Get rid of the surface harvestables for Mining Units and ...

[blazemonger]

Instead retain calibration for longer, set three brackets which will add 8, 16 or 24 hours to the time the Mining unit stays at the achieved calibration.

Easy, clean and removes the need to go run around and get the harvestables while giving you roughly the same amount of "bonus ore"

 

[Atmosph3rik]

I only play the mini game half the time, but when i do i'm just leaving the rocks there.

 

I'm wondering how many piles of rocks can be deposited on one territory.  And what a territory will look like after a year of that?

 

I know they said they are adding talents, and hopefully an option where you don't have to hold the mouse down the entire time you're harvesting a rock.  But i still might skip it i don't know.

 

An option to trade the rocks for more bonus calibration, or longer up-time, would be great.

 

 

Edited February 4, 2022 by Atmosph3rik

[Cabana]

26 minutes ago, Atmosph3rik said:

And what a territory will look like after a year of that?

 

The NEW meganode system ^^

 

I just spawn the rocks near my base and dont collect them for faster calibration. You can see the ore concentration from your ship. Its getting slowly big !

[Namcigam]

Lol, spoken like a true DU exile, I feel your pain

[GraXXoR]

i honestly dont even understand WHY some of the ore would go to the container as intended but some of the ore would leak out and be left there... smells of bad design and broken technology to me.

[RugesV]

They are already changing surface harvestables.  and adding time bonus for achieved calibration would result in all your MU's needing calibration at different periods of time. 

[CptLoRes]

The most worrying part of all this is NQ's seemingly complete inability to design enjoyable game features. And it is not getting better with time..

[Atmosph3rik]

I was harvesting some rocks the other day, because they happened to be right next to my mining units, and i was thinking about why surface harvesting is so horrible, compared to abilities that i've used in other games.

 

Holding down the left mouse button is the first problem.  It would be a lot more pleasant if it had a casting time, like a spell in other MMOs, that you activate with a keyboard shortcut, and as long as you don't do anything else, it completes on its own.

 

But the timing itself is what i noticed.  When you are about to finish harvesting a rock, there's this pause, when the progress bar is completely full, that feels like it takes an eternity, and if you release the mouse button during that pause, you fail to harvest the rock, and you have to start over.

 

I'm sure this has to do with latency or something.  But they managed to compensate for it in MMOs like Everquest, when i was playing on a dialup connection.  So there has to be a better way to do it here.

 

This isn't an issue with regular mining, because you can choose to stop letting the sphere grow at any time, so if you jump the gun by a second, you just get a little bit less ore.  And the pause while the server catches up happens after you completed the action, not before.

 

This same problem affects the Repair Tool too, but it's not as bad because if you release the mouse button too soon, it doesn't reset the progress bar.  But the pause at 100% is still frustrating in a sort of subliminal way that maybe not everyone notices, but no one enjoys repairing a ship either.

 

Abilities should have a satisfying pop when they complete, not a long awkward pause.  If it takes the server a second to catch up, don't make me hold down the mouse button during that time.

[GraXXoR]

@Atmosph3rik  I think it’s because this implementation was originally just an afterthought added on as an emergency extra for players caught on Sanctuary or somewhere without any resources but needed to be able to, say, create some fuel in there Nano pack or add an XS container or something.

Surface harvesting really was designed just for picking up those 20 litre rocks in small numbers.

 

But as with everything in DU, NQ thought they could just reuse something that they had already built and re-purpose it beyond its original scope.

 

like the interface for constructs, fine for a dozen, unworkable for 200.
 

Or the dropdown list for the RDMS, fine for adding a player or two to a policy but sucks when you’re trying to choose from 30 odd critical user-rights. 

Or skills interface that takes up over half the screen with a female in a gimp suit - fine if you just have a couple of selection boxes around the edge but stupid when it squeezes the actual skills into a list on the right hand 20% of the screen and allows the list to be 100+ Entries long!
 

these are all inappropriate tools for the jobs and surface mining is no exception.

 

not fit for purpose. 
 

im being critical because these are problems that have existed for months if not years and haven’t ever been addressed and in many cases (skills interface, surface mining) actually became worse.