croxis

In theory we won't even get to orbit for the first few months of the game. I have the nifty idea of a balloon type ship that moves about the planet. Over time as tech advances additional layers and tech get added on, so eventually it becomes a giant space station with the old wooden airship hull inside somewhere.,

Space Engineers, Minecraft, and Arc (all with survival mode and with mods): My brother and I have shelved this for now. We felt like we have reached the end game of what we set out to do and the game loop has become stale. There are no more challenges we want to overcome or problems that we need to engineer a solution for. We've overcome the survival aspects of the game to the degree that it is just creative mode. On the other hand we play all of the above on very small, private, pve-centric servers. We don't want to participate in pvp combat because, to be honest, we can't play all the time every day to make sure our hard work isn't lost. One success of Eve is that a thorax is a thorax and so I'm ok losing it as long as I can afford a replacement. However my creative work is much more important to me, so I don't want to put my hard work at risk.

Tutorial: I often shelf games that have isolated tutorials. "Oh you finished the tutorial? Lets throw away all the work you have done in this simulator and now you can start over with a real game." I would much rather have a tutorial system that actually begins to set me up for success in the actual game environment. Combat: The result of combat in eve seems mostly predetermined by ship loadouts instead of player skill and choices in combat. This can lead do some hour+ long waits for key players to fit their ships. I'm 32 with a kid on the way, I can't wait for that anymore.

This makes me think of three Overwatch Healing characters, Luci, Ana, and Mercy. For many games the healer (like mining) is a class that players don't often pick because of boredom or uninteresting gameplay. Mercy requires no twitch skills at all, but incredible situational awareness of her team mates and map awareness. Lucio's healing is passive so he can participate in combat and booping the bad guys off the map. Ana is a sniper, she can hit an enemy for damage or a friendly for healing. All of these make the role fun depending on the particular gameplay wanted or player talents. I haven't figure out how this could apply to mining as a lot of the "fun" gameplay in dual hasn't been announced or finalized yet.

Kerbal Space Program, Space Engineers, Overwatch, Eve Online

I have yet to play a game where the act of mining (or resource gathering in general) was itself fun. That is the other balance to the equation. I'll quote Sid on this one. The fun in games is "a series of interesting choices." Game mechanics that stabilize into a status quo (Rust and infinite oil) will result in a boring game for all sides. Mechanics that never result in a stable equilibrium (Rust with limited oil) requires individuals and groups to reevaluate and iterate on their systems if they want to keep the status quo. Here is my ideal: * Everyone can get some basic resources and build simple constructs (like a small hover bike) themselves so they can bootstrap on their first play or after a total loss, but most will purchase from the market to fullfill most their resource and construction needs. * The players we consider miners wont really mine themselves, mining is generally automated and the miners manage more of the logistic side of things, be it keeping a cheap mining rig functioning or a massive pit quarry with numerous automated drones. A player who is good can run a massive rig, or a smaller one and pursue other gameplay. * Player choice is needed to keep it running. Neglect the mines too long and they will begin to not produce at capacity and even break down. * Profit = Income - Expenses. Even a cheap rig will cost some money to run. If "everyone" is mining then mineral prices will drop to the point of being a loss. Others will flock to more profitable gameplay and prices will rise again.

What I know about economics comes from a xenobiology class I took back in uni (of all things). An economy is a system. "Energy" enters the system, moves around the system, and is pulled out of the system. This "pressure" (in energy its called flux) is what drives the internal parts of a system. A more practical analogy is a faucet and sink. If the faucet is off and the sink is plugged then the economy will gradually stop. The reason why not anyone can print money (legally) and developers in Eve control ratting payouts is so people who know what they are doing can control the flux on the economy to have "stuff happen" at an optimal/fun speed.

The big danger is that players will very quickly figure out the several alloys with the best min/max ratios, so all that dev time with to developing an alloy mixing system when they could spent far less time developing those several alloys in a more static way.

travel time is more important to a game than distance, imo. The next planet could be close (which is a great visual even if not realistic) but takes 20 minutes to get to with engines balanced at a slower speed, or a real Earth to Mars distance with engines scaled up.

All weapons turn to paint ball guns for April 1st

But you arnt behind, not in any real practical sense.

Fun should always trump realism if a choice has to be made.

I apologies that I wasn't clear, but that isn't what I posted. The tl;dr is that very basic, simple things is renewable/self sufficient. This is to get new players started quickly, a pathway for players who lost everything to restart, and reduce the chance of getting totally 100% stranded. I thought I was explicit with a BASIC construction material -- the voxel cube stuff for building constructs. With a good first player experience/tutorial a new player can have a structure built within 30 minutes. This construct will have no elements, because OTHER materials are needed to build functional elements. This will require the player to explore to obtain the other resources themselves or buy from a market. I would expect that a player could sit around on their farm if they wish because of the market, they are just indirectly paying others for it. The other issue you didn't consider is rate. The basic resource production chain is relatively slow. So if the player wishes to build or power more things faster, they will also need to gather/buy resources. I would expect that the arcship zone has non-renewable resources that will deplete over time. But as infrastructure and markets develop those materials will be available for purchase.

It has been done. Eve online has an API and, iirc, star trek online has an XMPP bridge for chat.

Sorry my post wasn't clear for you. I assumed log growth and levels being bonuses. (Did you quote the wrong post?) . Also my primary point is that players will create unfun grind if xp is gained by doing the task, despite the best intentions.