Forums » Suggestions
Mining (for ore, small ramble)
I've been thinking about this somewhat, and while I am unsure how the devs originally planned to handle this, I have a possibility for a "hack" to enable asteroid mining, a feature which would give the game more depth.
I am unsure if it is possible, I'm basing it on a few assumptions that i will lay out now.
1. Each "shot" from a weapon is tracked individually and has data associated with it, this data includes something that references the weapon type it was fired from, and who fired the shot.
2. asteroids also have a data block of some sort associated with them, including the "type" and "size" of asteroid, (EG. Ice, small; Rock, medium)
3. When a shot hits an inanimate object such as an asteroid, the engine looks at the data from both objects. (or can be made to look at the data from both objects without a large amount of trouble)
If all 3 of the above are true then It should not be too dificult to impliment a simple mining feature. (#1 almost has to be true, otherwise how would the server know who to credit with damage and how much damage it does when a shot hits you.)
Create a new weapon with the following stats:
Name: Mining Pulse Array
Size: L-Port
Damage: 0
Velocity: 50
Energy: 225 / Blast
Delay: 1 second
Auto-Aim: none
Levels: commerce 2
Cost: around 30k
when a bolt from the mining array strikes an asteroid, the server would then execute a subroutine thats triggered when the data from the weapon shot reads "mining pulse array" as the weapon type. In that subroutine there is a chance that you will succesfully "mine" an ore.
The chance of having an ore appear would be determined by a simple data table. each area of space would have a table that would break down by asteroid type & size what ores you might have a chance at getting.
(EG a large rock asteroid could have a 50% chance of nothing, a 26% chance of van-Azek ore and a 24% chance of ferrous ore;
a small Ice asteroid could have a 95% chance of nothing and a 5% chance of aqueous ore, etc etc.)
You could create a table for every system to start out, then refine it down to every sector as time goes on, eventually you might even be able to change the table to reflect every asteroid individually, so that the large oval asteroid at position blah, gives a different ore list than the large oval asteroid at position bleh, even if they are in teh same sector.
After the ore is "mined" it will spawn in space at the location of your ship(fast crude hack just to make it functional). eventually a cargo box could spawn with a velocity of between 1 and 5 on a random trajectory from the asteroid, or could even spawn with a velocity of 5, on a trajectory towards the point in space occupied by your ship. (assume the mining array is tractoring the cargo in somehow.)
Possibly each asteroid in a sector could have a counter to keep track of how many ores have been mined from it in the last 30 minutes. For every 5 (random number, could be adjusted) ores mined from it the chance of getting nothing increases by 1 % and the chances of getting one of the other ores goes down by 1%, this would reduce the effectiveness of mining asteroids near stations.
I wouldnt think it should be too difficult to eventually code into the sector creation part of the server a set of instructions that would allow it to generate it's own tables for each asteroid type, or even for each specific asteroid. All you would have to do is give it some broad values (these types of ore and maximum possible % availible for each, in this sector.)
Some quick explanations of my reasoning for the stats i gave the hypothetical weapon.
L-port: I envision it to be a larger item, it is projecting forces in such a way as to break the ore out of an asteroid instead of just demolishing rock after all.
Damage: the forces involved just arent as useful against a hull designed to avoid the stress of acceleration.
Velocity: since weapons shots exist for 3 (5?) seconds, this means you have to be fairly close to the asteroid surface to use it.
energy: keeps mining a little slower, after all it is effectively free money that you dont have to kill bots for.
Delay: same as energy
Autoaim: if you are shooting at a moving target with this, you need your head examined.
levels: I made the level low because i think that a mining rig should be accessible fairly early int he game.
cost: I made it fairly high to try to make it a long term investment that you try to keep safe, It's not something you want to loose after all.
I also made it a L-port item because that will make the Atlas and centaur more useful since you wont be able to mine in a marauder. I envision the marauder as more of a fast transport, where the centaur is a heavy freighter.
ok the ramble actually got kinda large, but at least its a focused ramble.
I am unsure if it is possible, I'm basing it on a few assumptions that i will lay out now.
1. Each "shot" from a weapon is tracked individually and has data associated with it, this data includes something that references the weapon type it was fired from, and who fired the shot.
2. asteroids also have a data block of some sort associated with them, including the "type" and "size" of asteroid, (EG. Ice, small; Rock, medium)
3. When a shot hits an inanimate object such as an asteroid, the engine looks at the data from both objects. (or can be made to look at the data from both objects without a large amount of trouble)
If all 3 of the above are true then It should not be too dificult to impliment a simple mining feature. (#1 almost has to be true, otherwise how would the server know who to credit with damage and how much damage it does when a shot hits you.)
Create a new weapon with the following stats:
Name: Mining Pulse Array
Size: L-Port
Damage: 0
Velocity: 50
Energy: 225 / Blast
Delay: 1 second
Auto-Aim: none
Levels: commerce 2
Cost: around 30k
when a bolt from the mining array strikes an asteroid, the server would then execute a subroutine thats triggered when the data from the weapon shot reads "mining pulse array" as the weapon type. In that subroutine there is a chance that you will succesfully "mine" an ore.
The chance of having an ore appear would be determined by a simple data table. each area of space would have a table that would break down by asteroid type & size what ores you might have a chance at getting.
(EG a large rock asteroid could have a 50% chance of nothing, a 26% chance of van-Azek ore and a 24% chance of ferrous ore;
a small Ice asteroid could have a 95% chance of nothing and a 5% chance of aqueous ore, etc etc.)
You could create a table for every system to start out, then refine it down to every sector as time goes on, eventually you might even be able to change the table to reflect every asteroid individually, so that the large oval asteroid at position blah, gives a different ore list than the large oval asteroid at position bleh, even if they are in teh same sector.
After the ore is "mined" it will spawn in space at the location of your ship(fast crude hack just to make it functional). eventually a cargo box could spawn with a velocity of between 1 and 5 on a random trajectory from the asteroid, or could even spawn with a velocity of 5, on a trajectory towards the point in space occupied by your ship. (assume the mining array is tractoring the cargo in somehow.)
Possibly each asteroid in a sector could have a counter to keep track of how many ores have been mined from it in the last 30 minutes. For every 5 (random number, could be adjusted) ores mined from it the chance of getting nothing increases by 1 % and the chances of getting one of the other ores goes down by 1%, this would reduce the effectiveness of mining asteroids near stations.
I wouldnt think it should be too difficult to eventually code into the sector creation part of the server a set of instructions that would allow it to generate it's own tables for each asteroid type, or even for each specific asteroid. All you would have to do is give it some broad values (these types of ore and maximum possible % availible for each, in this sector.)
Some quick explanations of my reasoning for the stats i gave the hypothetical weapon.
L-port: I envision it to be a larger item, it is projecting forces in such a way as to break the ore out of an asteroid instead of just demolishing rock after all.
Damage: the forces involved just arent as useful against a hull designed to avoid the stress of acceleration.
Velocity: since weapons shots exist for 3 (5?) seconds, this means you have to be fairly close to the asteroid surface to use it.
energy: keeps mining a little slower, after all it is effectively free money that you dont have to kill bots for.
Delay: same as energy
Autoaim: if you are shooting at a moving target with this, you need your head examined.
levels: I made the level low because i think that a mining rig should be accessible fairly early int he game.
cost: I made it fairly high to try to make it a long term investment that you try to keep safe, It's not something you want to loose after all.
I also made it a L-port item because that will make the Atlas and centaur more useful since you wont be able to mine in a marauder. I envision the marauder as more of a fast transport, where the centaur is a heavy freighter.
ok the ramble actually got kinda large, but at least its a focused ramble.
small ramble huh? heheh..
Didn't Celebrim make a huge thread about this once?
I like the method where the 'ore' has to travel to your ship. It might be interesting if there was a risk of someone snatching your mined cargo before you got it into your hold.
I picture seeing miners in the future with minefields protecting there roids from claim jumpers while they are busy harvesting.
I picture seeing miners in the future with minefields protecting there roids from claim jumpers while they are busy harvesting.
I like it!
I'm glad you brought this up, Spellcast, because I had been thinking a lot the other day about the different types of widgets we see in game and how their descriptions hint at where they come from. I count seven different types of raw "Ore" that comes from mined asteroids:
Aquean Ore
Silicate Ore
Carbonic Ore
Ferric Ore
VanAzek Ore
Ishik Ore
Xithricite Ore
As spellcast said, these types of ore could probably be found to exist in different ratios depending on the type of asteroid mined. If a "Mining" skill was introduced, the probability of getting ore from an asteroid could go up proportionately with one's mining skill. Mining license levels could grant better equipment, such as more effecient Mining Pulse Arrays, Mining Drones, or even a mining weapon that lets you target a particular type of ore to mine for.
As I was looking at some more of the kinds of widgets available it occured to me that from their description it appeared a great deal of them were produced by refining raw ore mined from asteroids. Three good examples are:
Xithricite Alloy: "Extremely durable alloy made primarily from iron and xithricite"
Precious Metals: "Extracted in small quantities from other ores"
Purified Water: "Purified water, safe for drinking"
Now here's the big what if.... WHAT IF in addition to mining there was a refining skill, which let a player take cheap ore mined from asteroids and refine it into more valuable widgets. There would be a "refining" tab added to the station where you can select one or more widgets to refine, and hopefully turn them into a more valuable widget. For example:
Aquean Ore -> refines to -> Purified Water
Ferric Ore + Xithricite Ore ->-> XiRite Alloy
Silicate Ore + Carbonic Ore + Purified Water ->-> SynthWood
The possibilities are endless. This would be different from a crafting system because it would only use widgets that are already in existence (rather than crafting completely new weapons or items), but it would allow players to have a whole new skill from which they could earn money. After all, it doesn't matter where the raw materials to be refined come from: they could be traded, mined, or pirated.
Successfully refining widgets would grant refining experience, and refining license levels would grant access to better "refining tools" which have better success rates, and allow more complex end products. Refining tools could be bought at stations and would be required for refining, and they could fit into L-ports for transport between stations, but would only have any use at a station.
I'm glad you brought this up, Spellcast, because I had been thinking a lot the other day about the different types of widgets we see in game and how their descriptions hint at where they come from. I count seven different types of raw "Ore" that comes from mined asteroids:
Aquean Ore
Silicate Ore
Carbonic Ore
Ferric Ore
VanAzek Ore
Ishik Ore
Xithricite Ore
As spellcast said, these types of ore could probably be found to exist in different ratios depending on the type of asteroid mined. If a "Mining" skill was introduced, the probability of getting ore from an asteroid could go up proportionately with one's mining skill. Mining license levels could grant better equipment, such as more effecient Mining Pulse Arrays, Mining Drones, or even a mining weapon that lets you target a particular type of ore to mine for.
As I was looking at some more of the kinds of widgets available it occured to me that from their description it appeared a great deal of them were produced by refining raw ore mined from asteroids. Three good examples are:
Xithricite Alloy: "Extremely durable alloy made primarily from iron and xithricite"
Precious Metals: "Extracted in small quantities from other ores"
Purified Water: "Purified water, safe for drinking"
Now here's the big what if.... WHAT IF in addition to mining there was a refining skill, which let a player take cheap ore mined from asteroids and refine it into more valuable widgets. There would be a "refining" tab added to the station where you can select one or more widgets to refine, and hopefully turn them into a more valuable widget. For example:
Aquean Ore -> refines to -> Purified Water
Ferric Ore + Xithricite Ore ->-> XiRite Alloy
Silicate Ore + Carbonic Ore + Purified Water ->-> SynthWood
The possibilities are endless. This would be different from a crafting system because it would only use widgets that are already in existence (rather than crafting completely new weapons or items), but it would allow players to have a whole new skill from which they could earn money. After all, it doesn't matter where the raw materials to be refined come from: they could be traded, mined, or pirated.
Successfully refining widgets would grant refining experience, and refining license levels would grant access to better "refining tools" which have better success rates, and allow more complex end products. Refining tools could be bought at stations and would be required for refining, and they could fit into L-ports for transport between stations, but would only have any use at a station.
It's been said before, and it's something that needs saying. This game would have a lot more interesting trade if astromining worked.
Hmm.. i like the idea of a weapon as a mining device, but it should be really basic and unefficent. The real miners should user a specialised crafts.
Spider-look like Miner
Hull 8000
Agility medium
Weapons: 1Special*
Cargo: 8
* The weapons runs the claws (spiders legs?) to drill next to you. It's HtH type of weapons but very effective (about 1000dmg/s, no energy drain)
Truck-Like mining rafinery
Hull 12000
Agility low
Weapons 2Special
* the first weapons works simillar to abowe, second one tries to rafine ore in cargo hold (could be some dialog box). Refining should take time, and have a chance to be succcessful or failure.
The better mining equipement, the better chance of gettig usefull item.
Then in some specialised stations (generaly the bigger ones) you could rent a labolatory or something to make special materials from other (refined) ores and such..
The whole manufacturing skill should be added, and depending on what your skill is you will have a new options what you could make from raw materials (you could even make new unique weapons and ship improvements)
Spider-look like Miner
Hull 8000
Agility medium
Weapons: 1Special*
Cargo: 8
* The weapons runs the claws (spiders legs?) to drill next to you. It's HtH type of weapons but very effective (about 1000dmg/s, no energy drain)
Truck-Like mining rafinery
Hull 12000
Agility low
Weapons 2Special
* the first weapons works simillar to abowe, second one tries to rafine ore in cargo hold (could be some dialog box). Refining should take time, and have a chance to be succcessful or failure.
The better mining equipement, the better chance of gettig usefull item.
Then in some specialised stations (generaly the bigger ones) you could rent a labolatory or something to make special materials from other (refined) ores and such..
The whole manufacturing skill should be added, and depending on what your skill is you will have a new options what you could make from raw materials (you could even make new unique weapons and ship improvements)
ciuciu, the whole point of this suggestion was to have an easy, minimal code "hack" to put mining in.
this would seem to be a more or less easy hack for mining. I like it