Mining is dead, but it can be revived!

[Silvercloud29]

(You can skip this to where the ideas start but I wanted to get off a reason as to why I am making this pitch)

So I am gonna start by explaining a bit where my thoughts are before I pitch this idea so people don't call me as a troll. Back in 2014 when I first started SS13 I joined goon as my first server. I didn't know anything about anything back then and cogmap 1 was still fresh and new and exciting. My learning experience came from me picking mining as my starting profession (I wanted to do engineering but I didn't know dick about how to work the engine or could figure it out) With mining I learned a lot about the game, how devious it is, abusive, cruel, but also rewarding and fun. How you can blow your arm and leg off in a mining accident with a exploding space rock and dragging your self, bleeding out across from the mining outpost to the station just to die in front of engineering and the clown farting on your face just as you croak. It helped teach me how to fend for myself against the NPCs or antags that were up to no good snooping around the mining outpost or in the diner, or trying to pick fights with me out in the field. Overall I feel like I had a good solid start in SS13 because I picked mining to learn the game to.

After awhile with some experimentation, the semi-randomized set ore zones turned into the mining Z level being completely randomized by a coder. I forgot which one. This brought on an issue that back then the codebase was really unstable (It's a lot better now but you can only do so much with BYOND) so this caused rounds to take FOREVER to render and start since all the asteroids in the mining Z was being rolled for their ore spawns. Thus a problem solver was invented, the mineral Magnet. At the time the thing was good, but then the admins removed the mining Z level and condensed space exploration to only 1 other Z level. This not only condensed mining down to just 1 little area on the station but also restricted the kind of fun you can have in space as well. Sure we had cool telesci zones and mysteries other stations couldn't compare to, but we lost a lot of use out of pods in this process.

So after all this the admins came to another decision that mining is too easy. Since all it boiled down to know was you get a pod, you put all the mining upgrades into it, then you kill rocks in the same 9x9 square with no fear of anyone harming you, dump all the ore out, make a buncha cool shit, sell the rest for a bunch a bucks, leave the station. It became mindless. SO they started to take away our key tools as well, they nerfed the industrial armor. (which was understandable it was a little too OP) and they took away our mining pod drills. At least with the drills we could work efficiently, and have a little fun and possibly defend ourselves.... But now? The drills were completely removed, plasma cutters can only be made and not started with. So now, we turned mining from a somewhat easy and at least moderately enjoyable job, to an absolute boring chore that no one likes doing or gives up like 10 minutes in because the stupid picks we have are useless against most of any hard rocks and to get better tools, like the laser drill, requires the hard rocks you can't mine.

(After Story skip, ideas down below)

So I present to you suggestions of how to fix mining and space exploration.
Number 1 (And no I am serious) Figure out in some capacity to bring back a new and improved Mining Z level. Split at least a good chunk of the overcrowded POIs in the debris zone to the new mining Z, making it less cluttered with more areas to explore.
Add more syndicate drones to make things more interesting (hide them in some asteroids that they pop out when a rock is mined as a hazard, maybe a new type) have some more EMP drones (They don't do damage like the orange faced ones that shut down pod systems these just stun pods all together)
Add a syndicate automated drone factory that is an explorable area, deadly to move around in, but is built into an asteroid and actually DOES make syndicate drones and deploys them where other drones were killed, that is... Until the facility is shut down. (It never goes over a certain limit of how many drones there can be in the Z level.)
Re-add starter plasma cutting systems for pods (At least 1 or 2) Re-add pod drills (In Fabricators only)
Remove starting mineral magnets (If this causes an issue with the server than create a small 5x5 magnet that you start off with) You can earn to build new ones or expand the ones you have by either getting the rare materials need to make it outright or make enough money with your local QM to just outright buy mineral magnets.
Mineral Magnets SHOULD BE A REWARD for hard work done to streamline your workflow and make it less dangerous than going out and getting possibly killed or maimed by the shit out in the mining Z level (But you still need to put in the work to get one)
Mineral Magnets should come in small, normal and large variants (Or extra small, small, normal and large variants) going from 7x7, 9x9 to 13x13
Give us more interesting ship debris to pick through using the quantum telescope (actual ship sections designed to be mini dungeons for the 13x13 magnet with all sorts of hazards and dangers in it)

TLDR-----> Add a new and improved mining Z, split up debris zone POIs with it to make debris Z less cluttered, make mining Z deadly, add syndicate drone factory that makes drones, add more in asteroid hazards. remove starting mineral magnets, make them a reward for mining job well done. add more rewards for mining and exploring. Add build-able or buy-able mineral magnets with different sizes, add a larger magnet that can use the quantum telescope to pull in custom made mini dungeon debris to explore and loot.

[Haprenti]

Also you need to be able to make more interesting things with the material, more unique stuff that you can't get without materials from mining. Fun things.

[amaranthineApocalypse]

Also you need to be able to make more interesting things with the material, more unique stuff that you can't get without materials from mining. Fun things.

There is actually a fair amount of dumb fun stuff you can make, it's just that nobody actually knows how to do it/does it.

Did you know you can use quark loaves as speartips? Because last i remember, you can.

I think we need a better guide for materials. Also bring back the material stats analyzer, it's bloody difficult to figure out the best way to make anything without it.

[Frank_Stein]

You know what would be nice? Roguelike Dungeon Crawler mining

Dig into randomly generated dungeon asteroids, finding progressively rarer ore/gems/minerals while facing progressively harder enemies and hazards

Every 5 to 10 floors give miners the option to head back to the start to unload what they've found, or to build better gear. Meet friendly merchants and other NPCs to trade with. Build shortcuts to start further into the mines. Fight bosses guarding treasure hordes

Probably best way to implement it would be simliar to the current Mining Magnet, just slightly larger and with a entrance and exit to the next one. Generate the next area while they are still in the previous one

[Dr Zoidcrab]

You know what would be nice? Roguelike Dungeon Crawler mining

Dig into randomly generated dungeon asteroids, finding progressively rarer ore/gems/minerals while facing progressively harder enemies and hazards

Every 5 to 10 floors give miners the option to head back to the start to unload what they've found, or to build better gear. Meet friendly merchants and other NPCs to trade with. Build shortcuts to start further into the mines. Fight bosses guarding treasure hordes

Probably best way to implement it would be simliar to the current Mining Magnet, just slightly larger and with a entrance and exit to the next one. Generate the next area while they are still in the previous one

It could be generated on another z-level, discovered with the long range telescope and accessed with the long range teleporter, which could be moved to mining or a public area.

With the new fluids system, pockets of oil, water, liquid plasma or lava pizza could be added.

You only need one bar of bohrum and one block of any power source (cerenkite, telecrystal, plasmastone, erebite. Cargo traders and certain debris field merchants usually sell at least one of these) to make pod plasma cutters, though it is inconvenient that you have to go to a pod fabricator, they should be in the mining fabricators along with pod drills as high-end mining equipment

[Silvercloud29]

You know what would be nice? Roguelike Dungeon Crawler mining

Dig into randomly generated dungeon asteroids, finding progressively rarer ore/gems/minerals while facing progressively harder enemies and hazards

Every 5 to 10 floors give miners the option to head back to the start to unload what they've found, or to build better gear. Meet friendly merchants and other NPCs to trade with. Build shortcuts to start further into the mines. Fight bosses guarding treasure hordes

Probably best way to implement it would be simliar to the current Mining Magnet, just slightly larger and with a entrance and exit to the next one. Generate the next area while they are still in the previous one

y u do dis?

To explain out the ship debris idea for the large magnet. Currently when you use the magnet you have a chance of getting some randomly generated mess of mangled steel tiles that have some random, ore made objects like Bohrum glass panels and floor tiles. Which in the grand scheme of things, is pretty useless to mining (Can't reprocess it back into usable ingots so whats the point of even having this stuff?) so the idea here is to have a randomized selection of space debris you can pull in that was pre-made by someone that would be stuff you'd expect to be in the debris Z like small ships, or a part of some old derelict ship with something lurking inside.

[Frank_Stein]

Nah, I mean the generation of the terrain. Progression through the dungeon would be on a floor by floor basis. So you enter from the station, then go to another z-level where a dungeon floor has been prepared. In that floor is a staircase that goes deeper in, to a second floor in the same z-level that's generated while you're in the first, and upon entering that, the first area is regenerated into a third floor, and so on and so forth creating an infinite dungeon.

And occasionally an extra exit is made that takes you instantly back to the station, but requires restarting from the beginning.

[atomic1fire]

I'm okay with roguelike mining as long as miners can carry swords to fight asteroid monsters with. SS13 minecraft edition.

[Silvercloud29]

Nah, I mean the generation of the terrain. Progression through the dungeon would be on a floor by floor basis. So you enter from the station, then go to another z-level where a dungeon floor has been prepared. In that floor is a staircase that goes deeper in, to a second floor in the same z-level that's generated while you're in the first, and upon entering that, the first area is regenerated into a third floor, and so on and so forth creating an infinite dungeon.

And occasionally an extra exit is made that takes you instantly back to the station, but requires restarting from the beginning.

I'm okay with roguelike mining as long as miners can carry swords to fight asteroid monsters with. SS13 minecraft edition.

Not that this isn't a bad idea or anything, but it's a bit off topic from the original post now. I'd like to move back on track, what can we do to improve mining? I feel having a new Z level can help out a lot plus we don't need every single asteroid randomized, only areas of some of them. I would like to think with the optimizations done now that it won't cause the game a long time to load into the shift.

[babayetu83]

i dont think there's a problem with mining but rather its lack of interactivity with other jobs. mining should be like what botany is to the bar to robotics & research. this is something i think the tg branch excels at. research and robotics are fleshed out to be something more than somewhere to make deathchems and bombs and a rarely used resurrection option that you need to fight off doctors/geneticists to use

[Studenterhue]

Nah, I mean the generation of the terrain. Progression through the dungeon would be on a floor by floor basis. So you enter from the station, then go to another z-level where a dungeon floor has been prepared. In that floor is a staircase that goes deeper in, to a second floor in the same z-level that's generated while you're in the first, and upon entering that, the first area is regenerated into a third floor, and so on and so forth creating an infinite dungeon.

And occasionally an extra exit is made that takes you instantly back to the station, but requires restarting from the beginning.

I'm okay with roguelike mining as long as miners can carry swords to fight asteroid monsters with. SS13 minecraft edition.

Not that this isn't a bad idea or anything, but it's a bit off topic from the original post now. I'd like to move back on track, what can we do to improve mining? I feel having a new Z level can help out a lot plus we don't need every single asteroid randomized, only areas of some of them. I would like to think with the optimizations done now that it won't cause the game a long time to load into the shift.

I know how much you liked the mining z-level, but I completely favor Frank's suggestion of dungeon crawl style asteroids over a whole new level. A bunch of content split and delivered into multiple sublevel floors feels much, much more approachable and less tedious than one big ol' level. When I'm playing something Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup for example, I feel less like I'm exhausting some ultimately tiny portion of a dungeon so insurmountable and more like I'm making real progress through the levels. There's a real sense of progression with clearing floors than just doesn't compare with clearing areas.

However, I don't think either solely new z-level or an asteroid dungeon design will make necessarily make mining better and definitely won't make me want to actually want to play miner (save for documenting the changes for the sake of the wiki). If I had the choice of playing Miner in SS13 or playing DCSS, I'd play DCSS, because DCSS knows how to progress level design the way Mining currently doesn't. With DCSS, with each floor, monsters get more health, hit harder, get more abilities and resistances, and just generally vary much more. Better items and weapons spawn, the level size gets ever so slightly bigger, and, my favorite, level designs gets more and more complex. DCSS knows how to kick players down and punish them for being unprepared/not resourceful.  

That doesn't quite happen the past mining z-level and current mining magnet. Each asteroid doesn't make the other asteroids harder (and to their credit, I can see why it wouldn't). If anything, it makes them easier, since you get  more and more resources for handling asteroids. There's things like radioactive ore and kinda sorta explosive rocks, but, unlike DCSS, those challenges never change while you do.

Mining, again, I think, needs a better sense of progression. It might, it might be in a new z-level, a dungeon crawl redesign, or a simple change in the mineral magnet. I can see you think it'd be better with a new z-level. But I think a dungeon crawl redesign has a better chance of adding the sense of progression I want.

[Silvercloud29]

i dont think there's a problem with mining but rather its lack of interactivity with other jobs. mining should be like what botany is to the bar to robotics & research. this is something i think the tg branch excels at. research and robotics are fleshed out to be something more than somewhere to make deathchems and bombs and a rarely used resurrection option that you need to fight off doctors/geneticists to use

Mining was meant to supplement other departments, science with artifacts, QM with money, engineering with rare and more sturdy station construction materials and robotics with improved power sources and materials to make borgs. Right now with only 1 mineral magnet you don't have much diversity and mining is much too slow now to be of use for anybody when you're at 30 min in and you finally made a laser drill.

[Cyfarfod]

[quote='babayetu83' pid='113716' dateline='1514185624']
i mining is much too slow now to be of use for anybody when you're at 30 min in and you finally made a laser drill.

Laser drill? Have a bohrum pick at 3 minutes and you can break every rock with ease.

I agree mining needs work but as someone that takes the job a lot, I feel the real issue is there's not much USEFUL you can do with it. You can make a nice spear (which the blob will eat in about 5 hits...) you can make a jumpsuit with protection of 2 or so... you can make insulated gloves but it's WAY easier to just steal a pair... I dunno, aside from erebite which is only really useful to a traitor (too high-collatoral for non-antags IMO) it's all pretty dull.

[Vitatroll]

I feel mining mainly suffers from jonesesism and rose-tinted nostalgia. Every proposed major change to mining feels like someone wants to make a whole new game-mode out of it. This includes me, btw.

For our station, where department interdependencies are practically [gratefully] non-existent, the key to more fulfilling mining [without an asston of code] will probably lie in tweaking equipment progression, loot acquisition, and/or material science.

As an aside, I'll never like any job having a whole z level designed for them.

[Silvercloud29]

I feel mining mainly suffers from jonesesism and rose-tinted nostalgia. Every proposed major change to mining feels like someone wants to make a whole new game-mode out of it. This includes me, btw.

For our station, where department interdependencies are practically [gratefully] non-existent, the key to more fulfilling mining [without an asston of code] will probably lie in tweaking equipment progression, loot acquisition, and/or material science.

As an aside, I'll never like any job having a whole z level designed for them.

The idea of bringing back the mining Z level has multiple benefits (Which I went over in the original post) First and foremost it will give us more area to space explore, to add new hazards too and more potential area to fill with all sorts of neat things, like a syndicate drone production facility. Next thing is that we can break up all the POIs fro mthe debris zone and split them between Debris and the mining Z (Asteroid field) since the debris field is absolutely cluttered with just way too much stuff as it is right now. It gives mining more to do and more area to do it in that makes the job more interesting and exciting. It makes the Mineral Magnet more interesting and an reward to streamline your mining output.

There was a few other points I had to why having another space Z level is a good idea but im too tired and I need to sleep for work today (Yes on christmas) to remember my points right now.