Mining?

[God311]

Ok i used to play this old game for Sega Genesis called StarFlight, it was a 2d space game similar to this with multiple systems and what not, but when you went to a planet you could land were you wanted and deploy a Rover, drive it around and mine for Minerals all the minerals could be located by using the Minneral scanner, then take them back and sell them.

[God311]

few screenys of the game StarFlight. http://www.mobygames.com/game/genesis/s ... creenshots

[fizz]

I don't know in the first, but in the second if I remeber well a mission that you could do was going hunting for esotic lifeform, and hunt for earth-like colonizable planets....

[Grendel T. Troll]

I would like to see some kind of mining routines in VS. I remember all the Elite games where you could mount a mining laser for asteroid prospecting. I don't know how difficult it would be to iclude this, but I think it would be a great addition.


I also remember that on of the later versions of Elite had mining stations you could purchase and place them on worlds. I don't know if anyone else has discussed this...then again, I can see there are a few old Elite players here!

[Halleck]

Yes, that would certainly be cool.

Those starflight screenshots look great! I didn't know it came out for genesis, all I've ever played was the DOS version. I'll have to see if I can find the genesis cart/ROM somewhere.

[Grendel T. Troll]

Yes, that would certainly be cool.

Those starflight screenshots look great! I didn't know it came out for genesis, all I've ever played was the DOS version. I'll have to see if I can find the genesis cart/ROM somewhere.

Well, at the Underdogs site, it's abandonware for the taking. I play it under DOSbox. It works great. Both SF and SFII.

As for Frontier...I loved that game as well (you think?? ). I would really like to see that kind of implementation in a future VS release.

[Accu-Accelerated]

There's been a lot of talk about mining in Vega Strike in the past. I personally think it would be really cool if it was implemented (and I don't think that would be too hard). I think the mining equipment should be expensive enough so you'd have to think about making an investment in mining. Also, how about collecting gasses inside a nebula or other forms of "mining"?

[Grendel T. Troll]

I agree with the expense for the mining stations planet-side. Getting your hands on a mining laser shouldn't be too much of a problem - mainly using one of your weapon points to use it.

It could work like the way cargo ejects from ships: you hit the asteroid with the ML, target the ore that eventually is shot off (if any), and tractor it in.

One could even implement an ore sensor. With the sensor you would have to scan asteroids for possible deposits before you could start "drilling." Not all asteroids would have decent ore samples (this could be a little complicated. Since I am not much of a programmer, I wouldn't know).

As for the other mining techniques, I'm all for that. What if you could skim the atmosphere of a gas giant for material? You could develop a special device a ship has to carry for that - a scoop of some sort. That migh also work for nebula mining - coupled with a magnetic gas collector or something like that. What do you think?

[Reuse]

I always thought that the idea of a mining laser was a very silly one. I can not imagine, what makes a laser the ideal tool for mining.

A laser will certainly not cause chunks of ore break of the asteroid. The only thing that would happen is that it would evaporate the asteroids surface. I always thought it would make more sense to use some kind of projectile to break of chunks of the whole thing.

Another question is, what the difference between a mining laser and a normal laser is? Why cant I mine with my crappy laser guns?

And why not just tractor the whole thing and pull it to the factory?

Enough about mining "lasers", mining would give a player the ability to create credits purely by investing time. Unlike trading, where one has to search for good buy and sell prices, you just have to fly out, mine some time, get back and collect your money.

[Accu-Accelerated]

If you had a large ship, I think the ability should be added to tractor in an asteroid or something - that would make the larger ships more useful. However, If you tractor the thing in, you'd first have to dock with a mining station and pay a processing fee to break the asteroid down into materials that you can sell. Or, perhaps you could get a miniaturized processing center as an upgrade for your ship.

Yes, a mining "beam" sounds silly, but it's a simple way to implement mining. It could be a special kind of particle beam that takes advantage of microscopic fissures in the rock, and weakens the atomic bonds between "chunks" of rock, and then it would tractor the chunks in as well. Also, the amount of materials in individual asteroids can be different. Perhaps more valuable materials could only be in certain areas. Mining could open up something new in gameplay - perhaps warring factions could fight for the control of a resource-rich asteroid field. Pirates could try to interfere with your mining operations.

There's been a lot of talk about mining, but how hard would it be to implement it? It would be really cool even if you just had a simple mining beam and some more asteroids to point it at.

[Duke Derek]

from what i remember in Frontier, the mining laser was highly powered but had a very poor refire rate as a trade off so it maintained it's cheapness but wasnt really useful for anything that required fast shooting.

i sort of agree maybe some kind of projectile would be better... maybe a nuke.....

[klauss]

A nuke would vaporize the precious ore... rather, you want a clean cut so that you can efficiently partition the big rock in pieces for further processing - cutting lasers. They do exist, you know - only not able to cut entire asteroids.

So, I would say, a mining laser would be a tremendously powerful laser, continuously shooting (so that you can cut asteroids in half, quarters, etc...) but somehow (perhaps because of long wavelengths) they do a very poor job at penetrating shields (so, practically useless in combat).

It could also overheat after, say, 5 to 10 seconds of firing, requiring long cooldown periods (1, 2 minutes) - another thing that makes it worthless in combat - except perhaps if you find a shieldless capships and want to give a decisive blow before its shields recharge - but I wouldn't mind that it be used this way... it's creative thinking... even if I say so.

[JonathanD]

Love the idea of using a not-a-weapon as a weapon in a pinch.

[Ryder P. Moses]

Pulse lasers. Still not as good at mining as a good solid rock drill, but not exactly useless either, and better if you want to remain at range. Cause a spot-vaporization that doesn't just burn a hole but rather causes the surface of the target to chip and shatter, spitting out tiny fragments suitable for netting up in a ramscoop. The vibrations of the repeated impacts of hundreds of little detonations of vaporizing material from hundreds of little laser bursts a second has an effect like an overengineered jackhammer, forming cracks along flaws and weaknesses in the rock grain and then widening them to split the asteroid apart.

And if you really wanna get fancy, you take a couple tests first, run the mass and composition data through a fast computer, and calibrate the laser to run on a resonating frequency with the asteroid. Shake-a shake-a kaboom.

They'd also make effectual weapons against armor in a pinch, although since they're more complex and of somewhat lower output efficiencies than a continuous beam weapon they'd be weak against shields and be considerably bulkier and more expensive.

So, basically, functionally identical to what Klauss said with a more practical explanation. It's still not the most sensible way to get things done, but it's there. Really, I'd recommend if you want mining to be an option the creation of a fleet of dedicated mining craft, excavator vehicles and drill-drone controllers and short-range heavy-duty transports, which actually "dock" to the asteroid and physically remove the ore using more conventional strip-mining methods, and then transporting the goods back to a nearby mining base. Long-term operations on rich claims would eventually develop permanent installations and evolve into the asteroid bases already present in the game, which'd become the nexuses for mobile mining operations in the area.

This gives the player the option to become a miner if they really want to, by buying an excavator or retrofitting a really big craft into one, but without silly stuff like warships heading out to the local planetary ring and mining water for money, and without the absurdity of blowing up cubic miles of rich ore and then running around like crazy with a net to get maybe a few hundred tons of material out of it. And with a more interesting civilian infrastructure and more visible relevance to what should be a central part of trade in space, too.

[snow_Cat]

Meow! We have mining in game already!

^ · ·^ You get raw ore for pulverizing asteroids, trade it to mining bases (that somehow or processes it) to make raw materials that...


^. . ^ Though now that I think about it; it is really not much of a business, too little ore and processing takes too long; almost makes more sense to imitate the Sylandro ...

^- - ^ Though with the ability to create managed (and purpose built fleets) it would make sense to launch a mining operation, and build bases. As described above.


^ . .^ And what of prospecting; like StarFlight's you find the ore, we pay you a comission setup. That would be important to these operations, no?


^· · ^ Planetary surface exploration would be awesome too, but would introduce a different type of gameplay; essentially a different game.

^- - ^ mew. minerVGA's dig, dig, dig, boom! Flood!

You don't have gills!
-5%

[Silverain]

Following from Accu-Accelerated's post, I think this is the main previous thread on mining: Digging on Asteroids

Though there could be others (only did a quick search).

I personally favour something more than just blowing an asteroid apart and tractoring in ore.

Something like having to purchase an 'ore extractor' (some sort of mining item installed in your cargo bay that does automated mining with laser drills or somesuch). You have to 'dock' with an asteroid to mine (which leaves you open to danger of attack), and mining takes a certain duration of time. A minable asteroid could have a record of tonnes of ore available (when scanned), of which your 'miner' can extract a limited portion (based on size, leading to different sized miners with different capacities).

Query: If you leave the miner to defend yourself, do you lose the miner? Can you return (redock) and continue mining? Maybe it is left to continue, opening the option of being attacked, you 'undock' to defend yourself, and some other ship comes along and jumps your claim?

As you can see, I favour something more, to make mining an integral part of VS, not just another thing I can shoot at.

[hurleybird]

Awesome. Another guy who's played starflight; my favourite game of all time. If you can, try the amiga versions of SF1 and 2 as well!

[Ryder P. Moses]

Something tells me that mining needs to be more interactive, though, somehow. I agree with the dock n' mine thing, but the player needs to be kept occupied while the machines do their thing. Fending off raiders and claim-jumpers until the job's finished would be all right if combat was made to be not so equipment-oriented (and kinda dull) as it is in standard fighting right now, at least for that instance, and would be more palatable than a mining-themed minigame or a stupid 'explore the asteroid' thingy, which'd be the other options that come to mind.

'Course, maybe I've just suffered through too many badly-done minigames and exploration thingies. Were somebody to invest the extensive energy to do 'em right, they might be okay, but given that we've got kinda a manpower shortage it'd probably be best to do what's already more or less in line with the game as-is with the ship-defense.

[Bodo]

Starflight definitaly rocks your socks!

anyways, for the mining thing: we have to pay attention to not get contradictory to the rest of the game. I mean, when everyone can buy a laser and cut some rocks in half to get ore, what would the current miningbases be there for? It's ok to take samples, maybe even some cubicmeters, but it shouldn't get too powerfull, or miningbases lose their right of existence.

prospecting would definitaly be something very welcome. 'Cause a problem most of these games have is that you don't get rewards from exploring. It's more like exploring would be vacation, and in between you got to work something to keep your ship together. I often thought there should be stuff like maping unknown systems, collecting data of interesting planets aso and sell them to companies or even to gouvernements (like e.g. you spot a Xeno-ruin on a far outside moon in a lowpopulated system that noone has spotted before, or maybe even extracted some technology from it).
Of course that would require special sensor-arrays, meassuringtools, telescopes etc. etc... So that exploring actually becomes a Job one can live from and one can have truly fun with.

[Ryder P. Moses]

Exploration in general needs to be cranked up in importance. We've got this crazy kajillion-system universe already in play and the materials for it, it's like the one thing this game is uniquely positioned to do best.

I agree that mass-mining would be kinda dumb, but I think the difference between a shipboard mining op and a miningbase is a matter of scale- a few tons of dirty rock harvested by ship simply can't compare to a huge dedicated operation miles across.

Besides, we could always require that the miners have to come back to the mining base to sell or refine their goods, so that the mining base actually serves as a central depot with most of the actual infrastructure involved in mining and the ships are just the harvesters. This seems the most sensible solution to my mind. Allow mining, but slave it to the central bases with nobody else being interested in buying the highly impure ore that's harvested.

[Grendel T. Troll]

Exploration in general needs to be cranked up in importance. We've got this crazy kajillion-system universe already in play and the materials for it, it's like the one thing this game is uniquely positioned to do best.

I agree. I am still searching for a system with nothing in it but untouched planets...but that's another story.

I agree that mass-mining would be kinda dumb, but I think the difference between a shipboard mining op and a miningbase is a matter of scale- a few tons of dirty rock harvested by ship simply can't compare to a huge dedicated operation miles across.

Much agreement here. Much like the early gold prospectors vs. the big gold mining companies in the United States in the 1800's.

Besides, we could always require that the miners have to come back to the mining base to sell or refine their goods, so that the mining base actually serves as a central depot with most of the actual infrastructure involved in mining and the ships are just the harvesters. This seems the most sensible solution to my mind. Allow mining, but slave it to the central bases with nobody else being interested in buying the highly impure ore that's harvested.

True. Another way to do it is like real prospecting:

Many prospectors didn't mine all of the ore themselves. They collected a large enough sample and sold their claim to whomever could actually do the mining. I could see this implemented in VS as well -- A would-be prospector enters a potential mining site, spends time taking readings for an optimal spot, uses whatever equipment is decided for the small-time extraction, then heads to a government or corporate center for selling the claim - value of claim based on whatever mineral is found and how good the quality of the sample.

Just a thought.

[snow_Cat]

Approaches to Mining:

• These are my random toughts on the subject, ignore them as you see fit.
• Prospecting
  Prospecting is how'd I prefer it be done; This is a space flight game, not a full blown empire building strategy title (yet), and keeping players busy with the 'hands on stuff' of flight would seem to be best as this least runs the risk of a 'mini-game' breaking the balance of the game; and would require the least amount of manipulation. And would add 'prospector', 'settler' and 'natural' as interesting (general) factions to consider.
  • can be integrated into space flight modes
  • economic effect can be determined/controlled within existing modes
  • potential for PVP action
  • potential for faction interaction
  • not necessairly the most engaging activity
  • see 'StarFlight IV' for an example of working system
• planetside surface exploration
  I do not mind the 'planet side' aspect of exploration, but remember the many weeks I've spent hunting some obscure little coordinate on a map because of some cheat-npc needing of a hit to 'is pixelated head.
  • plenty of possible events/interaction planetside
  • break from flight mode
  • economic potential
  • risk of planetside economics not matching up with spaceflight
  • risk of this becoming a 'time sink' for players
  • risk of becoming irrelevant to players
  • requires the creation of another completely selfcontained game mode
  • see 'StarControl II'
• Dock and work
  This is not some mere can of worms we are tempting with this talk of planetside exploration; it is the very bait bar itself.
  • requires a completely self contained game-mode
  • will not risk breaking economic model
  • possible 'puzzler' aspect
  • see 'MinerVGA'

[Ryder P. Moses]

Might work if the game was a lot less inhabited. As it is, seems like everything's mapped out, established, exploited already. And at the extreme 'we can do anything' tech level the game is set at, it seems like it wouldn't take much more than one survey ship ducking into a system for a moment for every body worth noticing to be fully scoped out and its composition assessed.

It'd also take a much... denser... universe than there is now. Right now, there's maybe a dozen celestial bodies in any star system total. Most of the time, more like half that. If every system contained potentially hundreds of unexplored rocks, derelicts, etc. most of which didn't even appear on the map normally, then exploration would be a bit more rewarding, as in 'actually existant'.

Shouldn't be that much of a problem, since it's just numerical storage until you're right on top of a thing, but given that even tracking the paltry number of ships in a given system seems to be giving the game problems right now that might best be filed for later.

[Silverain]

Besides, we could always require that the miners have to come back to the mining base to sell or refine their goods, so that the mining base actually serves as a central depot with most of the actual infrastructure involved in mining and the ships are just the harvesters. This seems the most sensible solution to my mind. Allow mining, but slave it to the central bases with nobody else being interested in buying the highly impure ore that's harvested.

No, in that you are producing the same product as a mining base (as currently envisaged), you would be selling to the MB for its low sale price. You would take your product to a refinery (or industrial planet) to sell.

An option would be different quality ores. We have, say, 10 low quality ore = 5 medium quality ore = 1 high quality ore. Mining Bases always produce high quality ore, since a MB has facilities for initial refinement (e.g. crushing the rock, initial extraction). Our ships can only produce the lower quality ore (sold for a lesser price).

Or,

To extend my previous idea, we have different levels of mining machinery filling our cargo hold. The Miner Mk 1 series produces only low quality ore, with Mk 1a taking up huge cargo volume (say 1000 units), and extracts ore at the rate of 1 ore unit per second or somesuch. Mk 1b takes up less volume (700 units) at twice ore rate, but quadruple the price. Mk 1c proressive. You then have Mk 2, which produces medium quality ore, but maybe a size factor x10. Then have Mk 3 producing high quality ore, size factor x100(?) such that only huge capships (or mining bases) can fit Mk3's.

For exploration, we would need scanning (I think we have this re: scanning missions), and have asteroids (or only some asteroids) have a base value of low quality ore (e.g. 10000 LQO). This is stored in save game file. Each time you mine, that asteroid is reduced in value. Depending on your miner, you take out LQO, MQO or HQOre, being 1 LQO, 5 LQO, 10 LQO respectively from the pool above. So a Mk3a takes 1 HQO, reducing pool to 9990 LQO on the asteroid. Once an asteroid is 'empty', you need to explore 'scan' more asteroids.

Hmm, I've got a few ideas now...

[Silverain]

A further idea,

Have the 'miner' a separate model that appears docked to the asteroid when you activate it (removed from your cargo hold). Using Llama (500 hold) as an example, once you have 100 units or ore, bring in your miner (400 units), for a full hold, return to somewhere, sell your 100 ore, wash, rinse repeat.

OR,

Leave the miner on the asteroid, fill up 500 ore, return to base, sell, return and dock to miner, transfer (buy for zero credits) another 500 ore which the miner has gathered in your absence, wash, rinse, repeat.

OH NO!

On return, the miner is empty. Being a separate model, ANY other ship can dock to it, steal your ore (claim jump). Worse, they go and steal your miner as well!

Do I take a full load of ore and risk losing the miner, or take my miner back, with less ore?