[Jonboy]

Mining in Jumpgate Classic was moderately fun. Those who did enjoy it thought it had issues with incentive and reward. I would welcome discussion of a new mechanic for mining, but that's not what I want to discuss right now.

Mining is balanced so that you can mine a set amount per hour, so you can earn an amount per hour. Pure mining is random, very random, but still nets about the same amount overall. However, it's not easy to optimise your mining activity to suit your purposes, either for wealth generation or for production of higher tier commods and equipment. Neither regular mining nor pure mining are very intelligent in terms of production - i.e. mining for a specific commodity that you need to make something is too slow with regular mining and too random with pure mining. Overall there is probably enough tier 1 commod generation to cover server-wide production needs, or it can be rebalanced until it does. But I still think Something Must Be Done.

I think we mining would be more fun and involving if were able to mine more intelligently. Game mechanics should allow us to decide what we want to mine and actively seek something specific. That way we can choose our level of involvement with the mining process. We can choose casual ten minutes of mining in the station sector, optimise mining-patterns for cash, or mine for production of equipment.

So what do we do?

==========

My suggestions:

We need to be able to detect what the best areas are to mine in. We need to be able to get an appropriate amount of ore to use for the purpose.

For detection, one idea is to have a remote probe which you can launch like a missile, which will scout a few sectors ahead quickly and return to you with information. You could make the the probe destroyable or not, or recycleable or not, depending on balance and fun factor. You can tie the information to beacon status if this would be fun.

For mining an appropriate amount, that's probably in the order of a hundred units of a specific commod, under the conditions when I left. That means you need to find a sector or bunch of sectors with a high proportion of that commod available. This is where the current system has it wrong. There isn't enough types of ore available to mine selectively. Pures are still too random. I should be able to do some research and then be able to go out and mine for any tier 1 commod and be fairly certain of coming home with little waste and around 100 units.

The current roids are separated into common, ice, etc. Common are all over space, and ice is found easily in sol space. I suggest that the ore types be more variable. So, starting at wake, I could probe purian lake and see that the ice ore there is rich in lithium. I could then go and mine for lithium until purian is dry and search for another lithium rich sector. Purian could yield say 30 units and I'd have to find another 2 sectors. There would obviously have to be a mechanic for rolling thru the different commodities that an ore could be rich in.

I wouldn't mind having to go to outside sol-space for things that aren't rich at home, if i were guaranteed to find more appropriate stuff there.

I wanna mine intelligently!

[Bingofuel]

I wish we knew what the mineing mechanics are going to be. All we know is mining is going to be way different.

I totaly agree we should be able to do targeted mineing. For example you need Silicone and lots of it. Silicone comes from semifluxors. Semifluxor ore breaks down into several other resorces. So as your mining semi fluxors you are also getting commons,ice,radioactive, and precious.

If a tallent/skill abilities were to be implemented in the game, you would be able to earn the ability to raise the % of semifluxors, reducing the % of the scrub ore as you mine. Another skill would be the ability to raise the % of 1 specific mineral you get from the semifluxor when you refine the ore.

You wouldn't start out being able to do target mineing and refineing, you would have to earn it. Also it should be impossable to aquire 100% of what you wan't, It should cap out at about 80%.

[Wild_Bill]

Or "tunable" mining lasers would be nice (either a modex, or a setting done at a station before launching). An untuned mining laser would work exactly as we currently have. A "tuned" mining laser would focus on the element you select and therefor extract more of that mineral and less of everything else. In effect it would be "refining while mining". On Ice, set for lithium, it would get more lithium in the Ice ore and less Common, Semi, Rad and Semi ore than we currently get.

Alternately, as GrimGriz suggested many times, different elements should be more prominent in different areas/factions/sectors much like Jonboy suggested. Not just in 'roid types, but in the ratio of the ore in those 'roids. Whether it was more lithium in certain Ice roids or Silicone in certain Semifluxors based on sector or faction space, it would be more interesting to me.

[Jetset]

I always liked to mine because it ment i could go fetch myself a cup of tea if i felt like it.

[dahalb]

The two point i like are:
1. Roids should have different compositions (within the same group) in different locations and
2. "Tune-able" lasers to assist with targeted extract ion

Both of these would make mining more enjoyable for me (and i don't like mining all that much).

[netburnr]

I always hated mining because I could never find a rock that wasn't already over heated :\

[vorlon31]

One of the things I dislike about mining in Jumpgate Classic is the random spread of the roids. Ive already posted my thoughts on this elsewhere I seem to remember but to recap for mining I would like to see;

HUGE roid belts, densely packed and stretching off out of view and vast fields on a grand scale, big roids, huge roids, humongous roids as well as little's, spread out planar, like a flat sea of rock, where teams upon teams of miners can forage above and below its spread. Some random chip movements - ricocheting chips breaking out of the field that can damage your ships shields - possible in close vicinity to better yielding rocks, better yielding because their cores are exposed by the chipping - to add a little danger from the roids them selves.

What I dont want to see;
o's
x's
words
Nor do I want to be so heavy after a few roids that I cant barely move. If I have 700 cargo - I want to fill 700 cargo not just grab 200 then have to unload before I get stupidly massed out.
Also, I want to see some movement, in the mining beam, not just a straw poking from the ship, let it track and flow like them beams the ghostbusters had

[Vinegar Goose]

Originally Posted by vorlon31

Nor do I want to be so heavy after a few roids that I cant barely move. If I have 700 cargo - I want to fill 700 cargo not just grab 200 then have to unload before I get stupidly massed out.

I have to disagree on the mass issue. Part of the challenge of being a hauler or miner is dealing with overloaded ships. It is your trade-off if you mine 700 or 200 units of ore. Volume versus transit time. A ship with 5,600 metric tons of ore should not handle like a ship with 1,600 metric tons of ore.

I would agree to changes to ore mass. Common, Semiflux, Precious, and Radioactive should not all be 8000 kg per unit.

[Jonboy]

The mass of the ore is just about the same as the mass of the stuff in it.... It is a realistic simulation. So the mass of ice ore is mostly the mass of the water in it. If you refine the ore yourself the mass will be just about the same before and after. So, if you lower the mass of the ore, you have to lower the mass of the refined goods, which is obviously not possible without using different masses from reality, or you get less ore per unit of cargo-space.

[vorlon31]

Originally Posted by GrimLeo

I have to disagree on the mass issue. Part of the challenge of being a hauler or miner is dealing with overloaded ships. It is your trade-off if you mine 700 or 200 units of ore. Volume versus transit time. A ship with 5,600 metric tons of ore should not handle like a ship with 1,600 metric tons of ore.

I would agree to changes to ore mass. Common, Semiflux, Precious, and Radioactive should not all be 8000 kg per unit.

I would have to disagree, shifting and ultimately landing a freighter or even a tow full to the brim with the heaviest items/ore isnt a challenge at all. What it is is an excercise in player patience and an indication of the free time that the player has to spare.

While I agree ship handling should be different for the larger cargos, I dont feel different should be simply slower, slower accel, slower stop, slower turn. The larger cargo ships should from first concept have the grunt in their engines to deal with heavy loads. After all, you dont put a 2litre engine in an 18 wheeler, you fit it with an engine to suite.

[netburnr]

I agree with what you just said Vorlon, the bigger the ship, the more the engines need to be able to thrust, I'm not saying they need to be fast, but they need to have the get up and go power needed to at least move if filled to the brim with the heaviest items in the universe.

[SlimPickns]

I active mine, its hard for me to sit and burn, one rock after the other, in a tight cluster. With burn rates dubble, when one is orbiting a rock, i like ones with enough room to orbit.

I can mine all the ores i need with the current, one large roid of each mission roid type, in each sector. The current player base enables me to say that.

Mining pures gets everything but silicon, water, and gases.
I am talking about enough silicon to do anything, i know pures have silicon spawn, but mining semis is faster, for silicon.

I have all the large semis on my rotacol, so i pop into the sector and its on my radar, to save time. I can mine 400 units of semis in short time realy, three hrs, or so. One can do 400 units three times in quant space if he feels like it.

I like the idea of specific roid types in different sectors, but my idea was reducing the random pure spawn to say five types to a sector. As a example ringview could spawn five different pures, carbon, radium, lithium, gallium, and antiminy. With the standard random size also. Expand that same scenario to other sectors, and peeps could target fairly easly ores they needed.

The way i would pick the pures for sectors, would be to pick five ores out of a hat, and set them to that sector, put those ores back into the hat, shake the hat and pull out another five. That randomness, would have some real rich sectors, and some real poor sectors.

I like seeing peeps mining, when i am flying, i like burned rocks in my flight path. Having rocks we mine close to the flight path, is cool. I would like to see more of that.

I would like a flashfire tank, like a drop tank, for haulers. The sight of a miner flashing to the next rock would be a cool sight. Most of mining time is in transit to the next rock. I average 15 to 20 pures a trip so that is 30 to 40 flashfire pops,, starting and stoping, for each pure.

I would like stackable ABS, CMS. I have never figured out why they were unstacked. Just another ancor around some peeps neck, i guess.

I would like arti engs, for HMs and Tugs. If its not possable to have a arti pce4 because they dont want them in a fighter, put a engine in the HM that wont fit in a fighter, like one sz 6 eng. The HM is realy a dog after 150 units of any ore becides ice anyways.

Make the mining lasers, and gun hardpoints seperate. To mine i have to give up one or more gun slots. That needs to be changed. Its realy silly to have any ship defenceless in space.

I am looking forward to the new mining system in Jumpgate Evolution. whatever it is, i am sure it will be fun.