Mining ideas

[ptbptb]

Yes, it would take longer to complete the game but there is no penalty for taking your time.

The penalty for taking a lot of time, is taking a lot of time.

Suppose, for instance, that ice asteroids could be mined - slowly - for an infinite amount of water ice and mining stations would buy always buy ice. Very few people would want to spend hours of real time getting enough ice to pay off their fuel usage + 20%

In other words if we define the multiplier X to be

X = [time to win by mining and base cracking] / [time to win by base cracking]

It is certain that there is a value of X for which the majority of players will choose to win by battle alone.

On the principle of wanting alternative paths to victory to be equally valid then we would also have

X = [time to win by mining and base cracking] / [time to win by mining]

Determining X would be a matter for experimentation, but somewhere between 2 and 5 would be my guess.

[schilcote]

"Nethack's developers have created a very complex and suitable punishment for Pudding Farming. It's called Pudding Farming."

[ptbptb]

"Nethack's developers have created a very complex and suitable punishment for Pudding Farming. It's called Pudding Farming."

Damn, you said it so much better than me.

[Prophet]

I had an idea last night for persuading miners not to basecrack. In the mid-late game nearly every station has multihull, meaning that a weapon with WMD is nearly a necessity.
Perhaps simply providing enough mining equipment choices to fill the weapon slots with mining weapons/tools that do not have any WMD would be a big jump in the right direction.
Launchers are a favorite of mine for basecracking when I use the freighter, as my primary weapon is usually an omni or a high r.o.f. energy weapon to deal with swarms better. Providing specialized launchers for miners would make it much more difficult for a miner to basecrack.
Any thoughts?

[digdug]

I like that, special launchers for novel ammo used for mining could be a very good direction.

Launchers are also my favourite basecracking method when using the freighter.

[Atarlost]

That won't do what you want. For one, you still have to base crack to clear the area before you can mine it most of the time. They can't be made mutually exclusive. For another, if the launcher is worth using over the mining laser the mining laser can get left off freeing up a normal weapon slot for a WMD weapon.

And then there's the use of repeating weapons as a poor man's WMD. Mining lasers have repeating="4" for 5 damage even to stations. At 1d4 per shot that's equivalent to a weapon with about WMD 3.5 on a single 5d4 shot. (WMD3 is 20%, 1d4 without WMD averages about 28%, and WMD4 is 34%) That's a better WMD rating than the mark I howitzer.