Discovery Gaming Community

It has been brought to my attention that mining system is in need of some tender love and care (also streamlining and simplification). As many Official Faction leaders should know by now, I am currently collating information regarding mining factions and ores. Ideally I will be posting some draft notes this weekend.

Any comments and suggestions about this aspect of gameplay (and related gameplay in the context of mining) are welcome here. Comments specifically regarding Ore bonus events are discouraged, as those are for the Admins to regulate.

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NB: Player Faction IDs are not included currently. Those are adjusted on a per-server basis by the Admins.
However, for ease of reference, I will eventually add their current bonuses.

Here is my suggestion:
Increase the speed of mining array beams.

On the matter of Ore bonus events,I find that they work very good as an activity booster(they got me to log ),so it would be best for it to remain in-game in my opinion.

Give better multipliers to GMG for alien organisms. No GMG will quit his/her H3 mining to try scrubbie farming as is.

I don't find much difficulty in mining ores. It seems to be good as of now. The only problem is the different drop rates in different fields for different ores making certain ores prioritised over the others. If that would be generalised, it would be awesome to choose from different ores and from different locations (Gallic ore fields have lower drop rate making them less popular maybe).

Oh, and also rescale/remodel the hegemon please. It is not as useful in mining as well as transporting, which is it's purpose I guess.

DELETE

One Director at Kishiro here, On our part we would like to see an increase on our mining bonus from 4 to 6 on the h-3 operations. As such, GMG should also be buffed in the same way - including Alien organism ( not speaking for them atm, just expressing my thoughts ) - Also, Im not sure if its a local problem or a server problem, but it seems that h-3 is broken. Sometimes you can feel the bonus and sometimes you cannot, somtimes it takes twice the time and sometimes more, sometimes its just fine. I hope this gets checked. The justification, among other reasons are plenty to see. We have our own gas miners at 19, and our own fields - with the GMG training us at the mining proccess, and that we now have an independent gas miners. ( I think more then two or three ). I'll let the other directors to input their thoughts.

(09-01-2014, 08:22 AM)Zen_Mechanics Wrote: [ -> ]... but it seems that h-3 is broken. Sometimes you can feel the bonus and sometimes you cannot, somtimes it takes twice the time and sometimes more, sometimes its just fine...

Please be more specific. The drop bonus doesn't always work, or the asteroid spawns don't always work? Is it something else? Where does this occur, and with what equipment?

PS. Kishiro is not going to get a bonus on H-3 that equals GMG.

(09-01-2014, 09:06 AM)Echo 7-7 Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-01-2014, 08:22 AM)Zen_Mechanics Wrote: [ -> ]... but it seems that h-3 is broken. Sometimes you can feel the bonus and sometimes you cannot, somtimes it takes twice the time and sometimes more, sometimes its just fine...

Please be more specific. The drop bonus doesn't always work, or the asteroid spawns don't always work? Is it something else? Where does this occur, and with what equipment?

PS. Kishiro is not going to get a bonus on H-3 that equals GMG.

GMG should have the upperhand, which is why I mentioned a buff to GMG too. Its my fault however that I was not specific of that. Thanks for correcting me. And, The issue is not with the spawns, but with the drop ratios. This has been tested with both kishiro and GMG ID miners - And its only on Kishiro gas fields ( havent tested GMG fields )

In specific, sector b2/3 in sigma-19

My thoughts on the mining mod at the moment and what could be done.

• switch fields to "on" or "off". No "low yield" category. The low yield category confuses people needlessly. Zero drop or Full drop is enough.
  
• streamline drop/rock: every "on" field should have the same range of ore dropped per hit. Like: every asteroid in every switched on field should have: 0-6 dropping. Or is it 0-5 normally? I lost that file.
  
• streamline rock spawn rate: it should be the same for all commodities/fields that are switched on.
  
• Group mining fields instead of "every faction has theirs". Omega 7 is currently rather boring with 3 groups in 3 far far from each other places. I suggest 1 large field (5-8 k wide) for each commodity where miners of all colour go and meet.
  
• Keep field drain switched off. The amount of oorp mad has decreased so much since the phrase "someone mined it out" is gone from the vocabulary.
  
• Omega 7 ores need some differentiation. Silver/Copper/Cobalt all going to Narita is boring. Copper and Cobalt (both to Denver / Narita) should be different, or be mineable in a different system (suggestion: Omega 9?). They feel exchangeable.
  
• PoB base placement and ore fields: We need a rule concerning that, imo, still. There should not be a PoB closer than 10-15k to an ore field. Denying then chance to interact because miners just hit dock is rather bad for gameplay. Total safety in an activity is bad (and boring). Perhaps new field placement and reduction of indivicual fields (see above) can solve the existing problems.
  
• Don't introduce more mining commodities. We have 100 players on good days. If we create more mining hotspots, it will be even more difficult to meet and interact. There are other ways of strengtening regions as hub than giving new factions mining bonuses on new commodities.
  
• The mining speed (on x3 and x4 modifiers) imo is perfect at the moment. It's long enough to allow for interaction, it's short enough not to get bored too fast even if soloing it, and it encourages group activity as this shortens it a lot.
  
• I am not sure whether it is in the game again or not, but if not: bring back the small miner 20 % bonus. Small miners are good, as they have to work with another ship in contrast to solo mining.
  
• Do not change mining laser refire. I remember well when there were certain people (2 years ago, don't worry) that cultivated the "afk mining" with taped down, auto-spinning Heges. With very fast refire, the chance of hitting rocks without aiming is low enough to make it not really feasible.
  
• Comparable selling points in the main House systems to streamline traffic to a few hubs. Like: every ore goes to each House Capital for the same cred/second price.
  
• Unlawful selling points: should exist, but not close to the destination to discourage "last system piracy" grieving. Atm, we have some close hauling locations with prices around 3-4k. Something like that would also work for unlawfuls. 2-3 systems away with a bottleneck between.
  
• Redo/rescale the Hegemon model. It is absolutely unfit to operate as a miner. Try to fly one in the Tau 23 dense Niobium field.
  

(09-01-2014, 10:20 AM)Jack_Henderson Wrote: [ -> ]My thoughts on the mining mod at the moment and what could be done.

Spoiler

• switch fields to "on" or "off". No "low yield" category. The low yield category confuses people needlessly. Zero drop or Full drop is enough.
  
• streamline drop/rock: every "on" field should have the same range of ore dropped per hit. Like: every asteroid in every switched on field should have: 0-6 dropping. Or is it 0-5 normally? I lost that file.
  
• streamline rock spawn rate: it should be the same for all commodities/fields that are switched on.
  
• Group mining fields instead of "every faction has theirs". Omega 7 is currently rather boring with 3 groups in 3 far far from each other places. I suggest 1 large field (5-8 k wide) for each commodity where miners of all colour go and meet.
  
• Keep field drain switched off. The amount of oorp mad has decreased so much since the phrase "someone mined it out" is gone from the vocabulary.
  
• Omega 7 ores need some differentiation. Silver/Copper/Cobalt all going to Narita is boring. Copper and Cobalt (both to Denver / Narita) should be different, or be mineable in a different system (suggestion: Omega 9?). They feel exchangeable.
  
• PoB base placement and ore fields: We need a rule concerning that, imo, still. There should not be a PoB closer than 10-15k to an ore field. Denying then chance to interact because miners just hit dock is rather bad for gameplay. Total safety in an activity is bad (and boring). Perhaps new field placement and reduction of indivicual fields (see above) can solve the existing problems.
  
• Don't introduce more mining commodities. We have 100 players on good days. If we create more mining hotspots, it will be even more difficult to meet and interact. There are other ways of strengtening regions as hub than giving new factions mining bonuses on new commodities.
  
• The mining speed (on x3 and x4 modifiers) imo is perfect at the moment. It's long enough to allow for interaction, it's short enough not to get bored too fast even if soloing it, and it encourages group activity as this shortens it a lot.
  
• I am not sure whether it is in the game again or not, but if not: bring back the small miner 20 % bonus. Small miners are good, as they have to work with another ship in contrast to solo mining.
  
• Do not change mining laser refire. I remember well when there were certain people (2 years ago, don't worry) that cultivated the "afk mining" with taped down, auto-spinning Heges. With very fast refire, the chance of hitting rocks without aiming is low enough to make it not really feasible.
  
• Comparable selling points in the main House systems to streamline traffic to a few hubs. Like: every ore goes to each House Capital for the same cred/second price.
  
• Unlawful selling points: should exist, but not close to the destination to discourage "last system piracy" grieving. Atm, we have some close hauling locations with prices around 3-4k. Something like that would also work for unlawfuls. 2-3 systems away with a bottleneck between.
  
• Redo/rescale the Hegemon model. It is absolutely unfit to operate as a miner. Try to fly one in the Tau 23 dense Niobium field.

+1 on all of this.
Especially the rock spawn rate and group mining fields.

I hate digging around fl companion and the mining mod text file to find out that two places have the same/similar drop rate per asteroid but the asteroids only spawn at about half the rate in a different field, it really makes things annoying when I go there to mine.

I also really love this idea of 'group mining fields' Imagine two rival groups having to mine in the same area, it'd definitely lead to a lot of interesting interaction for sure. Be it in the form of piracy or having mini price wars when trying to compete for a customer to mine for, I also think it could lead to a lot more hiring of escorts to protect mining operations and disrupt other corporations own operations.