Mining changes + mini reworks

[JohnnyJohn]

Just a batch of changes for mining in general!

• Digbots fight nanites and have a mining laser by default, when printed from the fabricator
  
• Industrial armor can protect against plutonium, and heavily negates bleed
  
• Mining PDAs can interface with the magnet and control it's activation/target/override and see it's status
  
• Geoscanners can "diffuse" volatile compounds before they detonate
  
• Nanites glow so they're more visible against space
  
• Mining fabricators can print weak EMP and anti-zombie grenades to deal with the problems that the magnet can pull up
  
• Mining phasers on pods get buffed
  
• Replacement for the quantum telescope (explained below)
  

While scientists still have the quantum telescope, miners will now get the radiological astroscanner, which can convert atomic radiation into radio frequencies to help locate them. Upon using this, miners will get a menu presenting buttons and dials, and a sort of RF oscilloscope to show the signal. They will have to fiddle with different settings to hone in the signal, and identify what kind of asteroid it is. Once found, it can be repeated.
That being said, most frequencies are unknown, and they are shuffled roundstart. Only a few ore types (mauxite, pharosium, etc) are known roundstart, the rest you'll just have to figure out yourself. Once you do, you can record it, and know what settings to hone and where to look to get the asteroid you need! (Does not work on aquatic maps.)

[JohnnyJohn]

To clarify the new asteroid finding system, think harmonic siphon mixed with wire hacking, but less intense and complicated.

[Lord_earthfire]

Not a real fan of these. Most of these changes give station crew dedicated weapons on their hand.

Design wise, crew is meant to repurpose tools as weapons and miners just need hammers. Powered hammers deal with almost anything a miner can encounter. And large pods with drills deal with anything else (up to the point these are the go-to means to fight the nanite meteors with dozens of them inside)

And the way to "defuse" trapped rocks kinda dont make sense? I mean, how does a scanner defuses an exploding rock. You kinda should never explode anyway, since the tine betwen hitting the rock and it exploding is plenty to get away.

[JohnnyJohn]

Well, an issue is that even if a tile is volatile and you can see it, the game's controls and tendency to lag can have you step right into it anyway. That, and erebite tends to explode itself before you can get any, since most of it per asteroid is *inside* explosive tiles. Though maybe having the geoscanner do it is a little strange. Maybe a tool or magnet feature that can disperse neutralizing agents to halt or disrupt the explosive compound reaction?

Though, you do have a point for the weapons. It might be better it instead of grenades, it's just upgrades or add-ons you can apply to the magnet, or some adjacent apparatus. Maybe something from hacking the fabricators? Or from cargo? I'd imagine that cyborgs would also have a built-in neutralization tool for explosive compounds.

[Waffleloffle]

gonna be real I think you should just play scientist or something

mining is in a nice spot as a job with a low skill floor that still has some occupational hazards. its lack of necessary complexity means that it's accessible to people who don't feel up to learning a whole medical or engineering system, but the occupational hazards still give it some stakes. trying to introduce a dedicated solution for every single little thing that goes wrong turns the job from an opportunity to react to things as they come into a Knowledge Check Role. we already have plenty of Knowledge Check Roles and they work fine for what they are! miner would be much less fun if it was one of them

[JohnnyJohn]

My issue is that mining is a *CRITICAL* department, but it's gameplay loop leaves a lot to be desired. Of all the jobs I've played, it feels closest to a chore. Not even janitor felt that bad.

[Mouse]

On the mining magnet, there's a button that says "scan" or something along those lines.  If you press it, it will helpfully mark every single interesting thing on the current asteroid - a purple circle indicates a buried object of some sort, a blue dot indicates a gem, some other markings indicate tougher or weaker rocks which can be completely ignored if you're mining with a copper pick as Armok intended, and a red exclamation point indicates a rock that is explosive or full of rads.  Then, and this is a neat trick, you don't mine any tiles with a red exclamation point.  Do this, and you will never explode.

You can get the same overlay, albeit in a smaller area, by using the mining scanner inhand if you're mining in the trench or the asteroid field.

[BadShot]

I do like the nanite visibility thing tbh, they can be pretty hard to see sometimes