Spice up the mining

[Kurock]

Scanning and mining devblog was added recently. And this got me thinking:

 

One of the base ideas of all the mechanics in DU is to make it easy to use but hard to master. There is mastery in the form of both character skills and player experience.

 

Can mining be made more interesting than point and click and the better the tool the more efficient the mining will be? I am not talking about the logistic of moving the material after it has been mined which could be an issue all on its own but rather this is about the mining itself.

 

It has been mentioned elsewhere that the deeper you mine there is potential for heat dangers (Such as minecrafts lava pools). Other natural hazards such as gas pockets could also be an issue. I feel these should be done very carefully as they could easily become an annoyance and not actually make the game play any different.

 

How about an increased or decreased efficiency in mining at a certain angle or from a certain direction, like with or against the "grain" or strata of a certain resource. Why this is interesting is that hand mining will more easily follow the changes of the resources strata while a digging machine will lose some of that efficiency.

 

Can you think of other ways to spice up the mining?

[Kuritho]

I would like a drill ship. Not one that is insanely overpowered, but a drill ship would be nice because it'd be more immersive.

But the mining dangers would strain the server. If they could do that I'd be happy.

[Fitorion]

Resource mixing... and or pockets of rarer stuff surrounded by less rare stuff.

 

With mixing you could have 2 materials that need different techniques to gather right next to each other.  Requiring planning to maximize how much of each you can gather.

 

Pockets of more rare materials inside your lower rarity is just a nice surprise as you're going along.

 

 

I like the grain idea... Mining can be very repetitive... Something that makes it more intellectually engaging so you're having to stop every so often to rethink and plan your next move for increased yield would be most welcome.  

 

Another way of doing that, may be to have several different types of Ore for the same refined material... and these ores need different tools to extract them... so as you're going along and the color of the ore you're mining shifts slightly and you're getting less stuff out of each hit... maybe it's time to switch to another tool.  This is very much like mixing...

 

There's got to be more ways...  I think it's got to be puzzling...  Not a really hard puzzle... but one with large amounts of variety and which isn't a literal puzzle...

 

Sudoku is a literal puzzle which isn't very hard yet has hundreds of thousands of variations.  Mining should in much the same way take a little bit of figuring to discern the proper path and be different each time. 

[Limyaael]

I like the grain idea... Mining can be very repetitive... Something that makes it more intellectually engaging so you're having to stop every so often to rethink and plan your next move for increased yield would be most welcome.

In the devblog it's mentioned that you would have to build constructs to get dirt out of your mines. So presumably, your characters can't just carry all that dirt on them and you'll need to break up the monotony of digging to go up to the surface and dump the dirt next to your mine, or in a truck or something (maybe the planet has a beautification policy and all dirt dug out of one mine goes towards filling up another completed mine).

 

Besides, this isn't like Minecraft where you'll be digging through tons of cobblestone to find three blocks of diamond. Your prospectors will be directing you right towards where the ores you're searching for should be. It shouldn't be as boring so long as you have a good prospector.

[Fitorion]

In the devblog it's mentioned that you would have to build constructs to get dirt out of your mines. So presumably, your characters can't just carry all that dirt on them and you'll need to break up the monotony of digging to go up to the surface and dump the dirt next to your mine, or in a truck or something (maybe the planet has a beautification policy and all dirt dug out of one mine goes towards filling up another completed mine).

 

Besides, this isn't like Minecraft where you'll be digging through tons of cobblestone to find three blocks of diamond. Your prospectors will be directing you right towards where the ores you're searching for should be. It shouldn't be as boring so long as you have a good prospector.

 

in the same article they also say it could take weeks or months to dig out some of the larger deposits... Even with occasional breaks to haul stuff up to the surface... that's a long time clicking featureless monotonous rock wall. 

 

Something needs to be implemented that makes the act of mining something that isn't mindless.  And no elevator shafts and hauling stuff out doesn't do that.

[Kurock]

Resource mixing... and or pockets of rarer stuff surrounded by less rare stuff.

 

I like this idea.  Firstly because it could lead to extra discoveries for example the prospector found rare resource X.  But in inspection, resource X is surrounded by a large deposit of resource Y.  What a nice surprise.  And it also works the other way around.  Digging through less expensive resource Y, a few nuggets of a rarer resource may appear.

 

This brought on the idea, what if you change the settings of your morpher manually?  The default setting is to just dig everything equally badly. But with a bit of fine tuning you could set it to dig out specific resources more efficiently (faster, more resources obtained) but everything else takes longer.  This also leads to situations that you are collecting multiple resources, you need to choose which one you favor and have the morpher set to that one.  Though technically upgrades could also fill this role.

 

Though I still think the "puzzle" of maximizing a vein by digging along its changing 'grain'/strata is a more interesting problem to solve for miners, though these ideas can all work together.

[gyurka66]

I would like a drill ship. Not one that is insanely overpowered, but a drill ship would be nice because it'd be more immersive.

But the mining dangers would strain the server. If they could do that I'd be happy.

Dangers would only stress the server when they are activated and i suppose you are not meant to dig out 100 gas pockets at once.

You dont have to care about the servers so much that's the developers job. In the idea box we are supposed to support them with ideas, don't worry they will only include ideas they can(Because hardware limitations).

 

I support the drill ship idea. I dont understand why they want only manual mining (i dont want to get bored, thx).

[Fitorion]

If they introduced explosives...

 

It could be balanced in such a way that it's not much faster than clicking on the wall... but so much more fun.

 

 

Like the time it takes to gather a given number of resources by clicking ... say 10,000 is the same as the time it takes to set up the explosive charges... trigger them... and then run in to pick everything up.

 

But the differences in positioning and timing of each explosive is different each time... it's an engaging puzzle that's different every time.  Plus you get a cool explosion to watch and instant gratification of a massive amount of resources all at once... even if it's roughly the same efficiency as the other method. 

 

 

 

I'm trying to come up with as many different methods for mining that relieve the monotony as possible.  Also ideas for ships and machines.

 

 

I'd love an asteroid mining ship that's basically a mobile factory that just sucks in asteroids to refine them.  In the Star Wars Expanded Universe before everything got dumped... there were these ships called World Devastators.  Huge mobile factories that sucked in materials... asteroid or planet surface... building or ship... and then used those materials to build robot Tie Fighters and repair itself. 

 

 

 

As cool as having something like that in game would be...  It would suck for anyone who built anything on the surface without a safe zone generator... as one of these could come along and carve a 500m deep by 1km wide trench through whatever you were doing...

[Fitorion]

I think ship based mining should be limited to space only.  Asteroid processing.

 

Just make asteroids have 2-3 materials that can only be found there and you'll have people who specialize in asteroid mining.  And that will leave planet based mining unaffected. 

 

Just put an oversized nanoformer on a ship... and provide enough storage space to contain all the ore and you got a mining ship.  Then people could tack on processing facilities to process the ore on the way back to market to sell it. 

 

As an explanation for why it doesn't work on planets... You could say that the energy involved in such a large nanoformer is adversely effected by gravity... or atmosphere... or magnetic fields... so if you try to use it on a planet is shorts out or something.

[Mazillus]

I'd personally rather mining require dedicated tools and vehicles instead of having voxel hands.

 

Voxel hands to me just looks immersion breaking.

[Dirk Baeyens]

I think it is not so bad to dig by hand, it gives the game the time to send and receive the data. Maybe there are hidden shortcuts in the tools that you have to master. Or maybe you can buy extra things with DACs. I will start it slow to understand and master the tools.

[Fitorion]

I think it is not so bad to dig by hand, it gives the game the time to send and receive the data. Maybe there are hidden shortcuts in the tools that you have to master. Or maybe you can buy extra things with DACs. I will start it slow to understand and master the tools.

the problem isn't so much the speed... it's the monotony.

 

Most of the suggestions in this thread aren't about speeding mining up but about making it entertaining and intellectually engaging.  Doing that may actually slow down mining...

[Guest]

What if we had auto miners and could adjust different settings or make it more efficient.

[Lethys]

What if we had auto miners and could adjust different settings or make it more efficient.

Automatic mining = bots would surely make mining more interesting.....not

[Guest]

Automatic mining = bots would surely make mining more interesting.....not

If you are trying to build a giant ship you dont want to stand there mining. But your right bots wouldn't be the best.

[Anaximander]

Spice up mining? Make minerals explode!

That way miners will be able to unionise to demand better wages for their work. You know, politics. And it would make mining serious business.

[Dirk Baeyens]

It is for that that the big groups will advance faster because they can for example put 100 miners out. If you want to advance quick then join a large group if you want to do it slow then you could do it alone or with a few.

[Kurock]

the problem isn't so much the speed... it's the monotony.

 

Most of the suggestions in this thread aren't about speeding mining up but about making it entertaining and intellectually engaging.  Doing that may actually slow down mining...

 

The suggestions in the thread are exactly meant to come up with ideas to make mining entertaining and intellectually engaging.  The speed of mining is immaterial as mentioned in the first sentence.

 

Automating mining hopefully won't happen. Or be so inefficient that it makes player miners the go to.  Exploding minerals might be one way of doing this.  Having to constantly repair the digging ships would be more expensive than miners that can dig with better precision around the exploding parts. 

[Lights]

Honestly all they need to do is make light,medium, and heavy versions of each one, and intensity settings on your drill to correspond to each. If you use a heavy drill on light one you will mine more but loose like half the ore cue to the pressure and if you use light drills on heavy ore you will end up mining big chunks but in a very very slow pace, and medium ore can be mined by both drills without much repercussions other than being slow but the medium drill will just do it the quickest.

[croxis]

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.

[Lights]

To add on to my previous comment,kurock had a good idea to spice up the mining the problem with "grain" mining is that i believe it would be too much to rework the mechanics of the game with grains and while it would be a fun idea i believe my idea of light medium and heavy materials is more practical and an easier solution to implement until the game has the capability to create more complex mining mechanics such as grains.

[Lord_Void]

To add on to my previous comment,kurock had a good idea to spice up the mining the problem with "grain" mining is that i believe it would be too much to rework the mechanics of the game with grains and while it would be a fun idea i believe my idea of light medium and heavy materials is more practical and an easier solution to implement until the game has the capability to create more complex mining mechanics such as grains.

 

I agree with this, it makes more sense to add something like ore quality or density into the mix than some sort of directional calculations.

[Fitorion]

To add on to my previous comment,kurock had a good idea to spice up the mining the problem with "grain" mining is that i believe it would be too much to rework the mechanics of the game with grains and while it would be a fun idea i believe my idea of light medium and heavy materials is more practical and an easier solution to implement until the game has the capability to create more complex mining mechanics such as grains.

 

I agree with this, it makes more sense to add something like ore quality or density into the mix than some sort of directional calculations.

 

well... yeah... but just doing that still seems a little too simple to me.  Not engaging enough.  If we could combine it with some sort of hazard... explosive pockets or even false materials... So you have to pay attention... work around obstacles... 

 

I don't know what the best solution is.  I just want mining to be enjoyable as well as profitable.

[Lights]

Well im talking about the mining "swings" itself, of course they should include stuff like sealed caverns which over time created poisonous air and gas pockets and just large cavern falls and magma the closer to the center you go.

[Lethys]

lava/magma like in minecraft confirmed by devs