STAGE 1: COMPLETE
STAGE 2: IN PROGRESS
STAGE 3: IN PROGRESS
STAGE 4: IN PROGRESS
Stage 1 is to have lootable ice chunks around a Gas Miner.
The field is small - only about 300 long. It straddles across a Gas Miner such that one ship can fit inside the field either side.
There are no big asteroids, no particles other than the lootable rocks - so it doesnt detract from the visuals or ship flight paths.
I have the default drop rate set the same as the Silverton Field in Colorado.
Stage 2 is to sort out the in-system dynamics.
Specifically I want to address the issue of travel distance to a docking point. it is not fair on pirates if the Gas Miners are too close to safe harbour.
To this end i shall explore the idea of moving the miners further away - as well as repositioning some miners +- 2K from the plane - so the overall cluster of miners is more distant from safe harbour.
Stage 3 is to sort out the drop rates. Looking at the FLHook code - it wont be too difficult to assign drop rates for the appropriate factions.
I would also be looking at lowering the dynamic asteroid count in Sigma-13 - as it is supposed to be running low on sufficiently dense H-Fuel reserves. With less rocks being spawned it should take longer to mine a load - and thus counter the closer distance of this system to any sell points.
Stage 4 is sorting out the economy. It may well mean deleting the local buy points for H-Fuel - and having the nearest points out further, like Mainz, Aomori or Osaka, and perhaps Shinjuku or Narita for the Samura traders.
And of course it will mean looking at the furthest sell points, and giving them a suitable price.
Main idea- Gas miners output l'il crates of stuff ready for you to pick up. As in, the gas miner object thing that's a part of the system.
Possibility 1: Each miner object has stored somewhere (FLHook variable, or something) the amount of substance it's picked up and packaged. This is periodically incremented until the miner is "full" at 1000 units or so (to keep people cycling through the miners rather than camping). It doesn't need to be incremented often, either- maybe once every few minutes. A player goes up to the miner, within 1k, targets it, and types a command- this empties the amount "stored" into the players cargo hold if they have proper ID/IFF/ship/bling/whatever. They then go off to other miners and pick stuff up from them, then go to the sell point. To keep people from doing "drive-by" collections (if that's necessary) the FLHook command could give you the substance some time after you tell it the command, possibly keeping you stationary or simply checking that you were still within range.
Some miners might need to be moved farther afield, or have their capacities/rates adjusted based on how far they are from a base- the ones 2k from a base might only generate 200 ore every ten minutes, and only store 400- enough for a newbie freighter to get a payday from, but not useful to larger corporate folk except to top off.
There's no reason this would only work with gas miners, either- the miners in Omega-11 and Dresden could be made to supplement mining there as well- though obviously they'd need to not be as good at it as the gas miners to keep the two competitive.
Advantages: People have "hubs" to go to, keeping miners from wandering away from all interaction (or at least encouraging them to go where others might be). Pirates have places to check for without wandering aimlessly and hoping to catch unsuspecting miners. Gas mining doesn't need to be silly. The mining ships scattered across Sirius don't seem as outdated or useless. And lag will probably be a lot less than that induced every time you shoot a rock.
Disadvantages: It's pretty much trading, 'cept you fly to a few different areas and hang around where you can be interacted with (read: shot) rather than just docking and buying something. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's something to consider. The resources are also communal- one person running all of the Sigmas by themselves is going to make a lot more money than 20 people trying to do it at the same time. But again, that's not necessarily a bad thing- it would certainly help keep places from getting clumped like Omega-49 or Pennsylvania did.
Possibility 2:
Make small mineable zones with crates of stuff produced at gas miners. Pretty straightforward, it harvests it and you collect it with a "mining gun" acting as a glorified tractor beam prep. Probably the simplest solution other than "continue to do nothing".
Possibility 3 (least favorite, and probably impossible):
Make gas pockets into pseudo supply depots. You shoot them, they drop stuff- if the gas pockets themselves can't be turned into depots, put invisible "depots" just around their hitboxes to provide similar functionality.
Advantages: You can shoot your way through those fields, and they're useful for something besides making you wonder why the GMG beat Rheinland if gas rapes fighters and doesn't touch caps.
Disadvantages: Making a randomly spawned object into a supply depot might be really hard, or impossible. Or incredibly lag inducing. Coding a bunch of them in by hand wouldn't be worth it (or fit, for that matter, as a gas pocket is not specifically defined, but rather generated by a field like rocks are).
Make small mineable zones with crates of stuff produced at gas miners. Pretty straightforward, it harvests it and you collect it with a "mining gun" acting as a glorified tractor beam prep. Probably the simplest solution other than "continue to do nothing".
This is actually very close to what I have right now. Instead of directly looting things - you have small ice chunks that get spawned - and you mine them just as you would anything else.
They are small enough that it doesnt interfere with the visuals of the system. They only spawn when you are right next to the Gas Miner - think of it as frozen chunks of H-Fuel being spat out (you can freeze Hydrogen and Helium under pressure, but it will quickly sublimate in a vacuum).
The default loot drop I have set the same as the Silverton Field in Colorado (max of 6 units per ice rock). Increasing this rate will only happen when I get to Stage 3, and look at the FLHook mining bonuses.
Looking at the Sigma-19 map - I was considering the problem of the space needed to establish outlying mining areas in an expanded Hiryu Cloud.
It also occurred to me to consider just how many mining ships would be present in an area at any given time.
Sigma-19 has 15 Gas Miners - if all of them had this mod implemented the system could hold up to thirty (30) mining ships at once!
This is far more than what would normally be expected - especially given the presence of other Gas Miners in other systems.
So I thought of a compromise. I shall take only some of the miners from each of the three areas (south of Ogashawa, west of Ogashawa, and east of the tradelane), and move these miners (and their patrol paths) to the outlying areas. The remainder will remain where they are - unmodded.
This would still allow at least a dozen mining ships to operate simultaneously in Sigma-19. It also means that the areas near Ogashawa and the tradelane will still have eye-candy Gas Miners in sight.
When i have moved the Gas Miners into position - I shall put up an image of the map for people to take a look at.
Well, here it is. The Waypoints are located on each of the moved Gas Miners - it basically show the mining area situated within a Hiryu Cloud that is about one-third larger than the current one. The extra volume of cloud extends mostly out west.
okay, i dont know much about modding. but if possible, a good solution to "AFK miners" is makeing the ores/minerals spwan OUTSIDE the ship and dissapear after a certain time (say 5-6 seconds) that will keeps miners on their toes
![[Image: GMG_banner.png]](http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e68/thenoseyshadow/GMG_banner.png)
![[Image: SCRAgenderheuristics.png]](http://i530.photobucket.com/albums/dd343/sovfalcon/SCRAgenderheuristics.png)
![[Image: s19new.png]](http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/4450/s19new.png)
![[Image: JcTvorC.png]](http://i.imgur.com/JcTvorC.png)
![[Image: sig-16718.jpg]](http://www.clintonio.com/sig-16718.jpg)