reinvigorate mining

[misto]

inspired by discussion from

https://forum.ss13.co/showthread.php?tid=8356&page=2

read that to form your own opinions, use this thread to voice your own opinions regarding the state of mining

here are some ideas for reinvigorating mining on goon lands

1. the miner's upgrading process

right now you basically have all you need out from the gate with the mining pod to mine all bug those black asteroids, which only have some crummy gems inside them anyways. you shouldnt lean too hard on it or make it very difficult suddenly, but the process of making better equipment for yourself brought a degree of satisfaction.

how to implement -
demand that the rock drills and plasma cutters be crafted from medium-to-good quality/rarity materials at the mining fab instead of laying there at the beginning. this will re-acquaint miners with hand mining and the hazards and challenges that come with it. speaking of hazards

2. more hazards in the asteroids


particularly the explosive rocks one, thats my favorite. but especially, more variety is needed. space wasp nests. fermid nests. ship wreckage infested with drones or gunbots. the worse the monster nest pulled in, the better goodies should be lying on the floor of it, making you really think about if you wanna hit the button again to try for another rock. hopefully these monster nests would not have holes and doors in them by default, so the miner knows that they are taking their life into their own hands by stepping in, rather than a swarm of drones flying out of it to slaughter them the moment a shipwreck is pulled in.

3. benefits for even basic mined materials over storebought

mauxite walls and floors should be substantially stronger than steel. bohrum even more so. molitz windows should be substantially stronger than glass. pharosium should carry current much, much more efficiently than copper. whats the point of these materials being different things and having different names if theyre essentially just the same? hopefully a way can be invented that makes upgrading the station's existing structure fast and easy to encourage the use of such materials.

4. less steel, glass, and cable laying around everywhere.

this comes up a lot lately, but yeah. even materials hungry-departments like robotics or mechanics can just loot some maint hallways, tool storages or podbays and be swimming in materials again in no time.

5. propagate simple instructions departments may use to better their life thru mining's contributions.

in particular, i feel that security would benefit highly from crafting improved taser power cells to give them more shots before needing to reload, or even self recharging cells. in times of power shortage, cerenkite cells would probably also be coveted. even something like informational pamphlets on the subject scattered about would be a boon.

6. change experimental portable generators to also accept erebite, plasmastone, cerenkite, char, for times of grave power emergency.

oh yeah and

7. make miracle matter actually give useful materials again. its rainbow glow thing is nice, but i miss how you used to be able to pop in a miracle matter found early on and have it luckily transmute into uquill, bohrum, etc.

8. who gives a fuck about cobryl? get rid of cobryl and just have syreline be the sale ore. oh wait, gold also shows up. why does gold show up in asteroids if we can never sell it properly? making gold rooms is only entertaining the first few dozen times. please shape up

[Grifflez]

Mined gold can't be sold because of an OLD OLD OLD OLD OLD OLD OLD exploit when Material Reclaimers were first introduced where you could turn 1 bar of gold into 5 sheets and then each sheet into 1 bar of gold.

I have no idea why it hasn't been reverted, the exploit was back from cogmap1!

[misto]

9. those black asteroids should have one of those things living in them sometimes. you know, those things. the ones that turn you into a dead skeleton sometimes. or maybe one of those other things. a black asteroid is the sort of thing those things would live in, right? and there could be nicer stuff on the floor in there. thanks

10. do gems actually sell for actual amounts of credits? whenever i tried to sell gems they sold for 1 credit each. make gems sell for actual money maybe

11. a tube for stuffing viscerite into that sends it to cloning so you dont have to send it to robotics or research and HOPE the cloning boys somehow pick it up

[Erev]

12. Get material sciences working and add more mineral types with more varied properties.

[babayetu83]

how to reinvigorate mining in 1 easy step:

make it 3 things: fun, simple, and worthwhile


if its boring and monotonous only a small amount of people who enjoy repeatedly performing boring monotonous tasks will play miner. 

how to make it fun and simple: make it so that you can just walk towards asteroids to drill through them. autopickup minerals. be able to dump your minerals into the reclaimer easily without having to click drag 1 mineral at a time.

how to make it worthwhile: make it so departments can benefit more from you mining up shit. make it so robotics can build mining robots to help rapidly collect and process minerals. make it so qm can get lots of money. 

give mining its own budget and ordering console to purchase better equipment. keep the fabricators, but make it so they can only make lower-end stuff, with the high end stuff on the computer.

[Noah Buttes]

Mined gold can't be sold because of an OLD OLD OLD OLD OLD OLD OLD exploit when Material Reclaimers were first introduced where you could turn 1 bar of gold into 5 sheets and then each sheet into 1 bar of gold.

I have no idea why it hasn't been reverted, the exploit was back from cogmap1!

Haha yeah, I remember doing that.

I made almost the entire station floor gold one time.

[Burrito Justice]

I really think the mining magnet has to go, or maybe become a small time mining area that's used in case of emergency/small work, and I really want to see a mining level come around with dangers and more unique items.

[Superlagg]

Let them have a slot they can dump their non-profit ores into that'll distribute it to the rest of the station, cus 900% of the time all that metal shit's going right in their private manufacturers, cus getting things from Mining into the places they're needed, aside from the QM, is a pain in the ass.

[misto]

bring back clickdrag sorting of ore piles. i dont know how this new material stack junk works and its new and im old and i dont like it.

mining has a cargo transporter and mechanics and robotics have receiving telepads, superlagg. although mining might start running low on crates eventually. maybe a dump chute that dumps into the smelter room would be ok. people seem to like to visit the smelter semi regularly sometimes these days

[NateTheSquid]

click drag a type of ore to a tile, it stacks all of that ore into one thing you can pick up

[Dr Zoidcrab]

Remove the manufacturers and reclaimers from mining, have the ore chutes pay out points for each type of material(conductive material points etc.), refining it in the process, and have a machine for redeeming equipment with costs similar to the manufacturers. Materials not used in manufacturing equipment would just not give points or be processed.

As for the materials themselves, I always figured the mined stuff was isotopes of common elements and their compounds with desirable properties only found in space, mauxite being a name for an iron isotope stronger than steel, bohrum an isotope of lead etc and should probably be better than terrestrial materials.

Stuff like cobryl (space silver) with no real use right now could be used as a weapon against werewolves or vampires if they're made more common in the future. It would make sense for gold, syreline and bohrum to have radiation resistant properties. A use for koshmarite would be nice too.

dump chute that dumps into the smelter room

Already exists.

[TheOnlyRyan]

13. More artifacts from mining

[misto]

and then we will need a reinvigorate artifact research thread

[Sov]

Mined gold can't be sold because of an OLD OLD OLD OLD OLD OLD OLD exploit when Material Reclaimers were first introduced where you could turn 1 bar of gold into 5 sheets and then each sheet into 1 bar of gold.

I have no idea why it hasn't been reverted, the exploit was back from cogmap1!

I'd assume because of the other well known duplication exploit

[medsal15]

14. Make miraclium actually worth something over the market. It's only worth 1 credit when sold from QM. Even steel is worth more, dammit!