up with the best armor(<lv 10) that I find, not even bothering with a shield until I reach Master Sergeant. Power drain could use a decrease if shields are intended to be viable(medium weight armor could use a nerf if shields are buffed, though).

On the topic of mining tables, I'm unsure of what our goal should be. I've typically got enough credits for most anything I want after St. Katherine's, so a major income supplement doesn't seem necessary at the time being. As Miner holds are needed for it to be viable, there has to be a reason I shouldn't use a smuggler's hold instead for much quicker profit.

There is a way I can see that would balance mining, at least for now. The first step would a general buff to ore prices across the board, to make it a better deal and an effective means of covering extra fuel costs or getting that last bit needed for an upgrade. The second would be a nerf to the currently rather overpowered Black Market economic path, through some manner of consequences for reckless smuggling with a smuggler hold. Perhaps a 10% chance of being caught when using a smuggler's bay to haul large amounts of contraband, resulting in either a fine or confiscation of military ID? The third would be a buff to tinkers, setting the cost of fabrication to a flat 10% of the materials' base price, so that miners have an extra edge in preparing for combat.
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I am the opposite. I try to get solar panel array and/or solar armor (and use Tinkers to give solar armor radiation immunity) as soon as possible, and use the biggest, most powerful shield I get my hands on, and avoid anything with Shields Down. Since 1.2, Ares positron cannon melts any shield (accessible to the player) in the game in about one to three hits, and I will need to upgrade armor before I meet Chasms or Ares sentries. By then, I should have a way to get cheap fuel.

Having solar items or easy access to cheap fuel removes the time pressure, and I can take my time doing whatever I want at my pace (especially when I mine and move items). Without it, I am on a timer to do things before fuel drains away, and I need to spend a big chunk of cash to refuel and not die.

EDIT: This assumes I honor permadeath. If I do not, suicide is the cheapest refueling and armor repair service in the game! (I did that in one of the successions.)
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Huh. Level 10 mining worth hella of money. 4M credits
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This table confirmed my suspicion that titanium ore, cerallox and plasteel, the most common construction materials in the human space are actually quite rare drops and cheap and not worth mining at all for the player.

For fuel ores, why there is pteracnium dropping at low level systems ? Shouldnt the drop curve start at higher level following the progression of reactor fuels ?
Also helium regolith. Helium fuel is cheap and widely available, 1 ton of helium regolith is a rare drop (and was a rare drop even before the mining tables were changed)

I like the economy progression of this table as it makes sense game-wise, however this progression doesn't make mining viable as a play style at all.

What about:
- make fuel ores distribution and availability be system level dependent, so that helium regolith is available at low system levels then xenotite then pteracnium. Exactly like reactor progression.
- make construction ores follow a similar distribution of what armors are the station using.

- make the ores of widely available resources, like helium, much cheaper and increase drops. From the economy point of view it will be the same for the table, but the player could sustain himself with mined fuel. If the player mines his own fuel it should be cheaper than buying it.
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EditorRUS wrote:Huh. Level 10 mining worth hella of money. 4M credits
Yes it is! Yet another reason to grab a jumpdrive or gem of despair and warp to Heretic. Heretic is almost completely safe (no random encounters) if you do not start the endgame.

That said, buying limits may be an obstacle.

Late game systems spew lots and lots of high-level ore.

Before 1.5, mining was mostly an early game option. By midgame, player either had enough cash and/or income generators more efficient than mining (like farming enemy loot piñatas).
digdug wrote:- make the ores of widely available resources, like helium, much cheaper and increase drops.
Better increase the number of stations that buy ore (or amount of ore they are willing to buy) or else we may hit buying limits first.
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Shrike wrote:That curve is pretty interesting. It's pretty clear that low level mining is a heck of a lot less lucrative than it used to be.
Yes. It used to be possible to make 10-20k in Eridani alone. That was probably overpowered, but for mining to be useful at all, it should be possible to recoup the initial equipment investment and net another few thousand credits in a single level 1 system. The total value of all the ore in the game is not especially relevant since no one will have the patience or the need to mine it all. And by the time you get to the really lucrative systems, you should have endgame quality equipment anyway.
Shrike wrote:There is an unfortunate second calculation that's impossible to get *accurately*, but might be possible to model: how much it costs to get that ore. At the lower levels in 1.5 (at least from my own experience) you're pretty much assured to run at a loss from fuel and equipment costs unless you get lucky, and since most people don't bother with midgame or lategame mining, we don't know when (or if) it swaps over to being profitable....let alone when it becomes worthwhile. But without either playing 100 games for an average, or having some very complex modelling (average reactor size at given level from multiverse stats, average power drain from non-mining equipment at X level, average time to mine X tons of ore using a mining laser, then work out the fuel for that + flying through an asteroid belt on thruster power for a long time (maybe time it ingame), convert to cost, and add the cost of equipment. Not accurate as such, but a start) it'd be difficult to work that out.
It should at least be possible to work out the cost of firing the mining laser. I've found that 5-7 bursts per asteroid will find essentially all the ore. That's about 3 seconds (90 ticks). According to this post, a 3 MW device uses 2 fuel units per tick. Early fuel yields 100 fuel units per credit (although you may get it at a discount). So that works out to 1.8 credits per asteroid. Thrusters draw 2 MW, so they're probably a smaller component of the cost, at least for dense asteroid fields. Shields could be significantly larger, depending on how long it takes to travel from asteroid to asteroid and their power rating.

George, could we have the average value of the ore and number of asteroids per system for each level?
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One thing people should know before suggesting stuff is that there is already a plan for reworking mining into something new, of sorts. However it doesn't cover levelling. And I really like the idea of deposits (as long as the RNG doesn't decide to throw deposits onto lone asteroids that are tiny and in the middle of nowhere so they're less a loot pinata and more a loot clown car).


In terms of level adjustment, I'd agree with making the 'common' ores (eg. Uranium, Helium regolith) a lot more common. But deposits should also have a chance to have truly nice stuff in them, even at relatively low levels. Remember that mining colonies sometimes have a dude bragging about the time he found ithalium and wasted all the cash on booze. Stuff like neutronium and pteracnium is a bit much, but for pre-St. K's having orthosteel and xenotite as rares and ithalium as a very-rare encounter should be possible.
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Shrike wrote:And I really like the idea of deposits (as long as the RNG doesn't decide to throw deposits onto lone asteroids that are tiny and in the middle of nowhere so they're less a loot pinata and more a loot clown car).
Worse, an ore bearing asteroid placed inside a planet or other object that makes said asteroid impossible to hit. (There are no area-effect mining weapons.)
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Shrike wrote:One thing people should know before suggesting stuff is that there is already a plan for reworking mining into something new, of sorts. However it doesn't cover levelling. And I really like the idea of deposits (as long as the RNG doesn't decide to throw deposits onto lone asteroids that are tiny and in the middle of nowhere so they're less a loot pinata and more a loot clown car).
That plan is definitely rough (it's already obsolete--I'm going to update it again today). And I'm definitely using the comments here to influence the plan, so please keep suggesting stuff. Plus, even once implemented in 1.6 Beta 5, I expect we will want to refine and enhance it as people play test it.

Leveling is not listed there only because we haven't totally finished discussing it here. But I more or less agree with people saying that the early levels have too little ore. It's possible that the later levels have too much ore.
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george moromisato wrote:
Shrike wrote:One thing people should know before suggesting stuff is that there is already a plan for reworking mining into something new, of sorts. However it doesn't cover levelling. And I really like the idea of deposits (as long as the RNG doesn't decide to throw deposits onto lone asteroids that are tiny and in the middle of nowhere so they're less a loot pinata and more a loot clown car).
That plan is definitely rough (it's already obsolete--I'm going to update it again today). And I'm definitely using the comments here to influence the plan, so please keep suggesting stuff. Plus, even once implemented in 1.6 Beta 5, I expect we will want to refine and enhance it as people play test it.

Leveling is not listed there only because we haven't totally finished discussing it here. But I more or less agree with people saying that the early levels have too little ore. It's possible that the later levels have too much ore.
Yeah, misphrased a little on it, sorry. Was aiming for "this is where it's at already, keep talking" rather than "this is what it is".


One thing I do think might be neat is reworking the old mining weapons. Right now, you shoot rocks and ore flies out. This works....but may become somewhat obsolete when pods come out. What would be cool is if the pods and laser/torch/FPC had two sort of variables: Efficiency (determines how much ore is extracted) and Destruction...how much (edit: of the ore NOT extracted) is destroyed (More edit: IE: Additional damage to the ore left in the rock), and how effective it is at breaking up rocks. (Edit): Or something like that. [/Edit]

Using pods would be great while it worked, but once the surface was worked over, you'd eventually run out of stuff the pods can extract easily, resulting in reduced returns and eventually it just not giving any more. Breaking up the asteroid (possibly literally, more likely just altering a flag on the thing) might destroy some ore (so doing it first, while possible for very early mining, is not preferable), but it lets you keep using pods past the point when they'd normally be unable to continue extracting stuff....resulting in a net gain.

I would also advise a disposable pod launcher at some point, based on the DM600.
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Shrike wrote:One thing people should know before suggesting stuff is that there is already a plan for reworking mining into something new, of sorts.
Didn't see that before, it's very nice. I'd actually been thinking of something like that, where mining yields are buffed significantly and local raiders begin attacking after the player has been mining for a while, making it somewhat dangerous and skill based, while decreasing monotony. It'd also be excellent for immersion, having pirate factions that actually perform acts of piracy. It'd supplement having to fight off illegal miners quite well.

For example, every 15 - 40 percent(randomized based on pirate presence in system, does not occur in systems without random encounters) of system ore mined, there is a chance that a raiding party is spawned to attack the player, with its faction determined by system level and its size determined by pirate presence. An example table of this is below:

Eridani: Centauri raiders, varying from 2 raiders to 4 raiders and a heavy raider.

Up to Charon: Charon pirates, from a Corsair II leading 2 Corsairs up to a pirate frigate(only in Charon) or a drake escorted by 5 Vikings(outside of Charon).

Up to Jiang's Star: Marauders, from a Viking II and a pair of Corsair IIs up to a sizable group of assorted Marauder gunships.

Past Jiang's Star: Kobol raiders, from 2 random Kobol gunships to a missile gunship and 4 other random Kobol gunships.
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