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Re: Mining Gameplay Ideas Refined

#76
ThymineC wrote:Are my posts in this thread invisible or something?
I often ask myself the same thing about my own posts. :lol:


Personally I don't really mind a little bit of grind. In Morrowind I always started out by training a bit of sword fighting on the mudcrabs near Seyda Neen.
In X3 there's the energy cell ferrying when starting out as a trader. I'm sure there are tons of examples where a bit of grinding in a game lets you progress.
And keep in mind, it's optional. Nobody is forcing you to start out as a miner, it should be perfectly possible to start with combat, only to put down autonomous miners later. This way, mining doesn't get too involved for people wanting to spend a few relaxing hours firing a beam at some rocks. :D
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
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Re: Mining Gameplay Ideas Refined

#77
I think mining drones are a better idea all around because the mining beam is the "monotonous factor" in mining.
You are stuck waving this beam back and forth, back and forth...

The scanning / prospecting can be interesting but the act of mining? Not so much.
Offloading the menial task of mining to mining drones, the player could do more interesting things.
In my last write-up I just figured I'd go with the direction you're going...

Starting over it could look more like this:


Using ThymineC's graphic here - but probably for an entirely different point. =P Image
  • In my version this is not a top to bottom cut through an asteroid.
    It's a 2D map of the surface you are seeing.
  • You scan the asteroid and you see what's on the surface.
  • If your scanner is an advanced model, you can use the mouse wheel (or whatever) to scan deeper layers.
    Or maybe you just have to watch the scanner result real careful if you're scanning more deeply with a cheap scanner.
    No harm in letting a skilled player be more successful at mining. =)
  • You click to place virtual beacons where you want your drones to mine.
    These beacons can be below the surface, too, meaning your drone targets a deeper spot, discarding the "rubble" along the way.
  • Where you place a beacon, a drone will mine as drones become available.
    A drone bay could have settings like "mine until the local mineral purity drops below 20% of the starting value".

    A beacon below the surface would just have a little setup time while the drone drills down to that layer.
  • Also, by mining a spot, a drone "ruins" the nearby area without you getting anything out of it.
    IMO this is very important because it means you have to decide which mineral you can live without and which you would rather have.
    It's not much of a consequence but at least it is one. =)

    This also works in 3D so you would lose a deep deposit if you just grab the low hanging fruit on the asteroid's outside right above it.
  • As your drones mine an asteroid you gain additional information, gradually improving the depth you can scan at.
    This is a "per asteroid" value so it doesn't turn into a complex 3D game of drilling probing shafts or the likes.

    This way you can continue to "work" an asteroid instead of having to move on because your scanner can't see any deeper.
By switching around and scanning for different minerals at different depths, you can optimise mining.
You decide which spots are to be exploited, accepting that the surrounding areas get trashed in the process.
The actual yield of an asteroid depends on how well you plan the mining.
A ham-fisted approach probably ruins half the really good deposits...
And if you find a real gold mine with all the good stuff in a dense cluster... sucks to be you! You decide which exact spot to target. =)

But once the plan is made and the beacons are placed you can start looking at the next asteroid or go somewhere else while a dedicated mining ship takes over the operation.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Mining Gameplay Ideas Refined

#78
Gazz wrote:....
I like this idea. but what if that mining ship is a drone bay that you place close to the asteroid that sends the drones to mine at your beacons and then stones the ore and your drones when they are done for your pickup later. That way you can have multiple of these mining drone bays in your hold to place near asteroids as you find them and then pick up before you head back to the station.
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Re: Mining Gameplay Ideas Refined

#79
I think that detachable drone bays would be needless complexity.
If a ship has mining drones and a drone bay, it can mine. Simple.

Whether or not it stores the ore in cargo crates on the asteroids surface depends on how you want to set things up.
If you want to specialise, you use a ship with lots of drone bays... which leaves little cargo space.
The minerals are ferried off by dedicated freighters - or maybe used to build a station right there.

Or you use a harvester which mines more slowly but has the cargo hold to carry the goods as well.

Same applies to your own ship. However you design it - that's how you work. =)


If you mine more ore than you can carry then yeah - stacks of cargo crates will be generated on the surface. Maybe no one sees them if you leave to sell what you have? =)
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Mining Gameplay Ideas Refined

#84
Gazz wrote:
  • You scan the asteroid and you see what's on the surface.
  • If your scanner is an advanced model, you can use the mouse wheel (or whatever) to scan deeper layers.
    Or maybe you just have to watch the scanner result real careful if you're scanning more deeply with a cheap scanner.
    No harm in letting a skilled player be more successful at mining. =)
  • You click to place virtual beacons where you want your drones to mine.
    These beacons can be below the surface, too, meaning your drone targets a deeper spot, discarding the "rubble" along the way.
  • Where you place a beacon, a drone will mine as drones become available.
    A drone bay could have settings like "mine until the local mineral purity drops below 20% of the starting value".
...
A ham-fisted approach probably ruins half the really good deposits...
And if you find a real gold mine with all the good stuff in a dense cluster... sucks to be you! You decide which exact spot to target. =)
Sounds a lot like the way I was envisioning the process, only difference being the use of drones rather than a mining laser. I think the real problem with a mining laser is that most people envision a beam of light that doesn't actually do anything. With the voxel geometry Josh was discussing, effective lasers that actually carve holes in the asteroid might be possible. I'm not sure if that level of construction is something Josh is considering implementing, but it could be really impressive. If you aren't familiar with voxels check out Resogun or Everquest Next. From there I think that the other misconception (if you want to call it that) is that mining with lasers has to be slow, and I don't see why that's the case. I think that with a good laser you could quickly carve up an asteroid (automatically collecting the ore in the process) and move on, and it would be much more gratifying than setting some drones and going away. I want mining to be fun! I think using drones is a cop out because, that doesn't make mining fun, that makes it so you don't actually have to mine!

On your second point, I think I'm missing something. Are you saying that if I find an asteroid of pure gold, I should be upset because inevitably the majority of the asteroid will be lost in the mining process? Doesn't really make sense to me. if you've got your transfer unit focused on the drone doing the digging you'd think it could suck up any and all debris. From there it isn't a large leap of technology to assume you have some kind of "filter" mechanism built into the transfer unit to prevent your ship from collecting useless rocks.
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Re: Mining Gameplay Ideas Refined

#85
One possible way of making things a little more interesting is to factor in the "complexity" of the deposit. There are two ways this could impact mining:
  • Deposit complexity could have an impact on the extraction rate. Highly complex deposits require more prospecting and appraisal, and larger numbers of drones etc. to match the same rate as less complex deposits. It's possible that for this purposes, "purity" would work just as well.
  • Deposit complexity could require you to use munitions ("we may have to blast!"). This you perform a scan, you do your drone prospecting... and the result is that you need to blow the thing into several parts to make it feasible to extract at a reasonable rate (or at a reasonable cost in drones/materiel). This would require additional scanning capabilities (to look for fault lines) and a different type of drone, which carries a shaped charge.
These are realistic, if nothing else...
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Re: Mining Gameplay Ideas Refined

#87
ThymineC wrote:I'd prefer if by 'beacons' you mean 'waypoints' so I can constantly interact and control them if I wish.
Yah, I said "virtual beacons" so no physical objects.
It's less ambiguous when talking about waypoints for ships.

I'd also still like mining beams to be involved, but as a top-down variant since that's how we're interpreting my graphic now.
It could be... a deep scan mode.
Basically a mining beam with rather low yield which penetrates deeply but has little to no impact on surrounding deposits.
A mining scalpel.
And it tells you what is being mined so you get an idea of what's far beneath the surface.

You mine a very small area but depending on the quality of your beam or it's focus setting, it can penetrate several layers at once and mine them all at the same time.
It's what you might use if you find a dense cluster of high value ores... that are so close together that your chip brains would trash half of it.

Since it is part of the "scanner", you can't outfit a ship with 12 mining beams for 100% yield. That prevents it from becoming the de-facto standard for mining yet again. =)


I imagine that the deeper / more focussed you set it, the longer it's spin-up time before it's "through" to the last layer.
If you turn your ship, the beam loses focus again.
Should give a better feeling of "drilling down".

Quethas wrote: I think the real problem with a mining laser is that most people envision a beam of light that doesn't actually do anything.
My mining laser is actually a laser mass spectrometer. Mostly sort of. =P
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Mining Gameplay Ideas Refined

#88
Hmmm.... Masseffect 2 had an interesting mining mini game.
Image The graph on the right represents the different minerals present, and there was a sound associated with each as well. The scaner on the left is controlled by your mouse, and you would launch a collection probe when
you thought you had a decent concentration on materials, ocasionaly you would also discover beacons
for crashed ships or other interesting things to salvage or explore. :think:
"A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
- Arthur C. Clarke

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