It's a gameplay mechanic I expect to see disappear unless you really want to do it quite early on.

Bored of the mining beam? That's OK, the game features a fascinating array of ways you can get an NPC to do it for you, freeing you up to do stuff you enjoy!

Ergo boringness of mining beam, for me personally, is not an issue at all. I don't want to see the imposition of some kind of quirky minigame to make it more interesting. I'm happy assuming that, even if it takes a couple of in-game minutes, I can just read a book until it makes the "hold full" beeping noise.

A really simple mini game would be that you get "bonus loot" depending on the mineral density of the spot you are aiming at.
The beam continually "weakens" the ore density around it so merely waving it back and forth would get you decent results.
However, if you carefully target a good spot, then fire the beam, you have a much higher chance of getting some unobtainium crystals along with the regular willsmith ore.
Takes longer to "mine out" an asteroid but you get a lot more value out of it.

I don't see that as a "mini game" as much as "the way Josh has described the current implementation".

I am, however, assuming that the transfer beam only picks out valuable stuff and doesn't leave you with a cargo hold full of rocks.

Either way would work, of course, because the prospecting mechanic seems pretty viable to me.

Charley_Deallus wrote:

Behemoth wrote:Now everyone stops talking about drones in the thread about mining. There's plenty of it elsewhere.

So, the mechanic Josh has implemented today is currently "Find ore, aim unit, wait". I think there should be something else to it, like blowing the asteroids up as mentioned previously.

Thoughts?

X3 Had that method and it got old pretty fast (like...really fast). You had to move near an asteroid, turn around (because the freighter ships only had a gun on the rear. Argon at least), and then fire, and then wait for the gun to recharge, then repeat 1-2 more times before scooping up any ore. It sounds really cool (and I am sure Josh could make it look better than X3) but it also ended up with the bits of asteroid spreading out and other ships (typically my other mining ships) hitting them and getting damaged or destroyed. So, if Josh finds a way to make it feasible, then sure...but I think blue sparkly lights is cool too. I mean come on...it's like...blue!

I didn't really like the mining process of X3, and it was pretty much the same in XR as well. It seemed like a waste of time to have to fly around a pick up the pieces after you destroyed the asteroid. To me mining should me more than mindlessly shooting a rock and then playing the part of a vacuum cleaner. To be fair, I'm not a fan of mining in Eve either as it is boring to just set your lasers and stare at your ore hold.

I say we make mining more about the prospecting than the extraction. I think this idea has been mentioned earlier in this forum, but like the idea of actively looking for the highest quality of ore on an asteroid and deploying an extractor that can very quickly get that ore. You could add more to the game play by having the best ore at varying degrees of depth in the asteroid, and even being able to manually adjust your extractors to the depth you want.

I think that this would move the process of mining away from being bored to tears b/c of mindless extraction, to a part of the game where skill is needed to recognize how to best extract the ore you need. I think that extraction time should be there, but should be minimized( I say a minute maybe two, to get what you need from the roid) and have the possibility of deploying multiple extractors (i.e. 5-10 not too many, but enough that you could fly around and get ore from each and reposition while others are working) so you can move from one site to another. It seems like Josh maybe moving to something like this, but who knows..... viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2226#p31193 - Wed Feb 12.

Like the idea of mining and building in these types of games, but the mechanics of mining have so far been wanting.

brunomoose wrote: I didn't really like the mining process of X3, and it was pretty much the same in XR as well. It seemed like a waste of time to have to fly around a pick up the pieces after you destroyed the asteroid. To me mining should me more than mindlessly shooting a rock and then playing the part of a vacuum cleaner. To be fair, I'm not a fan of mining in Eve either as it is boring to just set your lasers and stare at your ore hold.

I say we make mining more about the prospecting than the extraction. I think this idea has been mentioned earlier in this forum, but like the idea of actively looking for the highest quality of ore on an asteroid and deploying an extractor that can very quickly get that ore. You could add more to the game play by having the best ore at varying degrees of depth in the asteroid, and even being able to manually adjust your extractors to the depth you want.

I think that this would move the process of mining away from being bored to tears b/c of mindless extraction, to a part of the game where skill is needed to recognize how to best extract the ore you need. I think that extraction time should be there, but should be minimized( I say a minute maybe two, to get what you need from the roid) and have the possibility of deploying multiple extractors (i.e. 5-10 not too many, but enough that you could fly around and get ore from each and reposition while others are working) so you can move from one site to another. It seems like Josh maybe moving to something like this, but who knows..... viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2226#p31193 - Wed Feb 12.

Like the idea of mining and building in these types of games, but the mechanics of mining have so far been wanting.

The extractors, as you linked to, are a 'mid-game' idea, or at least that is how he mentioned it. Early on, you gotta do it the old fashioned way, but when you get enough money, you can drop extractors to do it for you (albeit having small cargo space, so you can't just ride off into the sunset).

Maybe late game would be a full blown mining facility or something, but I don't know as much as everyone else. Wish I had a building list :p

I know there will be no perfect way to keep mining exciting because it is exactly how it sound...a job. There aren't too many jobs out there that you can legitimately enjoy forever, but everyone is different. I'm a guy whose job is dealing with people, so mining isn't the first thing that comes to mind.

Now, if we had Josh narrating mining...THAT could be interesting hehe.

Perhaps we could incorporate the impurity of an asteroid into whatever action the player needs to take to mine?

I can imagine that mining a very pure asteroid is boring. If it consists of 99% of a certain material, that means it's 99% pure and you might as well tractor the whole thing to the nearest factory.

A few baselines:
- Asteroids can consist of multiple materials.
- The different materials can have different purities.
- Different materials need a different mining beam wavelength, meaning only one material can be extracted at the same time.
- Prospecting an asteroid gives you a very good understanding about its composition.
- Mining out a 'chunk' affects the purity of the neighbouring chunks.

The wavelength of the mining beam is configured automatically when you tell the ship's computer which material you want to extract.

A holographic representation of the asteroid is projected onto your HUD, the materials you selected are highlighted in a colour. This colour is brighter for pure concentrations than for impure ones.
You lock your ship in geosynchronous orbit of the asteroid and start working from the outside in. Keeping in mind that when you mine a chunk with 15% purity, that the other 85% impurities will pollute the neighbouring chunks. (I'm thinking "game of life" here, but it's not really accurate.)
It's now up to the pilot to mine in such a way that's both efficient in time as profit. Carelessly mining away would cause the pure concentrations to be polluted more heavily than when you carefully cut a path to the highest concentration.

Or instead of impurities, you just get a bunch of useless space rock (or maybe there could be a purpose for it). So if you mined at like 60% purity, you would get ~60% of what you want, and ~40% of space rock. Maybe have a purpose for it (making countertops for poor people), or just something that takes up cargo space, punishing you for not probing more and forcing you to eject it from your cargo or having to unload it somewhere.

But ejecting debris is just a small hindrance. It won't impact your efficiency all that much. It might be even faster to just mine without prospecting and just eject the debris.

Heh true...maybe you have to have a piece of hardware to eject it without everything else going with it? I just didn't like the idea of impure ore...UNLESS you had to take it to a facility for impurities to be removed. That would really make you damn sure you found the purest parts because having to pay a certain percentage of your haul to get the impurities out would make you not so lazy (as my previous idea might have encouraged).

None of this sounds like it would make the actual activity of mining more fun, just more monotonous.

It would make it more frustrating and monotonous if you are too lazy to probe that asteroid right where all of the goodies are. So you are punished for just going to a random asteroid and expecting to hit it rich. It takes a tiny bit more time and effort.

I like the idea of doing a holographic overlay of the asteroid using the HUD. Prospecting, depending upon the quality of the technology used, could result in different/higher precision overlays. Some different technologies I can think of off the top of my head...

• Triangulation Probes - As Josh outined in his DevLog
• Ionizing Radiation Detector - A geiger counter, with the accompanying sound, and a visual cue, such as a small bar graph, counting frequency of hits of different types of radiation. Not as pinpoint as other detectors, but could be an "always-on", passive approach to discovering that rare mineral as you're flying about doing other things (you hear the intermittent chirping of the alpha particles you know to be Aluminum Ore, but the higher pitched audio cue that your counter is picking up gamma particle radiation catches your attention, and you investigate with more targeted methods)
• Ore Density Spatial Overlay - Lower quality units have poor spatial resolution, but might tell you which quadrant of the asteroid has the highest density of ore. Better quality units give a precise heat map with hot/cold zones of the asteroid guiding your mining lasers. The best quality units might even give you a 3D heat map, rather than just what is on the surface. If Josh's voxel based objects come to fruition, asteroids could be deformed by mining, yielding the inner regions of the asteroid and make mining very interactive.
• Ore Beacons - Beacons would be like stationary buoys that you build or deploy and constantly probe an area for ore, giving you a report on basic elemental contents of all asteroids within range X. Better models might be able to constantly monitor the area, and send you an alert even when you aren't in the immediate area. Perhaps they could even tether the asteroid and hold on to it until you come mine it (think bear traps!). All you would need to do is deploy a few beacons in an area known for high value, but sparsely populated, ore veins.

Just a few concepts. I really like the idea that there is no one way to mine or prospect, and that some methods will be better than others, but most could just be personal preference. I'm not likely to do a ton of mining on my first play through, but if I hit on a really rare element I would cash in the lottery ticket and take it to market!

[*]Ionizing Radiation Detector - A geiger counter, with the accompanying sound, and a visual cue, such as a small bar graph, counting frequency of hits of different types of radiation. Not as pinpoint as other detectors, but could be an "always-on", passive approach to discovering that rare mineral as you're flying about doing other things (you hear the intermittent chirping of the alpha particles you know to be Aluminum Ore, but the higher pitched audio cue that your counter is picking up gamma particle radiation catches your attention, and you investigate with more targeted methods)

How is this really different from the scanner Josh has already shown us?

@McDuff

Maybe it's not significantly different enough to be of value, but I envision this as something you don't have to "target". The active mode scanner we have seen works with your targeting reticle. Josh has stated that your scanner will also have a passive mode, but we haven't seen that yet, and it could functionally very similar to what I've described. I just though the Geiger counter would be a neat way to signify the presence of minerals in your vicinity, even when you aren't actively looking. I also didn't mean to imply these were all good ideas, just ideas to illustrate a point that mining doesn't have to be a single process that everyone is happy with. There could be different mechanisms depending upon the equipment you have installed.

What I would really like to know is, has anyone seen mining implemented in a fun / engaging way in any game? (That's not a rhetorical question, I am legitimately asking.)

To be honest it feels a bit like one of those things where the 'fun' is limited by the nature of what's going on, not really by the implementation. No matter how many details you add to the process, the fact is, mining is mining...collecting resources from a rock. I'm totally willing to accept that this is not true, if anyone has seen 'interesting' mining. Personally I have never seen mining made interesting in any game - Freelancer, EVE, X, ...Skyrim, WoW, etc...

I think DW was pretty much spot on when he suggested earlier in this thread that discovery could be the interesting part of mining. Extraction could be fairly quick, but scouting out and discovering new ore could be the fun part. Sounds pretty good to me, since I think exploration has more potential for making it engaging and fun.

OTOH, in mid and upper game, I think 'setting up' mining will be fun as well - whether it be with drills, contracted NPCs, or building full-blown mining outposts with hired workers. But that's more under management gameplay and not so much mining.

Is it possible to make the raw mining gameplay fun?