Forums » Suggestions
Let's rip off GoW to make mining more interesting
Yes, let's take GoW's active reload and apply it to mining.
In case you don't know how it works, here it is:
It is basically an old gaming gimmick from way back in the days of the Commodore 64 and the Apple II. When you press the button to reload, an empty bar appears and it begins to fill up, quickly. Somewhere on this bar (depending on the weapon), there's a clearly marked "sweet spot". Now, you can do nothing else and let the bar fill up; the weapon is reloaded at that point, no harm no foul. Or you can try to squeeze the button when the fill reaches the sweet spot. If you manage it, the weapon is reloaded right there and then, cutting time, and you get a damage bonus to boot; but if you try and miss, the weapon jams and it takes even longer for the reload to finish.
In case you can't see how it would apply to mining yet, here it goes:
You start mining and the bars fill up as usual, only these bars now have a sweet spot too. If you don't do anything, when the bar finishes filling up you get one crate of some ore, as usual; this is mining as we do right now, and you can AFK mine, or read while it works, and so on and so forth.
But if you press the button and hit the sweet spot, you get the ore crate at that moment, so doing "active mining" means you fill up your hold faster. Also, the heating rate remains the same, so it means that with active mining you get more ore than from passive mining with the same heat!
And if you miss the sweetspot? If that happens, the asteroid immediately heats up; in other words, instead of you cutting the mining time up, you cut the heating time. So failing constantly makes the asteroid heat up faster than usual.
Now, the "RP" logic behind it. Some people might know from reading their SciFi how the mining beams work, but some might not, so here it goes: The laser beam sublimates (vaporizes) the asteroid where it heats it, and a series of magnetic fields pull the released ore molecules into the ship, where they are sorted by type and stored (this is the dusty cloud the beams seem to be sucking up as you mine). Logically, there's an amount of molecules that escape the fields and so are lost into space; this loss is seen as normal and not a big issue, considering the overall efficiency of the system. Also, the beam might completely atomize compounds, too, in effect destroying molecules of the more complex ores; this, too, is generally considered an acceptable loss. However, active manipulation of both the fields and the beams can result in increased efficiency, ensuring less molecules are destroyed or lost; of course, if you don't know what you're doing, manipulating the fields and beams can make you lose and destroy more molecules than usual and even heat the asteroid faster, to boot. And so there we have it: passive mining is letting the ship do its thing, active mining is fiddling with the mining gear in real time to obtain better results, with an added risk of making things slower.
This would allow for people who like to read a book or walk they dog while they mine, as well as those who want to mine but feel it's too mind-shattering dull and time-consuming. It would also allow people to boil roids faster. Everybody wins!
And this system would make for more variation in the beams. Let's say that in the beginner beams the sweet spot is placed 3/4 near the end, so active mining saves little time over passive (and yet it still saves time, and more importantly, temperature), but the best ones have the line at around 50%, or lower, so active mining with these makes for HUGE advantages. Also, depending on the beam quality (or the rareness of the ore being mined) the sweet spot could be wider, or narrower.
And that's not all! Let's add multiple sweet spots! For example, one for Heliocene, one for VanAzek, one for Silicate, and a general one, each color-coded so you know what type each is. Hitting the sweet spot for a particular ore results in increased chance to get that ore (if, of course, the asteroid has it), while hitting the general sweet spot just gets you a crate of random ore faster than letting the whole bar fill up. This increased chance could be in addition to the beam's normal increased chance, or you could need to hit the sweet spot in order to gain the increase. This way, an active Pyronic miner would have better results than a passive one, even if both are using MagnetoTwins beams.
Thoughts?
In case you don't know how it works, here it is:
It is basically an old gaming gimmick from way back in the days of the Commodore 64 and the Apple II. When you press the button to reload, an empty bar appears and it begins to fill up, quickly. Somewhere on this bar (depending on the weapon), there's a clearly marked "sweet spot". Now, you can do nothing else and let the bar fill up; the weapon is reloaded at that point, no harm no foul. Or you can try to squeeze the button when the fill reaches the sweet spot. If you manage it, the weapon is reloaded right there and then, cutting time, and you get a damage bonus to boot; but if you try and miss, the weapon jams and it takes even longer for the reload to finish.
In case you can't see how it would apply to mining yet, here it goes:
You start mining and the bars fill up as usual, only these bars now have a sweet spot too. If you don't do anything, when the bar finishes filling up you get one crate of some ore, as usual; this is mining as we do right now, and you can AFK mine, or read while it works, and so on and so forth.
But if you press the button and hit the sweet spot, you get the ore crate at that moment, so doing "active mining" means you fill up your hold faster. Also, the heating rate remains the same, so it means that with active mining you get more ore than from passive mining with the same heat!
And if you miss the sweetspot? If that happens, the asteroid immediately heats up; in other words, instead of you cutting the mining time up, you cut the heating time. So failing constantly makes the asteroid heat up faster than usual.
Now, the "RP" logic behind it. Some people might know from reading their SciFi how the mining beams work, but some might not, so here it goes: The laser beam sublimates (vaporizes) the asteroid where it heats it, and a series of magnetic fields pull the released ore molecules into the ship, where they are sorted by type and stored (this is the dusty cloud the beams seem to be sucking up as you mine). Logically, there's an amount of molecules that escape the fields and so are lost into space; this loss is seen as normal and not a big issue, considering the overall efficiency of the system. Also, the beam might completely atomize compounds, too, in effect destroying molecules of the more complex ores; this, too, is generally considered an acceptable loss. However, active manipulation of both the fields and the beams can result in increased efficiency, ensuring less molecules are destroyed or lost; of course, if you don't know what you're doing, manipulating the fields and beams can make you lose and destroy more molecules than usual and even heat the asteroid faster, to boot. And so there we have it: passive mining is letting the ship do its thing, active mining is fiddling with the mining gear in real time to obtain better results, with an added risk of making things slower.
This would allow for people who like to read a book or walk they dog while they mine, as well as those who want to mine but feel it's too mind-shattering dull and time-consuming. It would also allow people to boil roids faster. Everybody wins!
And this system would make for more variation in the beams. Let's say that in the beginner beams the sweet spot is placed 3/4 near the end, so active mining saves little time over passive (and yet it still saves time, and more importantly, temperature), but the best ones have the line at around 50%, or lower, so active mining with these makes for HUGE advantages. Also, depending on the beam quality (or the rareness of the ore being mined) the sweet spot could be wider, or narrower.
And that's not all! Let's add multiple sweet spots! For example, one for Heliocene, one for VanAzek, one for Silicate, and a general one, each color-coded so you know what type each is. Hitting the sweet spot for a particular ore results in increased chance to get that ore (if, of course, the asteroid has it), while hitting the general sweet spot just gets you a crate of random ore faster than letting the whole bar fill up. This increased chance could be in addition to the beam's normal increased chance, or you could need to hit the sweet spot in order to gain the increase. This way, an active Pyronic miner would have better results than a passive one, even if both are using MagnetoTwins beams.
Thoughts?
...Repeated post???
I still like it.
Moving sweet spots would also be nice. Varying speeds....widths...
I still like it.
Moving sweet spots would also be nice. Varying speeds....widths...
I like it too.
As I said earlier... anything added to the mining portion of this game is good. The mining area in this game is horrible currently, nothing could make it much worse.
As I said earlier... anything added to the mining portion of this game is good. The mining area in this game is horrible currently, nothing could make it much worse.
Yes, please.
My post on this issue from previous thread.
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/15417?page=2#195826
This seems like a good if different way than the sliders to use a "sweet spot". I don't agree with the heat the asteroid faster on a miss, it would be enough that a miss put your fill bar back to zero, or that you have to wait out the current load time. Perhaps on a miss your loaded bar could loose 30% of its progress, with no chance of hitting the sweet spot until the next crate starts.
As per my above suggestion, broaden the range of the sweet spot, the closer the asteroid is to ideal temperature for the ore mined.
I also like the sweet spot being dependent on the mining beam, and specific beams finding it faster and having a broader range for different ores. Of course this would require that you know what mineral you are actually mining, rather than the current "we will see when it's done" model.
I would think that you will need two bars, because as the asteroid heats up, it would become much easier to hit the sweet spot, simply because of the time it would take to move to the next pixel. I would suggest that the sweet spot bar be separate and the sweet spot be located randomly between 1 and 60 seconds of the 10k temp mine speed. This way a skilled player could fill their hold regardless of the temp of the asteroid. Miss that spot however and you are waiting lord knows how long if you have been cooking the rock for a while.
To avoid exploiting by turning on and off the beams to get another shot at the sweet spot, the first crate after the beams have started has no sweet spot, and you have to wait the full time anyway.
Other threads where this issue has been discussed.
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/15539
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/15417
And here Incarnate wades in..
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/15417?page=2#194945
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/15417?page=2#195826
This seems like a good if different way than the sliders to use a "sweet spot". I don't agree with the heat the asteroid faster on a miss, it would be enough that a miss put your fill bar back to zero, or that you have to wait out the current load time. Perhaps on a miss your loaded bar could loose 30% of its progress, with no chance of hitting the sweet spot until the next crate starts.
As per my above suggestion, broaden the range of the sweet spot, the closer the asteroid is to ideal temperature for the ore mined.
I also like the sweet spot being dependent on the mining beam, and specific beams finding it faster and having a broader range for different ores. Of course this would require that you know what mineral you are actually mining, rather than the current "we will see when it's done" model.
I would think that you will need two bars, because as the asteroid heats up, it would become much easier to hit the sweet spot, simply because of the time it would take to move to the next pixel. I would suggest that the sweet spot bar be separate and the sweet spot be located randomly between 1 and 60 seconds of the 10k temp mine speed. This way a skilled player could fill their hold regardless of the temp of the asteroid. Miss that spot however and you are waiting lord knows how long if you have been cooking the rock for a while.
To avoid exploiting by turning on and off the beams to get another shot at the sweet spot, the first crate after the beams have started has no sweet spot, and you have to wait the full time anyway.
Other threads where this issue has been discussed.
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/15539
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/15417
And here Incarnate wades in..
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/15417?page=2#194945
[stamp of approval again]™
PsyRa, nice link to incarnate. Have a cookie.
Another suggestion for mining: can we make the radar go wacky around asteroid fields? That would allow pirates and other funsters to hide therein. Perhaps just within 400m of the asteroid field.
Love this idea, but may get tricky running 2 HDs and an Advanced (yes I mine weird)
You'd press the fire button for primary beams, secondary fire button for the secondary beams.
Get ma' drift?
Get ma' drift?
*STAMP OF YAY*