Mining Station Idea

[Aeonic]

Essentially this is a mining station. They will appear in asteroid fields just like regular mining stations and outlaw miners do, and you'll see their ships harvesting ore much like the Ferians. Their stations will be protected by sentry units and orbited by a reasonably large defense ship much like the Hauri.

At the station, you'll have the option of talking to the managers, who will tell you about how their operation is run, and how they think illegal miners may be intercepting their transmitions in order to steal ore from ore-rich asteroids that their survey ships have found. You'll also be able to purchas custom mining equipment, get basic dock services such as refueling and armor repair. Finally you'll be able to purchase the location of ore-rich asteroids, the price of the location depending on the type of ore that was found.

When purchasing the location of an asteroid, you get the job of going out to mine the asteroid in question, and if you want you can sell the ore back to the station although this should not be the most profitable way of selling it. These asteroids should be populated with a specific ore in varying quantities after you purchase the location of the asteroid from the station. Sometimes when you arrive at the asteroid, you will find that illegal miners are already there, and you will have to deal with them before you can mine your asteroid.

In the same system you should also see a small fleet wandering consisting of a survey ship accompanied by a squadron of Paranha-class gunships for protection. The survey ship is harmless and generally worthless, only used for scanning asteroids which is how the station knows where they are in order to sell you the locations. Once scanned, the survey ship theoretically transmits the locations of valuable asteroids back to the station, but these transmittions may occasionally be picked up by illegal miners who shadow the survey ship in order to find the location of these asteroids and mine them before anyone else does.

There may periodically be freighters traveling back and forth between the mining station and another station which manufactures the raw materials into equipment which is sold at the other station.

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Here's what I need to build in order for this to be finished:

- Custom station graphic.
- Custom mining ship graphic.
- Custom survey ship graphic.
- Custom paranha-class ship graphic.

I might also build new graphics for the sentry units and the orbiting defense ship, as well as the station that sells the equipment manufactured from the mined materials.

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You think that would be doable?

Perhaps having a mining station that sells you the location of good asteroids, which you can mine for a profit, would be better than wandering through the asteroid belt blasting every asteroid out there. Plus the occasion illegal miners interfering would make things interesting.

If someone else wanted to come up with it, the mining stations could also give you other little missions, like go rescue a freighter or deliver this package to somewhere, etc...

[Prophet]

I like the idea, and more graphics are always welcome. Scripting it wouldn't be too difficult and you could even generate the ore and the enemies according to the system level and/ore mining level (if it were implemented).

I have put the mining changes on hold until 1.0 comes out to see what changes George makes but would be more than happy to work with you on this at that time.

[Atarlost]

Why not use the usual hammerhead gunships or a mix of them with ronins according to system level.

[Aeonic]

...Because having custom ships is fun. Can have Hammerheads and Ronins all you want for illegal miners.

[Retroactive]

Why not use the usual hammerhead gunships or a mix of them with ronins according to system level.

I think most players' first instinct upon sighting a hammerhead is to hit it in the face with a missile. I have enough trouble not attacking friendly Borers when they travel between stations.

[schilcote]

Why not use the usual hammerhead gunships or a mix of them with ronins according to system level.

I think most players' first instinct upon sighting a hammerhead is to hit it in the face with a missile. I have enough trouble not attacking friendly Borers when they travel between stations.

Perhaps we should make friendly and enemy Borer gunships (Gunship? It's a mining vessel...) look slightly different?

[Aeonic]

I'm inclined to leave most of the changes to the existing game up to george. I'd rather spend my time adding new content to george's game than modifying what there already is.