Noob question... where is the ore?

[Dyab0lix]

Played a little bit 6 months ago, and came back 3 days ago... plenty of threads on the changes RE: mining units already, but cant find anything on manual mining. 

 

Is there any planets you can mine on? Or is the only option as a new player to pick up 10 million rocks before I can afford astroid finding things?

[Maxim Kammerer]

1 hour ago, Dyab0lix said:

Is there any planets you can mine on?

No, neither planets nor moons.

 

1 hour ago, Dyab0lix said:

Or is the only option as a new player to pick up 10 million rocks before I can afford astroid finding things?

Only if you find 10 million rocks. They don't respawn anymore. I'm afraid there is no way around mining units.

[Dyab0lix]

Oh damn didnt know they didnt respawn, thats rough. So for a new player on sanc, its really just waiting for that whole 250 ore per hour? (After picking up 10 million rocks to afford mining units)

 

Selling at about 20each thats 5000h an hour... so i can afford 1 engine per day and hope to fly nowhere better in about a week from now.

 

I thought rock picking simulator was slow!

 

Surely theres something im missing here. For a game entirely based on processing ore, it seems like somethings not quite right in the early game.

Edited December 16, 2021 by Dyab0lix

[Novean-32184]

Some will tell you to go do missions, for a new player missions pay very little though and so you really are stuck with grinding for a good bit of time unless you join an org where you may get some support .. these starter mission are really not work the effort IMO..

 

You get 150K quanta/day which will mean in about week you will have a basic mining setup running 4 basic L mining units which will give you about 400l/h in ore from Sanctuary. Quick calculation will mean you make about 1.6 million quanta a week from selling ore to bots. doing so will require you to log in daily and spend considerable time on just this.

So yeah.. The game has pretty much turned into a grindfest..

[Dyab0lix]

I know you get about 500k from tutorials too... but add in blowing your hard earned ship up on your first try at re-entry ( and all the scrap you need from game freezes while flying) and its a real grind for noobs. Need to up that 200k starting salary!

 

I think i'll check back again in 6 months. Was really hoping i was missing something, but that starter grind just isnt fun.

[Novean-32184]

I certainly feel the balance is not there yet and I hope NQ will make some quick adjustments to accomodate this.

 

I would not mind if the small basic MU would lose the  calibration (on Sanctuary) and the bonus for adjecent tiles to just pull 50l/h. Limit use to 8 per player and new players can fairly easily get going on Sanctuary. The basic S MU really has little to no value elsewhere anyway. SImple fix with a good impact for noobs..

 

[Aaron Cain]

The ore feature is canned, we dont know what feature is next to reduce lag, industry? Flight? Trees? water?

[sHuRuLuNi]

35 minutes ago, Aaron Cain said:

The ore feature is canned, we dont know what feature is next to reduce lag, industry? Flight? Trees? water?

 

Game?

[Dyab0lix]

2 hours ago, Jake Arver said:

I would not mind if the small basic MU would lose the  calibration (on Sanctuary) and the bonus for adjecent tiles to just pull 50l/h. Limit use to 8 per player and new players can fairly easily get going on Sanctuary. The basic S MU really has little to no value elsewhere anyway. SImple fix with a good impact for noobs..

 

Its pretty much that way on sanc already. Some nice person gave me 500k when i got stuck and had to suicide with my life savings in my inventory... and i bought 8 small miners. The veins are only like 64l/hr of each ore except 1 which is about 150l/hr.. with 2 miners working each ore calibration doesnt actually matter on 6 of them. 

 

But thats about 300l/hr total, or about 180,000 quanta a day. Can buy 2 assemblers and 1 schematic...  then just wait for the next day... and when you finally have industry going, i assume 7000l of ore a day wont make much at all.

 

I was making fun of rock picking simulator, but now i know they dont respawn i suddenly value them sooo much. But at the same time i know theres probably not enough there to get me to asteroids... which isnt super motivational to keep trying.

 

Edit: in case devs read this.. 6 months ago there was something to do as a noob, mining... even if it was just a little bit of tier 1 ore that didnt earn alot, at least it was something active to do... but now its literally just waiting for a machine to do it for you slowly.... i understand why it was removed for stability/sustainability, but please put "fun" at the top of your considerations for the next update.

Edited December 16, 2021 by Dyab0lix

[Maxim Kammerer]

1 hour ago, Dyab0lix said:

I was making fun of rock picking simulator, but now i know they dont respawn i suddenly value them sooo much.

You can go to Alioth and pick them up on free tiles. It's a pain compared to the good old mining, but better than S MUs. I did that to reful my ship while waiting for the territory scanner.

[Wyndle]

  

6 hours ago, Maxim Kammerer said:

They don't respawn anymore. I'm afraid there is no way around mining units.

Holy F***, I missed that detail before. My opinion about the direction NQ seems to be taking this project (can no longer call it a game) actually got worse with reading that, and there wasn't much room for that to happen.  Well played.

 

2 hours ago, Dyab0lix said:

I was making fun of rock picking simulator, but now i know they dont respawn i suddenly value them sooo much.

Except for the fact that the bots don't change their prices based on market conditions, so new players are ensured a certain amount of income compared to what an org can achieve (rough paraphrase).  Wasn't that also about the same time they started UBI (daily login quanta)?  Both now completely screw the new player for much longer than any sane person would grind in the client (formerly known as a game) without some fun.  

 

I seem to recall there being discussion of hiring someone who understood economics to help balance the market.  Either that didn't happen or the person they hired said some of the same things about free markets and was let go or, more likely, ran to the nearest Austrian economics facility for personal safety.

 

1 hour ago, Maxim Kammerer said:

You can go to Alioth and pick them up on free tiles.

That works this time, but eventually all of those rocks will be gone too.  Then the only rocks would be on actively controlled tiles.

 

Guess what you get when you combine planned/limited income growth and selective price controls at the same time?  Stagflation... and war/conflict.  Too bad we don't have AvA or functional space PvP to at least salvage that part of the project.  (Edit:  The previous sentence was pure snark.  If you don't have a functional economy then war and conflict would decimate what little is left of the project).

[Cybob19]

Yes starting out is hardcore nowadays. A wipe would be so awful, I'm a freak who picked up rocks on sactuary while I kept my queue busy (when everybody has nothing, juggling the few thousand liters inventory space for no timeloss is a challenge) and even I don't see myself micromanaging my nanocrafter in the manner I did, when I'm heading towards such a steep cliff. Basically I'd rush mining units and some prime locations on alioth, then barely play for 1-2 months.

 

If somebody really wants to sink their teeth into demeter, I have no qualms gifting 4 basic mining units L, maybe even one of each basic industry units... The issue is 3 out of 4 times, it would lay dormant on an inactive account after a few weeks. ?

[Aaron Cain]

sorry to say but logging all alts per day and unlogging in 1 minute makes me more quanta then the mining units.

[Efeliel]

So, Mr. Cain, what you're saying is that I should pay 8 dollars a month for 4 million Quanta as a new player?

 

And, Dyab0lix, I think that was DaisyTurtle (iirc the name) who helped me, also. They took the time to review over my Job request right after helping you and got me out of a real fix I was in, where; I couldn't progress on my 5th day here. I wanted to move to Alioth and didn't know that after buying a 20 ton TU (paying for sub, paying 1 mil a week each tile over threat of losing it all, paying for another TU and tax) I would also have to spend another 500k quanta to even place it! in order to have 2 adjacent tiles to build my plan/my dream to build on in effort to 

"...rebuild

society in this brand-new solar system." ~NQ

gah! dream was dashed. Stuck with 20tons on my back. But I shall just adjust my plan a bit. So, I put in a job order to place the TU on another planet. Maybe I'll take Mr. Cain's advice and pay real money to make sure I can pay for rebuilding in this brand-new solar system XD. Yet, I do not intend to yield to stress. I'm harvesting up every little drop of surface ore on my tile on sanctuary!

 

[CptLoRes]

Mining is now considered "end game" with lots of experience, time gating and expensive elements needed to find and reach the asteroids in a system that is heavily tilted in favor of PvP players.

 

It is brilliant really. They took mining which many people considered the boring mindless part of the game, and made it the "reward" for sticking with the game and doing the even more mindless and boring "picking up rocks" and "calibrating" auto bots part. A true lose-lose scenario!

 

[Novean-32184]

2 hours ago, Wyndle said:

 Holy F***, I missed that detail before. My opinion about the direction NQ seems to be taking this project (can no longer call it a game) actually got worse with reading that, and there wasn't much room for that to happen.  Well played.

 

NQ actually tries to claim that respawn of surface harvestables was "never intended" (which is what Deckard claimed in Discord) to not have to address this issue. Funny bit is though, surface rocks respawning was one of their major arguments when they introduced them and huge swats not actually doing that has been a problem since, which they seem to not be able to fix (of they just don't care to).  

[Wyndle]

13 minutes ago, Jake Arver said:

"never intended"

Ah, another synonym for placeholder.  Gee, at what point do we change the name to Duct-tape Unfuniverse?

 

13 minutes ago, Jake Arver said:

they just don't care to

It is a matter of priorities.  Right now the priority seems to be wholesale conversion to a F2P system with as much grind as can be humanly tolerated.  It worked for Blizzard!  (too soon?)

[Cybob19]

As alluded earlier, I picked up skittles when the beta dropped (most veins won't fit in your inventory, why run back and forth everytime you got a little space available).

 

They 100% for sure respawned. If they're actually being disingenous, and not just misremembering... I would totally ascribe this change to all the "skittles look tacky criticisms" ("fine you can make them dissappear if it such a huge issue"). Another one of those "damned if you do damned if you don't" ideas, that got an inappropriate amount of airtime in the public discourse about the game.

[CptLoRes]

Speaking of surface ore respawn. Has anyone tried gaming the system?

 

Here is what I mean by that. When you dig/flatten an area, it will no longer respawn ore.

So what happens if you flatten most of a tile, only leaving a small area that can spawn ore?

Will you get more ore spawning at one location? Will the bot calibration hot spot and ore spawn be limited to one location?

 

[Sejreia]

They do respawn, just very slowly and I would suggest that NQ will not release surface nodes that look like these. Probably look more like underground mini tiny nodes that are 2d on surface, I'd think. Remember, this is in beta, and, upon release, the worlds will have to have a massive overhaul if they would want to enjoy today's gamers to subscribe.

 

/wave Mr. Cain.

[Cybob19]

Besides one could quickly fix how "aggravating they look" (personally i like them they help me land) by having the colorful parts only light up when you aim at the skittle with a harvesting tool equipped.

[Zeddrick]

28 minutes ago, CptLoRes said:

Speaking of surface ore respawn. Has anyone tried gaming the system?

 

Here is what I mean by that. When you dig/flatten an area, it will no longer respawn ore.

So what happens if you flatten most of a tile, only leaving a small area that can spawn ore?

Will you get more ore spawning at one location? Will the bot calibration hot spot and ore spawn be limited to one location?

 

Calibration ore can definitely spawn in places where you flattened the ground.  It messed up my base with random ore splats I wasn't interested in harvesting and I had to stop calibrating mining units on the tile because of it.