woooow that is gay man. yeah honestly the easy way to solve this problem is to just re-enable asteroid respawning (cause the exploits regarding asteroids were fixed already) and to disable planet mining, so that way people can just mine asteroids. Server owners can then appropriately buff mining stats for asteroid mining so that people can get plenty of their supplies from the asteroids, and it'll also help level the playing field in terms of one faction planet mining while other people who don't have good computers would otherwise be forced to try to mine the small-in-comparison asteroids.
Currently, I don't really want to play the game. I was gone for a few weeks and was going to come back after the most recent update, but bugs and this issue have changed my mind. I'm waiting for shipyards, and maybe longer.
In this post, I briefly outlined a system for gasses as another class of resources. (Completely symmetric with existing crystals, ores, and rocky minerals—meaning 8 different substances, Red through Purple + Black & White.)
What if these needed to be harvested by passive technology versus salvager, were only available one gas type per terrestrial planet (up to 3 per gas giant). This creates an incentive to create outposts on planets with atmospheres.
I know it doesn't solve the immediate question at hand, but I personally would like to see both overlapping and conflicting incentives that tend to come down against strip-mining all planets out of existence.
Just making asteroids respawn wouldn't change much, but would be a good point to start with.
What always bothered me about asteroids though is that the game spawns laggy r280 planets by default, but asteroids are super small and scarce even though the game runs smooth and stable at a relatively high amount of not moving/not touching entities.
Maybe reduce the amount of groups of asteroids but increase the size of the groups.
Fewer but bigger asteroid groups would also ultimatly make the grind more comfortable.
Making certain type of asteroids only spawn in certain system would assure the need for factions to expand even with respawning asteroids.
For a respawn mechanism i would suggest that groups would respawn missing asteroids randomly over time when the sector is unloaded. And also deleting asteroids below a block threshold.
I don't see planets becoming anything other than a waste of space then. (And i don't see how fauna could change that.)
You wouldn't even need to disable it.
If asteroids would be worth your time mining you would rarely ever encounter any violated planet.
But then there would be no use for planets at all.
Planet miners was suggested and discussed countless times, wouldn't be a replacement, but an alternative to the current salvaging, would encourage players to inhibit planets, build infrastructure, expand.
Cargo is currently tagged as planned, but for what?
You would need to add a cargo to your salvager to transport your resources to your homebase, but thats it.
Planet miners however would make people build freighters for supply routes. This would encourage piracy and also planet raids (currently players can just store everything in their homebase-a mining colony would be vulnerable to raids). This would again encourage players to build even more base defenses/infrastructures.
What about all those cool gimmicky suggestions like planetary shields/ground combat/etc. With the way planets are i don't see any use for them.
Also i can hardly ever imagine boarding becoming a thing. The only locations where i can imagine close combat are planets. But then again, why would anyone want to ever attack a planet?
Vanilla Minecraft has a bunch of automated farms for a number of different items. There are a bunch of really popular mods like industry craft etc. where you can basically build a automated-anything.
Long story short: Minecraft has an awful amount of resource inflation.
However this isn't minecraft. We don't just grind and build increasingly bigger ships, while being lovey dovey.
This is starmade, we blow each other to peaces and we need a ton of resource inflation.
Or players aren't willing to throw their ships into a fight.
To me, asteroid mining always felt a lot more grindy and cumbersome than planet mining, which is why I preferred it.
Planet mining is simply finding a planet, pointing and shooting your salvager beams at it.
General asteroid mining (taking everything in sight) I always did like this: find asteroid swarm, mine asteroids, look up nearest asteroid swarm in navigation menu, try to remember the coordinates, put in coordinates (if you have forgotten the coordinates, go back one step), , use jumpdrive* to get to next swarm and repeat. *sector size here was 8k I believe, making jumpdrives faster than thrusters
It's incredibly repetitive, takes a lot longer for the same amount of resources and is just plain dull.
If you don't want people planet mining, the alternative(s) should give better results and/or be a more enjoyable experience.
The easy thing to do is probably just buff the amount of resources gained from asteroids, but that doesn't address the issue of mining feeling like a grind.
Something I had thought about was perhaps to have actual continuous asteroid belts, not the small blobs of them in a vaguely circular area that we have now. Size and spacing would have to be adjusted accordingly, but it would help get rid of the annoying travels you have in between asteroid blobs and would make you feel like you're in an actual asteroid belt.
Gradual asteroid respawning is probably unavoidable, simply to stop places from becoming barren wastelands because there are no resources left.
Also worth mentioning is something that's already been suggested a few times: galactic uneven resource distribution. Making asteroids in one system only have one to three or so types of minerals. though this is probably better for trade than for mining itself. It would help with making asteroid mining feel like less of a gamble for certain minerals. You would know what you can get from a system, not fly around for an hour and realize the thing you want wasn't there.
I hope there are more ways to make mining enjoyable and resource acquisition less of a nuisance, but I can't think of any more at the moment.
To me, asteroid mining always felt a lot more grindy and cumbersome than planet mining, which is why I preferred it.
Planet mining is simply finding a planet, pointing and shooting your salvager beams at it.
Something I had thought about was perhaps to have actual continuous asteroid belts, not the small blobs of them in a vaguely circular area that we have now. Size and spacing would have to be adjusted accordingly, but it would help get rid of the annoying travels you have in between asteroid blobs and would make you feel like you're in an actual asteroid belt.
Space-Druids: Let planet mining happen, but for every minute you mine a planet, let there be a percentage chance that a fleet of space druids will jump in and start blasting you for despoiling the planets natural beauty.
Alternately, what if fully functional scanners let you analyze the composition of individual entities? If you are looking for a particular mineral you can shorten your search considerably by scanning smaller entities. If you know that each contains a certain amount of your favorite mineral, wouldn't you rather mine out a 300 block asteroid than a 5000 block tectonic plate?
You should find rarer minerals in more abundance in asteroids than on planets. Consider that on terrestrial planets, heavy elements tend to sink to the planetary core. I suppose you should be able to get at the core by blowing up the planets, but then the space druids should REALLY come after you.
Space-Druids: Let planet mining happen, but for every minute you mine a planet, let there be a percentage chance that a fleet of space druids will jump in and start blasting you for despoiling the planets natural beauty.
Idea: Salvage computer can be placed on the surface of a planet or asteroid. Salvage cannon blocks serve as "enhancers" (probably need a server-configurable maximum number of enhancers per computer). The salvage computer stores the time it is placed or last accessed. The next time it is accessed, it takes the time difference (maybe measured in hours to avoid being OP?) and multiplies it by the number of attached salvage cannon blocks to create an inventory of the appropriate ores and crystals that would be mined, but without damaging the entity. In addition to linking at least one salvage cannon block, you'd also need to link at least one plex storage block. (And ore/crystal storage could be effected by the upcoming cargo update.)
It's a little less interesting than eating blocks directly, but would provide a nice, simple, low-impact way of passive mining without destroying the mined entity. I think it would be neat to come across a planet or asteroid with a "mining city" or "refinery" where a player has placed multiple salvage computers together,to heavily mine the entity. All without tearing it apart.
I think such a passive mining system should be attached directly to the entity without the ability to link up a faction or permission block. Then the player would have to build a protective shell around it to prevent it from being hijacked or robbed. New players just starting their refinery would have to carefully guard it until they could create a protective shell.
I like the idea of planets being a source of renewable resources. Planets should be where you go to "farm" both literally and figuratively.
Maybe each tectonic plate spawns with a random distribution of ores, with a chance to be rich in a single ore. On a planetary plate, as you said, a salvage computer could become a mineral extractor. What if you could only build one extractor per plate? What if mining too fast from one plate or all 12 on a planet could destabilize the world, but mining slowly you could mine indefinitely.
I saw 'brainstorm' and thought I could jump in, but there are already a lot of good ideas here, so I'll just add some thoughts and possibilities.
Systems with stars should probably have either belts (Spacie) in orbit, or polar field clusters (Dragleones) of asteroids, as the gravity well of the star should gather the space rocks up. Systems with no stars could have small grouping clusters at random about like now, but more scattered through the system. Wormhole systems should spew out a few randomly spawned asteroids every now and then at random (server configurable, and dependent on existing mass population), possibly repopulating systems adjacent to the wormhole systems at a regular rate, while non-adjacent systems take significantly longer to repopulate (through wandering-capture or solar discharge)? Outside of those instances, asteroids would likely be pretty rare if one goes by realistic standards, perhaps one or two lonely bodies floating in a distant sector. Another option would be a 'cloud' of individual blocks interspersed with resources, but I can't imagine that being anything less than straining on the computers involved, especially if someone flew through it.
In belts and clusters, there could be more asteroids of greater variance in size, but have resources more condensed and localized. You should fly past 10-15 dead rocks and small pebbles before you find a errant boulder laced with all kinds of Sapsun and Parseen. Larger asteroids about twice the size of regular ones could infrequently appear as well, allowing for surprises like a rogue pirate and his smuggler's cache, or part of a barren and destroyed derelict ship, or perhaps a planet shard with a piece of terrain or building attached, or just a regular-style large asteroid that has large amounts usable ores in it. I feel that while resources in asteroids should be common, it should be in lower amounts, but with high-yield rewards if one searches enough.
I like jayman38's idea of Salvage mining stations. Using an autonomous mining setup could also be used to get people to reconsider strip-mining a planet, as a proper setup could be made to produce more resources over time than planetary denuding, if you invest the time and equipment for it. One could also possibly place them on resource-rich asteroids? All this also sets up a raid/defense strategy, as an undefended mining station could be raided for its stock, but the raiding would have to be quick, as the owner would likely get a message their mining unit has failed or been breached...
A more odd-ball idea for alternate income would be to set up a contract system with the trading guild, where you invest in or assist them, and they pay out dividends and retaining fees. In return for your contract, you must pay a set fee up front, and after that, fulfill specific randomized requests (procure X units of resources and deliver them to Y station, escort/defend a traveling ship, do a courier run between two stations, take out X number of pirates, etc.). Failure to fulfill contract requests could result in diminished dividends, cancellation of the contract, or even a attempt to take you out. Players on contract would receive funds via direct deposit at set intervals and could just go to a shop and buy what they needed (perhaps at a discount). There could also be special job opportunities with high payouts for one-time rewards. A player could select a tier of contract, determining the retainer payout and also the frequency/difficulty of the tasks required. Instead of mining, a player could grow wealthy and powerful as an interstellar company (hit)man!
woooow that is gay man. yeah honestly the easy way to solve this problem is to just re-enable asteroid respawning (cause the exploits regarding asteroids were fixed already) and to disable planet mining, so that way people can just mine asteroids. Server owners can then appropriately buff mining stats for asteroid mining so that people can get plenty of their supplies from the asteroids, and it'll also help level the playing field in terms of one faction planet mining while other people who don't have good computers would otherwise be forced to try to mine the small-in-comparison asteroids.
When a system reaches a low enough asteroid entity density, new asteroids will be spawned in that system gradually as a function of how far it is from a wormhole, simulating matter being flung from the wormhole to come to rest in an asteroid orbit. This only happens to systems with the yellow asteroid orbitals.
Idea: Salvage computer can be placed on the surface of a planet or asteroid. Salvage cannon blocks serve as "enhancers" (probably need a server-configurable maximum number of enhancers per computer). The salvage computer stores the time it is placed or last accessed. The next time it is accessed, it takes the time difference (maybe measured in hours to avoid being OP?) and multiplies it by the number of attached salvage cannon blocks to create an inventory of the appropriate ores and crystals that would be mined, but without damaging the entity. In addition to linking at least one salvage cannon block, you'd also need to link at least one plex storage block. (And ore/crystal storage could be effected by the upcoming cargo update.)
It's a little less interesting than eating blocks directly, but would provide a nice, simple, low-impact way of passive mining without destroying the mined entity. I think it would be neat to come across a planet or asteroid with a "mining city" or "refinery" where a player has placed multiple salvage computers together,to heavily mine the entity. All without tearing it apart.
I think such a passive mining system should be attached directly to the entity without the ability to link up a faction or permission block. Then the player would have to build a protective shell around it to prevent it from being hijacked or robbed. New players just starting their refinery would have to carefully guard it until they could create a protective shell.
Have the player actually be required to find the ore and then place a salvager module next to it, then link it to the salvage computer. Rate of production determined by how many ore blocks you have touching a salvage module.
Have the player actually be required to find the ore and then place a salvager module next to it, then link it to the salvage computer. Rate of production determined by how many ore blocks you have touching a salvage module.
Oh god yes please. I take it the ore blocks do not disappear when mined? In any way, if the storage update really makes dedicated transport ships necessary, combined with this suggestion, I could see some really interesting gameplay happening.
Oh god yes please. I take it the ore blocks do not disappear when mined? In any way, if the storage update really makes dedicated transport ships necessary, combined with this suggestion, I could see some really interesting gameplay happening.
Yes the ore blocks would remain and production would be based on a timer so the sector would not be required to be loaded to harvest ore. Instead of lag inducing block removal you would instead be traveling to your mining operations to gather ore and there's no reason it couldn't be applied to asteroids as well.
Seeing as massive block removal causes so much lag, allow players to use a mining beam instead:
-Fires only one beam.
-Collects only ore/shards.
-Does not have to hit the ore block, as the beam strikes an entity it is scanned for ore at a rate dependent on the number of mining modules.
Either option would remove the need for lag bomb automated salvage beam arrays.
I like this idea. I think we should also have asteroid field sectors with more asteroids with a wider range of sizes. These sectors could spawn new asteroids at a slow to moderate rate when "no one is looking."
Maybe you could also add systems that replace planets with asteroid field sectors "orbiting"/arranged in a disk pattern, or even systems that are just asteroids orbiting a small burned out star.
These asteroid fields would be a resource you'd want to be near, but with the constant motion, mining, and respawn of asteroids, they wouldn't be a great place to build a permanent base in.
Maybe multiple factions could lay claim to sectors that weren't in the same system as a faction's homebase and that didn't contain a faction station? A sector or system with multiple faction claims on it would be "Contested." Each faction laying claim to a Contested sector could get a partial faction mining bonus, maybe 6x instead of 12x. Also, the presence of your faction's ships in Contested space, or the destruction of other contesting faction's ships in Contested space, could gain a your faction a FP bonus, and/or maybe a higher mining bonus?
Asteroid field sectors or systems could disallow the building of stations, but allow factions to claim and/or contest them. These sectors with regenerating resources could be hot spots for inter-faction conflict, but still allow for more efficient resource gathering compared to regular space.
Long ago, there was this idea from devs that using FP you could respawn 'roids in your claimed systems. Back when the faction points were introduced and potential uses for them were discussed.
I guess this is the time to do that. Schine always tried to make people form bigger factions. The whole faction point system was made for that.
If you could pay with FP for the server to run a repopulate command on all your yellow orbital sectors (a.k.a. asteroid belts), that'd encourage players banding together in bigger factions - since, the more active people you have, the faster you'll gather enough FP to pay for your asteroid respawns, and thus, the faster you can obtain resources. Of course, this feature should NOT come cheap. I expect a cost of 100 points per asteroid sector in your systems - optionally, with the option to select which system(s) the respawning should take place in, if you own multiple - per use of this feature.
Thus, systems with fewer belts might be cheaper to repopulate, and suddenly, the layout of the system you chose as your faction's home gains a lot of importance, as it determines:
- How many asteroid sectors are there (the amount of available resources, as well as the cost of running the repopulate command in faction points)
- What kinds of asteroids does the system have (as asteroid types have different chances to spawn based on their distance from the star)
- How many of those sectors will NOT be harvestable (due to close proximity of the star, for example)
An especially well-generated system (no 'roids too close to the sun, far-reaching rings making the generation of larimar asteroids possible) might even be something worth waging wars for in order to control and mine.
This could be a double win. First, finally faction points would have a valid, important use, and second, this way we could have the renewable resources we want without loopholes. It's not realistic? Maybe. Everything being make of blocks isn't either.
Also, this feature still wouldn't rule out the implementation of planetary core/magmatic mining as many of you mentioned. That would also have its advantages, but wouldn't encourage faction forming as much as a solution that requires faction points.
Why not just create a 24 hour refresh timer for servers? Players cant abuse and re-spawn asteroids. or a editable one by the server owner? Every time the server hits that point when it needs to refresh its asteroids, it does so for ever system. it does not add extra asteroids to untouched systems, but rather implements a completely new slate for asteroids for the entire server, or something along those lines.
It encourages some adventuring/exploring. because sitting in one system is pointless since you'll exhaust the resources there.
It creates a resource conflict between players, which can encourage more interactions instead of everyone sitting in their home system for months on end.
Here are a couple of thoughts that might help curb resource depletion while still encouraging multiple sector claims:
1) Comets and Meteors
I don't think it would take up too much of a server's resources to spawn an asteroid 'ship' that flies through a sector. Like pirates, this only needs to happen around where players are currently playing - not be a persistent entity. They spawn, fly a path through a sector, then despawn if they are far enough away from players. Players can mine them as they fly, or use kenetic weapons to catch them. They have a spiral path towards a star or worm hole (where they despawn outside player's vision).
The more players logged on then the more sectors that the server must keep loaded. The more sectors currently loaded, the higher the likelihood of a comet/meteor event. The more space a faction owns, the more likely they are to have a member find a comet/meteor.
2) Gravity Well Events
This is more fiction than science, but it will work for a game. In the real universe stars explode and reform - space is a vacuum, but it still has dust in it that (over time) condenses into a new stellar formation. So rather than asteroids just 'respawning,' they are being formed naturally by gravity. In essence, they grow over time (just like reality, but over the course of hours/days rather than millennia).
A sector of space has a chance of spawning a 'gravity well' which shows up on scanners and plays havoc with thrusters (like a weak black hole that kills instead of teleporting). This area grows hazy/foggy as it collects space dust. Eventually the dust settles and an asteroid (or cluster) is there. The event becomes something to fight over/defend since it takes a long time to 'finish'. It is rare that it starts, and takes a long time to finish.
The more sectors a faction owns, the more likely they are to have an event naturally occur in their area or near their scanners.
3) Gravity Well Modules
If #2 seems incredulous, then perhaps we could instead say that the event is man made. We have a Gravity Well Module, which is shot into space like a decentigrator. When it is detonated (by laser or missile) it makes a couple of checks:
A) Only one gravity well active per sector
B) No entities within X-meters
C) The sector is owned by the correct faction (determined by faction module attached to gravity well module)
If everything works out, it creates the hazy/foggy space-dust collecting event I described above. To prevent it from being abused the gravity it uses to collect dust shouldn't affect other entities. Over the next few hours (or whatever time is appropriate) it collects space dust and turns into an asteroid. I see this as a faction moves to an area, launches the well and activates it, then leaves and comes back the next day to see what formed.
The price of the module used to do this is the control over how often it will be used. It is faster than flying 40k km, but also much more expensive. If we limit them to one active per sector, then a faction can have more asteroid 'farms' if it owns more territory. We could also say that the color of the nearest star determines the probability of certain ores developing - if you want a particular ore you should find a particular colored star.
Essentially, there are ways to make 'respawning' seem like a legitimate thing to exist in space. If the rate of respawning is low enough, it can be used to prevent resource depletion without being productive enough to replace exploration.
If you didn't read the post I linked to:
1) Comets and Meteors spawning like pirate waves (only when players are around, then they despawn)
2) Gravity wells collect stellar dust into asteroids (random events)
3) Players can use a manufactured 'gravity well module' to create a gravity well to create an asteroid (limit 1 active per sector, time delay between deployment and finished product).
4) Buy asteroids from the NPC shops and have them delivered to a sector or planet.
EDIT:
Another idea that occurred to me: Asteroids from gas giants.
If we have a meteor object (not directly mineable) fly into a gas giant (also not directly mineable) the collision spits out a cluster of asteroids that hover around the gas giant like moons. Eventually they fall back to the planet (so they can despawn and not clutter up the server over time).
This adds in a planet object to make space look more interesting. It isn't made of voxels, so it won't cause as much lag as other planets. It can't be explored because of its gravity killing you, but it is still useful because it spits out resources on occassion.
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