Jump to content

I want Asteroid mining on Planets too


m0rrty

Recommended Posts

I would like to have the old mining on planets.

I believe the average size of ore-nodes should be bigger, and maybe amount of ore-nodes should be less than one year ago.

 

However, the feature is great, and, since we have asteroids, why can't we have the same on planets? -- I mean, to have mining with closing tunnels automatically after some time ( the same, how asteroids just get refreshed ).

 

If player wants to have the cave, - make a game-mechanic that will "mark" the soil modifications to exist for some extra time (+1week, next time +2 weeks, next time + another time..)  That is how cave and tunnels can remain active, - by player maintenance), else it will be refreshed automatically.

 

Best regards,

m0rrty

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Du is no longer the "make you own game" MMO, and instead we now have NQ who is hand feeding us very specific ways that we must play the game.

For example they are now using the old mining system as a higher tier incentive where everything is stacked so that the PvP crowd get some involuntary victims to shoot at.

 

I.e NQ is saying either get involved in PvP (asteroid mining or missions), or learn to live with pocket change money given out by the mining bots.

And while I have no problem with risk-vs-reward systems, you cannot just decrease the non PvP income factor by something like 1/100 in a building game and call it a day.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, CptLoRes said:

Sure, but that is just classic NQ taking the easy way out. There are many more elegant ways they could have solved the scaling problem, and kept the mining etc. But that would have required some work on NQ's part.

 

Riiight? I think this will hurt them more than is obvious right now. It makes building more convenient in a lot of ways, but overall it reduces the engagement of the game. 

 

Once you have some AMs set up, mining is basically a "watch the paint dry" feature. Just like slowboating. Just like training talents. Just like waiting for asteroids to spawn. 

 

When so many features in your game rely on waiting around doing nothing, that's just not a good design. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, blundertwink said:

When so many features in your game rely on waiting around doing nothing, that's just not a good design. 

What about the AM mini game? (UGH!)

Or picking up all the rocks that drop via the mini game? (EWW!)

Or all that pvp during the now slower boating missioning? (ACK!)

 

Imho, we're doing all the waiting and all the UGH! EWW! ACK! for the building and maybe flying some cool aircraft/spacecraft (for a short while). DU is mostly (time) grinding...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, blazemonger said:

NQ can't afford the cost of planetside mining, they have actually said it was part fo the reason to move to the MU... cost saving ..

Yes, the cost is the topic, -

That is why it is so good to just fill the tunnels with soil a week after tunnels were made ...

At the moment we are in the same situation, -- if everyone goes to ground and dig tunnels, they will stay there forever.
that is consuming space.

 

But if tunnels are get filled with soil authomatically once a week ( if a player don't "mark" them as "in use" ), - that will solve the issues with ore and tunnels.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No one said they needed tunnels to mine, either....the most important aspect of mining (to me) is that it gets players moving across the system searching for ore. Exploration is a good thing. 

 

The actual process of digging through the planet...I could take it or leave it.

 

They could have a mining mechanic that doesn't involve actual digging -- like maybe you fire some sort of sensor probe and the goal is to pinpoint the node. Then your ship automatically extracts the ore once located.

 

Then having a mining-specialized ship would be a thing (e.g. more or better probes or faster extraction) -- without the cost of terrain deformation. 

 

Not saying it's the best idea, but my point is that there's a lot of room between pulling ore out of the earth and eliminating a huge pillar of active gameplay with timers and a silly mini-game. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please NQ please give us mega nodes on asteroids!

 

They only last a week and if small amount of asteroids have these there will be more content for explorers and PvP folks as there will be certain asteroids of higher value "not just ore tier wise".   Many of us disliked the ore veins not having huge random sizes with jackpot ones we might get luckily and find. NQ dropped a hugely one more action/turn game loop when they removed these. That rush of maybe finding a huge ore vein was real fun and real immersion as many wanted to do just one more scan or track down one more node hoping for that big score.  
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Endstar said:

Please NQ please give us mega nodes on asteroids!

 

They only last a week and if small amount of asteroids have these there will be more content for explorers and PvP folks as there will be certain asteroids of higher value "not just ore tier wise".   Many of us disliked the ore veins not having huge random sizes with jackpot ones we might get luckily and find. NQ dropped a hugely one more action/turn game loop when they removed these. That rush of maybe finding a huge ore vein was real fun and real immersion as many wanted to do just one more scan or track down one more node hoping for that big score.  
 

This makes much more sense than NQ literally undoing their entire reasoning behind why they removed planetary mining in the first place. Collapsible tunnels notwithstanding. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Their reasoning was flawed to begin with, though. 

 

"Let's remove the idea of exploration and movement because digging is too expensive."

 

They could have removed digging instead of turning the game into an exercise in waiting between repetitive back-and-forth hauling. 

 

Further, I don't think it was "too expensive", I think it was poorly implemented. Digging was too deep, the technical implementation was far too inefficient (especially with players in the same areas), and NQ realized that they need to maximize their margins because churn is too damn high. 

 

The lack of engaging content only makes churn worse, though...yay new players can exist in the game without "pending operation"...but they also have nothing to do. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It would be nice to be able to do some mining on unowned territories. Currently, there's really no reason to travel to another planet unless you own land there.

 

We've seen the economy build up from zero several times and it always settles out to 1 market on Alioth where you can get everything and all other markets are useless - unless bots are buying/selling everything in which case all markets are equally useful, but not good deals for anyone. So the economy doesn't provide a reason to travel.

 

No one in their right mind would take missions now that the combat system has been skewed so heavily in favor of what we might generously call pirates. Why would you play a game you can't win or even draw?

 

I would like to see ore placed at least 100m down and any contiguous tunnel that goes below -100m should be erased a small number of hours later. That saves needing to designate terraforming you don't want deleted. Maybe make it 200m so you can easily fit a L core underground if you want to.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just don't understand how NQ manages to always come up with subpar solutions to problems, some times even breaking the game trying to solve problems that does not exist like element collision and the latest nerf of elements.

 

There are SOO many ways NQ could have made this game better and more interesting, many of them without requiring a lot of dev time. But instead they seem to be spending most of the dev time breaking the game down and making it less enjoyable.

 

Take for example the cave systems you find everywhere on Alioth. All NQ has to do, is to randomly spawn large ore clusters (like the ones you get from the mining units, but on steroids) inside those caves and voila. Instant sense of exploration in the game that serves a purpose, and at minimal dev cost using mostly existing functionality no less. Then spend a little bit more dev time and have some rare occurrences of higher grade ore/aliens artifacts/collectible items/whatever spawn in the caves also, and people would go nuts.

 

And this is just me writing down the first thought that occurred to me, while NQ staff is supposed to be thinking about such things all day long.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

All NQ has to do, is to randomly spawn large ore clusters (like the ones you get from the mining units, but on steroids) inside those caves and voila. Instant sense of exploration in the game that serves a purpose, and at minimal dev cost using mostly existing functionality no less. Then spend a little bit more dev time and have some rare occurrences of higher grade ore/aliens artifacts/collectible items/whatever spawn in the caves also, and people would go nuts.

 

Absolutely.

An unclaimed tile should be reseeded somehow after a month of no visit/digging there - also mix some few rare ore into it so anyone once has the chance to get some Goldnuggets too. 

That would be a nice addition to the PVP Asteroid Gameplay and Scanning-orgies and gives ppl who like(ed) the mining their sandbox back.

 

For the time I'm playing I'd like to have a reward. 

Keep the MU's, why not. But also reseed the tiles all 3 months to kill that infinite lucky bastard rush. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/28/2022 at 12:46 AM, m0rrty said:

But if tunnels are get filled with soil authomatically once a week ( if a player don't "mark" them as "in use" ), - that will solve the issues with ore and tunnels.

 

Have all holes slowly regenerate unless they are within the area of a co strict build zone. You want to keep that bridge you made from sand, out a core there. You want to keep your underground bat cave, out a core there. No core, any digging slowly reverts to original status every maintenance cycle.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, CoyoteNZ said:

 

Have all holes slowly regenerate unless they are within the area of a co strict build zone. You want to keep that bridge you made from sand, out a core there. You want to keep your underground bat cave, out a core there. No core, any digging slowly reverts to original status every maintenance cycle.

That's an easy problem to solve, just have a parameter on player owned tiles that decides if the ground should regenerate or not within the tile area. It would even allow players to clean up and start new on terraforming their tiles if they want to "rearrange the furniture" so to speak.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I proposed it once, but I'll repeat myself: I think our asteroids should be supplemented by ONE mega asteroid... T3-T5 would stay dispersed on the small asteroids but every week we'd basically get something of a size between an asteroid and a moon, to mine T1 and T2 by hand.

That leads to people who want to play really actively meeting eachother more frequently, the spacebody needs to be just large enough that 50-100 working on it don't constantly triangulate the same note, but still frequently see other players in range, enabling them to meet eachother organically, and possibly to form groups to venture out where there is more risk/reward.

For the others leave the spawn as is if you must, but for the mega asteroid drop the weekend thing... Just spawn in another mega asteroid when the first one is 60-75% empty, then have the old one vanish when there are no players around it.


It would be a noob hub, a primary place for newcomers to progress and meet up.




edit: I also like the idea of planet healing eventhough that's most likely out of scope, and a total pipedream by now. But if they did it, they'd need to add a twist: only unclaimed tiles heal (or only them heal quickly)... Now that's bound to force migration! Voila now tiles don't get permaclaimed... BTW they could do something similar with MU... but MU are just so tedious and such non-gameplay, that in an MU based economy, the prospect of tile depletion doesn't sound fun at all! When demeter dropped I made my peace with MU, but actually the game was more of immersive first person game and less of a glorified browser game (that requires a beefy PC) before the introduction of MU. I tried to stay positive. Especially once I got the impression that the new management tried to have a constant content drip to keep us busy. But with the wipe discussion and consequently the stuff NQ openly and tacitly admitted to... Ugh, I hope you like the game as it is, the time for patience and positivity is over (not that most of you ever had any).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...