[Feedback] Automatic mining vs Manual Mining.

[Elitez]

We all know somewhere in the future we will get automatic mining. One of the solutions i have for automatic mining (passive, machine, drones) not to impact the market that much is the resource to be locked and forbidden from selling on market.

You can mine in 24h on X tile which has 1000kt of T1 at the speed NQ wants but the resource MUST be locked and forbidden to be sold on market. A new locked tier of items has to be added to the game where Locked T1 > processed locked T1 until final product is forbidden to go on the markets. What can you do with it? Of course, use it for pve or pvp purposes. Locked items are for personal use, normal items are for sell/resell, etc.

So, lets say you have partial locked items and you cant get easily stuff to finish your Locked Engine. You can use not locked parts to create a Locked engine. If you have 90% not locked parts and you use 1-10% locked parts, item is locked.

In order for the lock to be applied correctly it has to be locked to a specific player and only him can use/move/deploy the item, otherwise trading locked items will bypass the tactic of not trading locked items easily obtained. Once you create A Ship with locked items and you want to sell it via gift or key or whatever, items are locked and cant be used. Ship is functional only if Owner is the same, that means automining will have more added value especially for big orgs.

Its a theory i think that it wont impact that much the amount of autominers in the game. You get your stuff but you cant monetize it.

o7

[bleakcon]

I think the issue with this will be things like :

1. what happens when you tokenise something with one or more such items?
2. are they also untradeable?
3. what about sticking them in dispensers?

Then there is also the issue of : "we want players to be interacting", this sort of mechanic is an incentive to become self sufficient on a number of components.

Just from these initial thoughts it looks like this would be more of a workaround than solving a problem.

The reality is this: automatic mining defined as placing something down and having to expend no amount of effort maintaining the structure is a massive problem; auto miners must have downsides and automated shouldn't mean requiring no effort to have such devices working.

Thing is, let's look at why this is the approach they are taking:

1. Simply put putting lasers or drills for mining on cores is simply going to lag the server out to hell, at least with how mining currently works.....I believe they have confirmed this themselves.

2. Mining is boring and no one wants to do it, not only is it boring but the experience itself is bad, it can be really disorientating moving through tunnels plus the lighting is just wrong from what I have seen.
3. they probably want these to be conflict drivers, where different hexes provide different benefits to units.

 

I, personally would like them to take a step back and look at how to make resource gathering more challenging and fun with a better feeling of progression that exceeds simply adding talents or placing machines down to automine.

[CoyoteNZ]

I think they want autominers so we put less holes in their planets killing their data base.

 

It won’t really work though. It will be great for casual players, as they will log on for a couple of hrs three or four tines a week. They will have a bin fill of ore they can either play with or sell so they can do activities other than mining.

 

Hard core 8hr a day miners aren’t going to change. Sure they will place down their maximum number of auto miners and workout if clearing them is more or less profitable that mining all day. If there is no limit to how many they can have then they may just change play style to spending eight hours flying between miners and clearing them.

 

It will help with the database issue I suppose.

 

And since the casual player pays the same sub amount but uses a heck of a lot less bandwidth of the hardcore, maybe they are going to make some toys for them.  But probably at this stage there are probably more hardcore than causal.

[blundertwink]

3 hours ago, CoyoteNZ said:

And since the casual player pays the same sub amount but uses a heck of a lot less bandwidth of the hardcore, maybe they are going to make some toys for them.  But probably at this stage there are probably more hardcore than causal.

 

For sure. NQ needs a lot more semi-casual players if it wants to have a chance at sub-based monetization. Anything that helps this is to the game's benefit. 

 

There are plenty of ways to balance auto-miners without introducing more complexity or even new features. 

 

For example, miners could require real infrastructure like power -- they already wanted to make a power mechanic for industry (schematics were their quick and lazy fix).  This creates an element of maintenance since power plants likely require fuel (without being too much micro-management) and prevents players from just dumping a miner and getting ore with no effort. 

 

Territory war could also play a huge role in balance -- yes you can slap down some basic infrastructure and power, but that wouldn't be enough to defend your claims.

 

Autominers could also add a level of logistics beyond just hauling. Settling near mining outposts that are willing to trade minerals might be more efficient than just buying them at a market. Competition over (hopefully) rare nodes would help drive real conflict, which the game sorely needs. 

 

Done correctly (not holding my breath), autominers could add a lot of depth to industry, PvP, logistics, and the economy...but the game needs more foundation before this will really work. 

[Maxim Kammerer]

On 4/26/2021 at 7:20 PM, Elitez said:

You can mine in 24h on X tile which has 1000kt of T1 at the speed NQ wants but the resource MUST be locked and forbidden to be sold on market.

 

You seem to assume that automining will be way faster than manual mining. But it will most probably the other way around. As you already mentioned it is NQ that defines the speed and we know that they deem the current mining speed as to high. Thus, I expect them to set the automining speed so low that additional balacing becomes obsolete.

[Elitez]

On 4/29/2021 at 1:05 PM, Maxim Kammerer said:

 

You seem to assume that automining will be way faster than manual mining. But it will most probably the other way around. As you already mentioned it is NQ that defines the speed and we know that they deem the current mining speed as to high. Thus, I expect them to set the automining speed so low that additional balacing becomes obsolete.

I actually assume that automining will be slower in terms of what 1 player can do in 1h but my main interest is the automining ore not to be injected in the market and monetized. Use it as you want to defend or construct anything you dream off, just lock ore/item from market and trading.

[blundertwink]

2 hours ago, Elitez said:

I actually assume that automining will be slower in terms of what 1 player can do in 1h but my main interest is the automining ore not to be injected in the market and monetized. Use it as you want to defend or construct anything you dream off, just lock ore/item from market and trading.

I guess my question would be 'why'? It isn't like the markets are meant to be stable at this point. There's plenty of other ways to balance the impact that auto-generated ore has on markets beyond an extra level of complexity that locks trading. So what if it crashes ore prices? They can always tweak the price of schematics etc. to balance it. 

[Cheith]

Not sure it really matters how fast auto-mining is. Unless you happen to sit your autominer on a mega node most mining time is spent getting to the next node anyway.

Casual players will not be sitting on mega nodes most likely so I doubt it will really make that much difference to the market - it will just let you do something else while the node is mined.

 

Now, if we are completely changing how mining works - no mode nodes or something - then maybe it makes sense. Then the question is what does manual mining look like?