Put ores in the debris field again

[quiltyquilty]

Put ores back into the debris field! Apparently this was changed to keep the crew generally at the station, so miners wouldn't dick off onto another z-level, but I don't think it's changed anything. It would be a good change if miners, who are going to dick off anyway, could at least have the option of sending home ores while they're gone.

[Erev]

I was - and am - a proponent of the mining magnet to keep people on the station. That being said I think the reason you don't see many miners is simply because mining itself needs a bit more to do to be 'fun'. Whether that be Material Sciences getting finished up or interesting new prizes in the center of asteroids there needs to be something more to the job.

[TheNewTeddy]

I dunno. I can see the point, fun for miners, but I also want to keep people on the station to increase interaction. I'm torn on this TBH.

[Frank_Stein]

I think it would be nice if there was some kind of feature similar to the science telescope for targeting things to bring in with the magnet, as well as more interesting things like derelict ships, with the occasional hostile mob onboard.

[medsal15]

There is a mining magnet on the debris field. Why not ores too?

[Mageziya]

Why not just an entire z-level for mining? That's how it used to be, I think, and the debris field is actually starting to be rather crowded as of now. There are more "things" in it now than there are asteroids.

[quiltyquilty]

Why not just an entire z-level for mining? That's how it used to be, I think, and the debris field is actually starting to be rather crowded as of now. There are more "things" in it now than there are asteroids.

This is what I would like, but I feel that that's much too optimistic.

[Gannets]

It'd probably not hurt anything to have ores out there again. Imho.

[Vitatroll]

Are you guys actually serious about the new z level thing? We might need to do that, or expand the ones we have, later -- but it's not worth the lag for random ores.

I'm not opposed to random ores (provided they don't add to the lag); I just think it's silly. If you actually want to mine then the magnets (there's even one on z3 if you build it, which isn't hard) are vastly superior. If you just want to fuck off in space then you aren't really going to mine. Maybe if miners actually had value I would understand. As it stands - no job, save Sec, has any real responsibility. The reason for this is that we are all so critically incompetent that the station would fall apart if one iota of reliance was held upon us... but I digress.

In the end I'd rather give the miners a reason to mine. Erev brought up good ideas. Mining could also become 'the pod job' since they rely on them so much now. Making it easier to pimp out their pods with some new paint schemes and new attachments. Or, unpopular idea incoming, make it where they actually have to work for indy suits - or tie them in with material science.

[Zafhset]

IIRc the old mining z level was recycled for telesci locations, and a lot of people don't realize that extra z-levels = way more lag.

[atamusvaleo]

*cough mining plasma *cough

Isn't that what we're supposedly doing in the first place?

I like the idea of combining the long range telescope with the mining magnet. That opens up a world of possibilities.