Mining operations. volume of matter, mechanics.

[devu]

Hi @All @NQ

 

Some other discussion of discord channel triggered me to as this question.

 

How is the mining will be implemented exactly?

So far we know you have a scanning process worked out. 

 

We know with the our mining tool will be able to extract volumes of matter when you located your deposit. 

that brings 2 questions:

 

1. How the ore deposits will be positioned... as a veins stretching over some lengths on certain depth? Or simply blobs of it in random locations and depth.

 

2. Once we located the ore, to get there we will need to dig trough dirt and useless rocks. What will happen to this material? Will be able to magically get rid of that unwanted material or more realistically to get rid of, means deposit in other place.

 

Personally I wish the second is the truth. That would create logistic challenges and even help to keep Alioth in better shape. Because nobody will shamelessly dig holes all over the place and simply destroying it into void. It should be transfer of any matter. If your inventory is full of dirt you have to go somewhere else and form a hill out of it to empty your inventory. If you need to move your valuable resources they physically occupies the same volume of space as it was laying in the ground.

 

So what is your plan in regards to this?

[Kuritho]

I hope that there will be massive veins of ore instead of blobs of it.

So a mining operation actually makes sense.

[Shynras]

1- i heard JC saying there'll be veins of resources kilometers long. I guess those will be the common ones, while the rare resources will have shorter veins and possibly blobs or different shapes (depending on the procedural generation algorithm they set up) 

 

2-Noone knows, but I'd say you'll just get rocks and dirt in your inventory. It's the more immersive choice and it would be wierd if stone and dirt are not in the game. At best with skills or the nanoformer they may add the possibility to filter materials

[ATMLVE]

1. There was a Devblog about scanning already with relevant information. They'll be blobs of voxels; the size and depth of the blob will be different for different resources. I'll let the table from the blog speak for itself:

 

 

 

2. There hasn't been any clear-cut information in regards to this, but given the nature of the game and what it is aiming to be, my speculation is that voxels cannot ever be completely destroyed. You can fill a cargo container with tons of useless dirt and launch it into open space, but I don't think there will be some little red X that you can click on to magically delete stuff.

 

One reason for that is that it is simply unrealistic. It's just the nature of the game; everything is physical and tangible, you want ore from the guy the next system over, it has to be physically transported. Another reason is that someone could delete all of their valuables in a hurry if they knew they would be lost, or to troll. If you have a base filled with rare stuff, someone might be able to break in and delete it all, even if they have no way out. Or, after having your ship disabled by pirates, you could delete all of your stuff, making their endeavors worthless.

 

While dirt and rock aren't really valuable, I don't think they'll get exceptions and be deletable. They're physical, they gotta go somewhere!

[DevisDevine]

The extent of what I have heard on mining has been mentioned here, but as a miner myself it is something I eagerly await information on.

 

I think having a few pieces of ore here and there is a good thing (think minecraft). Allows for small scale miners to always have access to stuff. But on top of that have the massive rich veins of ore that are worth claiming and setting up a large scale operation on. It would be cool if there were certain geological features that increased the chabce of finding particular deposits.

If the ores were only in the large veins, they would be laimed quickly by groups and the odds of a newcomer finding a new one to mine and get a start would be slim. But there shouldnt be eneough to just dig down anywhere and have eneough to support an elite alliance, thats where rich veins come in.

 

On top of planetary mining, where geavier, oftwn more valuable ores are deeper down, we have asteroids as well. These I would expect a more uniform distribution of all the minerals, roughly mimicing their rarity in the system.

 

 

The bigger question for me is how will mining work. We will start using the nanoformer, which i expect to collect everything in the area. Just filter and dump the dirt if you dont want it.

 

But what about the next step? Skills to upgrade speed and other aspects sure.

Will there be modules or upgraded nanoformers that can mine larger areas or faster? Will the base nanoformer beable to mine even the rarest ores or will I need an upgrade?

How will that scale up to an industry scale? Will they have rig or vehicle mounted methods to mine? These could be nanoformer tech or 21st century mining methods. Or will it rely on slave miners of captured enemies to keep the supply of materials going?

 

I dont recall any of these questions being addressed, but I could have missed it in my slumber.

[Anaximander]

I don't know how mining is gonna go down, but I do want meself some drills.


I want to re-enact Rammstein's Sonne in DU.

[Kuritho]

I don't know how mining is gonna go down, but I do want meself some drills.

 

 

I want to re-enact Rammstein's Sonne in DU.

NQ is currently sporting for Hands-Only Mining, to prevent massive drills from scooping up all of both the planet's and server's resources.

[devu]

Thanks @ATMLVE for this reminder. I actually re-watched the video and read that stuff again.

 

But yeah it looks like what they call veins is just a terms to describe ore existence rather its physical formation.

 

I'm more interested about that unwanted dirt and rock aspect. They have shown us on the videos early game-play one or even asteroid base build how easily you can dig big holes. Obviously in dev mode they can pull anything from thin air but I do hope it wont be a case in game.

 

Sure, all that unwanted material must be shifted transported as well and that should be a logistic challenge as part of the mining operation. In some games we already have it. Like in Space Engineers for instance all that useless rocks, people building special ejectors to get rid of it and shoot it into the pace. Because game engine deletes all flying objects after some maximum number is being reached it means you can vaporise big portions of matter. That creates a lot of destruction of the surface and make long running servers unplayable. 

 

But the way they implemented it is.. well.. bad. I think that any voxel should exist in 2 states. The physical one you can pick from the ground and put it back with the same volume. And as representation in your cargo. They invented 3rd state, so when you collect voxel, it has cargo representation, but when you throw it back it becomes a physical item that only looks like rock and it's size grows with the volume. So you have massive problems when your cargo blows up. Because it can suddenly produce a Little asteroid inside your ship. It never matches the actual volume. It's almost like when you collect voxels you compress them.

 

But hmm... now if we can grab that voxel and put it back, we have to do it by hand. Blowing up the cargo would need to be locked down or impossible even. Because you would need to represent it's content somehow. And having massive amount of rocks floating around is not a good solution for a server.

 

This whole thing is not that trivial as it seems. I would say, if it will try to mimic reality it needs to be well thought. If not it will led to careless surface destruction with no consequences. So this is why I wish NQ could respond to this. What and how they actually planing to deal with it.

[Anaximander]

NQ is currently sporting for Hands-Only Mining, to prevent massive drills from scooping up all of both the planet's and server's resources.

I see the trajectory of my joke was just off by a bit to get it. :|

[devu]

I see the trajectory of my joke was just off by a bit to get it. :|

Don't worry it was read by some but when I picture that video clip... not sure if this is what I want to spend my free time on so double sarcastic joke here.

[yamamushi]

Many of your questions are answered in the first 30 minutes of this video (although the quality is kinda of meh) from the dinner in San Francisco during GDC:

 

[Haunty]

I also think veins would be better than blobs, it would promote tunnels instead of big ugly gouges on the planet surface, like open pit mines in real life.

[devu]

Many of your questions are answered in the first 30 minutes of this video (although the quality is kinda of meh) from the dinner in San Francisco during GDC:

 

 

 

 

Yeap, and this is what worries me. (26:00) Hundred of cubic meters of matter destroyed in no time dissolved into void. 

 

JC himself mentioned it is a tricky part, and looks like they still working this out, or they were.

 

I only wish that matter will not be able to disappear, what volume you dug up should remain. Even if for game-play they introduce some compressors for 1 person to be able to carry much more that you would expect, if you don't want dirt or rocks, you will be force to dispose it, form a hill somewhere or simply put back to the hole you dug up so the damage to the environment will be minimal.

 

Sure, some people may not care about it, but there will always be someone who does. Building cities, planing them, even dirt will play a crucial role. I don't know... you would like to build a road systems, flatten a canyon etc form a hill whatever. This volume would be needed. And it will preserve the overall volume of the planet.

 

If the mineral distribution would fit of the model we know from Earth

Here is the template:

 

Element name

Symbol

Percentage by weight of the Earth’s crust

Oxygen

O

47

Silicon

Si

28

Aluminium

Al

8

Iron

Fe

5

Calcium

Ca

3.5

Sodium

Na

3

Potassium

K

2.5

Magnesium

Mg

2

All other elements

 

1

 

Table 1 The elements in the Earth’s crust

 

Clearly we going for Iron/Aluminium/Silicon/Magnesium and the 'other elements'. Being able to preserve the rest of crust, bu forcing players to shuffle it around there will be no noticeable damage to the planet even if we manage to dig it all up.

 

It's actually a shocker for me that 47% of Earth crust is Oxygen.

[0something0]

Of course, the problem here is that the common elements are in various ores and rocks and have no use. The nanoformer could be able to isolate pure elements from compounds. I personally think there should be ores more common on planets and other ores common on asteroids(like in real life), with the planetary materials being more specialized.

[Vorengard]

I absolutely support the idea of materials being consistent, and not something that just vanishes after you mine it.

 

That being said, I think there serious tech and gameplay consequences for including this feature. What's going to happen when you drop a bunch of dirt? Does it vanish? Does it mold into holes in the ground? Or does it stack into piles next to you like it would if you dumped it out of a dump truck? Any of these solutions pose significant tech and performance issues.... Which is fine, but there's also a lot for exploits to worry about.

 

For example, what happens when a player fills their inventory with dirt, and dumps it all on the ground next to a building? If several people do this, now you've got a building completely buried in dirt. Do the same thing to someone's mine and either it's now gone, or they're buried at the bottom. What happens if you go onto someone's space station and dump a ton of dirt in the hallways? Same argument for a spaceship.

 

None of these things is necessarily game-breaking because anyone can mine it, but it's obnoxious and troll-y. I don't think the game benefits from this at all, simply because of all the shenanigans that would result.

[FireStormNova]

But what about the next step? Skills to upgrade speed and other aspects sure.

Will there be modules or upgraded Nano farmers that can mine larger areas or faster? Will the base Nano farmer be able to mine even the rarest ores or will I need an upgrade?

 

 

 

I think they will have to implement automated Nano farmers to get the amount of materials needed to build large scale ships and cities. I cant imagine them allowing a personal Nano device / inventory being able to hold that amount of materials at one time. Plus a automated Nano Farmer could extract certain materials from a specific radius and depth without tearing up the landscape. One of the easiest ways to go about it is the size of the Nano farmer could determine radius and depth it has. The Nano farmer could be set to any ore you could scan for! If you found a rare ore deep in the ground a small Nano farmer is not going to work : you would have get a medium or large Nano farmer to get to those depths but small Nano farmers would be cheaper and still allow beginners the chance to grow so the could later produce the larger Nano farmers. 

[Lethys]

I absolutely support the idea of materials being consistent, and not something that just vanishes after you mine it.

 

That being said, I think there serious tech and gameplay consequences for including this feature. What's going to happen when you drop a bunch of dirt? Does it vanish? Does it mold into holes in the ground? Or does it stack into piles next to you like it would if you dumped it out of a dump truck? Any of these solutions pose significant tech and performance issues.... Which is fine, but there's also a lot for exploits to worry about.

 

For example, what happens when a player fills their inventory with dirt, and dumps it all on the ground next to a building? If several people do this, now you've got a building completely buried in dirt. Do the same thing to someone's mine and either it's now gone, or they're buried at the bottom. What happens if you go onto someone's space station and dump a ton of dirt in the hallways? Same argument for a spaceship.

 

None of these things is necessarily game-breaking because anyone can mine it, but it's obnoxious and troll-y. I don't think the game benefits from this at all, simply because of all the shenanigans that would result.

That's why there are TCUs and RDMS. Restrict who can dump dirt, edit your base, do stuff you don't want

[Shynras]

NQ usually don't support tedious mechanics that are irrelevant to the gameplay, so I doubt they'll ever force us to dump dirt on the ground. Other than that, it would create unnecessary load on the servers (every time you place something or break it, the server receives that information and send it to all the other players). 

However you probably underestimate the fact that players will not put those resources back in their place, but use them to ruin even more the landscape (pillars, mountains of artificial dirt with the same texture and unnatural shape, lines of dirt on the ground they'll place while going back home and so on ...)

[StoneLegionYT]

I actually wonder how well their engine handles the dynamic terrain changes of say 1km deep ore. Actual players digging that out. I guess seeing how big the station and the tech with the LOD not bad but some game engines I played around you dig a massive hole your ram usage goes right through the roof. 

[DevisDevine]

I think they will have to implement automated Nano farmers to get the amount of materials needed to build large scale ships and cities. I cant imagine them allowing a personal Nano device / inventory being able to hold that amount of materials at one time. Plus a automated Nano Farmer could extract certain materials from a specific radius and depth without tearing up the landscape. One of the easiest ways to go about it is the size of the Nano farmer could determine radius and depth it has. The Nano farmer could be set to any ore you could scan for! If you found a rare ore deep in the ground a small Nano farmer is not going to work : you would have get a medium or large Nano farmer to get to those depths but small Nano farmers would be cheaper and still allow beginners the chance to grow so the could later produce the larger Nano farmers.

I would hope so too, but thats speculation. And while discussing it shows the devs what we expect and gives ideas, its no way a confirmation of what they do plan.

 

We dont even know the scale of nanoformer mining aside from a few shorr clips showing the feature

[devu]

NQ usually don't support tedious mechanics that are irrelevant to the gameplay, so I doubt they'll ever force us to dump dirt on the ground.

 

Well, mining by hand is tedious and they justified it by not damaging gameplay. And in this case force us to dump unwanted stuff back into the environment would also justify protecting game-play against damage caused. Territory control would help to regulate a lot too.

 

But think about it for a second. If I will be allowed to dig any material in no time and throw it away on the spot, or even with small cool-down I bet plenty of people will start to do underground bases. We didn't arrive on new planet to rat ourselves like we hiding from sun . Many still will do that but in order to carve underground city you will need to shift massive amount of material from one place to another. That matter will not be lost. If it does planet will be like a Swiss chees in no time.

 

And speaking of server performance. If they allowed to dig voxels thousands of players at the same time, there is no difference between forming vs digging a voxel. It is the same load on the server. If I'm busy putting voxel back I'm not digging, I can dig and build at the same time. To compare to the guy who dig all the time and throwing stuff away that must have a physical representation and have an extra calculation behind it.

[Stig92]

I prefer the idea that nothing mystically disappears whether it is useless stone from mining or destroyed ruins of a ship from earlier battle that can be salvaged for materials. There might be technical issues that don't allow this, but other than that, I think this would be better. 

 

However I also think that nothing should be completely useless and unable to be utilized in some form. For example, it you have to dig up a ton of rock to get metal ore. For example,  the game could have cement/concrete material that could be made using that rock. This would be very cheap and reasonably but not very durable or light material. It could be used in building things, not starships necessarily, but walls for ground building or around bases, bunkers, statues, etc.  With these the weight isn't so much of an issue and durability could be compensated by thickness while being more cost efficient than some advanced metal alloy. Just one example. 

[Vorengard]

That's why there are TCUs and RDMS. Restrict who can dump dirt, edit your base, do stuff you don't want

 

Right, so what happens if I walk into someone's territory where they allow public access but not public editing, and they dump a bunch of dirt around me? Now I'm literally entombed in dirt that I can't move. Same can be said for allowing people in to mine with access rights, and then removing those rights and trapping them in a hole, or a building, or what have you. 

 

As immersive as this feature would be, there's simply too many possible exploits to make it a viable mechanic. 

[Lethys]

Right, so what happens if I walk into someone's territory where they allow public access but not public editing, and they dump a bunch of dirt around me? Now I'm literally entombed in dirt that I can't move. Same can be said for allowing people in to mine with access rights, and then removing those rights and trapping them in a hole, or a building, or what have you.

 

As immersive as this feature would be, there's simply too many possible exploits to make it a viable mechanic.

If you dump dirt, you edit it so its not possible.

 

And for the other part: well, look, speak and talk to the guys owning that mine. Just because they say they're nice and let you mine for free, doesn't mean they're truthful about that..... and if you don't want to pay the ransom, you can always kill yourself

[DevisDevine]

Right, so what happens if I walk into someone's territory where they allow public access but not public editing, and they dump a bunch of dirt around me? Now I'm literally entombed in dirt that I can't move. Same can be said for allowing people in to mine with access rights, and then removing those rights and trapping them in a hole, or a building, or what have you.

 

As immersive as this feature would be, there's simply too many possible exploits to make it a viable mechanic.

 

Hey thats part of the game. Covering you in dirt vs in a cell, whats the difference.

 

You clearly havent played eve or ark. Suicide and move on.