I think everyone can agree that the mining medals should lead to the ability to purchase upgraded mining items in the field they received the medal.

For instance, if someone receives the Heliocene Miner I award, maybe they should get some kind of upgraded beam? Or if not level 1, then level 2 at least... Mining obviously is a forgotten aspect of the game for now while the economy rolls around, but I think this should be a fairly easy thing to implement.

Thanks for your time.

Mining II already gives access to a moth with 20 extra cargo and a freakin' scanner. What more do you want!?

lol thanks Lecter. I'm glad I can finally see through your sarcasm.

Um, do you not recall the issues of being a moth miner without a scanner? This was one of my rare serious posts. More beams, better scanners, fine--but they just gave us a medal based reward of MAJOR value.

What if our equipment actually took our level into account to make it more effective? Mining beams would have a modifier to make them more efficient, pulling more ore and creating less heat, according to what your mining level is. That itself would make leveling a worthy pursuit.

This could also apply to most other types of equipment. Scanners would have an increased range, guns would cause more damage, etc.

True Lecter, but that should not stop us from wanting more!!!!!

I agree it is not very high on the list of Items To Do, but at some time later it could be cool to have some stuff that caters to us strange creatures of the roid fields. More specific mining beams that actually work better than the HD for the dedicated ore type would be a nice place to start. Maybe make them badge specific as suggested.

With the speed the devs are shooting new weapons into the game I imagine it won't be too hard to do.

@Sledge: Uh...no. Don't get me wrong; it can work, but the devs have made it explicitly clear in the past that they want to avoid anything where experience directly influences game-play. That is why they went with the License system: it makes the game more innately based on the skill of the actual player and not their avatar.

As for Kirk's original suggestion, I don't see why not. We've already got beams specialized for mining specific ores; would make sense to utilize the pre-existing medal functionality to help unlock them.

Sledge: I too must disagree. The idea is plausible and understandable enough, but really I like the idea of licensed variants instead of upgrades.
Essentially, this would be because the technology on your ship would not just mysteriously upgrade itself, but you could purchase new technology when you returned to a station.

The more 3P!K |_0o']['z thrown about in an MMO, the closer it approximates World of Warcraft, and the longer it takes for a new miner to hit a competitive level, unless it's strewn about in between the current the levels, instead of streamlining out to level 60, then 70, and then 80... and so on.