reinvigorate mining

[Frank_Stein]

Give the mineral magnet some complexity.

Have an asteroid field that's generated at round start. Rather than being a physical location you visit, you input coordinates at the magnet that corresponds to the field, and pull the thing located there to you.

Finding ores and loot would be a bit like Battleship. You pull in an asteroid that is full of gold, you can search nearby coordinates to try and find a "vein"

Occasionally you can pull in weird stuff like abandoned ships, unique merchants, deadly traps and mobs, or find hints of places you should look.

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Also, the magnet area should be expanded to incorporate larger things that can be pulled in.

For some of the more unique things that can be pulled in, I'm thinking something like Urs Dungeons. Some kind of way to submit user made mining dungeons and locations would be nice

[Nnystyxx]

15???) A way to actually get specific things that isn't total RNG (read: gems and the like)

[Gannets]

I agree, it could use some love.

[ferriswheel1]

Give the mineral magnet some complexity.

Have an asteroid field that's generated at round start. Rather than being a physical location you visit, you input coordinates at the magnet that corresponds to the field, and pull the thing located there to you.

Finding ores and loot would be a bit like Battleship. You pull in an asteroid that is full of gold, you can search nearby coordinates to try and find a "vein"

Occasionally you can pull in weird stuff like abandoned ships, unique merchants, deadly traps and mobs, or find hints of places you should look.

---

Also, the magnet area should be expanded to incorporate larger things that can be pulled in.

For some of the more unique things that can be pulled in, I'm thinking something like Urs Dungeons. Some kind of way to submit user made mining dungeons and locations would be nice

This is exactly what the mineral magnet should be, with all sorts of derelicts with cool loot being brought in as well as having agency over what minerals are pulled in.

I feel like the mineral magnet loses the feeling of exploration and discovery that would otherwise come with mining, especially as most of the "loot" It produces are easily found locked crates or artifacts.

Having to sort minerals by hand is extremely tedious. I would recommend having a processor that ore satchels can be directly emptied into, with the minerals being held inside and ejected using an interface similar to the one for fabricators. Some way for the miners to easily process minerals into useful sheets is essential to the resources actually getting used.

Removing the pod tools for mining doesn't change the fact that hand-mining tools are incredibly boring to use, with all of them having uses that are variations on "click on rock till it disappears" and they have to be constantly charged to boot. I'd propose a little more variation in how the mining tools work (have the laser drill be an actual laser?) and lower their power usage so they don't have to be constantly recharged.

[Cirrial]

if nothing else, having mining hand mining tools proc on asteroid turf bump instead of click would postpone my inevitable RSI a little further into the future

[Nnystyxx]

The mining tool progression is basically completely worthless for mining the moment you realize pods are far, far more effective than any tool and protect you from cerenkite/erebite by virtue of you being in a pod. At that point it's only good for beating people up. Do mechanized boots even work again yet?

Not to mention artifacts have a small chance of just trapping or murdering you and have no real inherent value iirc, they're just a curiosity. And then there's rocks that just explode. I don't mind risk, it's just everything feels very. . shitty and disparate. Crafting is kind of pointless when materials are rare (& the sheet/bar conversion rates so brutal) because of mining sucking. Mining involves even less crew interaction than genetics does for-- what benefit? Some armor? Cash that probably doesn't go to the miners and can't be spent on anything meaningful (except maybe debris field traders)? Sure, it may not take very long per round to get the 'best stuff', but that just highlights how futile the whole thing is in the first place. Geneticists give powers, doctors heal, scientists make hellchems, engineers fix, mechanics build, hydroponics grows, chefs and barmen serve, but miners just mine. There's so little still that you can meaningfully do with the smelter/nano-fabricator and materials, effectively the other half of their job.

Mining being so bad disincentivizes people to do mining, which means certain materials aren't accessible (mostly radioactives, uqill, etc.) and thus crafting of certain things other departments could use (such as robotics) is impossible without a lucky QM and a consistent budget.

And making the things only mining can (semi-)consistently produce more important/necessary while keeping the system the same only invites frustration because the mechanics are currently just kind of unfun.

EDIT: Also the pod plasma cutters are incredibly inferior compared to drills, just saying

EDIT2: ALSO I think it would be nice if mining got a dedicated z-level, they take up a large chunk of relatively unused debris field space that could be repurposed. I don't know how much strain it puts on the game to add another z level however, since iirc the adventure zones are all parts of one area separated by v-space

[Noah Buttes]

I like Frank's idea.

I also like the idea of making pod mining equipment hella expensive.

Also yes to improving interactivity with regards to hand mining.

Also yes to an automated refining unit.

Yes to miraculum being useful again.

Does mining have a department PDA address? If not, it should.

[TheOnlyRyan]

and then we will need a reinvigorate artifact research thread

We've needed a reinvigorate artifact research thread for years.

There's actually been a few but they've always fallen on deaf ears.

[misto]

useless unwanted artifacts used to be sellable for moneys. maybe they could be again

[TheOnlyRyan]

Everything artifact is pretty useless at this point, finding handheld ones is about a 25% chance, and having it be something interesting other than a cruddy shield wall beaker or teleporter is another 20%

Whenever I find beaker artifacts, or weapon artifacts, for one its a MASSIVE rarity and two Im almost never an antag when I do.

Then I play another round when Im a none antag and LOOKY LOOKY, a beaker artifact full of gunpowder and a weapon artifact.

There needs to be a reliable way for people to go out and find the artifact they're looking for, just like in Genetics when you can have a goal and reach that goal. With artifact research its a 100% RNG game and the odds are always against you.

[misto]

o yea and i just remembered. consider actually connecting the mining pod bay to mining, like, on the inside of the station? its nice that they and qm are meant to share it to promote co-operation between the departments, but there are still heavy separations between the departments, demanding miners take a spacewalk to reach their pods. hell, you could possibly just let them share workspace with minimal fuss

[Vitatroll]

The keys (as I see em') to job appeal are progression, gain, notoriety, and entertainment value. I'm bored, so here's some ideas people probably already said.

Disjointed ideas:
Blah one -
- Get rid of industrial armor and equipment - leave a set or two in telsci/derelict levels. Replace it with:
- Introduce industrial suit that's material/quality dependent. Helmet, mask, suit, gloves, shoes, and jetpack. Example: A heavy suit requires power-producing materials to zip around at normal speed or faster, but too much and you'll get irradiated or shocked.
- Get rid of industrial pods and standard mining-pod equipment.
- Introduce pods and pod equipment that're quality dependent. Armor, drills, lasers, etc. Example: Hardness could make drills more damaging, power production could make drills project outward, and erebite could make them explosive.

Blah two -
- Get rid of all but the most basic equipment, including pod stuff.
- Introduce a export favors. Each miner has their own favor pool, and there's also a community pool. Traders, NT scientists, and other dubious fellows send in requests to a mining console which are filled by sending said ores via special telepad. Slapping a barcode onto the crate will transfer favor to your pool. You can transfer favor from your pool to the community pool, but not vice-versa.
- Favors used to buy equipment and upgrades.
- One of the upgrades being magnet targeting for specific materials and loads. High level magnets being able to pull in chunks of other stations, even. Use at own risk: pulling in a bunch of syndicate NPCs might be bad for your health.

Blah three -
- Move mining to the mining sat - completely.
- Move the magnet to be the center of mining operations, and enlarge it greatly.
- Now make the magnet not a magnet: make it a giant wormhole that connects to a randomized mining zone. Same z level, but you can't break in or see in from the outside due to the ever present purple energy stuff - yep, ghosts included.
- Possibly combine with export favors, or add mineral research, or include some other way to upgrade the magnet to target specific ores/areas. More danger = more reward. Make zones that require beefy pods.

Blah four -
- Introduce a company reward system that allows the purchase of upgrades for good stations. Upgrades like: patrolling medbots, magic air generators, bulk gene injectors, a portacloner, 'pets' for everyone, a '''vacation''' permaportal, magical/nanomachine station remodeling like turning all windows plasma and all walls gold, a cruiser, a big bad enemy to fight, etc.
- This is a pain in the ass because metrics. Yay balancing issues.


Well that's enough for now. This is all just mental diarrhea so it's probably crap.

[Salami Sam]

Occasionally you can pull in weird stuff like abandoned ships, unique merchants, deadly traps and mobs, or find hints of places you should look

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I would love to see more mobs/dangers like /tg/'s mining. Specifically big mobs that could be brought back to the station.

Mobs could drop randomized loot. How about expanding the abandoned crate/safe variety?

[misto]

hm hm but vitatroll, a lot of that means actually using the materials system which everyone seems to hate coding for for some reason

coder people, if you really hate materials you can tell us, we can help think of solutions or alternatives maybe

[Vitatroll]

I know. 

That was me spitballing for my own entertainment, with no concern for actual viability. Kinda refreshing, actually.