As Vendetta Online evolves, it is likely that the next-generation versions of game systems will have much, much higher asteroid densities than those from the "classic" galaxy. Perhaps a million asteroids in a sector, or more?

The Unknown System has partially been a test-bed to experiment with that, although still at a lower density than what is eventually intended.

As a result of these changes, and other emerging factors, it seems beneficial to update certain aspects of mining mechanics to better align themselves with the future architecture of the galaxy.

Dynamic Distribution of Rare Ores and Minerals

Rather than asteroids being completely "static" in their makeup, they would now be largely static only in their low-value ore content (carbonic, ferric, etc).

High-value ores would essentially be more "volatile" minerals that would be exposed by the process of Scanning (imagine a laser blasting some dust off), but due to their elemental instabilities, the rarer materials would also degrade and dissipate (over hours or days) if not mined and stored.

Asteroids that had been previously scanned would have their radioactive rarer ores "decay" and dissipate, and newly-scanned asteroids would have new material be exposed.

In this way, while the absolute percentages of rare ores in given area might stay roughly the same (say, a single sector).. over a period of hours or days the rarer ores would effectively "migrate" across the fields.

Much more Rapid Asteroid Heating, Slower Cooling

In coordination with this "slow migration" of detectable rarer ores, the ores themselves would also be distributed across a much larger number of individual asteroids, but in smaller "effective" quantities.

So, instead of finding "the one asteroid" and sitting there cooking it for eons, you would be more like a bumblebee, buzzing from flower-to-flower, finding new nectar in each one, and having a whole bunch of asteroids marked on your HUD with your desired mineral goals.

Going along with this far greater number of asteroids, the heating rates of individual asteroids would go up considerably, and they might cool more slowly. So, by the time you extracted some value from a given asteroid, it would probably then be "out of commission" until its mineral makeup had shifted anyway (not much point in "going back" to the same asteroid).

Huge asteroids would still heat far more slowly, but I suspect huge asteroids would also be unlikely to have rare minerals. It would be far more effective to prospect / Scan a given sector, looking for higher value yields from asteroids that are "freshly" having deposits coming to the surface.

Next-Generation Prospecting

This would require a more broader, simpler and larger-scale form of prospecting. Because, obviously, the current system can be arduous, and this new mechanic would basically mean "prospecting" would only be valid for a few hours or days, as the rarer contents of the asteroids would be constantly shifting throughout a given field. Your data would quickly go out-of-date.

Prospecting Scan data could be Group sharable, for those who wanted to cover more ground together, and also potentially augmented by specialized sensors on a Capital Ship. In this way, fairly large areas could be scanned pretty quickly.

It would also be laid out in a friendly way on the HUD, and allow a player to easily set a goal of particular types of ores or minerals, and discern where to go in a large field.

This efficiency would be needed, as extremely rare ores might require considerable hunting to find the particular transient rock that temporarily contains that mineral. The makeup of a given system would be largely guaranteed, and sectors might stay "fairly" consistent, but extremely rare ores might be more involved to track down.

Systems would probably state their overall contents openly, somewhere on the galactic map. It wouldn't tell you exactly what sector(s), but it would at least give you an idea of where to start looking for X rare-mineral.

Precision Mining Control (PMC) for added efficiencies

You should be able to "mine" more-or-less the same way as you ever have, albeit with rocks that heat up more quickly. Fly up to the rock, start your mining beam, sit there and receive ores.

However, for those interested in enhanced efficiency, I'm also looking at a specialized device that would yield drastically better "mining returns", but would require some degree of player interaction, in the form of effectively "steering" the mining beam towards particular pieces of ore in real-time, on a display.

The experience might differ based on the type or density of ores. Some you might be trying to "follow" a small vein. Others you might be trying to zap a lot of dots. Another might be an easy-to-follow river. It would depend on the type of material, and the percentage in the given asteroid.

This would only be possible on small fighter-class ships, as Capships are too massive for the micro-maneuverability of the fine mining beams.

For extremely rare new types of potential ores and minerals, these types of systems might be needed to get a meaningful yield.

There are also a ton of potential upgrades and addon-tweaks and benefits that can come with this kind of system, to yield more success with specific type of ores, etc. Better visualizations, more reactive drills, whatever.

Risks For Miners

As we've seen a little in the Unknown System, mining high-value content far from support can be more dangerous. This would likely continue, and there might well be value in partnerships between miners and those with the skills to protect them.

Added Benefits

This design has the potential to inherently deal with a variety of challenges that have cropped up:

- No more "troll-cooking" asteroids. Ie, one person can't just go and insanely bake an asteroid until no one can extract the rare ore that is only in that asteroid.. because hey, all the rare ores are moving around randomly anyway. So, there's no point.

- Mining could be a higher-value activity in the Game Economy. This has historically been held back by how mining was relatively open to multi-box exploits and automated farming and the like, but this system has some characteristics that would make automation more challenging.

- Storing the unique mineral contents and thermal conditions of billions of asteroids was going to become obnoxious (slow, complex, and large to store). Doubly so for anyone who thought they would be doing that client-side in some kind of plugin, the way many of you are today. We need to move away from those kinds of static concepts, into something procedural that will scale better.

- Maintains value of small ships in a mining context, keeps Capships as a really useful Support role, without making them a necessity, or an overwhelming advantage.

- Levels the playing-field of "knowledge" about the galaxy, but keeps things interesting. There'll still be new systems and other areas of uncertainty to explore, but for most purposes a newbie should be able to go out mining for rare content pretty easily, without having done some extreme amount of prospecting, or having to rely on the knowledge of an established guild.

- Adds a level of direct interactivity and "player-skill" to the actual mining process. I understand that this will not be everyone's cup-of-tea, and as I said, I expect there to be a degree of backwards-compatibility with older mining practices in a lot of cases (for those who just want to "chill"). But, for newer super-rare ores, these kinds of added mechanics should be beneficial.

As Always, this is not Set In Stone (or carbonic)

This is a prototype overview of a concept. It isn't about to roll out tomorrow, or anything. If you strongly dislike the idea, at least try to be reasonable enough to respond logically and describe why. Please try to Be Nice.

If you like the idea, well, that's great too :).

+ More roids
+ Databases no longer have relevance; everyone is on a level playing field
+ Group scanning mechanics
+ Ability to highlight roids on the HUD
+ Actually interactive mining instead of the mind-numbing bore it is
+ No more troll-boiling

Love the idea. Thinking rarer ores could be deeper inside roids requiring maybe Avalons to expose the deeper deposits. (Because fun!)

Sounds interesting but also seems like it could have some down sides, this should add variety and make it a bit more fun to mine again I'd like to see it in action also no more boiling roids is a + rare ores dissolving and switching roids.... Eh.... Not as enticing but willing to see how it goes. If this change happens I assume that prices of certain ores should have higher prices in stations and on the player market. More rare the ore the higher the price to sell it should be, also staring at a roid isn't very fun, hope this changes that.

I've always asked for a more active wya of mining. Even made a suggestion a while ago for beams that'd encourage more active mining.

Im gonna love it.... Can't wait....

I like pretty much all of what I see here.

Intended or not, I still see some use to be had with asteroid databases. While the basic ores would be largely static, there is still diversity amongst sectors. Some have ice, some have ferric, some carbonic, and not always together. Finding basic ore might therefore still be a useful purpose for such plugins.

Depending upon how prospecting actually works, you've mentioned the data may be relevant for a few days. With the information available through the API, it could still be beneficial to be able to re-visualize it through another interface.

Regarding mining efficiency -- this is something that could be done even now -- the specialized beams should be made king for a given type of rare ore. The upgraded, generic mining beams should be better overall than the ones below them, but the specialized beams should not be outstripped by them. I've not done the math, but enough other people have repeated the idea that the advanced mining beams are better statistically than the specialized beams.

When it comes to storing ore and heat information for an asteroid and the viability of any asteroid to be mined, why not allow smaller asteroids to be vaporized, especially ice crystals? There's always going to be some level of magic involved with any sort of regenerative system like this. Why not give a visual indication that an asteroid, that previously contained rare ores, is essentially empty. It would allow players to visually scan a sector and see if the distribution is such that they want to continue mining the area or move on. The asteroids might then only repopulate after a given amount of time and only on sector load, to avoid random pop-ins. This same feature could be used to give hive mining and sector clearing a more dramatic affect on things.

You mentioned a visual indication of where rare ores in a sector might be located, and thus the rare ore distribution may be wide-spread already, but it could still be helpful to be able to visualize the state of the sector as well.

What about hive bots being attracted to substantial mining activity. This would make mining in dead sectors more risky and incentivize group activity.

Just one thing that should probably be done along with this is to reduce ore requirements for manufacturing. Since ore would be much harder to gather after this update, ore requirements should be similarly reduced, keeping the amount of effort involved in building stuff (particularly capships) relatively constant.

Glad people seem to be fundamentally optimistic about it, thus far :).

Since ore would be much harder to gather after this update, ore requirements should be similarly reduced

I don't think that's an assumption that should be made, necessarily. The mechanics are changing, but the actual time required to prospect and mine N-crates of mid-level rare ore, for a single player with a Behemoth Heavy Miner, might be about the same for the two systems. One would have more static activity with a few asteroids, while the other might be more dynamic across a wide variety of asteroids (which, granted, might be more spread-out in a sector or some such), but even factoring in transit-times between asteroids and differences in prospecting, the actual "time per CU of ore" might end up being similar, when averaged-out over an hour or so.

Finding basic ore might therefore still be a useful purpose for such plugins.

I'm not against plugins trying to do things in different ways, or whatever else, but I'm imagining most of this would be built into the game client. That would be the goal, anyway. I want this to be newbie-friendly.

why not allow smaller asteroids to be vaporized, especially ice crystals?
The asteroids might then only repopulate after a given amount of time and only on sector load, to avoid random pop-ins.

We cannot guarantee that sectors will ever shut down, effectively. Busy station and newbie sectors already stay online fairly persistently, even those without player shop-bots or whatever.

I think that players impacting the sector, in terms of making stuff vanish, is cool.. in that I like the concept of players having a visible impact on their environment. But, it probably isn't a good fit for this initial design, as it just adds a certain amount of complexity.

I also don't really want to hack-job things disappearing and reappearing in a game-esque fashion. If we were going to do this, there should be some "naturalistic" and procedural way for the ephemeral content to be repopulated, like a passing Comet leaves a big crazy trail of fresh ice-crystals in its path, and they might slowly dissipate, but could also be destroyed or mined. But, on a technical level, they would be considered different classes of objects from the rest of the scene.

Anyway, I don't want to off-topic onto dynamic sector content, let's say it's something I'm very aware of, and have been thinking about for decades, in terms of what I can technically deliver, and in what way, and the various impacts of potential "scale" challenges. It's something I'll continue to think about, but it's orthogonal to this basic mining design (not directly related or relevant).

I like the overall ideas presented. I don't know how they would influence my gameplay. For me, mining is primarily a task when I want to be online but not necessarily active in the game. It would depend on the reward / (effort + risk) involved. Right now, the reward for mining is getting to another badge level, which I could care less about. With the changes, my question becomes, why do I want/need to mine?

Only slightly off topic (Apologies), and maybe this suggestion is too complex to implement, but here goes ...

Based on the proposal, might it be possible for a turret mining beam option for cap ships? And further, that a cap ship might target / mine multiple roids at once (the complex bit), to leverage the increased roid density / mineral volatility, in a given location?

And before we go dialing up the grid on turret beams, a Player might have to decide if they want a super mining platform, with zero defenses, or something more conservative. Also it would be a handful to operate, constantly switching target roids, managing multiple temps, etc. Such a player would likely struggle with situational awareness, beyond the mining operation.

Likely a big ask here. And noted, not an original idea ...

With the changes, my question becomes, why do I want/need to mine?

Well, I did mention making mining a more effective form of economic revenue generation, which has always been nerfed a bit due to the problems with scale-exploits. So, there's at least the possibility of "credits".

But, beyond that, this also makes it more feasible to have hyper-rare ores and minerals, that ephemerally appear and than vanish for awhile. If that ties into Manufacturing, I think that would generate a lot of interest in the player-economy.

Ultimately though, what motivates a person is a bit individual. I know some people find the zero-engagement process of mining to be "relaxing". And while that is not very appealing to me personally, I'm trying to not completely eliminate that with the new system, particularly with the common ores, or if one is just willing to take lower percentages of rare ores.

And before we go dialing up the grid on turret beams, a Player might have to decide if they want a super mining platform, with zero defenses, or something more conservative. Also it would be a handful to operate, constantly switching target roids, managing multiple temps, etc. Such a player would likely struggle with situational awareness, beyond the mining operation.

I'm theoretically not-against that, but it would have to be heavily balanced, and it's definitely beyond scope of this initial level of discussion. But, I will touch on a few related things..

Part of the goal here is to reduce the impact of farming and client-automation (which forces the whole system to be nerfed, currently), and also to make sure small-ship-class players (read: poor / newbie / casual players) are able to participate meaningfully in a player-economy.

I don't want mining to turn into a "Capships Rule Everything" festival. While I was thinking about some of these issues, I read about some Other Games that have individual people running mass-multiboxing across hundreds of concurrent accounts, extracting resources at such a massive level that the participation of any normal person (for certain activities) becomes kind of pointless.

I don't want that. I want Capships to be relevant and useful, I want them to present big advantages that offset their considerable costs. But I don't want them to be a necessity, any more than I want guild-membership to be a necessity. That, and I want casual-player participation to still be relevant, and not crushed under the whims of the extremely-hard-core.

So, anyway, I'm not against the theoretical idea of some properly-balanced system where cost and challenges of managing a capship rigged with a ton of mining lasers is offset against the relative risk of taking their expensive and perhaps inordinately-fragile vessel out into the hostile unknown. I mean, that sounds interesting, I like interesting things.

But, it also sounds complicated, as you say, and probably something for "down the road".

I look forward to seeing how these proposed changes take shape as the game develops. I think these changes would add to the immersion. From an aesthetic perspective, I would like to see asteroid movement throughout the sector, possibly including collisions, though I expect the resource cost would be too high.

This may run counter to what you intend. Still, I'd like to see players being able to claim either the sector or territory in the sector to claim ownership of the rare ores in a given area, similar to but different from the conquerable stations. It could be that an individual or group cleared an area of hive, making it safe for mining. They should 'own' that region, which they can hold exclusively for themselves or share. Other players and hive would then be able to conquer that area and take control of it.

From an aesthetic perspective, I would like to see asteroid movement throughout the sector, possibly including collisions

What do you mean by "asteroid movement" exactly?

Still, I'd like to see players being able to claim either the sector or territory in the sector to claim ownership of the rare ores in a given area

Territorial contention is definitely something we're moving towards. Goofy version of it in Deneb being an obvious indication (Itani-vs-Serco ownership buoys). But, that's pretty far off-topic from the OP here, I'd like to just stick to this mining discussion for now.

I am excited to see what the next gen prospecting HUD would look like. The precision mining control idea is fantastic! The PMC really fits into the style of VO and how rocks are mined in the game.

Back when I was young playing VO I loved getting lost in the fogged asteroid sectors of Deneb even encountering the Itani/Serco turret in one of the sectors! I am also excited to see the new dangers that will come with mining. Exploring the depths of space has been something I have been looking for in a game.

I look forward to see what the end product is. I think many of us are privately comparing this proposal with how mining is done in many other space games.

That's my two cents. Best wishes on implementation!

My only real contention with this is the statement that large asteroids would be "unlikely" to contain rare ores. I feel that it is a benefit to the game to be able to at least locate which sectors are of industrial level value. Id like to see three jobs emerge in the player mining industry, miner, transport, and escort/guard, rather than all of us are mining, and hauling, and defending. To someone planning large scale manufacturing with a group, i fear this would be overly complicated if there are no large asteroids worth mining. i.e. if the large roids have ferric or carbonic at best, they are rendered nearly useless in many cases.

Also, just how much faster heating are we talking?

Thank you for considering our input

My only real contention with this is the statement that large asteroids would be "unlikely" to contain rare ores.

So, I can understand that. But, keep in mind, we may also have asteroids that are much larger than any currently in the game (I think the Training Sector has the biggest?). Ideally there would be a spread of both large and small objects, and an interesting distribution in between.

The challenge with large objects is, if they contain enough quantity of rarer ores, and they're sufficiently slow to heat up, then basically you're re-creating an easily-farmable and automate-able situation. Why bother hopping from asteroid to asteroid, if you can just sit on one and slam it with all the mining beams, across a dozen accounts? It ends up subverting part of the "point" of the system.

Alternatively, if you genuinely have an industrial-level outfit, like an organized guild of players with different roles like you describe, then the real question is simply whether your grouped engagement is more effective than you would each be solo. Basically, that the genuine organized economy-of-scale of many real-players adds meaningful value over a random mass of individuals. I would think there would be a lot to gain from that level of organization, but with people actually meaningfully playing, as opposed to just sitting around mining one big 'roid.

Also, it's important to remember that while this design is framed in the "current gameplay context", as much to help describe / discuss it as any other reason, the "rest of the game" is also not standing-still. So, the selection of manufacturable content, and meaning and value of that content, will continue to evolve, along with the ores, drops, items and quantities needed to achieve those new manufacturable goals. The same could be said of more beneficial mining equipment, specifically targeted to group or guild uses (like I mention the shared-visibility prospecting, but really, there are a lot of possibilities).

I don't think we're going to have a problem finding roles for industrial-scale mining guilds. I just would prefer it was actually a real guild, and not one dude farming across 120 accounts, as in the example earlier.

Also, just how much faster heating are we talking?

I'm not exactly sure, yet. It would probably have to be a "multiple" to drive gameplay in the direction I'm illustrating, for cases of asteroids the size of, say, the "bone" 'roids.

Ultimately, the calculation would be determined by the amount of time a miner would be expected to pursue a specific asteroid, and how that varied from the current situation.

There are a lot of details about nonlinear distribution of ores across a large field, relative transit time between asteroids in large fields, rare-ore migration periods, relative risks in the area (NPCs, etc), and other things that I would have to actually play-test in practice. Things like tweaking ore distribution to have relative regional locality within a field could have a huge impact.

Draugath asked about Hive being interested in other people mining, and increased risks stemming from that as well, and that is definitely a thought-process here as well. All of this stuff blends-together. But, that's why the OP is a fairly limited overview, to articulate the concept. A lot of the details will come together later.

Thank you for considering our input

Absolutely; thanks for bringing up useful points in a productive way.

Just a comment on making asteroids larger than what is currently in game. Perhaps this doesn't happen for other players, but I tend to have difficulty targeting larger asteroids as it is. Usually I have to make multiple attempts and many of those attempts target asteroids behind my desired target. If I am the only person experiencing this, it's not a big deal. If other people share it, you might want to look into it.

As I understand it, that happens because the asteroid itself is large but it's radar blip isn't. Radar blips for all roids are the same size, regardless of how big the roid is. So when you target nearest object in front, it targets the radar blip closest to the center of your front radar. If your roid is large, it may cover your entire screen but you still might not he facing its tiny radar blip. So it targets something behind the roid.

I think in order to make group prospecting/mining operations better in these massive fields, having an addon similar to the shared radar extender but solely for prospecting data would make sense. If the ores are valuable and in enough demand, having a team of prospectors scour these massive asteroid fields and relay the data relayed back to mining ship(s) to pick up (and most importantly, have some sort of HUD indication for the super-rare ores so they're not forced to target every single roid to see the data) sounds fun.

At the bare minimum, some way for prospectors to 'tag' roids is going to be essential. Allowing players to see roughly how long they have before the raritanium dissipates through either wooly language (eg. imminently, soon, eventually) or precise timers is going to be important to curb the frustration of having rare deposits evaporate mid-mission.

Radar object selection is based on the center of mass (indicated by the blip). It would be fairly easy to change that to a different heuristic / system.

On the shared radar, prospecting aspect, I do call that out explicitly in the OP. One would definitely not have to select individual asteroids. We're talking about prospecting hundreds of thousands of asteroids in a reasonable timeframe, here.

Allowing players to see roughly how long they have before the raritanium dissipates

Just a reminder that the rare ore is literally exposed by the process of Scanning / Prospecting. So, if multiple hours is the minimum bound for ephemeral ore presence, it isn't going to vanish immediately. But, yes, there should be some informational display about ore lifespan.