Mega-scale Mining

[demonduo]

Having thought about how resource collection will play out over time, and the usual demand out-stripping supply, i propose methods of collecting resources on a far greater scale, these methods deal with mined materials.

 

Thinking far larger then mining as a small group, rather entire organizations or very large resource divisions, preforming literal planetary mining. With varying degrees of required technology and feasibility, i envisage techniques such as:

 

 

Orbital bombardment, rendering portions of a planets surface into rubble/debris, ready to be collected and processed.

 

Orbital Melting, as the name Implies, from orbit areas of a planet are melted resulting in all potential resources and the surrounding rock/surface material liquefying and or burning away. continued heating over time should result in the formation of separate layers  of semi-refined material which can be cooled and collected.

 

Tectonic 'plate mining' (planet cracking under a different name) whereby sections of a planet or moon are carved out and pulled into space for immediate processing, this method could also be used on asteroids (whole or otherwise).

 

These are just a few examples and are my thoughts of what could be, mega-scale/high-end mining.

Please share thoughts below.

 

 

[Xplosiv]

hehehe tractor beam and orbital bombardment. Use some sort of shock wave technology that shatters rock, then suck it all up via tractor beam. 

[Wicpar]

i want this:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/World_Devastator

[Halo381]

While the physics in DU will be pretty good, I don't believe it'll be complex enough to do any of those things. 

[Dunbal]

Having thought about how resource collection will play out over time, and the usual demand out-stripping supply, i propose methods of collecting resources on a far greater scale,

Please share thoughts below.

 

Interesting what you'll want.

 

What you actually get: pickaxe, shovel, bag. And you have to make them.

 

j/k your ideas sound cool but what happens when you let a single person have too much power and they start gobbling up all the planets for themselves? With great power comes great responsibility, lol. I understand about economies of scale, and technology can solve work-force issues with droids, etc - but at some point just keeping everything organized and working needs to be what puts the brakes on very, very large scale operations.

 

For example to mine a planet, you'd need an energy source. It needs to be transported, stored, converted. No energy conversion is ever 100% efficient, so there will be waste heat to deal with, etc. All sorts of things that necessarily must put the brakes on purely fantastic notions of efficiency. One or a few dozen men mining a planet - hey, planets are BIG!

 

If you feel like mining a planet so much I suggest you join EVE Online, go to nullsec and mine that giant Spod asteroid that spawns in the small industrial belt... a few days of mining THAT and you won't want to mine planets anymore heheheh

[IffyCougar832]

Well there should certainly be large scale mining, but not on that level. Large drills or other equipment can be used to go deeper at a faster pace and such. So, not planet destroying level, but maybe large island/asteroid disappearances will be reported throughout the galaxy...

[ATMLVE]

Your ideas are certainly awesome and powerful, but I don't think the game will ever be that complex. Your ideas are better suited to how an advanced civilization IRL would mine resources for a population of trillions. But this is just a game, so I wouldn't get my hopes up that the methods you describe will be present, at least not for while, or to the extend you're suggesting.

 

And lets not forget that everything you're suggesting could be turned right around and used as an outrageously devastating doomsday weapon!

[IffyCougar832]

Your ideas are certainly awesome and powerful, but I don't think the game will ever be that complex. Your ideas are better suited to how an advanced civilization IRL would mine resources for a population of trillions. But this is just a game, so I wouldn't get my hopes up that the methods you describe will be present, at least not for while, or to the extend you're suggesting.

 

And lets not forget that everything you're suggesting could be turned right around and used as an outrageously devastating doomsday weapon!

Maybe that's what he wants...

[RightBigToe]

Having thought about how resource collection will play out over time, and the usual demand out-stripping supply, i propose methods of collecting resources on a far greater scale, these methods deal with mined materials.

 

Thinking far larger then mining as a small group, rather entire organizations or very large resource divisions, preforming literal planetary mining. With varying degrees of required technology and feasibility, i envisage techniques such as:

 

 

Orbital bombardment, rendering portions of a planets surface into rubble/debris, ready to be collected and processed.

 

Orbital Melting, as the name Implies, from orbit areas of a planet are melted resulting in all potential resources and the surrounding rock/surface material liquefying and or burning away. continued heating over time should result in the formation of separate layers  of semi-refined material which can be cooled and collected.

 

Tectonic 'plate mining' (planet cracking under a different name) whereby sections of a planet or moon are carved out and pulled into space for immediate processing, this method could also be used on asteroids (whole or otherwise).

 

These are just a few examples and are my thoughts of what could be, mega-scale/high-end mining.

Please share thoughts below.

 

In the Kickstarter comments, NQ partially addressed this:

 

1- Will there be real industrial automation? Similar to the game Farlight Explorers with conveyor belts, ore extraction machinery, robot arms, trains, etc...

1) About industrial automation: it should be technically possible with LUA script. 

 

From that comment alone, it seems the ability to automate industrial process such as mining is up to the skill of the scriptors and the availability of pre-defined elements with moving parts.  To take it a step further, NQ has mentioned that interacting between ships outside the atmosphere and the surface will be limited by the ability of the pre-defined weapons/tools available. Considering that I do not think you can move planetary bodies with constructs (at least at this time), "plate mining" also seems unlikely for the near future.

[SimonVolcanov]

One way or another, there should be the possibility to mine on a larger scale than by hand. I mean, if the resource depots are really several kilometers large, you'll need either a mining ship or (my preferred solution) ground vehicles like drills, diggers and such. (I know, they said no wheels, but nothing is set in stone yet)

[StoneLegionYT]

I love to see some auto mining for sure. I love to see some basic industrial stuff as well for processing and such. But I hope it does not become a script war as well. I know the scripts are being run client side and it suck if in the end if the idea of the game is having 100 accounts afk automating mining / processing all the time. This will end up turning into having more then 1 account and ugh. NIGHTMARES  

[demonduo]

Interesting what you'll want.

 

What you actually get: pickaxe, shovel, bag. And you have to make them.

 

j/k your ideas sound cool but what happens when you let a single person have too much power and they start gobbling up all the planets for themselves? With great power comes great responsibility, lol. I understand about economies of scale, and technology can solve work-force issues with droids, etc - but at some point just keeping everything organized and working needs to be what puts the brakes on very, very large scale operations.

 

For example to mine a planet, you'd need an energy source. It needs to be transported, stored, converted. No energy conversion is ever 100% efficient, so there will be waste heat to deal with, etc. All sorts of things that necessarily must put the brakes on purely fantastic notions of efficiency. One or a few dozen men mining a planet - hey, planets are BIG!

If you feel like mining a planet so much I suggest you join EVE Online, go to nullsec and mine that giant Spod asteroid that spawns in the small industrial belt... a few days of mining THAT and you won't want to mine planets anymore heheheh

 

this isn't meant for a a single player, the size of a ship required to preform such actions would be by it self an impressive achievement, requiring the input of (purely speculative) say 100 players, and operating it would require as many again, its an idea to solve a problem that wont appear and present it self for a long time, which isn't to say people wont strive  for larger-scale operations on their own terms. EVE shows this very well.

 

as for power and efficiency, this wouldn't be simple efficiency in terms of greater output, eventually a level is reached where it becomes the next step, by this i mean, mining with players and ships will reach a point where a bigger ship has capabilities the smaller ships cannot achieve. Another EVE example is the Rorqual.

 

It is rather funny you should mention EVE, im a veteran of 8 years, and organizing a fleet to mine entire belts was  my thing, so i can say i wouldn't get tired of devouring a planet

 

 

Your ideas are certainly awesome and powerful, but I don't think the game will ever be that complex. Your ideas are better suited to how an advanced civilization IRL would mine resources for a population of trillions. But this is just a game, so I wouldn't get my hopes up that the methods you describe will be present, at least not for while, or to the extend you're suggesting.

 

And lets not forget that everything you're suggesting could be turned right around and used as an outrageously devastating doomsday weapon!

 

Maybe that's what he wants...

i will admit, i strive for complexity and advancement, even crave it, and it being a game is exactly why i would like to see it, i realize my idea is not a short term, rather a long term or far future idea, if it should ever reach such scale at all.

 

Now. as for everything being a potential weapon, it is true, it could be, but as with anything, it is how it is used.

Examples of your argument are the likes of nuclear weapons and nuclear power generation, it is entirely up to the user.

[StoneLegionYT]

From today's interview we learned there will be no ship mining or really any sort of Auto Mining. They feel that this belongs to the players and people should mine not the ships. They don't want to take it away. 

 

A good argument is that it would help bring people closer and even give the lowest ranking org members something to do. 

[IffyCougar832]

So we mine everything by hand? And we're expected to build cities and ships? So what if people don't want to spend 10 years mining out the resources for half a ship?

[wizardoftrash]

So we mine everything by hand? And we're expected to build cities and ships? So what if people don't want to spend 10 years mining out the resources for half a ship?

You can expect that if players are mining by hand, that the process will probably go pretty fast and it'll be something like a 1-1 ratio of mined volume to usable volume.

 

People build some huge stuff in Minecraft mining by hand. I play on a SMALL private server (total population of 10) and we built cities, in vanilla. A full MMO game will have cities in a week.

[Lethys]

Do contracts for others

Gain money

Go to market hub

Buy ship

Profit (at least for the seller)

[ShadowLordAlpha]

I would be surprised if there was not eventually some way for constructs to mine and construct simply because of the size of the things as SLI already has plans for some very large ships and structures and mining everything by hand would make those projects not really worth it. Probably wouldn't be worth building ships as anything other than large hauling barges due to the upkeep they will have and such

[StoneLegionYT]

I would like to see basic Iron / Stone being something we can automate at least. Nothing big for ship production and such but maybe some the basic common materials for building on planets. 

[ProphetZarquon]

Personally, I am in favor of a large group of players (or one sufficiently well-funded one) having the capability to frag/slag a planet.  In a game with a near-limitless procedurally generated environment & (presumably) ever-expanding zones of influence around the safe-spawn zones, it only makes sense that resources could truly become exhausted.  Also, planet-buster weapons are just fun.

 

How splitting a voxel group as large as a planet is accomplished, I have no idea, but I'd definitely like to see something like Universe Simulator, where debris & resources can actually collect into group-objects, reform, or even evolve into complex structures.  For instance, having a very large asteroid or small moon crash into an inhabited world seems like something that would not only be exciting at the time, but a desirable source of change in what could otherwise be a very static universe.  (Procedural spaces are hard, yo!  Ever seen a really messed up village in Minecraft?)

 

I don't think it's actually beyond the engine/networking code's capability; More a challenge of implenting such huge map changes without utterly breaking gameplay.

 

As for bot-mining, I'm hoping it not only exists, but will be done by NPCs if the players don't stake their claims first!  NPC enemies that don't expand at least somewhat (to some limit, perhaps as imposed by other NPCs) get really boring.

 

I like the idea of new players buying (or mining/crafting/bartering for) a share of the output from user-built, scripted & directed bot swarms.  I really want my own mining drones.

 

I'm definitely hoping for fighter-swarms to help prevent the over-proliferation of capital ships.  Big ships should be vulnerable to harassment, not just made unavailable by resource constraints (except for time-sink/P2Win players).  That said I definitely think the largest class should have super-effective crater-making tools.

 

(When I was a kid & somebody told me that the core of Mars had cooled, I proposed blasting the entire surface off to get at that sweet sweet semi-refined iron core.)

[IffyCougar832]

You can expect that if players are mining by hand, that the process will probably go pretty fast and it'll be something like a 1-1 ratio of mined volume to usable volume.

 

People build some huge stuff in Minecraft mining by hand. I play on a SMALL private server (total population of 10) and we built cities, in vanilla. A full MMO game will have cities in a week.

True enough, I've built a few neat things in MC, it does seem odd though, I would have thought we could have some sort of advanced way to mine.

[IffyCougar832]

Do contracts for others

Gain money

Go to market hub

Buy ship

Profit (at least for the seller)

If everything is mined by hand who's to say the ship market will be very big? Depending on the resource cost of ships they may not be a big thing to sell, and certainly mas produce, imagine having to gather all the resources for a production line of battleships, or even fighters.

But it might not be a problem at all, we'll just have to wait and see.

[Hotwingz]

...it does seem odd though, I would have thought we could have some sort of advanced way to mine.

Yes me too.

But that doesnt mean there wont be mining elements later on. I'm quite sure that since this game is an mmo chances are that new tech will be introduced at some point.

 

Who knows what is in the future for this game.

[Lethys]

Might be not big, so? Then you just have to take a price that is 500% more than the minerals used...When you are too lazy to mine and build it yourself, or you don't have time, that's your problem then. Or buy the minerals and build it, be a bit creative

[StoneLegionYT]

Will have to see how it goes. Right now mining is a massive voxel remover Maybe Mining will be one those easier things where you spend more time searching then mining?

[Omfgreenhair]

Will have to see how it goes. Right now mining is a massive voxel remover Maybe Mining will be one those easier things where you spend more time searching then mining?

 

that'd be disappointing, though. Think of the jobs you can create if large scale mining was possible via machinery. It's much more profitable to have an industry where we can design useful machines. Gives more life to the universe other than "hurr durr I'm a pirate".