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Quality of material


Archonious

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Hi,

 

Don't know, was this idea suggested before or not, so don't blame me =)))

 

Ok. I played Space Engineers (and actually still playing time to time). As it looks games (DU and SE) will be on very similar resource base. I mean, players get some resources (refine them, not sure about DU), then players can create some items. But since DU universe is unlimited, exploring will be very important. I don't know how many different resources will be presented in game, but what you think about this:

 

Each resource (as example Iron - Ferrum) has many quality levels. Fe1 is very bad by default, so items created with this resource will be basic. Fe10 is much better than basic, so items created using this material will be much better (it could have extra armour or higher performance or parameters), Fe20 is high-quality resource, so items created from this material will have much higher parameters or even extra bonuses.

 

The system could allow mixing resources, but it must punish for that, as example downgrade 60:40. This mean 100x Fe10 and 100x Fe20 will give 200x Fe14 as final resource.

 

So this system could be easily integrated into a procedural world (IMO), but will generate the huge potential for exploring. Of course, high-quality materials must be very rare. So the player will spend months to find all the best resources. The overall idea also shows motivation as items bonuses when using higher quality resources.

 

What do you think?

 

P.S: Ups, probably wrong forum =))) If there are moderators, could you please move it? =)))

Thanks,

Archonious

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I think there was a topic with a similar idea posted and most people liked it. I think it will be a nice addition to have "High quality" metals and resources. DU team has not specified if this will be in game or not.

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I'm hoping that the quality of materials gathered could vary depending on the specific skill level of the person gathering them.

 

I doubt the game will be like this, but because the skill system was said to be time based like Eve Online, I was imagining a skill tree might look something like this (I just threw this together to illustrate my thoughts briefly using what I remember from Eve):

 

BMosnnu.png

 

 

Each level of Mining would increase the yield of higher quality materials collected, but a miner at any level of Mining has the chance to collect better quality resources.

 

Each level of Mining would also have other sub skills that could be unlocked and trained individually, wherein your ability to collect those resources safely or efficiently would depend on your skill level in a given resource group. 

 

 

The reason I'm thinking along these lines is because part of the reason why Eve's skill system works for it is because no single player has the ability to fully train every single skill in the game, there are hundreds of skills for all sorts of very specific tasks.

 

In a game like Dual Universe, there might be people who are specialized in very specific types of resource gathering, or crafting/production/whatever, and they have an advantage over other people because they spent the time to have those skill trees mastered. That keeps them in a good position to be valued for their skills that others can't quickly train on their own. 

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@yamamushi 

That is cool as well, but I would say a bit different. Quality of Resources more about world generation, not player skills. Also, it could be affected by the system, you displayed above. I like it and find it great. As example, if you learn basic Iron gathering, you will gather basics only (Fe1-Fe5 as example), but if you learn extra skills, you get chance to find and gather higher levels.

 

So this is as sub-group of resources. If we will have 20 different resources, sub-group could increase this amount up to 400 (if follow example).

 

Also, some of the high-end items could require a higher level of resources. All of that is similar as in life, there is a quality of resources. Big range of material also will improve trade, so Fe1 will be cheap and used by many beginners, but Fe20 would be very expensive and used by end-game players mainly. I think it could be the great addition.

 

@ostris maybe it was, honestly, don't spend a lot of time on forums, since it very hard to give feedback or suggest while there is not chance to play the game. Have idea, then post.

 

Thanks,

Archonious

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@yamamushi

 

Following your model, the skill level might also affect the type of ore you can find in an area. At higher levels with a sensor or similar skill, you can detect ores that are deeper in the ground or have a weaker signature. And then with the mining skill, the efficiency of mining and the quality and quantity of the ore increases. This would decrease the necessity of a forced move due to dwindling resources. If time is spent making a homestead, a town, a city, I don't want to waste all my resources building something that isn't viable to begin with, especially when trying to make an area secure (PvE vs PvP).

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@yamamushi

 

Following your model, the skill level might also affect the type of ore you can find in an area. At higher levels with a sensor or similar skill, you can detect ores that are deeper in the ground or have a weaker signature. And then with the mining skill, the efficiency of mining and the quality and quantity of the ore increases. This would decrease the necessity of a forced move due to dwindling resources. If time is spent making a homestead, a town, a city, I don't want to waste all my resources building something that isn't viable to begin with, especially when trying to make an area secure (PvE vs PvP).

 

Actually I think dwindling resources forcing possible moves or expansions might be necessary, otherwise it would break the markets and economy. 

 

You need limited resources and scarcity in order to encourage trade and a healthy economy. 

 

This kind of falls in line with what JC said about going to a planet, in that there will be a reason players go through all the effort of sending probes to them and building stargates to them. One of those reasons could be to find more resources, if not the main reason.

 

Cities completely exhausting all of the natural resources around them isn't such a bad thing, because they will inevitably end up being part of the larger market economy, and will likely move into needing to import raw materials in order for them to keep growing. Kind of like in real life I guess. 

 

 

You did say your idea would decrease the necessity for a forced move, I was just trying to say that it doesn't seem like such a bad thing if you exhaust your local resources. 

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How about increasing the quality of any material by decreasing its quantity, for example you have 10kg of Fe1 and can forge it to be 5kg of Fe2 or 2kg of Fe3, just by a process of purifying this material. Not sure once it reached the higher quality level you could reverse the process

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Actually I think dwindling resources forcing possible moves or expansions might be necessary, otherwise it would break the markets and economy. 

You need limited resources and scarcity in order to encourage trade and a healthy economy.

Few little mark from idea:

-As better quality, as more rare chance to find

-If item requires Iron, any Iron can be used (as Fe1 as Fe20)

-Trade prices must vary, so good quality material will be impossible to get in early/mid game

 

All of that gives motivation to search/explore, rich market (make it healthy, not poor), increase end-game time.

 

 

How about increasing the quality of any material by decreasing its quantity, for example you have 10kg of Fe1 and can forge it to be 5kg of Fe2 or 2kg of Fe3, just by a process of purifying this material. Not sure once it reached the higher quality level you could reverse the process

It could be an option with a chance to decrease grade or even lose materials. Otherwise, it simply loses rarity parameter. Anyway, that is more deep design decisions, idea is more global and open for extra design for DevTeam

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Different quality resources doesn't really make sense though, iron is iron. The real difference should be in how you process the resources you gather.

 

That not exactly true. While iron is iron you can find different purity that is harder or easier to mine/process. It can be mined from different types of rock with a different percentage of iron to other material. In the game world you can have it be high quality iron simply requires less of it to make what you want. 1 iron ore = 1 iron bar, 2 iron bar = 1 pure iron bar or 1 high quality ore = 1 pure iron bar. I don't think high quality should be only found in the ground and you should be able to process any quality of iron into another. Finding a high quality deposit simply means you get more iron for your work/time.

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Different quality resources doesn't really make sense though, iron is iron. The real difference should be in how you process the resources you gather.

There are many chemical compounds, some of them make ore fully useless. Iron ores vary in mineral composition, iron content, useful and harmful impurities, the conditions of foundation and industrial properties. Iron ore, used for steel production, must contain certain substances in the correct proportions. On this depends the quality of the product.

Idea based on reality + game opportunities, not on "I don't know, so it is not real".

 

@ostris, that is partial truth. Quality of Iron Ore (an example) is very important. Some ores are fully useless because of their quality (based on impurities).

 

Thanks,

Archonious

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Whether or not this is useful has a lot to do with the crafting system and how it works. I'm not sure if details on that have been announced yet (if so, I'd love to be informed).

 

In many games, such as WoW, where the items that you build have individual stats that are based solely on the item being created, resource quality doesn't really have any impact other than to say "I have x amount of this required quality to build this item".

 

In games like Star Wars Galaxies, the stats on the resource directly impacted the stats on the final item. Personally, I'd love to see a system like this.

 

In DU, I think there are really 2 areas that quality could enter construction. First, the raw materials used when creating voxel structures and ships. This likely wouldn't impact much beyond durability and mass though, though could be used to make a better version of an object if higher end materials are present. The second, is items themselves. We know that we'll be able to get objects that add functionality to our ships (such as weapons). The stats on these weapons could well be based on quality of the materials.

 

That said, if we do end up with a system where there's quality, I'd like it to be more interesting than just quality 5 > quality 1. Using SWG again an example, resources had multiple stats (randomly generated) and different items used these stats in different quantities. Thus, it would make the crafting game much more interesting and knowledge based when the best crafters can figure out which proportions of impurities yield better results in their weapons.

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Different quality resources doesn't really make sense though, iron is iron. The real difference should be in how you process the resources you gather.

 

That's really not true at all.  The grade of materials makes all the difference in the output of the product... so it's another layer, on TOP of your refining process, that should make a difference.  

 

If I take the time to gather grade A pure iron as opposed to grade C pure iron, there should be a difference in the output of the product I'm making. If it's a gun, maybe more durability. If it's a radar dish, perhaps it's higher density.

 

But beyond quality/grade, I'd like to see materials have properties as well - for example, weight, conductivity, strength, etc And different combinations of those materials could make them the right choice for project A, and a different combination of those material attributes could make a better choice for project B.

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I would love some sort of quality of materials as well. Would make resource surveying alot more important and interesting.

 

 

This was my thinking on a Quality system. As others have stated earlier, iron is not iron, raw iron ore is usually full of impurities and other useless minerals in varying concentrations. Surveying an iron ore vein in the ground might yield 60% iron and the other 40% a mixture of other things, this system can then be expanded as such for example:

 

1. Proportion of desired mineral versus proportion of other minerals.

2. Proficiency of Miner and quality of equipment used will determine the about of energy/fuel needed to extract said mineral.

3. Proficiency of Refiner and quality of equipment used in refining process determines what % of desired mineral is transformed into useful ingots/rolls.

   3a. Refiner skill and equipment quality also determine quality of end product (high quality imparts +5% HP bonus or something).

   3b. Refiner skill and equipment quality determine amount of energy/fuel needed to produce end product.

4. Refined material quality determines sub-component quality and stats.

   4a. Assembler Skill and equipment quality determine sub-component stats.

   4b. Assembler Skill and equipment quality determine energy/fuel needed to produce sub-component.

5. Sub-component quality will determine the element's quality and stats.

   5a. Builder's skill and equipment used in construction will determine elements and voxel quality.

6. End ship/vehicle/building/base stats are determined by averages and sums of all items used in construction, with all items going through this process.

 

High Player skills will improve chances that beneficial stats are imparted on the final products in each line, in addition to reducing costs of production by producing more/better things using less energy/fuel.

 

This system would be entirely outside of a player rating system for Quality which I've seen mentioned before. What players rate the ship's or final product's usefulness is entirely different than quality of it's parts and stats.

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I would probably think this would have to be introduced after the main game launch, but in essence not a bad idea, It gives more depth to yet another style of play i guess to give that more immersive game play. But on the other hand given how large a lot of constructs plan to be .. I am not sure how viable it would really be late game

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This was my thinking on a Quality system. As others have stated earlier, iron is not iron, raw iron ore is usually full of impurities and other useless minerals in varying concentrations. Surveying an iron ore vein in the ground might yield 60% iron and the other 40% a mixture of other things, this system can then be expanded as such for example:

 

1. Proportion of desired mineral versus proportion of other minerals.

2. Proficiency of Miner and quality of equipment used will determine the about of energy/fuel needed to extract said mineral.

3. Proficiency of Refiner and quality of equipment used in refining process determines what % of desired mineral is transformed into useful ingots/rolls.

   3a. Refiner skill and equipment quality also determine quality of end product (high quality imparts +5% HP bonus or something).

   3b. Refiner skill and equipment quality determine amount of energy/fuel needed to produce end product.

4. Refined material quality determines sub-component quality and stats.

   4a. Assembler Skill and equipment quality determine sub-component stats.

   4b. Assembler Skill and equipment quality determine energy/fuel needed to produce sub-component.

5. Sub-component quality will determine the element's quality and stats.

   5a. Builder's skill and equipment used in construction will determine elements and voxel quality.

6. End ship/vehicle/building/base stats are determined by averages and sums of all items used in construction, with all items going through this process.

 

High Player skills will improve chances that beneficial stats are imparted on the final products in each line, in addition to reducing costs of production by producing more/better things using less energy/fuel.

 

This system would be entirely outside of a player rating system for Quality which I've seen mentioned before. What players rate the ship's or final product's usefulness is entirely different than quality of it's parts and stats.

"

Smart thinking there. I like most of your points, but by considering some of the news about Dual Universe, some points are quite unnecessary. Since we know that refining, assembling and building will mostly be done by one person or in a factory, wouldn't it be better to only focus on the refining skill. I doubt there will be something like "Assembling Skill" or "Building Skill" in the terms you have described. For one, I completely agree that the strength and quality of constructs should, to some extent depend on the skills of the creator, the quality of materials and how well they are refined. Good job. We need more brilliant input like yours.

"

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Quality in materials is only really worthwhile if it leads to stat increase in the final item.  SWG did this, and until it had problems in beta so did the repopulation.

 

If the higher quality just refine to more quantity of something why have the extra items, just pads your item database and makes it technically slower, just make the gathering or refining have a chance to produce a good result and give you more of the standard quality item.  Compression may be a reason as from what i have read, like eve, there is no magic transportation via banks etc.

 

I personally really like the idea of quality of materials and way to refine lower quality materials into higher quality materials at a loss, but only if that quality has a bearing on the quality (stats) of the final item.  This allows people to compete on quality of an item and not just on price.  This does however create technical challenges as you have store item stats as well as the item and quantity that n the single sharded environment could lead to a huge amount of data.  So if you can create a better weapon element for construct or customise it by quality of materials.  IE better quality certain materials affect range, or damage, or ROF.

 

 

Spung

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There have been a few suggestions in varying degrees on this topic. There are a lot of points here I agree with but I will just rehash all my thoughts on this. 

 

First, I would hope that skills arent a limit to being able to harvest and use resources. Affect  the speed at which you do it sure, but dont say I cant, just have a longer mining time, or maybe a higher chance at failing to craft something. As I level my mining, I can do it faster. As I train up surveying skills I can operate better equipment that can locate deeper ore pockets,or give better detail on ones I know about. 

 

As people have said, all iron isn't the same. We mine it in different concentrations and with varying impurities which have to be processed out if undesired. I think having varying ore density deposits would be great. Poor deposits may only be 10% where the richest spots upwards of 90%. An it could be that as you dig deeper they naturally get more dense. Also you would expect asteroids to be much richer in what we consider rare elements, most are thought to be nearly completely iron. One that was looked at is estimated to contain more iron than we have mined on earth in our entire history. So if you mine a poor spot it will take you longer to get a given volume of iron, while mining a lot more junk, stuff like clay or dirt. It would be nice to naturally find trace impurities in very low quantities like cobalt, nickel and other ores. 

 

Now, based on the purity, on earth different processing methods would have been used. But remember, we have the nanoformer that is pulling it apart already. I would assume this could naturally separate it. So mine a section and you get 70% of it iron, 25 dirt, 4  silicon, 1 nickel, or something like that, all in your kadpack separated. Now maybe they wont go this route, but if they didnt they would have to have some station on the ark to process the initial batches, as how else would you get iron to build the blast furnace or whatever device you used. 

 

But this doesn't have to be the end of processing. It was suggested having alloys you can make, and while I hope they introduce some, it is another component to code into the game. But qualities could be used. While its not completely realistic there could be a Fe1, 2, 3... system. And these could require certain processing facilities and even skills to make. Now it would make sense to have Fe1 able to make equal parts Fe20, but it could take 20Fe1 = 1F20 on a simplistic level. Or even 2Fe2 = 1Fe3, taking 2x of the previous level. This would mean it takes exponentially more material for the highest grade stuff (2^20 is just over 1mil, meaning 1mil Fe1 for 1 Fe20).

 

These levels could give increases in various stats, which as some have discussed, could be used in various ways. Affecting the voxel blocks stats is an obvious one, and likely easy to implement. But it would be nice to be able to affect the components you make themselves. While more complex, it would give more variety to the one feature of the game that will inherently be limited. So better stats or durability on a turret, to possibly more dense fuel. 

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What about different technology tiers being able to extract refine materials to a certain degree? Like all iron is the same iron, but depending on what level of refining you are capable of, how good your technology is, you can refine the same material but to a much better degree than others. That way, everyone has access to most materials from the get-go, but it just may be not even worth the time for large-scale extractment of most resources.

Additionally then, if you also add in different types of the same material along with what I said earlier, it would make the resource industry quite diverse.

 

What I'm saying has probably already been thought of, but one thing I would definitely like to iterate with this is give materials at least two properties. Then make it so that if you want a good value with one property, you have to sacrifice another. That way people don't just get the best refining equipment and the best type of each resource and stop there and make that an end goal. Otherwise it'll take people 10 hours to reach that, and then they'll have the perfect equipment for the rest of the game. Make it so that there isn't a "perfect setup" and then it will create a more diverse market with no end goal.

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What about different technology tiers being able to extract refine materials to a certain degree? Like all iron is the same iron, but depending on what level of refining you are capable of, how good your technology is, you can refine the same material but to a much better degree than others.

This fully removes goal/target of different qualities, which is EXPLORE as more as possible. Highest Quality Materials - very very rare. So the price for 1 HQM may be hundreds of times higher than basic.

 

Shortage:

-If you want HQM - you need to explore a lot

-If you want HQM - you need to have high technology of detect

-If you want HQM - you need to have high technology to drill/dig

-If you want HQM - you need to have high technology to refine

 

How often "very very rare" mean?

If we would take basic (lowest level) as 100% and take 20 qualities as in example. Also I will add number as average amount of resource of planet (nothing with real situation):

Q1 = 100% (10M tonn)

Q2 = 90% (9M tonn)

Q3 = 80% (8M tonn)

Q4 = 70% (7M tonn)

Q5 = 60% (6M tonn)

Q6 = 50% (5M tonn)

Q7 = 40% (4M tonn)

Q8 = 30% (3M tonn)

Q9 = 20% (2M tonn)

Q10 = 10% (1M tonn) Total Q1-Q10 = 55M

Q11 = 7,5% (750K tonn)

Q12 = 5% (500K tonn)

Q13 = 4% (400K tonn)

Q14 = 2% (200K tonn)

Q15 = 1% (100K tonn)

Q16 = 0.75% (75K tonn)

Q17 = 0.5% (50K tonn)

Q18 = 0.25% (25K tonn)

Q19 = 0.15% (15K tonn)

Q20 = 0.05% (5K tonn) Total Q11 - Q20 = 2,12M

 

So to understand, we have the planet (in average), there are 57'120'000 tonnes of Iron ore, Majority of this ore is very basic/average quality (Q1-Q10) and equal 55'000'000 tonnes or 96,28%.

 

Just because of high requests and rarity, bonus for items must be not minor. So if organisation or player spend lots of resources on research and scouting, their reward will be equal in the end.

As I said, the prices for these "Super Good Quality" items or materials will be much higher than basic. So this will be part of end game, which very hard to get (to build HQM ship/station).

 

As it shown on Kickstarter pictures, explorer is one of the directions of gameplay. So this HQM make exploration is very important.

dcc421c60be5a95d99223db20fbf4eac_origina

One correction I would do about this, exploration is very important for mining, so it must be connected at least.

 

P/S: All you see above is very raw numbers without any research. Just to show the overall picture of my view.

 

Thanks,

Archonious

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Looking a the real world.....maybe some more realistic mechanic could be introduced.

 

* There is an energy cost associated with removing mass from a planets surface to orbit. 

* The energy cost depends on the gravitational field and thus the mass of the planet.

* Realistically, most minerals mined on a normal planet would remain on the planet going into local structures and manufactured products.

* Most material for orbital and space structures would come from low mass planetoids. 

* Some rarer materials could be hauled to orbit. 

 

Just an idea.  At the end of the day, whatever system you use, you need enough rarity in the mineral distribution, so that players are encouraged to compete over them.   

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  • 1 year later...

Would love to know if we know more about resource quality and crafting. I love the idea of different grades of materials with randomized stats in one way or another. Being able to be a "rare" resource collector sounds awesome.  I could have the "rarest" copper ever found with the best stats for building an engine, but I only have 2000 units.  Any updates on this would be great!

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