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Questions about resource gathering


Miedein

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Obviously we have to collect materials to build whatever our hearts content in the game. But I'm more curious about the methods now that we approach closer to the first alpha phase. I know that initially we'll be given essentially creative mode despite my dislike for creative mode in any game. It is what it is. But what I'm most curious about, is from what I've seen in the videos. Its basically, select a shape, drag it across the ground and you carve out a path to collect resources from it like that. 

Is what the videos show going to be the way we actually get resources? Or will there be a more indepth way? Having drills both hand held or automated, if so will there be ship sized drills to make resource ships and drilling platforms in space. 

What we've been shown is great and all for the short term of things imo. But I'm hoping that there will be equipment needed for if not the only way to get resources, then perhaps more efficiently?

I'm also curious about how much mining has to be done to build something from a small fighter, to the death star. (As Novaquark have said if there was enough people, you could build a 1:1 scale death star) 

Do the raw resources have to be processed some way? Or if I drag my little shape across an iron deposit, do I just have X amount of iron at my disposal to build what I want with it. What's the limit I can personally carry on myself? What happens if I reach that limit? Do I need to think of a warehouse to store resources in for later use or for the use of my organization? 

These sort of questions have me thinking. If it's been answered already awesome can I have the link? 

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First things first, you should take a look at the Builder Guide on the wiki, we've spent considerable time refining it from the information we know now.

Link to Wiki

 

I wouldn't think of it as being given creative mode, but rather that to make testing things simpler, you will be skipping the mining and refining steps of the gameplay for the Pre-Alpha.

 

As far as how collecting resources will work, it seems that it will be more of a simple sphere, and maybe other shapes to dig into the ground, but you will have some tools like smoothing to round off edges and such while terraforming.  There is another whole type of voxel interaction which is building.  This involves editing a construct as defined by a construct.  This is where you will have a grid (if you want), and more precise tools.  

 

As far as the tools involved, it seems to just be this detached style of mining where you are shown the area that will be mined and click a button to mine it.  There is no implementation of a personal drill to directly mine out the ground/resources at this time.  

 

There will not be ship-based mining for balancing reasons.

 

How much mining for a small ship?  It depends on what materials you want to use to construct it.  There will be many options to use as the body (voxels) of a ship and that's not to mention the materials necessary for all of the elements involved.  In theory each of those resources would need to be scanned down, dug out, and refined into usable materials.  How long all of that takes is really yet to be truly determined as they refine the mechanics.

 

For a death star, remember that the entire volume of something you build has to be mined, and JC previously gave us a value of something like 52 m^3/s (check Twitter for actual number, not that it's final anyways).  Doing the math, it would take a rediculous amount of time for even hundreds of players to mine, refine, transport to orbit, and construct such a structure.  Imagine years most likely (for a 1:1 scale).

 

For refining of my materials, as I've mentioned above you absolutely have to refine the materials you mine out of the ground into something useable in a construct.  This mechanic has not been really defined, but imagine that it will involve inputting resources into a container that a refining element pulls from and dumps into another container.  This whole process would require power to run, and may only be possible on a static construct (TBD).  We created a list of known ores and refined materials here: https://dualuniverse.gamepedia.com/Resources

 

For questions about inventory stuff, check out this post: 

 

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Basic refining will be done in the inventory (e.g. iron + coal = steel), but more advanced processes will need to be run in external elements (e.g. refineries, smelters, etc), which will be constructed from the basic materials you refined in your inventory.

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24 minutes ago, yamisniper said:

Well they said they might have shipped based mining but after release and might they said

 

When did they say that?  I don't remember seeing anything

 

22 minutes ago, NanoDot said:

Basic refining will be done in the inventory (e.g. iron + coal = steel), but more advanced processes will need to be run in external elements (e.g. refineries, smelters, etc), which will be constructed from the basic materials you refined in your inventory.

Good point, that's the way it currently works for the devs, not sure if it will stay that way or not and what the options are in your inventory

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