Mining Tools

[Darth Saber]

Excellent idea OddBob; that sounds like a mission everyone would like. PM George and see if he would like to incorporate it into the next release canidate.

[IceMephit]

If we could get overlays to work on stations we could have a geology scan place a visual marker over asteroids that have ore in them.

I'm not sure if you can set the player's target with (shpOrderGoto ... or something similar) and point them to the nearest asteroid with ore? I will look into this...

I look forward to seeing what you come up with, I myself am a miner. Great cash for the first few systems.

Is there a way to tie it into the targeting system, like selecting a ship, but instead it will allow you to target asteroids? Once targeted maybe give info such as ore present (maybe not ore type/qty).

[Aeonic]

The problem with mining in the mid-late game is that it is time consuming and not very profitable. While the new tools can help with the first problem, making it more profitable is difficult.

I'd think just raising the price of some of the higher level ores so that you're getting a better deal selling those instead of looted weapons would solve that problem. Making some valuable armor that can only be forged with mined ore would also help.

(leq (random 1 100) (divide (multiply aMineProbability miningDifficulty) 100))

If that's the case, doesn't that give a plasma torch something like a 10% chance of finding ore per hit on a volcanic asteroid? And doesn't the plasma torch also send out 45-60 particles, giving it a 450-600% chance of finding something? Seems kind of overkill unless I'm doing the math wrong.

[Aeonic]

Might it also be possible to setup a mining corporation that worked something like Korolov? Your mission is to mine a certain field in order to retrieve a specified amount of ore - perhaps the asteroid field could be modified to make sure that the specified amount of ore actually exists there.

After a few mission to extract ore, you'll start to get more lucrative jobs mining valuable ores. You'd be getting paid roughly the value of the ore you're mining, just to keep you from running off and selling it instead of turning it in.

Mining missions could include defending against outlaw miners, as suggested in the other post, or even hunting down and exterminating them if they happen to be based in the system somewhere.

Such a corporation could also provide information about how to mine, different asteroid types, and so forth - as well as providing some additional mining equipment.

[Prophet]

This all sounds great.

A new station would be a great starting point, perhaps part of the Ringer's sovereign if it's going to be that far out? Else it could just be CW. I would rather make this station a refinery type purpose to create a demand for all ore, even if you don't want to run missions for them or buy an asteroid claim. You can still mine the traditional way and bring your ore here for a premium price (maybe even get paid in Rins if the station is allied with the ringers) As a refinery, they could also use certain ores to produce a few items, similar to the tinkers. As well as offer the new mining tools, information.

The <OnMining> event in a custom asteroid could alert the player that they are trying to mine ore that has already been claimed, if they visit the station they can buy the claim at which point the roid becomes mine-able.

The claim would not be cheap, but the roid could have dozens of high end ores inside or it might be almost depleted. This would then provoke either illegal miners or even ferians to try and steal your ore.

Basically I agree with what oddbob suggested minus the introduction of the heavy mining equipment or hired miners.

Some mission ideas:
1. Some miners have gone missing, try and find them.
when you arrive at the marker you find the wreck of the missing miner, and then some enemies appear. You've just been ambushed! Try to survive and return to inform the station.

2. Protect the miner's survey ship while it surveys an asteroid field.
(self explanatory)

3. Clear an asteroid field of all enemies.
A variation on the 'kill the illegal miners'
This could be really fun, an extermination mission. This could be nasty trying to fight inside the asteroid field. Perhaps they have some asteroids packed with explosives and they detonate if you get too close. Lots of possibilites.


Aeonic: I will create the station and try writing some missions if you are willing to design the station and make the equipment? I am currently working on another project (V.U.I. and some new cyberdecks) but this sounds very promising.

[Atarlost]

Sorry, missed this post before.

It has to be. The player needs to be prepared to fight the Iocrym at the end. It would be cruel to spring a boss fight on someone at the end on someone who's basically been playing Taipei all game without much fighting.

Unless those alternative play styles earned you uber amounts of cash or access to things that you couldn't acquire just by blowing stuff up, which in turn made it possible for you to get better equipment than a standard combat player couldn't normally get.

At the moment, its easier just to blow up some Ares bases and steal the undamaged archcannons and cash those in at the Ringers or Teraton bases. I went through three 100 ton loads of volcanic mined ore and only made 15k while a single archcannon sells for 20k.

Mining is pure grind. Some people like grinding, but most don't, and forcing them to grind to get the best equipment is cruel. There's already a nearly must have shield that you can only get by doing repeated missions. Adding must have armor that requires particularly boring grind isn't going to help the game. Especially since mining requries compramising your ship. Effective mining takes two slots of different types. Nobody can readily spare two slots. The freighter only hass two slots for weapons. The gunship only has two slots for nonweapons (assuming a reactor and shield) and the yacht only hass five slots total. (again, once you take away slots for the weapon and shield)

Super armor would have been fine in 0.99 because armor hardly mattered, but in 1.0 it's too important. It will either be overshadowed by carbide carapace, diamond lattice, holochroal, and p250 hexphaseand become as irrelevant as the Dvalin ion9, or it will overshadow them and become the new Class V. Both are bad.

[george moromisato]

Mining is pure grind.

I agree that mining today is pure grind, but is there some way to design it such that it will not be? That's what I think people are trying to do. If they succeed, then naturally the rewards for mining should be improved.

[Atarlost]

There's still the danger of creating the next Class V deflector if you get into nonmonetary rewards.

[Aeonic]

Class V is hardly essential since I just played my last game through without it and didn't have much trouble. Frankly I consider bombarding bases in late game to require just as much grinding as mining, but that's what the game makes you do if you want to peruse a combat course. If mining is so horrible why was it bothered to be included in the first place?

And I think its kind of dumb to post on a thread where people are suggesting ways to make mining more interesting about how mining is boring and you shouldn't make people do it.

No one ever MAKES you get the best equipment in the game. Having the best equipment is never REQUIRED to progress in the game (or at least never should be). If you don't want to do the work, you don't get the goodies, and you'll just have to live without them. Unless you have to run Korolov missions for half an hour to get the key to the Heretic stargate, its not going to ruin the game.

A new station would be a great starting point, perhaps part of the Ringer's sovereign if it's going to be that far out? Else it could just be CW.
Aeonic: I will create the station and try writing some missions if you are willing to design the station and make the equipment? I am currently working on another project (V.U.I. and some new cyberdecks) but this sounds very promising.

My only issue with it being a Ringer's station is that I wouldn't have a clue how to imitate a Ringer's station model without having the proper textures that george has been using.

Commonwealth stuff tends to look much more generic. But they could just be another freelance mining company that makes its job to mine the more valuable ores of deep space. After all, a lot of the mining companies in early game talk about how they made a killing mining in deep space.

[Sponge]

If that's the case, doesn't that give a plasma torch something like a 10% chance of finding ore per hit on a volcanic asteroid? And doesn't the plasma torch also send out 45-60 particles, giving it a 450-600% chance of finding something? Seems kind of overkill unless I'm doing the math wrong.

That's not how probability works. Going by that logic, if I were to flip a coin twice I would have a 100% chance of getting heads and a 100% chance of getting tails, which is quite evidently not the case. In this case, it is easiest to calculate the chance of something not occurring. That gives you a 90% chance. With an average of ~53 particles, raise .90 to the 53rd power to get the chance of not getting an ore. Subtract that from 1 to get the chance of getting an ore. I'm getting 99.6%. That said, I have no idea if that's even close to correct because I didn't so much as even look at the formula with which you derived 10%.

[george moromisato]

And I think its kind of dumb to post on a thread where people are suggesting ways to make mining more interesting about how mining is boring and you shouldn't make people do it.

Sorry to put words in Atarlost's mouth, but I don't think he opposes making mining more interesting; I think he objects to making mining unbalanced in comparison to other play-styles.

Ideally, there should be multiple successful play strategies in Transcendence. Some should be equal--it's up to the player to decide which strategy to pursue. Some should be subject to the RNG: if you're dealt a certain hand, then a certain strategy is preferable.

I think we can all agree that:

1. All strategies should be as fun/interesting as possible
2. No strategy should be so successful that it crowds out other strategies.

You all are working on #1. Atarlost is working on #2.

[Betelgeuse]

sorry to disagree with you George but from my conversations with Atarlost he would rather not have mining in the game at all. Atarlost seems more to be a minimalist, anything not directly related to combat isn't wanted or even desirable. This does mean he doesn't like trade. In his defense it would be very hard to balance two different playstyles.

[Aury]

Well, minimalist stuff is pretty easy to balance, so I see Atarlost's point, and often its best to toss out some of the frills, but TX2 (Which has had tons of his input on balancing) also aims to produce a fully realized world, including inter-factional combat, reactors on ships, etc. A whole minefield of balance just ready to go wrong (and certainly has blown up in my face more than a few times), but the balance is still attainable, it's just a WHOLE LOT HARDER due to all the different things that can go wrong. To be a bit more exact, it's just EASIEST to throw out mining. Of course, you can only go so far with reducing stuff. I mean, after a certain amount of fluff-cropping, you might as well go play rock-paper-scissors.

My plan w/ TX2 is to make everything first, as unbalanced as it may be, and then brute-force-balance my way through the minefield (yay for tanks!) to good gameplay.

George; if I havn't said this before, I just wanted to let you know you can take whatever you want from TX2 for use in vanilla transcendence. That means if we eventually find a working balance for mining that gets implementing in TX2, don't feel you can't take it.
Well, I'm not sure about aeonic's ships; you'll have to ask him about those if you ever decide to give the teratons a sweet ride. XD

[digdug]

I just would add my little idea too (that has already been said before):
What I would like from mining is "something" that it's not only for the money.

For example:
- Angry illegal miners could pop-up if you start mining in their area, and a local Commonwealth colony could reward you if you get rid of them.
- Mining for finding a rare ore for Dvalin.
- Mining titanium ore for a local station, so that it can repair the damage caused by pirates.
- Mining to find ancient alien artifacts.
- Mining as a decoy to distract a large group of pirates, so that a they come after you and not after a freighter with a very valuable cargo.
- Mining for surviving in nearly empty systems, you could mine your own pteracnium to fuel your reactor. This could also explain why the sovereigns are divided in areas, even if the main topology of the systems is linear, reaching another area could be too expensive in fuel.

So what i would like is "mission based" events like the agricultural station defense mission.

[Aeonic]

Anyway, if I have the math right, these are your chances of mining ore on the different kinds of asteroids using first a mining laser and then a plasma torch. This is your chance of success after one second of using the weapon (two blasts from each). FYI, as Sponge said in the other posts, plasma torch has a 99.6% chance of success on a volcanic asteroid with only one shot. Safe to say you don't need to use more than one unless the asteroid is yielding.

Code: Select all

Volc%	Metal%	Frost%	Ore%
33.5%	46.1%	65.1%	89.3%
100.0%	100.0%	100.0%	100.0%

As you can see, there's no point in getting any weapons of that type beyond plasma torch, even if its mining level is only 5 out of 7. ~50 hits is enough to get virtually anything out of any asteroid.

I'd be inclined to make plasma torches illegal to use in mining operations for some trumped up reasons. Maybe they ruin ore and are considered wasteful. Actually if you could make plasma torches actually destroy ore objects, that would be sweet and yet suck at the same time. Whoops, misfire!

So, since you can't get any mining tools of that type better than plasma torches, obviously there needs to be mining tools of different types to appeal to people - mass effect mining tools, for instance. Too bad you can't make an ICX to target asteroids.