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Let's talk state of ores on planets and future of asteroids


le_souriceau

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Consindering "asteroid mining" incoming relativly soon (and whole balancing it brings)... I wonder, what is actual situation with ore on planets? And wanted to propose to consolidate our empyrical observations (your/of your friends/org mates) and general thoughts.

 

Here is mine:

 

T1:

Still abundant almost everyhere. Even with current T1 "burning" to bots player population seems to be too small (and dropped even smaller) to seriously damage T1 supply in next several months. 

 

T2 

OK. With ocasional traces of someone else mining (on more popular planets), usualy its not that hard to find ore just next tile. Will last awhile.

 

T3 (beyond SZ):

Depends -- on ore and planet. Not as easy as at begining, there is obvious "cleared" patches, even in "worst" cases still doable with some scanning and patience. May be hot thing for asteroids eventualy.

 

T4-T5 (beyond SZ):

Overall -- bad, yet again -- depends on ore. Some are totaly non-economical to mine (immense time waste to find even negligible quantity), others -- still possible, but detiorating every day. We need asteroids with them on idea of risk-reward.

 

 

While may sound cruel to some, I think mineble asteroids must be 100% in PvP zone (especialy T1-T2-T3), because at least some "ore pressure", coupled with (eventualy) impoved PvP (both for attack and DEFENCE) -- only way to produce natural specialization, dynamics and gameplay-loops. And probably important way for DU survive until release and territory warfare as game with some activity.

 

Also, most importantly, for a change NQ need to be careful with new feature and not outright generate mega-nodes or other radical things. Just try concept with smaller nodes and observe/collect data how it will roll live with people mining and fighting around -- then, if something not good -- add more. Because otherwise I can almost predict classical NQ fail-cringe, when they "by mistake" generate 3 kk nodes of T5s and someone fast and furious ("big org") grab it without any opposition and everyone else grumpy forever. Generaly I super-suspicious of NQ repeating 1st week errors again. Wery little of confidence in their disign judgement left. 

 

Your thoughts?

 

 

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Honestly, I think that all ore tiers should generate in equal quantities. The increased mining time already prevents their acquisition very fast (although I would not be adverse to higher tier ores mining time greatly reduced), and if someone wants to use a massive quantity of t3/t4/t5 for honeycomb for a creative project, the cost is prohibitive. 400kl of a t1 or even t2 for a lot of honeycomb? No problem. 400kl of a t5 for honeycomb? Currently, that's a colossal waste. Builders should not be punished for wanting to use interesting honeycombs.

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3 hours ago, Emptiness said:

Honestly, I think that all ore tiers should generate in equal quantities. The increased mining time already prevents their acquisition very fast (although I would not be adverse to higher tier ores mining time greatly reduced), and if someone wants to use a massive quantity of t3/t4/t5 for honeycomb for a creative project, the cost is prohibitive. 400kl of a t1 or even t2 for a lot of honeycomb? No problem. 400kl of a t5 for honeycomb? Currently, that's a colossal waste. Builders should not be punished for wanting to use interesting honeycombs.

Let's make all "interesting" honeycomb T1 and the T2+ variants just a black brick but with meaningful stats. Deal ?

T2+ is not a "waste" it's supposed to give you a performance/durability boost, who cares what color it is.

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2 hours ago, Maxim Kammerer said:

There should be some T1 or maybe even T2 asteroids in the safe zone to practice asteroid mining. But large amounts and higher tier ores should be limited to PvP zone.

This.

 
They should also reduce the amount of t3/4/5 ore on the outer planets and only have it in substantial quantities in the pvp zone.


There has to be risk and reward for obtaining high end ore. The risk means losses will occur which is vital for markets to function, and will give reason for PVP to happen. 

 

Whilst NQ are at it they should change the mechanics of warping, so that instead of dropping out in the safe zone, players should drop out in pvp space 2 SU from the planet (maybe at one of several drop out points). Warping should be the quick travel route which carries risk, whereas slow boating (at odd angles) should be the v low risk approach that takes time. Again adding reason for PvP to occur. 

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You guys seem so hopeful. Lets be real here given recent events. Asteroids will end up either some stupid GM event spawn in nonsense , or they will exist in the safe zone because we can't ever have a game that is 'hard'. I expect the same level of cringe when automated mining and TW comes. It will be infinite resources for everyone! Even in the safe zone! It honestly wouldn't surprise me if TW included a voluntary "pvp flag" at this point.

 

I especially like that they have had bots deleting all this ore all this time. Wait they can skip all that dev time on asteroids and automated mining !!! They can just have their favorite pets the BOTS sell ore to us on the market forever right now! Thats sure to get the player driven market going!

 

 

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9 minutes ago, Xennial said:

You guys seem so hopeful. Lets be real here given recent events. Asteroids will end up either some stupid GM event spawn in nonsense , or they will exist in the safe zone because we can't ever have a game that is 'hard'. I expect the same level of cringe when automated mining and TW comes. It will be infinite resources for everyone! Even in the safe zone! It honestly wouldn't surprise me if TW included a voluntary "pvp flag" at this point.

 

I especially like that they have had bots deleting all this ore all this time. Wait they can skip all that dev time on asteroids and automated mining !!! They can just have their favorite pets the BOTS sell ore to us on the market forever right now! Thats sure to get the player driven market going!

 

 

I share your concerns, however no matter how carebearish NQ are, they have to eventually realise that a market doesn’t work without pvp.
 

They could’ve got it to work with npcs to fight, but that’s not going to happen, so they have little choice but to allow pvp.... I just hope it doesn’t take to long to understand this basic concept.

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2 hours ago, Shredder said:

I share your concerns, however no matter how carebearish NQ are, they have to eventually realise that a market doesn’t work without pvp.
 

They could’ve got it to work with npcs to fight, but that’s not going to happen, so they have little choice but to allow pvp.... I just hope it doesn’t take to long to understand this basic concept.

They can't even realize that the market can't work with bots. You want them to grok the idea that PvP and forcing everyone into PvP situations to advance is a pillar to a healthy economy? Nevermind that PvP would have to work completely differently then their server/client tech seems to allow for PvP to even be engaging. 

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43 minutes ago, Xennial said:

They can't even realize that the market can't work with bots. You want them to grok the idea that PvP and forcing everyone into PvP situations to advance is a pillar to a healthy economy? Nevermind that PvP would have to work completely differently then their server/client tech seems to allow for PvP to even be engaging. 

I’ve been ‘pvping’ (camping waiting  by for something to happen) most days since beta started, I disagree with the assertion that pvp in its current form is boring, it’s very basic, but rarely boring. What’s boring is to at it never happens, there’s virtually no situations when people have to take risks.

 

But I agree, they just don’t seem to understand that pvp and significant loss is required for a market to function. But I’m convinced they will understand eventually, because until they do, the market will fail. They’ll have to try it eventually.

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I could see NQ being very aware that they pretty much ruined this solar system due to mistakes made which they are not willing to correct. JC has been rather vocal about bringing in at least one new solar system with all the bells and whistles of the new things NQ thinks of and dreams up.

 

I hope I'm wrong but expect they will leve Helios as is and not bother with  it too much and put all their eggs in the next system hoping that all of us just move over .. 

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21 minutes ago, Shredder said:

I’ve been ‘pvping’ (camping waiting  by for something to happen) most days since beta started, I disagree with the assertion that pvp in its current form is boring, it’s very basic, but rarely boring. What’s boring is to at it never happens, there’s virtually no situations when people have to take risks.

 

But I agree, they just don’t seem to understand that pvp and significant loss is required for a market to function. But I’m convinced they will understand eventually, because until they do, the market will fail. They’ll have to try it eventually.

 

This is exactly the imbalance that exists with PvP. I'm not going to volunteer to put my ship at risk to fight some gunboat just sitting in space waiting for a hapless victim. There is no way I can defend such a ship because the gun boat doesn't have to bother allocating resources to entering the atmo , cargo hauling and just packs it with weapons and armor. Now I will grant you that the warp past PvP mechanic is stupidly carebear and prevents any sort of emergent PvP like me needing to bring combat escorts to prevent my armored hauler from being destroyed before it reaches safe harbor.

 

Right now I hear the "make them come out of warp in unsafe space". Maybe this helps, but what reason do I have to put in that risk? Just to go get some higher tier ore? I dont' 'need' those high tier weapons / engines , they are just a convenience. PvP needs to have a purpose and right now really there is not much is the realm of purpose other then to gank someones ship parts whoopidy do. The flip side is also true that higher tier ores are woefully underutilized in crafting.

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36 minutes ago, Xennial said:

 

This is exactly the imbalance that exists with PvP. I'm not going to volunteer to put my ship at risk to fight some gunboat just sitting in space waiting for a hapless victim. There is no way I can defend such a ship because the gun boat doesn't have to bother allocating resources to entering the atmo , cargo hauling and just packs it with weapons and armor. Now I will grant you that the warp past PvP mechanic is stupidly carebear and prevents any sort of emergent PvP like me needing to bring combat escorts to prevent my armored hauler from being destroyed before it reaches safe harbor.

 

Right now I hear the "make them come out of warp in unsafe space". Maybe this helps, but what reason do I have to put in that risk? Just to go get some higher tier ore? I dont' 'need' those high tier weapons / engines , they are just a convenience. PvP needs to have a purpose and right now really there is not much is the realm of purpose other then to gank someones ship parts whoopidy do. The flip side is also true that higher tier ores are woefully underutilized in crafting.

Fair post.

 

Re warping, it can be balanced by putting you near safe zone, making it difficult for someone to do sufficient damage before you get to safe space. They can also put in multiple exit points. Frankly, if this mechanic was in place then people can simply add tank to their haulage ships, a very simple counter.

 

If you don’t want to risk it then don’t go to the outer planets, buy the ore instead. Higher end ores would increase in price to match the additional risk. That’s the risk/reward trade off that would both give a purpose to the outer planets and introduce loss to help the markets (as well as cause pvp to naturally occur).

 

As you point out, higher end ores are under utilised  in lower tier items. That should also be balanced.

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8 minutes ago, Xennial said:

The flip side is also true that higher tier ores are woefully underutilized in crafting.

Except when it's vital...

 

Cryolite seems to be a problem in itself and shows deeper problems potentially with the system and some of the proposals above. 

 

From personal experience I mined less than 25 kl of Cryolite from 111 territory scans. 

 

Cryolite is required for large dynamic and space cores, alongside gold nuggets and kolbeckite.

 

This isn't the only thing it is needed for though. 

 

I found more gold from less than 20 scans. 

 

Maybe I was unlucky? 

 

Apparently not...

 

It's currently on the market at over twice the price of kolbeckite and 50% higher than gold nuggets, even though I think most agree that gold armour is what's needed for serious PvP? 

 

At one point the lowest sale price for Cryolite was 1,600 quanta per litre, and there were only 3 orders with less than 50 kl of Cryolite on the markets, total. 

 

Even now there are only 13 sale orders, but 71 buy orders. The volumes are much higher now, so I'm wondering if smaller orgs had stockpiled, hoping to make L cores, but are now selling to afford the schematics they would need to make them.

 

You need more Cryolite to make your L cores than either of the other two. It's not far short of the other two added together.  

 

So even before L cores became inaccessible to most, due to price hikes for direct sales and the industry revamp, the limited supply of Cryolite was what slowed us down as an Org.

 

We wanted to make a really big space station that you could fly big ships into. 

 

The fact that the recent and upcoming updates give a significant PvP advantage to L dynamics just makes this problem worse. 

 

If the game's designers allow it to be looped in a viciously paradoxical cycle where you can't access L cores unless you already have L cores by placing the supply of Cryolite exclusively in a zone that could be relatively easily inderdicted by larger PvP orgs this would mean they are denying the game any serious potential for long term growth or for newer players to enter the game at or after full launch and ever stand any chance of creating any org that could ever be competitive in PvP.

 

Why would any significant number of players ever move to such a game? 

 

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1 hour ago, Shredder said:

Fair post.

 

Re warping, it can be balanced by putting you near safe zone, making it difficult for someone to do sufficient damage before you get to safe space. They can also put in multiple exit points. Frankly, if this mechanic was in place then people can simply add tank to their haulage ships, a very simple counter.

 

If you don’t want to risk it then don’t go to the outer planets, buy the ore instead. Higher end ores would increase in price to match the additional risk. That’s the risk/reward trade off that would both give a purpose to the outer planets and introduce loss to help the markets (as well as cause pvp to naturally occur).

 

As you point out, higher end ores are under utilised  in lower tier items. That should also be balanced.

Imho the problem with PvP is not that there are too few scenarios in which you can actually engage someone else, but that it's  absurdly and stupidly expensive.

You don't find ppl to PvP with because PvP itself is out of reach for the majority of the playerbase, making it harder to obtain the necessary assets to be able to PvP (like NQ did with 0.23) will only make the situation worse.

 

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Well, nice points.

 

Asteroids obvious tied to PvP situation and right now meaningful entry costs fortune -- very little of players (for newbies -- not a chance) can actualy compete for resources here with established powers (who, at least, can use their old stockpiles to some extent). PvP was expensive before, now its kinda ridiculous.

 

This may (and probably will) ruin whole thing for many if they in PvP zone.

 

Yet, if they not in PvP zone (so disparity of player "resources" not put in action in full force), it will ruin game even futher economicly, making all what happening even more meaningless. And here even "regenerating space" T1s are not that harmless. 

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26 minutes ago, le_souriceau said:

Well, nice points.

 

Asteroids obvious tied to PvP situation and right now meaningful entry costs fortune -- very little of players (for newbies -- not a chance) can actualy compete for resources here with established powers (who, at least, can use their old stockpiles to some extent). PvP was expensive before, now its kinda ridiculous.

 

This may (and probably will) ruin whole thing for many if they in PvP zone.

 

Yet, if they not in PvP zone (so disparity of player "resources" not put in action in full force), it will ruin game even futher economicly, making all what happening even more meaningless. And here even "regenerating space" T1s are not that harmless. 

Why do people think pvp is expensive? Medium guns are like 500k, you can mine t1 ore and sell i for 500k in like a couple of hours, that’s cheap? And medium guns will cost more like 100k within a few weeks once prices come down. Compared to time sinks in most mmos that’s peanuts...

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11 minutes ago, Shredder said:

Why do people think pvp is expensive? Medium guns are like 500k, you can mine t1 ore and sell i for 500k in like a couple of hours, that’s cheap? And medium guns will cost more like 100k within a few weeks once prices come down. Compared to time sinks in most mmos that’s peanuts...

Because PvP ship is not 1 M gun.

 

We talking not about some "basic raider" to harass paper haulers that not shooting back (this can be any crap with any gun). But about actual combat against other specialized PvP ships and crews -- something to be expected to see in this asteroid belts (as attack/defence force for organizational mining ops). This kind of ships much more (prohibitively now) expensive, with new industy, cores and elements losses.

 

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7 minutes ago, Shredder said:

Why do people think pvp is expensive? Medium guns are like 500k, you can mine t1 ore and sell i for 500k in like a couple of hours, that’s cheap? And medium guns will cost more like 100k within a few weeks once prices come down. Compared to time sinks in most mmos that’s peanuts...

Ok but that's the price of 1 gun, the full ship might cost between 5 and 10millions, which is not that much IF you include current bot prices into the equation, and they are slowly disappearing.

But also mind that those 5 to 10 millions are per-life, every time you die you need to pay them again.

In the long run it's cheaper to set up a factory for most of said ship's part btw.

 

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10 minutes ago, Fra119 said:

Ok but that's the price of 1 gun, the full ship might cost between 5 and 10millions, which is not that much IF you include current bot prices into the equation, and they are slowly disappearing.

But also mind that those 5 to 10 millions are per-life, every time you die you need to pay them again.

In the long run it's cheaper to set up a factory for most of said ship's part btw.

 

It’s the risk of loss that makes pvp enjoyable in these types of games. I have no idea how people are spending 5-10 mil on a medium pvp ship. 3 mil max gets you 10g acceleration and breaking and as much tank as you want from uber cheap voxels. 4 medium guns will be 400k total soon enough, throw in a handful of large space Engines and some voxels and you’re mostly

there.

 

but again, it’s the fear of loss that makes it worthwhile.

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4 minutes ago, Shredder said:

but again, it’s the fear of loss that makes it worthwhile.

with your 'uber cheap voxels' the only chance you're taking is not running into an actual warship

 

the minute you cross paths with any real warship your 'fear' becomes a certainty, so you may as well just fly round space with your wallet hanging out your back pocket for anyone to take

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2 hours ago, Shredder said:

It’s the risk of loss that makes pvp enjoyable in these types of games. I have no idea how people are spending 5-10 mil on a medium pvp ship. 3 mil max gets you 10g acceleration and breaking and as much tank as you want from uber cheap voxels. 4 medium guns will be 400k total soon enough, throw in a handful of large space Engines and some voxels and you’re mostly

there.

 

but again, it’s the fear of loss that makes it worthwhile.

Hmm, 5-10mil ship doesn't stand a chance versus my L core lollipop it will evaporate in seconds.

 

Wanna pvp ? Buy L core, 20-30 mil modules and die with it 5 times while *learning*. Then you will have a chance.

 

High pvp entrance cost ? Say thank you to people that asked to nerf XS cores because balance

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1 hour ago, XKentX said:

High pvp entrance cost ? Say thank you to people that asked to nerf XS cores because balance.

Has to be the same guy crying that he couldn't monopolize the market with his 10L core gigafactory and thus suggested to gate every other simple production line with schematics.

 

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