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I'm not entirely sure on how to feel about this. Sure, it can be a huge improvement for how we handle ore resources and its role in player markets, but is this huge increase in asteroids in a single sector viable for mobile devices in regards to performance?
Also, I believe it would be better if the whole decay process took an X amount of days instead of just a handful of hours. In fact, maybe it could depend on the size of the roid? A tiny one could last up to 6 hours, while the biggest ones could take days to dissipate...
Also, I believe it would be better if the whole decay process took an X amount of days instead of just a handful of hours. In fact, maybe it could depend on the size of the roid? A tiny one could last up to 6 hours, while the biggest ones could take days to dissipate...
but is this huge increase in asteroids in a single sector viable for mobile devices in regards to performance?
Well, I'm not going to ship something that breaks mobile. Renderer discussions are pretty far outside this topic, but I do mention it in other threads.
Also, I believe it would be better if the whole decay process took an X amount of days instead of just a handful of hours.
At first I thought you meant thermal values (which doesn't work due to previously mentioned mass farming issues), but I think you actually mean the rare ore migration rate.
Why do you want it to dissipate more slowly? As long as Scanning / Prospecting is easy enough, that shouldn't be a burden?
I did intend the volatility to be ore specific, so some content might last longer than others.
However, it does have to be reasonably correlated to heating thresholds, so people don't keep switching back and forth between a couple of asteroids.
But, what condition are you trying to solve, or improve, by extending migration rates?
Well, I'm not going to ship something that breaks mobile. Renderer discussions are pretty far outside this topic, but I do mention it in other threads.
Also, I believe it would be better if the whole decay process took an X amount of days instead of just a handful of hours.
At first I thought you meant thermal values (which doesn't work due to previously mentioned mass farming issues), but I think you actually mean the rare ore migration rate.
Why do you want it to dissipate more slowly? As long as Scanning / Prospecting is easy enough, that shouldn't be a burden?
I did intend the volatility to be ore specific, so some content might last longer than others.
However, it does have to be reasonably correlated to heating thresholds, so people don't keep switching back and forth between a couple of asteroids.
But, what condition are you trying to solve, or improve, by extending migration rates?
Making mining dynamic would make things interesting for sure.
To actually have a use for ore databases even with that, it could be made in a way that the sectors what have a certain ore now would have the same ore in the future as well, just distributed randomly across the rocks in the sector, in varying amounts.
Also i do agree that capships should not be a neccesity for large scale mining. While i use a goliath with a hqmb usually, BHMs deserve some love. Even a bigger behemoth could be added as a manuable subcapital for mining.
To actually have a use for ore databases even with that, it could be made in a way that the sectors what have a certain ore now would have the same ore in the future as well, just distributed randomly across the rocks in the sector, in varying amounts.
Also i do agree that capships should not be a neccesity for large scale mining. While i use a goliath with a hqmb usually, BHMs deserve some love. Even a bigger behemoth could be added as a manuable subcapital for mining.
As long as Scanning / Prospecting is easy enough, that shouldn't be a burden?
Is this change going to be accompanied with increased range for mineral scanners? Because group prospecting addons are all well and good, but there are players who don't have the friends to prospect with them (possibly not because of their own fault, but because of low player activity in their play time). So for these kind of solo players, doubling or tripling the range of mineral scanners would help, especially with giant roid sectors.
Also could perhaps be done with a specialised prospecting ship (like Hive Observers) which is pretty zippy and small, has an extremely long range (like 2500m) mineral scanner but low armor and no weapons. Or prospecting drones similar to furies which can be deployed in a sector to gather data.
Is this change going to be accompanied with increased range for mineral scanners? Because group prospecting addons are all well and good, but there are players who don't have the friends to prospect with them (possibly not because of their own fault, but because of low player activity in their play time). So for these kind of solo players, doubling or tripling the range of mineral scanners would help, especially with giant roid sectors.
Also could perhaps be done with a specialised prospecting ship (like Hive Observers) which is pretty zippy and small, has an extremely long range (like 2500m) mineral scanner but low armor and no weapons. Or prospecting drones similar to furies which can be deployed in a sector to gather data.
To actually have a use for ore databases even with that, it could be made in a way that the sectors what have a certain ore now would have the same ore in the future as well, just distributed randomly across the rocks in the sector, in varying amounts.
We could, yes, but I'm not going to promise that. Not because I'm trying to deprive people of their databases or anything, but just because this "universe redux" is a wonderful opportunity to re-work content ore/mineral distribution, in ways that may apply better to modern gameplay. I may stick with what's there, in some cases, or I may not.
But, that's topically more about the "redux" itself, and not just this mining discussion, so, let's stay on track with the mining-system and mechanics here.
[EDIT] As a note, I'm generally trying to make prospecting quicker, simpler and easier. So, while in the context of the current game, the idea of "losing a mineral database" might seem painful; the idea is that next-gen prospecting will be relatively easy and fast and painless. So much so that "losing your database" probably won't matter much, in practice. I'm basically trying to eliminate excessively "grindy" parts of the game that don't really seem important or necessary in a modern context.
Is this change going to be accompanied with increased range for mineral scanners?
Yes, it would be a significantly increased range, with much better usability. That's where I was going with the statement "This would require a more broader, simpler and larger-scale form of prospecting.", and the rest of the "Next Generation Prospecting" stuff in the OP.
But, I don't have exact specifics of what the range increase would be, again, that would depend on testing with varied sector cases and such.
Or prospecting drones similar to furies which can be deployed in a sector to gather data.
Player-owned NPC-automation is definitely a goal, particularly as it ties into player-owned stations and territorial conquest. But, that's all way beyond scope here. For the moment, I'll just try to make the prospecting experience balance well for a solo miner, and give some added advantages to player-groups and capships.
We could, yes, but I'm not going to promise that. Not because I'm trying to deprive people of their databases or anything, but just because this "universe redux" is a wonderful opportunity to re-work content ore/mineral distribution, in ways that may apply better to modern gameplay. I may stick with what's there, in some cases, or I may not.
But, that's topically more about the "redux" itself, and not just this mining discussion, so, let's stay on track with the mining-system and mechanics here.
[EDIT] As a note, I'm generally trying to make prospecting quicker, simpler and easier. So, while in the context of the current game, the idea of "losing a mineral database" might seem painful; the idea is that next-gen prospecting will be relatively easy and fast and painless. So much so that "losing your database" probably won't matter much, in practice. I'm basically trying to eliminate excessively "grindy" parts of the game that don't really seem important or necessary in a modern context.
Is this change going to be accompanied with increased range for mineral scanners?
Yes, it would be a significantly increased range, with much better usability. That's where I was going with the statement "This would require a more broader, simpler and larger-scale form of prospecting.", and the rest of the "Next Generation Prospecting" stuff in the OP.
But, I don't have exact specifics of what the range increase would be, again, that would depend on testing with varied sector cases and such.
Or prospecting drones similar to furies which can be deployed in a sector to gather data.
Player-owned NPC-automation is definitely a goal, particularly as it ties into player-owned stations and territorial conquest. But, that's all way beyond scope here. For the moment, I'll just try to make the prospecting experience balance well for a solo miner, and give some added advantages to player-groups and capships.
Regarding the goal of making prospecting quicker, simpler and easier: It would add efficiency if there were a visual cue that reveals temperature so that once could see at a glance that an area has been worked recently. It could be via an effect visible to everyone or a device that behaves like a thermal camera. Or maybe hot rocks are brighter on radar.
It would add efficiency if there were a visual cue that reveals temperature so that once could see at a glance that an area has been worked recently.
Definitely. I mentioned before having a clear idea of things via asteroid highlighting or some similar overlay mechanic, and I imagine that for both temperature and makeup.
(In response to various discussions I've seen elsewhere)
Also, just to reinforce what I've written a couple of times now: I am not aiming to make it more difficult to find rare ores. I am trying to make the game mechanics involved more engaging, less boring, and less grindy.
For a newer player, I suspect prospecting for rare ore would be much, much easier than it is now. And for an experienced player who has a database of existing locations, it would probably not be much different than it is already (advanced players will probably have high-end scanners and prospecting addons, allowing scanning of large regions very quickly). After all, an advanced player already knows what sector to go to, you're just talking about scans within the sector, which would be accomplished pretty quickly.
Definitely. I mentioned before having a clear idea of things via asteroid highlighting or some similar overlay mechanic, and I imagine that for both temperature and makeup.
(In response to various discussions I've seen elsewhere)
Also, just to reinforce what I've written a couple of times now: I am not aiming to make it more difficult to find rare ores. I am trying to make the game mechanics involved more engaging, less boring, and less grindy.
For a newer player, I suspect prospecting for rare ore would be much, much easier than it is now. And for an experienced player who has a database of existing locations, it would probably not be much different than it is already (advanced players will probably have high-end scanners and prospecting addons, allowing scanning of large regions very quickly). After all, an advanced player already knows what sector to go to, you're just talking about scans within the sector, which would be accomplished pretty quickly.
Feb 16, 2023 incarnate
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.
Feb 16, 2023 Death Fluffy
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.
I would suggest something about asteroids movement that maybe won't be too high on resources and not as game-esque fashion as asteroids suddenly warping away from a sector.
Single asteroids are already spinning - how about large quantities of them that spin? How about asteroid belts that rotate slowly? Like giant donuts or elipses. Or even slowly spinning clouds, where center moves slowly, but outside of it would be little faster. Inside of them could be nothing, more asteroids, docking stations, maybe giant asteroids with some hive turrets on both of easier acceessible ends.
Some sectors could be in fog. Imagine navigating your ship inside moving roid (not too fast of course, bot not too slow either) to find valuable ores or to get to the center of it. That would be way more engaging - catching asteroid with your scanner (extended respectively) and managing a distance between your ship and asteroid - I think it would be more challenging and fun.
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.
Feb 16, 2023 Death Fluffy
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.
I would suggest something about asteroids movement that maybe won't be too high on resources and not as game-esque fashion as asteroids suddenly warping away from a sector.
Single asteroids are already spinning - how about large quantities of them that spin? How about asteroid belts that rotate slowly? Like giant donuts or elipses. Or even slowly spinning clouds, where center moves slowly, but outside of it would be little faster. Inside of them could be nothing, more asteroids, docking stations, maybe giant asteroids with some hive turrets on both of easier acceessible ends.
Some sectors could be in fog. Imagine navigating your ship inside moving roid (not too fast of course, bot not too slow either) to find valuable ores or to get to the center of it. That would be way more engaging - catching asteroid with your scanner (extended respectively) and managing a distance between your ship and asteroid - I think it would be more challenging and fun.
How about asteroid belts that rotate slowly? Like giant donuts or elipses. Or even slowly spinning clouds, where center moves slowly, but outside of it would be little faster.
I'm not against more dynamic content in the game, but there are a lot of technical ramifications to what you're describing being a common-case. For instance:
- AI pathfinding uses a node system with per-sector, three-dimensional "maps" that are computationally expensive to generate. Having the sector be moving around constantly would definitely require re-evaluating how the AI flies around. It would still work to some extent (as it does in, say, a big capship battle, with has no path nodes, and all moving-objects), but it would have a lot more problems. NPCs would probably not be a big threat in a sector with rotating fields.
- Certain rendering optimizations are possible if content isn't moving that much. A lot of the basic requirement underpinning having "dense" asteroid fields is using a variation of imposter rendering, a system that's scalable across all our platforms and basically renders out static fields into a temporary, short-term background texture, until one moves far enough to make the background-texture look incorrect (when it is then re-rendered). Eliminating imposter rendering would probably force us to A) not have ultra-dense fields, or B) drop support for mobile devices as well as most PCs that don't have heavy-duty gaming GPUs.
There are other challenges as well, that's just two obvious ones. Game development is all about "pick your trade-offs", and we may well have fully dynamic asteroid fields at some point, but it's all a bit outside the concept of this thread.
Here we're just focused on responding the OP topic. I appreciate that many other ideas are possible, but really broad and fundamental ideation is a role better suited for "other Suggestions threads", where any individual thread is intended to be more dedicated to the stated proposal within that thread.
Obviously, there's some gray area, but in this case we probably don't want to stray too far into discussions of full-moving asteroid belts and things, otherwise we'll never talk about mechanics relating to the intended topic at-hand.
I'm not against more dynamic content in the game, but there are a lot of technical ramifications to what you're describing being a common-case. For instance:
- AI pathfinding uses a node system with per-sector, three-dimensional "maps" that are computationally expensive to generate. Having the sector be moving around constantly would definitely require re-evaluating how the AI flies around. It would still work to some extent (as it does in, say, a big capship battle, with has no path nodes, and all moving-objects), but it would have a lot more problems. NPCs would probably not be a big threat in a sector with rotating fields.
- Certain rendering optimizations are possible if content isn't moving that much. A lot of the basic requirement underpinning having "dense" asteroid fields is using a variation of imposter rendering, a system that's scalable across all our platforms and basically renders out static fields into a temporary, short-term background texture, until one moves far enough to make the background-texture look incorrect (when it is then re-rendered). Eliminating imposter rendering would probably force us to A) not have ultra-dense fields, or B) drop support for mobile devices as well as most PCs that don't have heavy-duty gaming GPUs.
There are other challenges as well, that's just two obvious ones. Game development is all about "pick your trade-offs", and we may well have fully dynamic asteroid fields at some point, but it's all a bit outside the concept of this thread.
Here we're just focused on responding the OP topic. I appreciate that many other ideas are possible, but really broad and fundamental ideation is a role better suited for "other Suggestions threads", where any individual thread is intended to be more dedicated to the stated proposal within that thread.
Obviously, there's some gray area, but in this case we probably don't want to stray too far into discussions of full-moving asteroid belts and things, otherwise we'll never talk about mechanics relating to the intended topic at-hand.
Thank you incarnate for your answer, I see that rendering is a more complex subject than i thought. And sorry for derailing this discussion.
So back to the topic again:
incarnate
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.
As I understand this display will be available only when a player stay as usual next to the asteroid. For more dynamic play maybe it would be fun to have mining beam be more fixed to the spaceship. I mean by that a player would only mine forward (in this general direction) so mining could be done on fly but requiring maneuvering whole spaceship rather than a dot on HUD.
Another thought is that I'm not sure how choosing mining missions that require finding one type of valuable ore will go. Maybe one would fly and scan a sector first, then choose a mission. Overall I think for collecting all kinds of ores it's s a great idea to make distribution of them depend less on space and more on time. Mining will be more random and therefore engaging and i like that.
So back to the topic again:
incarnate
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.
As I understand this display will be available only when a player stay as usual next to the asteroid. For more dynamic play maybe it would be fun to have mining beam be more fixed to the spaceship. I mean by that a player would only mine forward (in this general direction) so mining could be done on fly but requiring maneuvering whole spaceship rather than a dot on HUD.
Another thought is that I'm not sure how choosing mining missions that require finding one type of valuable ore will go. Maybe one would fly and scan a sector first, then choose a mission. Overall I think for collecting all kinds of ores it's s a great idea to make distribution of them depend less on space and more on time. Mining will be more random and therefore engaging and i like that.
I like mining just the way it is apart from the fact that prices tank as soon as you sell anything
just my 2 cents worth
just my 2 cents worth
Late to this thread, but have some thoughts that I haven't seen mentioned.
Based off the OP, my biggest concern is the stacking RNG. Right now, the RNG in mining is the lower percentage of rare ores. With the proposed system, a player might be looking at some single digit chance to find the ore (one out of 100 roids, etc) multiplied by some single digit chance to get the ore (composition), potentially compounded by faster heating meaning you only have a couple shiploads before ore takes an unreasonable amount of time to mine. That sounds like the scenario of people finding the super rare ores but not getting them could be rather common (and frustrating).
Overall though, I'm in support of having the two types of equipment mentioned in the OP. Both to offset the RNG, and to support multiple play styles. Bulk mining equipment for those that want to chill and rely on RNG, meaning your yield could be zero or a lot. And precision mining equipment, that's active with guaranteed, static-sized small or medium yields. I think precision would probably have to be balanced by having it consuming all the rare ore on a roid, and having reduced yields as temperature increased. This would prevent players from 'stacking' bulk and precision mining.
Based off the OP, my biggest concern is the stacking RNG. Right now, the RNG in mining is the lower percentage of rare ores. With the proposed system, a player might be looking at some single digit chance to find the ore (one out of 100 roids, etc) multiplied by some single digit chance to get the ore (composition), potentially compounded by faster heating meaning you only have a couple shiploads before ore takes an unreasonable amount of time to mine. That sounds like the scenario of people finding the super rare ores but not getting them could be rather common (and frustrating).
Overall though, I'm in support of having the two types of equipment mentioned in the OP. Both to offset the RNG, and to support multiple play styles. Bulk mining equipment for those that want to chill and rely on RNG, meaning your yield could be zero or a lot. And precision mining equipment, that's active with guaranteed, static-sized small or medium yields. I think precision would probably have to be balanced by having it consuming all the rare ore on a roid, and having reduced yields as temperature increased. This would prevent players from 'stacking' bulk and precision mining.
With the proposed system, a player might be looking at some single digit chance to find the ore (one out of 100 roids, etc) multiplied by some single digit chance to get the ore (composition), potentially compounded by faster heating meaning you only have a couple shiploads before ore takes an unreasonable amount of time to mine.
I don't think that would be an issue? The point here is to simply make rare ores be positioned more randomly, be more "ephemeral" in the universe (location changes), and for the mining value of any single given individual asteroid to be less (increased heating).
So, the overall "rate" of acquisition of a rare ore should not actually be any less (measured over, say, an hour in a single sector), but it would require a different pattern of mining, as one would be prospecting over a larger area, and moving from asteroid-to-asteroid more often.
I don't think that would be an issue? The point here is to simply make rare ores be positioned more randomly, be more "ephemeral" in the universe (location changes), and for the mining value of any single given individual asteroid to be less (increased heating).
So, the overall "rate" of acquisition of a rare ore should not actually be any less (measured over, say, an hour in a single sector), but it would require a different pattern of mining, as one would be prospecting over a larger area, and moving from asteroid-to-asteroid more often.