QM Material Bar change

[Dhaidburt]

Miners, I think I can say with unfortunate confidence that we've all been in a situation where someone just dumps the contents of an entire asteroid into the smelter. Someone who just doesn't know or doesn't care about the fact that ores are worth far more than bars. It breaks my heart every time I see that mining fabricator sparkle with syreline.. but I suddenly got to thinking. 

How come an ore worth thousands suddenly becomes worthless because it's in the shape of a bar? Not sure how it'd be to code, but if there was a check in place to see if the metal is worth more than a material bar, it'd sell as the metal! If material bar is worth more than mauxite or other ores (rocks) you still get to sell them at a profit. 

No need to get snippy at your fellow miners as they dump asteroid after asteroid into the reclaimer, just hand over whatever you don't need to the QM as a gift. It'd also make any space debris pulled in more worthwhile other than 'what, no chest or artifact? lame'

[UrsulaMejor]

lord knows i've tried

---

But more seriously:

Commodities are checked based on type.

However, all material bars are just.. material bars, with the material applied

this means all material bars, whether gold or steel, have the same type, and therefore cannot be differentiated without a complete overhaul of the entire commodity checking system

[saccharineChampion]

I believe the main reason this is not already so is because, if bars weren't worth far less, QMs would be mechanically encouraged to just pop out all the material bars from fabricators and sell them for big money. I don't believe that is a very good outcome.

Keeping such a gap between raw and processed materials goes a long, long way to helping make mining actually have a point for QM; without it, there isn't really a difference between materials players worked to get (the raw ones) and those that isn't necessarily true for.

That being said - it's entirely possible that the recent QM changes has made this less of an issue. And overall, I'm not actually speaking against this change per se, just making sure all relevant considerations are taken into account. There's ups and downs to the idea, and I definitely agree with the backing concept of making smelting not "punishing" like that.

[Dhaidburt]

lord knows i've tried

Damn....