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demonduo

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I'd imagine that they will add some sort of advanced mining equipment later on. Perhaps they will add some sort of ship mounted strip miners to allow for mining barges. That may not sound as impressive as what the OP is suggesting, but could be pretty powerful. Each barge would be piloted by maybe two crew members and have "atmospace" engines to allow the barges to go to and from a larger ship in orbit. The larger ship could have storage and processing arrays and be able to haul the barges around too. 

 

It's not as impressive as the OP's suggestion but would allow for much larger scale mining operations in the later game with out breaking the balance of the game.

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In one of the recent videos they mentioned they didn't want to add anything as big as planetary destruction because they never want anything to happen that the player doesn't know why it's happening. If you're standing on a planet and a company comes along with their mining ship and cracks the planet, insta-gibbing you and you ship/town/whatever you have on the surface, that's fairly imbalanced. 

 

Also, as someone else mentioned on page 2, they also said they don't want to automate things like mining because taking it too far would destabilize the economy and trivialize the work efforts of new players.

 

Honestly I agree with them on both of these points. I really like their design philosophy. At least as much as I have seen so far.

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In one of the recent videos they mentioned they didn't want to add anything as big as planetary destruction because they never want anything to happen that the player doesn't know why it's happening. If you're standing on a planet and a company comes along with their mining ship and cracks the planet, insta-gibbing you and you ship/town/whatever you have on the surface, that's fairly imbalanced. 

 

Also, as someone else mentioned on page 2, they also said they don't want to automate things like mining because taking it too far would destabilize the economy and trivialize the work efforts of new players.

 

Honestly I agree with them on both of these points. I really like their design philosophy. At least as much as I have seen so far.

Yes, there are things to consider, but mining could still be automated to some degree. Rather than automating it, allow for the use of drones with drills, or just limit the automation. Also any form of mining would still require one or more players to supervise the work, or pilot the drones.

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Yes, there are things to consider, but mining could still be automated to some degree. Rather than automating it, allow for the use of drones with drills, or just limit the automation. Also any form of mining would still require one or more players to supervise the work, or pilot the drones.

 

 

OR ... automate a mining cart that moves on rails powered by something .... maybe redstone so you keep mining and inventory space isn't a problem.  I don't know why but that idea now that I think about it sounds familiar for some reason.

 

Seriously though, automate everything else that you can besides the actual mining which you must do in person. So even with no automation in the actual mining there is still ways to speed up the process/efficiency involved.

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OR ... automate a mining cart that moves on rails powered by something .... maybe redstone so you keep mining and inventory space isn't a problem.  I don't know why but that idea now that I think about it sounds familiar for some reason.

 

Seriously though, automate everything else that you can besides the actual mining which you must do in person. So even with no automation in the actual mining there is still ways to speed up the process/efficiency involved.

I imagine this is what they'll likely do. Automating everything but the actual act of extraction is a pretty decent middle ground.

 

I know people love the idea of planet cracking and massive automated mining systems, but honestly it's just way too unbalanced. Better the devs stick to their guns and require the players to do it. That way, it'll always be a matter of player effort, rather than time spent in the game. What I mean is, with enough time, any player can build anything. So really, all you'd have to do is spend enough time to get to the point of automation, and then after that it's just a snowball effect of progress. The automated systems keep giving you more resources. You use those resources to make more automated systems. It's a cycle of upgrades requiring almost no effort on the player's part. 

 

Manual mining will always require basically the same amount of effort on the player's part, it's just the auxiliary tasks that get easier. The way to improving speed and efficiency in mining is to gather more people to help. That supports the whole concept of the game as a community simulator, reinforcing their design choices across the board. Larger corporations will still be able to gather a lot of materials fast with the large labor forces they'll be able to support, be they corporation members or contracted workers. They'll always have an edge over individuals. That is as it should be.

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The mining mechanic is fundamentally a time sink, you are trading time for valuable product, if you make it so that a veteran player can mine 10 times as much a newbro you will make mined resources 10 times cheaper and the newbros will lose out and be more likely to quit. 

 

What you want to do is give tools that allow veteran players to locate the more precious ores, so that one veteran can recruit a bunch of newbros and actually have them be really useful on day one.

 

What I would like to see is "entry level" mining being a fun exploration mechanic like in minecraft (cave diving) but then to get the best resources you need to build scanners and dig shafts that go down deep to the big and rare ore deposits but the pay off is worth it if you work as a team. You could even have secondary market of "prospectors" who go out and locate stuff and then sell the information to miners.

 

 

The worst thing they could do is do it like empyrion, where you just have these huge deposits and you are just sitting there for hours digging away at a the same blob of iron.

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mmmm... I don't want script driven mining, because, in that case, you do not need in reality any supermachine to break a planet. All you need is good swarm programs and lots of small autominers. The megascale mining operation using gigantic machines is a waste of resources. The same can be accomplished with a big enough swarm of small machines. Also, such a mechanic is a very powerful weapon: go to your enemy planet, drop on it with a big army of autominers and a portable autominer factory. Use exponential growth of your autominer army to reduce the enemy planet to nothing in less time than the enemy response time.

 

That said, large scale mining should be possible to allow the construction of very big structures with a reasonable period of time for the material gathering.

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The mining mechanic is fundamentally a time sink, you are trading time for valuable product, if you make it so that a veteran player can mine 10 times as much a newbro you will make mined resources 10 times cheaper and the newbros will lose out and be more likely to quit. 

 

What you want to do is give tools that allow veteran players to locate the more precious ores, so that one veteran can recruit a bunch of newbros and actually have them be really useful on day one.

 

What I would like to see is "entry level" mining being a fun exploration mechanic like in minecraft (cave diving) but then to get the best resources you need to build scanners and dig shafts that go down deep to the big and rare ore deposits but the pay off is worth it if you work as a team. You could even have secondary market of "prospectors" who go out and locate stuff and then sell the information to miners.

 

 

The worst thing they could do is do it like empyrion, where you just have these huge deposits and you are just sitting there for hours digging away at a the same blob of iron.

 

Agreed. At max, higher skilled players should be able to mine no more than 2-3 times more than a new player. What they should do is give veteran players more tools/skills that make mining more interesting. Things like finding better ore and being able to harvest it, or compressing ore or refining faster/better. Things like that give people an incentive to invest time in training it but don't totally eclipse new players.

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First of all, large scale mining requires a way to consume all that material, and meaning that ships and stuff will be extremely expensive. This could lead to a situation were a guy with a large mining barge could dig so much that would break the experience for smaller miners and new players. 

Then you'd ruin planets with that. Since the exploration is going to be very slow, you could likely ruin the entire star system before we get to explore another one. 

 

Again, this is not a singleplayer, you can't destroy the universe, have infinite materials or some other insane stuff like minecraft/space engineers/.... that are singleplayer game or limited multiplayer.

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Mining lasers with limited range would be good, the limited range will stop people from insta-gibbing an area with a massive barge containing hundreds of lasers, if you are online, you will see it coming. Alternatively, you could have it so you have to own the land in order to mass-mine it (using massive drills and the like, you can still regularly mine in wilderness areas). 

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I was disappointed to hear about the lack of mining ships or automated mining. I was baffled by their logic as well. Its supposed to be because they don't want to "ruin" mining.  I think they greatly overestimate the fun to be had manually mining. 

 

There is fun to be had locating resources but there are so many other games that make us sit there and mine away that the experience is old and tired. 

 

Working as a team operating mining equipment could be quite a bit of fun, especially if that equipment is player crafted. Someone bores a hole, someone removes resources and rubble, someone extends the supply chain forward and someone watches out for pirates. 

 

Ship mining in Eve was a terribly boring process because it was just a matter of locking on and listening to your mining beams drone on. If it was a more involved process, it could be something different and fun. 

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If it was a more involved process, it could be something different and fun.

But it is different from EVE.

Mining in DU is more like mining in MineCraft. Plus you have to find it first.

 

Mega scale mining is still a thing but in DU it means groups of miners digging. Quite possibly there will be ways to set up infrastructure to support large mining operations. Like transport and containers to store the ore and so on.

 

I am one of those people who actually like it this way. And remember if you allow large scale automated mining you will force beginning miners out of the market. As supply increases price per unit decreases.

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Quite possibly there will be ways to set up infrastructure to support large mining operations. Like transport and containers to store the ore and so on.

 

Oh defiantly, I think locating and gaining access to a large deposit is going to be quite a feat so people are going to want to protect their investments by building an outpost around the mining site and doing all the refining there.

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Oh defiantly, I think locating and gaining access to a large deposit is going to be quite a feat so people are going to want to protect their investments by building an outpost around the mining site and doing all the refining there.

Yes I agree.

About the refining it might be an interesting idea to have a refining ship. So you can easily move from one site to the other. So you dont loose the elements after the mining is over.

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The advantages a large mining operation will have compared to a solo player won't be about the actual extraction of resources, but moving them around. A large operation can build automated hovercarts to carry material from the mine to the surface without players having to stop digging, it can have the resources to safely refine ores on the surface without needing to worry about attacks (because they'll have a mercenary company or their own turrets at the ready). Smaller operations won't be able to move stuff around as much and probably won't have the tech to do anything but simple strip mining.

 

I hope there are upgrades to the handheld mining device though, whether as objects or just skill upgrades.

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