We already have the ability to target and use our mining beams on other ships and you would think that a super powerful and extremely hot laser beam would be able to damage other ships. This could be a good way to defend yourself against bots in roid sectors because carrying a weapon and reducing your mining efficiency by a lot isn't really something you want. The damage could either be the same all the time and depend on the mining rate, or it could depend on the heat applied and increase over time as the enemy ship heats up.

I've often wondered at this.

A mining beam would I figure, boil away part of a rock in space, then somehow, (artificial gravity?) convey the ablated material to the mining ship. Something like this should work just fine on a refined hunk of metal, like a fighter, or an ingot, or a capship hulk. If anything, the ore obtained would be more valuable, as for example, if you target your mining beam on a structural support, you would basically be mining steel. Some highly processed materials, like plastics wouldn't work so well, as many do not keep their chemical form when heated.

I am nearly certain conventional mining methods, heavy equipment, high explosive, etc would work on such objects.

For game play reasons I would let stations be immune from this type of attack.

From a real-world standpoint, there are usually major differences in properties between raw ores and minerals, versus the complex alloys we form with them. Consider even something basic, like the difference between Aluminum and raw bauxite, or raw iron oxide ores versus complex steels like Monel or Inconel. Extracting titanium dioxide from a rock would probably be far different from trying to use a similar technique on a titanium metal alloy. Temperature properties and conductivity definitely change a lot, and spaceships might well be constructed of pretty high-temperature materials, due to atmospheric re-entry stresses, etc.

That all being said, if the gameplay benefit is there, I'm not against exploring this, or at least discussing it further. We're probably going to have more ship debris and hulks, having some means of salvage is something I've been considering for some time.

So, feel free to continue the discission.

Let's assume that the underlying technology of mining beams is that they are in fact electromagnetic tunnels that nanites travel down and bring bit of ore back and reassemble then that opens a world of possibilities for them to be used against existing man made items such as ship hulls and such.

A mining beam that is then programmed nanites to deconstruct things like FCP & FFSA etc could be then called a salvage beam and used against targets in a destructive manner.

Well the biggest gameplay implication is beam weapons, of which there are already turret versions existing.

While it makes sense that mining beams should at the very least exact some kind of very MINIMAL damage, there is little major gameplay benefit to be gained that would warrant turning the GS development machine towards this idea.

Beam weapons, sure, but not this. If you want to defend against bots in roid sectors, shoot the bots or kill the levi.

mining beams that do damage would be exploited by stat padders they would fly into your beam to get aggro then kill you

Drevent, wouldnt we *already* have prevented that since mining beams would only technically hit their target and not work on things in-between? More so, beams dont have that large a distance, so it would only really harm afk miners in nationspace. Keep an eye on your surroundings - its a key concept in VO, so applying that to mining doesnt sound that bad to me.

+1

I have no idea what kind of stats would be appropriate, but I like the concept. I would figure the extraction rate would be piteously slow, as incarnate mentioned, there are VAST differences between raw ore and refined product.

And yes inconel would be highly resistant to such attack, I used to work with it regularly (inconel 600 specifically, which is mostly nickel). It however may not be impervious to it.

Some materials however would be rather amenable to such extraction, at the very least you would get a higher grade of raw ore, with less impurities. Doing so in Earth's atmosphere would yield various oxides, that's why you need some kind of shielding (argon, CO2, Helium, etc) when welding.

I'm not suggesting that you could attack a trident and get ready to use FCP or a ready to use engine.

Though some way to salvage components from a wrecked ship might be cool. Those hulks I've seen in Odia (N-2?) at least visually appear to have some usable components, that are either completely or at least mostly intact. Whether or not such activities would be cost effective would depend on how advanced the manufacturing technologies have advanced. Still it might be an activity that some people would enjoy, so I'd say to hell with cost effectiveness. I often make my own trim and moldings, even though it costs more, simply because I enjoy doing it. I steal cargo from convoys and sell it. In that time with less effort I could half mindlessly schlep cargo to and fro, making more credits, but that's less fun.

The idea of salvaging used-but-good components can be taken a step further. Stocking spare parts at stations with capship docks could reduce repair costs. MANY auto-body shops use salvaged components instead of new OEM or aftermarket parts to cut costs. While some parts might not be a good idea to reuse, some would be great to reuse.

I definitely want the ability to steal stereos out of unattended Tridents.

Salvaging sounds way better than using beams in PvP, simply because it would have a bad effect on close combat if the beams dealt significant damage.

Something like 5 damage per second wouldn't be too bad. That would take half an hour to kill a CV.

Plus, a zerg rush of noobs in centurions with mining beam would be hilarious.

That would be fun lol, but as wally said, I'm not sure if it would be worth the time to implement.

I am going to show my age here, but when mining was introduced back in 2004 there was a bit of a bug where one could mine silicate ore from other ships. Problem wasn't actually the free ore, but I believe a few people actually exploded while being mined - so I do not think this would actually take much to implement - but with that said...

I guess in a world of safety warnings gone mad, it is not actually reality bending to believe that mining beams actually have a fail-safe. If it's not a mine-able body, then the beam disengages. No need to go all star trek and blame the isolinear relay chips or make random words and things up.

-1

Mining beams are for mining, and if I need a sticker to tell me not to eat soap, then I would guess we have a system in place (by 4400's, the average people are only going to have got stupider) to protect those who would otherwise win a darwin award.

I'm sure beams sold by the more upstanding corporations in the game would agree with you. I can see some certain grey space corporations cutting corners, or even making more efficient mining beams that have the sane safeties disabled just to increase mining output.

I can agree with that, and if the suggestion was for a gray market mining beam that mines a bit faster with more heat that did a bit of damage, I could maybe get behind that, but all mining beams? Not on your nelly son.

This is a setting where all governments hand out unlimited numbers of free guns to anyone who wants them, so I don't think any companies or organizations are worried about preventing mining beams from hurting people. If anything, there would be significant market pressure to develop mining beams that have at least a marginal ability to damage hulls, for exactly the same reason players want the feature.

From a gameplay perspective, however, the fact that they require no skill to aim is problematic, even with their short range. If there will never be longer range mining beams, then that's fine; they can just have their DPS range from 500 to 1000 depending on on model. If we want to keep open the possibility of equipping capital ships with longer-range mining beams, however, we'll need a fancier solution.

Asteroids don't (currently) move around. At most, they rotate. Players, on the other hand, normally move. So, make mining beam effectiveness inversely proportional to the relative velocity between ships. If you sit there and let a ship mine you, it'll chew you up. If you try to drift along idly in a ship's blindspot and that ship has mining beams, it will also chew you up. But if you're dodging around it, the mining beam will only very weakly caress your hull. We can extend this to asteroids as well -- if future asteroids drift, you'll need to try to match velocities to optimize your mining.

....Charged mining beam......ores you mined charges it up to a limited amount(?) ,and then fires slag chunks of the ores at a speed depending its charge. Like charged cannons but need perm ores to fire, uses 4ore per shot, damaged scale of the type and speed it fires, xrite ore does let's say most dmg of the ore dmg spectrum(tree?) But semi low velocity. Carbonic has low dmg output but faster velocity than the xrite.

Should i be making a suggestion on this crude type weaponry?