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(Suggestion) Mining Overhaul 2.0


Warlander

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Mining needs more viable ways to mine beyond 20l surface rocks and 4kl-1m kl nodes.

 

The biggest issue with mining is the inherent lag of needing to dig hundreds of thousands of tunnels a day and it seems like the point cloud data of keeping track of it all causes an intense amount of lag to mining that at times negates all avatar skills since you can only walk and the lag still is jamming the tool with "cannot complete opperation" or where the tool litterally jams up on the cannot perform operation itself for hours and sometimes days at a time.

 

It is not bad to have caves and places to explore, problem is when you stripmine the area there is no reason to go back there or fight over the land once it has been mined out unless it is by a market or geo location of water, mountains, etc based on personal prefrence.

 

First I suggest 3-4 potential ways to mine and add renewable resources that are sensable:

  • Harvest-able rocks underground in tunnels
  • Harvest-able crystals tht spawn underground in tunnels
  • Sifting
  • Mining nodes

 

The biggest problem this game is the lack of re-spawnable resources. I dont expect the 4kl-1m kl nodes to respawn, but I do expect that there should be some random chance of getting T1-5 rocks that spawn when I mine or if I go to a dead mine that there is still something to do that suppliments all the ore in tiny non game breaking 20-250l harvest-able rocks that spawn on the walls, floor, ceiling, etc on the way to a node to give me something to do between the 1-500m gap batween nodes. When I say T1-5 I mean it, a planet should consist of most if not all of the ores on alioth or other planets which could have better spawn rates for rockst of that type but there should be a way to get other mats then you came for in little bite size chunks.

 

On top of the rocks there should be rare gems that also pop up like they wanted to add a while back that could spawn or have a timer to grow to a higher node size or gem size (XS, S, M, L, XL+). This could also be used for the remaining existing nodes to make up for the dwindling finite resource pool if they grew in size with some kind of built in timer.

 

But also that there could be other debris like random ship crafting parts, scrap, stalagtites that fall with physics, or put some kind of action on harvest like a terforming sphere that goes off and fills in a 16x16m-128x128m terrain fill in reaction trigger to simulate cave ins. There could also be different harmful materials like lava that is filled in on the triggers as well that cant be mined that have a cooling timer before it changes into some kind of random soil or ore.

 

I also think that sifting could is required to also add even smaller amounts of trace ores at random every time you sift or grab dirt, sand, tundra, etc and spits out 1-5L of random ore on a 25% chance or 50% with T5. When there is no ore available sifting is still a good alternative since everything is made out of sediment it instantly makes it a profitable resource that nobody really ever collects. It also adds another layer on between surface rocks, underground rocks/gems/hazards between nodes so that you can sift dirt between nodes as well as collect rocks that spawn from breaking the sediment up as well as getting trace amounts from the sifter to slow people down between nodes is a good thing for longevity but still allows people to gather various supplimental ores while trying to go for a specific ore so that if you dont find anything for km you still dont go home empty handed.

 

The spawn rates of T1-5 rocks/gems should be:

  • T1 Rocks spawning 40% of the time, for 25L-500L harvestable rocks
  • T2 Rocks spawning 20% of the time, for 20L-400L harvestable rocks
  • T3 rocks spawning 15% of the time, for 15L-300L harvestable rocks
  • T4 Rocks spawning 10% of the time, for 10L-200L harvestable rocks
  • T5 Rocks spawning 5% of the time, for 5L-100L harvestable rocks

Or Gem Spawn Rates:

  • T1 Gems spawn 4% of the time, for 25L-100L harvestable gems
  • T1 Gems spawn 3% of the time, for 20L-75L harvestable gems
  • T3 Gems spawn 2% of the time, for 15L-50L harvestable gems
  • T4 Gems spawn .75% of the time, for 10L-25L harvestable gems
  • T5 Gems spawn .25% of the time, for 5L-10L harvestable gems

Sifting Chances per scoop (Ore):

  • 1 dig = 1 scoop. All mining talents for width should be duplicated for the sifter to get a little more chance for mats per sift.
  • T1 Ore per dig should have a 25-50% chace per sift to generate 1-25 T1 ore of random assortment or potentially 5 mats per type
  • T2 Ore per dig should have a 20-40% chance per sift to generate 1-20 T2 ore of random assortment or potentially 4 mats per type
  • T3 Ore per dig should have a 15-30% chance per sift to generate 1-15 T3 ore of random assortment of potentially 3 per ore type
  • T4 Ore per dig should have a 10-20% chance per sift to generate a 1-10 T4 ore of random assortment of portentially 2 per ore type
  • T5 Ore per dig should have a 5-10% chance per sift to generate a 1-5 T5 ore of random assortment of potentially -1 per type.

Siftin chancers per scoop (gems):

  • T1 Ore per dig should have a 25% chace per sift to generate 1-25 T1 ore of random assortment or potentially 5 mats per type
  • T2 Ore per dig should have a 20% chance per sift to generate 1-20 T2 ore of random assortment or potentially 4 mats per type
  • T3 Ore per dig should have a 15% chance per sift to generate 1-15 T3 ore of random assortment of potentially 3 per ore type
  • T4 Ore per dig should have a 10% chance per sift to generate a 1-10 T4 ore of random assortment of portentially 2 per ore type
  • T5 Ore per dig should have a 5% chance per sift to generate a 1-5 T5 ore of random assortment of potentially -1 per type.

Other RNG based drops:

  • The purity of a node should give a random % chance to gain some pure ore or scrap with each grab. It could be equal to the % of the next tier up with T5 only having a possibility of 1L gains.
  • Adding also other random ores that can be found in nodes. Many ores transition into other ore seams or most minerals are found with other minerals mixed into the seam or gems. There should be a random chance to get other things from an Iron node then just iron.
  • The depth should weigh in with gravity and pressure and make a substance harder then higher depth nodes and negate some of your grab speed and not necessarily the amount. Depth should negate your talents like adding more wind-up time for gold but still produce the same results as it would be with a normal node. It is denser and should get much more overall then a surface based voxel node.

Ore with grades:

  • Ore should have grades attached which should be required to make the higher grade parts. Not by requiring higher tier ores but using the same ores with much more refining required. Like if you want to take say a Rare/Unique L Atmo engine you should need to refine pure ore 5 times to make a unique grade ore to make a unique grade part.
  • Ore should have 5 grades per tier to cut down all the refining and have basic, advances, etc to suppliment and make that process more efficient if you can find better grade ores while mining at again random chances based on the purity of a node have the T1-5 grade factored in where you could get grades of T1 ore that are worth more then the standard 1 size fits all pure ore we have now.

Talents Needed:

  • Mining needs its own talent tree instead of 2 branches and 4-5 additional skills in the whole tree that even effect mining. Weapons/ammo needs to merge. Scanners need to be added to mining since we use scanners/detectors for everything its no surprise that mining would be the best spot to merge the Scanner Tree Into. HP tree is pointless since it makes repair costs higher instead of lower or bakes in more resistance via putdown so that should be scrapped. I would change weapons/ammo to a merged Fighter Pilot / Gunner Tree. Then come up with new game roles like Mechanic/Engineer, Builder/Architect, Base Management, or just creating a clone talent pool for PvP, PvE, Pvc, and Orgs so that the limited number of Talent Trees and skills can be opened up for other necessary things.
  • Mining needs some kind of vehicle and that is either some kind of modular train/track system so that it opens up the underground game more or some kind of exoskeleton/mech progression with cores. Either way everyone has some kind of vehicle that makes life easier so why not mining. So if and when a vehicle is added it should have talents that go into it.
  • Smelting/Refining should be moved to the Mining Tree and gated behind pre-reqs that only miners who go far enough can do. Until then people should have to use the nano crafter. Industry has way too much going for them requiring 10-15 people to properly spec into and some of that should be taken off their shoulders. Miners toil away all day and just hand over raw ore for other people to make real money turning it into items and not the miner who put in all the work vs a 1 button start machine that will run endlessly without having to touch anything ever again for max profit sounds pretty unfair. Miners should be the ones refining their own ore and making more money in the process.
  • Mining needs an Ore Research/Metaleurgy trees for each tier of ore that makes everything more efficient, give more ore per grab, chances for sifting, chances for harvesting, chances for pure ore or gems and making mining more worth while the more you go into it rather than maxing out in 14-15 weeks and watching your boost slip away as ore gets harder. I should be able to do more with less nodes or mining in one spot longer rather than mining non-stop 4-8kl nodes that get washed out by all the refining and production that turns litterally an L core's worth of volume of iron into 2-4 potential parts in the end is rediculous.
  • Tile scanner needs a nerf down to 1hr per tile and talents to potentially unlock scanner capability to find tiers of ore locked behind each ore tier above it being a pre-req to see the ore in a tile scan if you are looking for it specifically you should have to invest a lot of talents to see everything in a tile. Until you do so it would only detect T1 ore at a 4kl node size. Max talents should unlock the potential we have now with instead of 20mins its 30 max with a CD. Or making different scanners scan 1/3/7/19+ and base every tile scanned to be at least an hour base per tile added up with some kind of additional 1.5x time added on top of that so that even if you are using an L tile scanner its 19hrs x 1.9 or the number of tiles being scanned added on for attempting to scan a huge area should take longer than an hour but .1x per tile seems fair without talents making it slightly more efficient.
  • Add a sifter Talent Branch for the chances listed above.
  • Add a Talent Branch for Harvesting tool to make surface/underground mining more efficient.

 

An alternate resource generation system that makes sense is:

  • Create a world generation script for future expansions tht can target specific depth ranges and generate additional layers down the road under the 1-1000m resource depth range if the finite resource pool drops to dangerous levels that threaten the game. If they could specifically target and spwn an additional 1km worth of depth of reources under the current layer at will it would solve a whole host of issues and grant people full use of the 2.25km range from a container.
  • Allowing the generation of periodic spawning of small 500L-1kl micro nodes and tie in a timer to tiles which grows the nodes organically over time so that a 4kl node can turn into a 1mil kl super node if it is not discovered so that you dont have to respawn all the resources at once but the existing pool of ore nodes grows over time perhaps per week adding x amount of Liters and adding purity, hardness, quanitity, and size as time goes on.

 

That alone with solve 90% of production issues for smaller orgs and solo players.  It shouldnt be a crime to play how you want and being forced into a mold you know you dont like or wont fit into and any playstyle should be viable wether you  are 1 or 1000 people its just a matter of devision of labor.

 

Ore can also be put into a nynamic core as an asteroid and launched from an asteroid belt to any tile in the game if the devs use the auto pilot script that exists where there is no ore for miles. Since asteroids travel up to 30,000kmph it will also be subject to atmo burn and roast some of the ore off before it lands in the intended tile and upon destruction of the core should use a magic blueprint to spawn a crater around where the ore falls and create new ways to get ore respawns.

 

I also suggest if there is a new generation of resources that a core of magma be added 10km wide coming out from the core on Alioth. If you dig 20km down you will hit the magma core of Alioth and there should be a system that fills in the hollow space with 1 layer of voxels added coming up from the magma chamber until it gets up to the surface. Ideally its just a healing tool that heals from the ground up or that once you hit the magma core all the wall textures turn to magma and heal quickly but the bottom up healing would work best if the hollow space had a timer added to the tile in which it had to cool and you would not be allowed to dig unless you want to die. But once the magma timer is up it should have an instant 25% chance to turn into anything other than sediments like sand, tundra, or snow to create randomly generated ore seams. And even with the 25% chance it still has a random percent to spawn any kind of resource in the game including ore/stones/gems.

 

I also think that there needs to be some kind of mad tank approach from C&C where you use a 1 time device that resets the tunnels in a tile so that you can build massive bases without hundreds of spider web tunnels below so that if you want there to be tunnels or a maze you can start clean rather than having to fill other tunnels.

 

None of this breaks the game if you get 1-5 gold every once in a while sifting or you stumble on a gold nugget harvestable rock for 25L every so often or find a diamond randomly. It just bolsters and suppliments what you have. If the chances are much higher on planets/moons where that resource is abundant then it helps speed up mining while slowing it down so you dont have to go 20km to find out the ore in the entire region is picked clean and you will leave empty handed unless you spend a month or two on that planet coming up real soon here.

 

Its all about longevity of the game and the timed release of more grind due to scarcity or the amount of effort required to do basic things being cut down with little random surprises of various ores playing a role in making PvE, PvC, and PvE more enjoyable overall or allowing for a little more ore to be used in building fleets to fight or just lowering the grind a little.

 

This needs to happen one way or another to slow down mining whole km out for just perhaps 1 months worth of ore with how fast the machines process and make items. The craft times need to go up and the cost to make them go down. It takes a month to make a car from start to finish and it doesn't take a mountain of iron to make a car either.

 

 

Parts or all of this is required for longevity of this game.

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Logically you could do part of that with detector skills and an improved detector. Low skill = low level ore discovery rather that there just being small nodes on 'safe zone planets'... higher skills beget better detection of rarer ores, though not all ores on all planets.
Alternatively add several manfacturable imrpovements to both the scanner and the detector... each level added to the avatar as an enhancement (I know - like Eve impants, a bit) , or fittable to a hauler/linked container mining ship. 
Also, how about ship carried Refineries, so you can refine ores while you mine and carry the Pure back to makret or your base?

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4 hours ago, HamyMac said:

Logically you could do part of that with detector skills and an improved detector. Low skill = low level ore discovery rather that there just being small nodes on 'safe zone planets'... higher skills beget better detection of rarer ores, though not all ores on all planets.
Alternatively add several manfacturable imrpovements to both the scanner and the detector... each level added to the avatar as an enhancement (I know - like Eve impants, a bit) , or fittable to a hauler/linked container mining ship. 
Also, how about ship carried Refineries, so you can refine ores while you mine and carry the Pure back to makret or your base?

All ore needs to be on all planets and moons. The nodes are fine as is as that is the point of this suggestion that unless there is another pass on world generation that instead of 1-1000m node depths they could add another layer from 1001-2000m. Since I dont see that really happening the solution is rocks under the surface inbetween nodes.

 

Bare minimum each planet should have had 2 types of all 5 tiers with a primary and secondary ore to make specific parts from each planet or moon. But also that there are much smaller renewable fragments of ore between nodes to suppliment resources with again the primary and secondary types spawning more frequently in addition to other scaling rates per tier as a chance.

 

One day real soon Territory Wars will begin and it seems like they are going to hand over control to mega orgs as micro planetary factions. If another planet or moon is being sieged and you cant make specific tiers or grades of items to compete that is built into the design of the planets and moons should be to support each org controling a planetary body should have a self supporting amount of all ore since it is its own ecosystem.

 

Otherwise you give mega orgs a monopoly on not only the market but the tier items anyone else can make. Not only that but the grades as well as the size of items themselves. Its too much of a death vice for everyone else when the gap becomes impossible when all you can make is T1 basic parts and they can make everything else in the game.

 

Once the real blockades begin along with full assaults and unlimited resources and parts at their disposal it is not hard to imagine how they are going to blow through other peoples reserves and ability to fight in no time at all if they are also siezing TUs and everything connected to the cores which means even more power with every planet they take.

 

There is a real need for renewable resources and since the nodes arent going to repop harvesting a larger versions of ground rocks wont break the game if every once in a while you sift 1-5 gold or stumble upon a 25L gold nugget. If anyything its the only way to make mining random enough that you can actually break even or get ahead in the game. Not to mention a supplimental resource pool for sieges that builds up over time rather than hunting down 4-1mil+ KL nodes which are the real draw. This way orgs can still function when mega orgs flush everyone out of the most profitable planets and moons and cut everyone else off from that resource.

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I'm actually a fan of giving MORE yield per click.  Why does a huge node in the ground only take up less than %1 of my ships inventory?  This would fix a lot of issues going forward with demand as well.  I'm talking 100t + each smaller node.  I will often mine for several hours and only get a couple 100t stacks.  It's getting really old.  I know they have plans, but increasing the yields significantly would help out A LOT.

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On 1/18/2021 at 9:45 AM, OrionSteed said:

I'm actually a fan of giving MORE yield per click.  Why does a huge node in the ground only take up less than %1 of my ships inventory?  This would fix a lot of issues going forward with demand as well.  I'm talking 100t + each smaller node.  I will often mine for several hours and only get a couple 100t stacks.  It's getting really old.  I know they have plans, but increasing the yields significantly would help out A LOT.

Its as I say elsewhere that mining is the root of all evils in this game and the major cause of imbalance. My guess is by the time they did their first initial world generation that by the time they came back around to improve mining since its basically as stock of a system as you can get they realized that they could not change mining. Since every system down the line is impacted by it and you cant change any system sepperately that does not lead right back to mining.

 

But as time goes on they will need a supplimental system in order to keep mining viable as a profession once all the juice tiles and payday mines are gone. None or all of it can be phased in when that starts to happen but it will be necessary at some point when 4-12kl nodes end up being all thats left with the remainder of the ore being scattered by many km between nodes and still justify what happens to the millions of tunnels that crisscross all planets. At some point they are going to need to spawn content and alternatives to node mining to go back down there. Haveing 1-250l rocks is like 1 avg grab and stopping to harvest larger versions of surface rocks wont break the game if the spawn rates are done well.

 

 

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We could increase yield and then re-adjust all other recipes.

We could also decrease ore yield and increase Pure per production cycle to make it more feasable. O_o

It's a real balancing game if you think about it, to keep things in their current state without causing another 0.23

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On 1/19/2021 at 2:05 PM, Warlander said:

Its as I say elsewhere that mining is the root of all evils in this game and the major cause of imbalance. My guess is by the time they did their first initial world generation that by the time they came back around to improve mining since its basically as stock of a system as you can get they realized that they could not change mining. Since every system down the line is impacted by it and you cant change any system sepperately that does not lead right back to mining.

 

But as time goes on they will need a supplimental system in order to keep mining viable as a profession once all the juice tiles and payday mines are gone. None or all of it can be phased in when that starts to happen but it will be necessary at some point when 4-12kl nodes end up being all thats left with the remainder of the ore being scattered by many km between nodes and still justify what happens to the millions of tunnels that crisscross all planets. At some point they are going to need to spawn content and alternatives to node mining to go back down there. Haveing 1-250l rocks is like 1 avg grab and stopping to harvest larger versions of surface rocks wont break the game if the spawn rates are done well.

 

 

ive toyed with this idea as well, what if ore nodes produced like 1billion fold of thier current ore, and weight of said ore was equally increased.
Waltzing through a whole hex worth of nodes of ore and leaving behind ultimaely a desolate husk of a hex takes a solid team of 6-10 dedicated skilled miners about a day... 

 

im not sure whats gonna power pvp with land providing materials as a driving force if theres nothing of value to be had in the land hexes... cause by the time land pvp comes, the ore in any major rural area will be gone for KM all around.

 

we dont need to mine up the whole deposit we do that cause were greedy little gamers

and DU did a good job of teaching you early on before you got a stable supply of containers that you might not want to just mine up all the ore cause then you cant carry it.

I thought that was a interesting mechanic that would play into the game somehow but not really cause now its link yourself to 8 XL Expanded containers on a hub and empty the mega node so you can sell it to the computer... 

 

if extracting the entire node took a month or more then there would be some long term sustanibility that i could see in it, but with the existing iteration of minecraft style mechanics i do not see that occuring. 

 

 

Torch everything and start new

Hire an economist

Rebalance the ore yields, think of the real world, theres a copper deposit in Michigan thats been excavated by man for like 3000 years now... atleast... and its still got ALOT more copper in it 

rebalance the cost of ... everything...

remove some base ores from outer planets, to encourage measured and predictable growth

force the community to grow outward from alioth and not just blah like a virus on a sneeze at the theater
Place value on existing ore deposits being long term fixtures instead of making them vapor bits and encourage a community growth pattern thats outward and not random

Do these things and you will start to get some interesting gameplay that arises and less people being bored cause its all too pointless and easy.


 

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also warlander, i dont think you understand how voxels work. atleast not when it comes to the storing of and whatnot.

I dont have the best computer ever, but its ok, and i dont have your problem.

What i have noticed, is that people with lower powered systems especially lower end video cards will get the error messages while mining or doing terrain work, and thats cause those lower end machines pass off hardware baked tasks to software, which takes longer to process, and the changes to the environment locally dont or cannot occur right away seeing a difference in what is and what should be, thus requiring the player to wait between actions. 

so.. maybe im wrong but im guessing strongly, its not the server, its likely you.....

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13 hours ago, Greviouss said:

also warlander, i dont think you understand how voxels work. atleast not when it comes to the storing of and whatnot.

I dont have the best computer ever, but its ok, and i dont have your problem.

What i have noticed, is that people with lower powered systems especially lower end video cards will get the error messages while mining or doing terrain work, and thats cause those lower end machines pass off hardware baked tasks to software, which takes longer to process, and the changes to the environment locally dont or cannot occur right away seeing a difference in what is and what should be, thus requiring the player to wait between actions. 

so.. maybe im wrong but im guessing strongly, its not the server, its likely you.....

Yes I am aware that most of the volumetric data is stored locally and rendered from the cache stored on my machine client side.

 

What I am referring to is the fact that every time you change something it has to be sent to the server so it can update the volumetric data then allow users either in the proximity of the changes or later when someone comes along to have a consistent world rendered for everyone. When you mine or flatten anything it checks to see what is supposed to be there in terms of sediments like sand, snow, or tundra then reports back that there is and gives you the volume that exists there if you choose to collect it or not. Or that Building voxels are different than node voxels which are different than teravoxels. They are all voxels yes but they are classified as different things like the ore nodes which do exist on the grid but are given a different layer class so that you can clear around it. All of that of course has to be updated and rendered by the server to the client.

 

Otherwise if it is all client side there is nothing stopping you, I, or anyone from using a packet sniffer when mining different ores and telling the server that snow is gold if you change the hex values vs what the server knows is supposed to be there.

 

What I am talking about is the lag that mining seems to cause when there are 2 or more people in the area and the desync that occurs when it comes back to the server by how much damage can be done during that time which keeps bouncing back and forth between multiple clients and the server. Or the fact that when using the flattening tool for things like mining it never stops doing checks eveen if it is already flat to attempt to catch any artifacts that might exist to flatten the terrain and flooding the server with non stop checks. Or that some days there is so much mining and changes being done that it errors out and "jams" a tool for hours to days until it frees up and I can mine again.

 

I havent seen the specs of the Engine(s) they use but I assume (if im worng ill update this section) that DU uses PBR based textures that have multiple layers of textures baked into what is being rendered. And when you have multiple layers of textures with thousands of faces being rendered by the client it is going to bog it down when there are thousands of holes and jagged bits being rendered even if you cannot see the hundreds of tunnels nearby your still being taxed for it by your pc.

 

And yes some of it is graphics or my machine but I typically get like 45-60 frames a second unless im at the market and I get like 15-30fps. Im sure some of it is on my end but im also sure its the server too.

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