Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Dramatic Mining Overhaul
#1
I looked around first to see if it was suggested. This had gotten some support during one round so I thought I'd post about it.

As it is, mining isn't terribly useful. You make a bunch of equipment and if the QMs didn't get bored of shipping stuff they might sell what you send them. Occasionally you find an abandoned crate or anger fermids or lag the server to death because you thought it'd be funny to bomb an erebite vein.

There were two main ideas I had:

1. Mining Planet - There could be a zlevel with a cavernous planet rich with minerals. Interspersed could be previous excavation sites, lost alien civilizations, whatever you can think of. Add a few mobs and have them be weak to specific mining "weapons" which could only be used on them (unless emagged?). This is really open to ideas and discussion.

2. Exploration Team - Since miners tend to fuck off into space anyway, you could make this their primary role. Don't like this one as much since it kind of eliminates mining and the things you can find out in space are largely static anyway. People seemed to like the idea though so maybe send them off to the Ice Moon or Bio Dome or what have you.

That's all I got.
Reply
#2
forgot to note, the first idea isn't so much a "make mining more useful" idea so much as it is "make mining interesting".
Reply
#3
I could see that working
Reply
#4
I think we should have mining be all about exploration. Have all the real mining done by mining robots and just have the "miners" plot out the course of the drones. That would leave room for the miners to just explore space and try to find treasures for the station to sell/use.
Reply
#5
Really, this is a state of the art research station. Mining actually doing some exploration as a main thing rings nice bells in my ears. I am for a mining planet.

Miners have helmet lights, so I think the only other thing they could use is a couple toolboxes and maybe a utility belt in the chance that one miner wants to power things up, de/construct things and generally get into places in this mining planet. Maybe have one "ancient cargo telepad" there that, with a bit of fiddling, can be reworked. Have a bunch of VERY nice mining veins, a few mobs, and some cool gadgets and ancient things to wow and amaze people. Teams can focus on zapping back some minerals and gems and maybe... "diamonds"? while others can set on exploring and setting power to whatever base they find or decide to take over. Something akin to the Ice Planet, but less ice, danger and more set on gathering stuff and exploring. Maybe include some ancient, super dangerous hand drill or something like that.

Please feel free to expand or crush things in this suggestion as you feel fit. The more helpful conversation that is brought up, the better.
Reply
#6
Mining, as it is, is boring as fuck.

You make charges to blow up Bohrum and Claretine, hoping you get Uquill nuggets so you can make an industrial space suit, and fucking get off of Mining so you can have your nice suit stolen by a Staff Assistant.

Mining is literally a job where, if you spawn as one and didn't have it selected, the first thing you do is type *scream and run around pushing the other miners.

I'm not sure what could make mining easier. Simplify it, I suppose. Finding a single uqill nugget to make a hammer is worthless when you can just blast mine it. Make it take less time to actually mine and make it so, on average it takes no longer than 30 minutes to get your industrial suit and get back on the main station, I suppose.
Reply
#7
Making mining more fun and interesting to do is probably the key to the whole issue. As it is, the only reasons to be a miner or even go to the mining station are the spacesuits and jetpacks they start with, and the smuggler's cache way out in the middle of Bumblegrump, Nowhere.


I would suggest that if we do indeed rework the entire mining z-level, we might want to make it more like the biodome caves than anything, mostly because I think it's a cooler telesci area anyways. Instead of veins of various ores, can we have superdense blocks instead, so that ore extractors get more love? Find an area chock full of mauxite/cobryl/whatever, then set and forget it for a while. Maybe have some set, semi dangerous ruin-esque rooms where random amounts of various gems spawn, too. Or have veins of ore and gems too, I dunno.
Reply
#8
I forgot to add: the reason that we should make mining more interesting is so that we can start relying on it a bit. They can mine additional char/plasma for the engine furnaces, give the QM Cobryl to sell so that they don't have to scam Centcom with metal sheets, and be something like a training ground for away teams.

Not to mention that being a sneaky changeling/vampire in the mines would be fun as all hell.
Reply
#9
david2222121 Wrote:Making mining more fun and interesting to do is probably the key to the whole issue. As it is, the only reasons to be a miner or even go to the mining station are the spacesuits and jetpacks they start with, and the smuggler's cache way out in the middle of Bumblegrump, Nowhere.


I would suggest that if we do indeed rework the entire mining z-level, we might want to make it more like the biodome caves than anything, mostly because I think it's a cooler telesci area anyways. Instead of veins of various ores, can we have superdense blocks instead, so that ore extractors get more love? Find an area chock full of mauxite/cobryl/whatever, then set and forget it for a while. Maybe have some set, semi dangerous ruin-esque rooms where random amounts of various gems spawn, too. Or have veins of ore and gems too, I dunno.
The problem here lies in the fact that people don't -want- to just set and forget things. That's why the engine is now constant upkeep.
Reply
#10
They don't want to sit their smacking the cave wall/asteroid with their pick, either. I didn't word it well, but I meant plopping the ore extractor down to do the boring actual mining while the miner went and explored deeper into the cave and get eaten by fermids or something.
Reply
#11
I kind of like the idea of making mining into some kind of cave.

It adds the opportunity for more random adventures, Also requiring certain mining upgrades to travel through certain areas would enable miners to work a little harder in order to do certain things. e.g Mining zipline.
Reply
#12
MEOW POW Wrote:Make it take less time to actually mine and make it so, on average it takes no longer than 30 minutes to get your industrial suit and get back on the main station, I suppose.
It only takes about 8 minutes if you know what you're doing. wink
Reply
#13
There's a whole bunch of rare ore in the caves behind the biodomes actually. No mining tools are needed in there, but miners could certainly just go on a gemquest.
Reply
#14
I could design a new asteroid layer which is just one big meteor rather than an asteroid field. One thing I want is to be able to lay down pipes or something that go to extractor rigs as a lower-tech alternative to the teleporter upgrade.
Reply
#15
idea: use the minecart system I sorta half started
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)