Mining Tools

[Atarlost]

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.

George pretty much has the right of it.

The problem is that you can grind as a miner, but except against specific enemies you can't grind as a combatant, and you can pretty much never grind as a merchant.

Mining is where the money is. Either mining is profitable enough to make a difference or it isn't. If it is the game either becomes too easy for those who mine or too difficult for those who don't. If it's not there's little reason to have it in the game. Same for trading. There's currently next to no risk to either.

The pool of available money is finite up until lucrative infinite spawning ships start appearing. Those will probably be made non-infinite in the future. A very large chunk of that available money pool comes from mining.

Currently the game is balanced such that you need some big money source pre-St. K, be it mining, drug running, a fuel depot-ice farm-hotel run, a large number of korolov missions, lots of tinkers so you can sell damaged stuff, or the armor enhancment exploit. The Arena kind of helps, but you need money before Rigel if you're going to do the arena.

There's no exclusivity though. The miner is also doing the trade routes and the korolov missions so he gets to buy anything he likes the look of and since the only leveling is equipment based the miner doesn't even have the normal disadvantage of noncombatant strategies of being underleveled. If the mining equipment more severely impacted your combat ability then there'd be a non-boredom downside, but right now there isn't. Or if there were a lot fewer asteroids to mine so it wasn't a huge income source. If all the belts were claimed or mined out the small fields wouldn't give the sort of income that removes the need to make hard choices, but also wouldn't justify special equipment.

After St. K's there's really nothing to balance mining against the way you could theoretically balance it against korolov if they were made mutually exclusive. You can't take away the military missions from the miner or they can't win, and they don't give any money anyhow. It's not until Nebulas start replacing asteroids and the infinitely lootable Ventari, Huari, and Ranx start showing up that the combatant gains an economic advantage over the miner.

[Aeonic]

Has anyone ever played a level-based RPG where, at some point, they didn't feel like dealing with difficult enemies the proper way, so they sat around and gained levels until they could kick the big nasty enemies out of the way without a thought? That's kind of what I figure mining is.

Mining isn't necessary to win the game. I've played several games where I never mined anything at all, and those games turned out fine. But for those who want to get their ship decked out with the best equipment out there so they can kick every enemies butt for the next ten systems - there's mining. Its grinding, just like mindlessly gaining levels in an RPG is grinding. But players aren't forced to grind, its simply a choice they're allowed to make.

Frankly most of the big fancy things I'd end up buying I usually find on wreckage somewhere anyway.

You can't take away the military missions from the miner or they can't win

Which, incidentally, is something I really don't like. There's really nothing to do in that part of the game EXCEPT military missions. That's probably why I find the beginning of the game much more enjoyable than the later parts.

I'd be really happy with some nice exploration, recon, messenger or delivery missions.

[Prophet]

Mining and Trading are integral to the game.
If you remove them from the game you might as well remove the freighter as an optional player ship. These activities provide an alternative play style for those who do not want to wander around destroying everything they find. I'm not proposing that these activities be mandatory, only that they be viable alternatives. They should be balanced relative to the rest of the game in terms of risk and reward with respect to the amount of time and resources invested in them. Mining is an optional side quest that gets overlooked because it's often boring and not profitable. Introducing some risk would also make it more enjoyable.

What if you shoot an asteroid that is packed with a highly reactive chemical? maybe it blows up? What if the asteroid is home to a space creature (a pteravore?) that decides it doesn't want to be evicted from it's home? Maybe the asteroid has a cache of items and it's owner doesn't like you poking around? Maybe there's an ancient alien artifact or some rare crystal formation.... I could go on but basically we need more variation than point, shoot, collect, sell and repeat.

Mining could have an associated xp and ranking system. The current mechanics for how mining works can stay. You go out and mine ore and bring it to a new station, which will pay the standard price of the ore. The station will also hire you for missions, which do not require you to have mining equipment to complete, and will grant credits and xp on completion.
There will also be 'open' missions like the ronin weapons cache or centauri occupied station that will grant mining xp. Higher levels will unlock better mining tools that are sold from the station.

[Aury]

Mining and Trading are integral to the game.
If you remove them from the game you might as well remove the freighter as an optional player ship. These activities provide an alternative play style for those who do not want to wander around destroying everything they find. I'm not proposing that these activities be mandatory, only that they be viable alternatives. They should be balanced relative to the rest of the game in terms of risk and reward with respect to the amount of time and resources invested in them. Mining is an optional side quest that gets overlooked because it's often boring and not profitable. Introducing some risk would also make it more enjoyable.

What if you shoot an asteroid that is packed with a highly reactive chemical? maybe it blows up? What if the asteroid is home to a space creature (a pteravore?) that decides it doesn't want to be evicted from it's home? Maybe the asteroid has a cache of items and it's owner doesn't like you poking around? Maybe there's an ancient alien artifact or some rare crystal formation.... I could go on but basically we need more variation than point, shoot, collect, sell and repeat.

Mining could have an associated xp and ranking system. The current mechanics for how mining works can stay. You go out and mine ore and bring it to a new station, which will pay the standard price of the ore. The station will also hire you for missions, which do not require you to have mining equipment to complete, and will grant credits and xp on completion.
There will also be 'open' missions like the ronin weapons cache or centauri occupied station that will grant mining xp. Higher levels will unlock better mining tools that are sold from the station.

well, the current mechanichs being such a grind as they are, i never mine. too boring. now non equipment mining missions sounds fun, and i might mine if the end result was automining equipment or a mining7 gun that could double as a decent weapon for the level it is obtained at.

[Song]

Leaving aside the discussion about wether mining is worthwhile...

I would quite like to see a dual-mining laser device, using a firing layout similar to a PM6 Slicer....so that both sets of beams can be fired at the same asteroid. This would also be a slightly better in combat that frankly useless standard mining laser (which is used by the illegal miners way past St. Ks....which makes the Borers pathetic enemies)

[Aeonic]

I don't know about the PM6 Slicer since, until you mentioned it, I had no idea of its existence, however, I do have a dual mining laser on my current mining kit. Its just two mining lasers working side by side, a few pixels apart (close than the standard dual configuration). I figure since you typically blast each asteroid twice with a normal mining laser, then a dual mining laser would save you the trouble.

There's also a particle variation mining beam, which does a little over twice as much damage and of particle type, so it'd be more effective if used for self defense. There's also a drilling beam, which launches a blistering 60 shots per second, although they only do 1 point of damage each, still, that's over twice what a typical mining laser does. Combine these tools with a laser collimator and they could be fairly nasty.

Then there's the x-ray based deep core mining laser, which not only hurts, a lot, but it penetrates targets like a katana star cannon (unfortunately, this does not work on asteroids). It does over 4x the damage of a typical mining laser without the penetration.

[Song]

I don't know about the PM6 Slicer since, until you mentioned it, I had no idea of its existence, however, I do have a dual mining laser on my current mining kit. Its just two mining lasers working side by side, a few pixels apart (close than the standard dual configuration). I figure since you typically blast each asteroid twice with a normal mining laser, then a dual mining laser would save you the trouble.

There's also a particle variation mining beam, which does a little over twice as much damage and of particle type, so it'd be more effective if used for self defense. There's also a drilling beam, which launches a blistering 60 shots per second, although they only do 1 point of damage each, still, that's over twice what a typical mining laser does. Combine these tools with a laser collimator and they could be fairly nasty.

Then there's the x-ray based deep core mining laser, which not only hurts, a lot, but it penetrates targets like a katana star cannon (unfortunately, this does not work on asteroids). It does over 4x the damage of a typical mining laser without the penetration.

The PM6 is the the weapon by "The Slicer" in the last Arena battle in RC1/2.

Although a dual mining laser with beams close together does the same thing.

Your drilling beam might be a little OPed.....and sounds more like a capacitor using weapon (like the Ares lightning Turret)....but I like the sound of it!

60 shots per second.......I can't WAIT to slap a maxed speed enhancement on that with the G.O.D Mod.

[Aeonic]

Your drilling beam might be a little OPed.....and sounds more like a capacitor using weapon (like the Ares lightning Turret)....but I like the sound of it!

No, but that sounds like a good idea. Crank up the power a bit and let people blast away with it until the thing runs out of spit or overheats. Overheating sounds more realistic.

[Atarlost]

The game does not support 60 shots/second. Odd firerates are rouded up to the nearest multiple of 2. You're actually getting 30 shots/second, and the speed can never be enhanced. (unless you're doing a repeat 1 weapon, in which case you'd get 60 shots/second but they'd come in pairs) A 1 damage laser will do 0 to anything but level 1 armor or shields though or perhaps some higher level stuff with vulnerabilities.

Oh, for the dual converging weapon, from the standard 14 pixel offset dual weapon positions with each angled in by one degree the shots converge at 36 ls.

[Aeonic]

Alright, alright, I've modified it so its only 40 shots per second (which still looks exactly the same in game), but it does 2 laser damage and is a more effective mining tool, so its level was raised a notch as was the price.

It now easily slices and dices low level ships. However it is useless against ships such as centurions, although perhaps with a laser collimator it could resume doing some meaningful damage.

Oh, and technically its 10 shots per second with 4 shots per shot, so, 2 (x4) damage at 10 shots/sec.

[Atarlost]

Ah. You've got overlapping shots up the wazoo then.

[Aeonic]

As long as the end result looks like a relatively solid, persistent beam, that's fine with me!

And quite frankly, intentional.

[Atarlost]

From the standpoint of appearance there's no reason to have higher than 30 shots/second. Firerate 2 repeat 0 creates the same wall of green as firereate 6 repeat 3 or firerate 60 repeat 59

[Aeonic]

I figure using repeat instead of an extremely high fire rate provides more room for upgrades.

Are you in a mood to be difficult today or what?

[Atarlost]

I figure using repeat instead of an extremely high fire rate provides more room for upgrades.

Are you in a mood to be difficult today or what?

Yes.