+- Discovery Gaming Community (https://discoverygc.com/forums)
+-- Forum: Discovery Development (https://discoverygc.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=7)
+--- Forum: Discovery Mod General Discussion (https://discoverygc.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=37)
+--- Thread: Two mining suggestions for 4.85 (/showthread.php?tid=8612)
Two mining suggestions for 4.85 - Tenacity - 05-18-2008
A lot of players here, myself included, seem to want to make mining more enjoyable and more profitable for the time investment.
Simply put, mining gains very little monetary reward per hour of work compared to trading, and it's more stressful - requiring the constant attention of the player to shoot those annoying little rocks, while all a trader has to do is click and hit F3 every 30 seconds.
Another big problem is that those little rocks you have to shoot... have very short render distances. Probably a game limitation that cant be changed, but often I'll go to shoot a rock or coffee can and it moves out of visual distance right before i'm able to.
So I've got two simple, easy to implement (I think...) changes that should make mining a little easier.
1. Increase the yield of all those little rocks and cans. Currently you get anywhere from one to thirty or so units of material from each one shot, depending on how 'rich' the field you're in is. A lot of fields also have very few of those shootable objects, while others are so saturated with them that you can barely fly through.
Basically, just up the amount you get from each rock, say up to 50, 80, maybe even 100 in some of the richest fields. In new york I get around 15 scrap metal per can shot... it's around 25-30 near bornholm depot. In new york... that leaves me making only 270 credits per can shot, on average. That's pathetic amounts, even for a brand new player in a starflea trying to mine for a buck. The second one of those new players is able, they'll switch to trading. Likewise, in the most profitable scrap-metal system (omega 15, bornholm), I'll only make 15,000 credits max per can shot. When just about all the equipment at my 'level' costs millions of credits... hell, it even costs 5 million or so to make a new character now... that's pretty pathetic. Also take into account that you'll shoot around one can or rock every 5-10 seconds...
So put into perspective, let's say I'm mining around bornholm for scrap metal. An average of 25 units of scrap metal per can, at 1 can every 5 seconds, for 500 credits per scrap metal, puts me at roughly 30k per minute, or about 1 million credits in half an hour.
Nearly every common trade route available, with my cargo hold (3500, firefly) can make a minimum of 5 million credits in that time period. Some trade routes, albeit more risky, can make me up to 12.5mil in that time period (roughly 24-25 mil an hour on the rochester->canaria->tokyo->malta->rochester route)
So, a miner is typically making 5 times less profit for time spent than a trader, and is also having to put much more work into it.
Simply increasing the yield from rocks and cans shot will greatly improve the miner's business. 100 units of material per can shot in O15 will put me at just under what a trader makes on an average trade route in terms of profit per hour.
2. Put in Asteroid "wrecks"-
It's really a simple idea. You take the standard 'wrecks' that are currently in game - they can carry everything from weapons to equipment to cargo. You swap out that wreck's transport or fighter model with that of a medium-sized asteroid, and rename it accordingly... something like "Copper-Rich Asteroid" or "Large Diamond Formation" or "Chunk of Scrap Metal".
Place these objects throughout the mine-able fields in the game, as once-daily 'lootable' objects containing massive amounts of resources. For example, you find that chunk of scrap metal and shoot it... out pops 500 units of scrap metal. Likewise, for something like the diamond formation, shoot it and you get 300-400 diamonds.
The problem with this second suggestion is you'll end up with more people like the 'codename-whores' that sit a low level collector character at the source of each deposit, gather it up every time the server restarts, and makes profit off of it while all the real miners get left in the dust again... not sure how to get around that really.
So, thoughts?
Two mining suggestions for 4.85 - Tortured_Soul - 05-18-2008
If I may, I would like to add a suggestion to your list:
A mining charge:
Basically a weapon which, when fired does damage to everything in a blast radius. Set it to just above the damage level of scrap and fire it in the middle of a field, all the scrap that has been spawned is detonated and drops it's cargo.
It may do some damage to the player, although I'm sure there's an attribute which can deal with this problem, and it wonldn't be powerful enough to use as a combat effective weapon, thus making it only of use to miners. Means you don't have to sit and shoot rocks all day, makes mining faster for you.
Two mining suggestions for 4.85 - SimonBlack - 05-18-2008
Yet another one.
Put prices of buying commodities up, by say... 25 percent. A piece of rock costing 500 credits would now cost 625 credits. The selling price should be increased by difference of ex-price and new price. Which is 625-500=125 credits. So that selling price wouldnt be too much. The rock would now cost more, but the trading profit would remain the same, because its worth was increased. That way it would become more profitable to mine.
Two mining suggestions for 4.85 - Linkus - 05-18-2008
As Tortured_Soul said, a mining weapon would solve the issue. Large blast radius, very low damage. Basically kills all the asteroids around you.
The wrecks idea probably wouldn't work. Not only would you have a huge number of red X's on your nav map, but they would all be mined out by 1 person per server restart most likely.
Increasing the yield would work as well, or simply increasing the price. However increasing the price would also affect trade routes so yield might be a better route to take.
Two mining suggestions for 4.85 - Epholl - 05-18-2008
I had the same idea about the mining splash weapon myself long time ago...
I heard it doesnt work:(
Two mining suggestions for 4.85 - Robert.Fitzgerald - 05-18-2008
Mining splash doesn't work? That's a shame...
About the Mining Charge idea, it could be in either mine or slow missile form (so it won't be used in pvp against players).
If I can learn some basic ini editing, I'll try and make a version.
Two mining suggestions for 4.85 - Cawdor - 05-18-2008
check this thread:
http://discoverygc.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14322
Its dead because the resident coders don't seem to care much about mining. ;(
Two mining suggestions for 4.85 - Tenacity - 05-18-2008
Explosives have no effect on those little floating rocks and cans, it was discussed in the other thread. No weapon with an explosion radius would work for miners, not to mention even if it only did 1 damage it'd probably tick off every npc in the area.
Two mining suggestions for 4.85 - Dusty Lens - 05-19-2008
That's a good point actually and on that just occurred to me, Train CDs are exactly what we're requesting: Large blast radius with minimal damage, yet every time you smack something with one you don't see rocks exploding left and right.
Curses. I'm still very interested in the idea of more profitable mining. I'm a total carebear at heart, I'll mine all day.