Mining Changes

[Wurmish]

I'm just going to bring up one thing REALLY quick. It shouldn't take 75 minutes to write.

I prefer using Wolfen quite a bit, sometimes the Sapphire. Either case mining is now something I do fairly standard early game (before Rigel, usually amassing around 10000 to 25000 credits) and mid to late game (for rins if Ferian farming doesn't do enough). I would not say that mining is not POSSIBLE in the Wolfen or Sapphire, but just more trips are required (especially the Wolfen). Mining cargo expansion is quite nice.

[speedofsquid]

Maybe the mining cargo expansion should take up two device slots (one for the hold, one for the grappling mechanism) to limit the combat strength of Wolfen and Sapphire miners. Other mining equipment could also use up device slots (and increase overhead). To further weaken miners, ships could lose maneuverability at a greater rate when encumbered. When a ship is carrying enough ore, omnidirectional weapons would become most practical. As a last resort, pilots could eject their mined ore.

[Aeonic]

You already lose maneuverability when you're loaded up with 100 tons of ore, especially in a small ship. I have no objection to making the tools which allow for bringing ore onboard and smuggling goods but are separate from the cargo holds, so you can trade your ability to load as much ore for the extra device slot, or if you use enough device slots you can smuggle, mine and expand your cargo. After all, the more device slots you use, the less weapon enhancers you'll have installed.

It would also be good if miners needed to buy certain equipment to mine certain asteroids. For example, purchase certain shields which will protect from damage likely to be caused from certain types of asteroids. Radiation damage, explosion damage, shards of rock, etc...

I think a major aspect to making mining more fun is just to add more variety. If you're just sitting there blasting one rock after another, it gets boring fast. Even finding a little ore is exciting, but in the end that's all there currently is - blast rock, blast rock, blast rock, blast rock, collect ore, blast rock, blast rock... - If you add more variety to it, it'll improve things dramatically. I think missions would do quite a bit to break it up, even if its just purchasing the location of a rich asteroid, mining it, selling the ore, and returning to the station.

Regarding ship choices - some ships are going to be better at some things than others. Freighters suck at combat and rock at mining. Wolfens rock at combat and suck at mining. This is the choice you make when you choose your ship.

[Periculi]

It's mining, how 'fun' can it get? It's transcendence style character grinding to gain levels.

[Aeonic]

As much fun as anything else you do in the game. Base-cracking is grinding, Korolov is grinding, trading is grinding - Transcendence apparently consists of a lot of grinding. If those things can be made tolerably fun, then so can mining.

[Atarlost]

I don't think it can. Even Dwarf Fortress can't make mining (for ore as opposed to excavating for living space) fun.

[Prophet]

I put this together today, trying to add some minor changes.

Mining changes

It's just a whole mess of little changes and tweaks that end up making a fair bit of a difference.

Changes:
Asteroids are mobile
Asteroids are destructible
90% of asteroids have something in them
Reduced the amount of ore in each asteroid
Asteroids generate ore appropriate for their level
Asteroids will drop half of their ore when destroyed
Large asteroids can be mined, broken into smaller asteroids and then mined some more.
Did I mention they are mobile? This is actually a major change. Try it and you'll see.
Different asteroid types have different mixes of items at all levels.
Different asteroid types have different damage thresholds.
There's more but my battery is almost dead...

this is not a finished mod, it's not even really a mod at all, more of a demo/brainstorm of what is possible for everyone to try and see what they like. Please don't bring up any balance issues because that's not the goal, but rather suggest ideas on how to make it more fun first.

Please, everyone, feel free to post comments and suggestions, requests or just throw some crazy ideas out.
Thanks.

[Arisaya]

smells like Nova's mining XD
However, I must say I certainly found mining there more fun than mining here (and sometimes just blowing up asteroids with my uber-powerful polaris beam weapon was fun too...)

[Retroactive]

Prophet,

This is an ambitious effort!

One thing that I noticed in your mod is that ore-bearing asteroids will explode, often quite violently. This could probably stand to be toned down to disintegration and made consistent across all asteroids.

I also think that yields could be reduced to a few tons per asteroid; I made around 70,000 credits in Eridani from all the ceralloy dropping off ice asteroids.

I liked the very infequent drops of stuff like uranium nodules.

Mobile asteroids didn't really seem to add or subtract anything.

I'm not sure if this would be possible within the current limits of the game, but could different ores be assigned different sprites? This would simplify mining enormously.

I do think that this improves mining over the tedium of base.

[Atarlost]

It sounds like it's been pushed into free easy money territory, which means it would push out all other strategies.

[george moromisato]

I put this together today, trying to add some minor changes...

I really like this idea! The one suggestion I have is that maybe it should take some skill to mine. E.g., like EV Nova, maybe you need to chase down the mined ore.

This would (I think) be easy to do: Instead of ejecting station objects, maybe the asteroid ejects missile objects that you have to hit with your ship. Then on the <OnDamage> event, you can collect the ore (if you have the proper equipment, etc.)

[Aeonic]

It sounds like it's been pushed into free easy money territory, which means it would push out all other strategies.

Please don't bring up any balance issues because that's not the goal, but rather suggest ideas on how to make it more fun first.

No whining about balance issues until mining is made fun. That means you, Atarlost!

[Atarlost]

Balance must be considered from the start or you risk getting locked into ideas that are impossible to balance.

[Aeonic]

Better a fun unbalanced game than a boring balanced one. Regardless, this is about testing if a concept works at all and is fun, NOT about testing whether it is balanced, that can be dealt with later. You cannot balance a system that is not finished.

[Atarlost]

We already have a fun game, though, so the choice is not between a fun unbalanced game and a boring balanced one, but between a balanced one that maybe doesn't include mining and an unbalanced one that does.

I've seen what happens when you take no account of balance. It's not pretty.