Essentially: make all mining beams limit their functionality to 500 Kelvin-- target a hot rock or cook one to that point, and your beams won't fire on the targeted roid.

Let's be honest: there are only two reasons someone cooks a roid beyond 100K...

1) they are afk-mining (an undeniable exploit intended only to up mining levels)

-or-

2) they are intentionally cooking the roid to a dysfunctional level as an antagonistic exploit

By limiting the temperate functionality of all mining beams, honest miners could still get tons of ore, but level-grinders and roid-fryers would be nerfed.

Be better if the really good roids were in sectors with lots of assaults. That way the only way to mine ore would be actively avoid the bots while mining.

This would mean all afk miners would die.


2) they are intentionally cooking the roid to a dysfunctional level as an antagonistic exploit

I have a feeling I know what group you are talking about. Just pay them and they'll stop overheating those roids. It's just a style of extortion/piracy. Which is NOT an exploit, so stop using that drama inducing word please.

There are tens of thousands of roids in VO, as such, there is zero way a few overheated roids are causing you this much grief.

I'm okay with there being some sort of temperature safety on the mining beams. That seems to be what this dude is suggesting. But it should be optional. Just put a check box somewhere in settings to opt in or opt out.

-1

Roid boiling is a valid playstyle. It takes time and effort to keep all them roids cooked, and this is not an exploit at all, I don't think that word means what you think it does. Annoying? Mayhaps. Abusive? It surely can be. Exploitative? Well there is no bug or flaw being abused...

And no, this pilot isn't talking about some safety switch, they are basically asking for an upper limit to mining roids, which wouldn't have the effect they want. If I could basically disable a roid by keeping them near the max limit, then what would this fix? Sure, they might cool down faster, but it still takes a lot of time from 500; and it is also quicker to cook them to 500 than it is 5000 - meaning I can disable them faster - so what does this fix? A switch I can disable might be a good idea, especially if I can set the limit myself but that also does not stop people boiling roids (and why should it? just because you want something does not mean it should be easy to get), which is the OPs complaint.

Please stop insinuating that i am making this suggestion only to benefit myself and to only solve issues that i experience. It's insulting, condescending, and has no place in this discussion. I already mine roids that no one else mines and are never hot-- many in sectors with lots of bots. This is a suggestion to benefit the game community as a whole, not a personal gripe.

Roid temperature increase while mining is something that has already been addressed in a couple of recent updates, yet is still somewhat lacking in effective governance and, subsequently, is still taken advantage of in more ways than one-- that's pretty much the basic definition of an exploit. It's not drama inducing to use the appropriate term.

Also, making this an option would defeat the purpose.

And what would your solution fix? How would that stop me heating roids to temperatures that cannot be mined by anyone? If I take a roid to 500, it is still going to take half an hour or so to cool down enough to be usable for more than a few CU, how is that any different to now?

And no, the definition of an exploit (at least in the video game sense) is: In video games, an exploit is the use of a bug or glitches, game system, rates, hit boxes, speed or level design etc. by a player to their advantage in a manner not intended by the game's designers;[1] however, the precise determination of what is or is not considered an exploit can be controversial. - There is no bug, or advantage to be gained by roid boiling, except to either annoy others or level a bit. To boil a roid, you equip the mining beam and fire it at a rock, sounds exactly as designed? If mining unlocked various ships, or equipment, or having a high level gave you something great that you could only obtain by mining then you may have a point. But as it stands, apart from a few useless mining beams, AFK mining gets you nothing more than a bigger number for that level; and if it does ever get you more then maybe this should be revisited, but your solution just makes disabling roids easier, and really does not do much to counter other things - past 200 in temperature the mining goes so slow that it becomes pointless, no matter how long you do it for (in fact, the longer you do it for the more pointless it becomes - it is much much much faster to simply mine to 60-70 and change).

Can you not see my point? Your solution actually makes disabling a rock easier.

How about the devs implement a timing temp cutoff feature into the roid ore autojet screen. Similar to what M.A.I.D. has. And let players decide what temps to let their beams stop at. And include a built in alarrm when the roid temp gets to 80% of that temp.

One thought that's been kicked around in earlier discussions would be the concept of adding some kind of inherent "risk" in boiling asteroids, through damage. Maybe the mining laser has a risk of "overloading" above a certain temperature, and if it does, the miner begins receiving damage as a result. Damage could escalate with rising temperature, etc.

Would add a different aspect to mining entirely.

+1 to Inc's angle on this, definitely.

also, +1 to We All Float's suggestion of variable temperature cut-off options for beams overall: I appreciate you coming back with another possible alternative, but what lies at its foundation is still the fact that the "option" of regulating the temp of mined roids is still placed within the hands of the individual pilot...and we've all seen how well that works.

+1 to a random event that could cause damage, even if rare. This is a good way to at least get people to keep tabs on their miners, without impacting those who mine a lot (as these people tend not to AFK, they will be present to disable the beam before too much damage occurs).

I have nothing against trying to fix this perceived problem!

If this avoids roid overheating due to afk miners
Definitely needs!
+1

Okay, then, getting more specific:

- What asteroid temperature should induce a risk of damage?
- What should be the probability of overloading? Should that probability increase with temperature?
- How much damage should be done, and how should that scale with temperature?

200k should risk damage

300k 100% chance of overload

500k BOOM

800k should have 10% risk of overload at 5 damage per second

1200k should have 50% risk of overload at 20 damage per second

5000k should have a 100% risk of overload at 300 damage per second

10000K should have a 100% risk of overload at 2000 damage per second.

I don't know what the k stands for. But I sometimes bake bread at 500f which is 533.15 kelvin. I know inc doesn't like real world comparisons, but if that k stands for kelvin, i don't think damage should start until my oven would melt.

The damage should instant drop shields on capital ships .

I concur with what We all float suggests. That all seems reasonable.

What about if, instead of (or in addition to) roid-temp-induced ship damage, the beam itself did damage if run for too long continuously? Effectively, a "cool-down" period for the beam itself. That would prevent newbies from doing themselves an injury by unwittingly mining a super-hot roid, whilst keeping the lid on afk mining.

Consider it implemented as a bucket, where the bucket "fills" with one token every second the beam is on, and "empties" ten tokens every second while off. When the bucket has more than 600 token in it (so after the beam has been running continuously for 10 minutes), the ship starts taking damage from the beam at some rate proportional to the number of tokens in the bucket (say one-hundredth of the number of tokens in the bucket, per second), which represents the extreme heat of the beam's inner workings melting away the ship's structural components. If you wanted to be *really* mean, keep that damage going after the beam is turned off, until the bucket has emptied out to having less than 600 tokens in it...

This would of course "stack" based on the number of beams, so your afk HD/HE rag would take 4x the damage that a ship with one beam would.

+ 1 to We All Float's scale, except just eliminate the 10000K damage rubrik because roids top-out at 10000K these days anyway, iirc.