Making planets useful utilizing the new power and scanning systems.

[Panik Attak]

During some discord discussions, I had an idea for making planets useful using the soon-to-be-implemented systems, mainly, scanning and reactor system.

Basically, using the exact same premise as the reactor/chamber set up, You would set up a "mining system" on a planet, the size reactor could determine the speed of resource "absorption" from a planet, the max distance of the chambers from the reactor (possibly), and the radius covered by each chamber. The chambers would essentially become "mining drills" and would need to be placed over/near mineral/resource "hotspots" these resources would only be accessible through the construction of the reactor/drill system on a planet, to prevent mining via spaceship. This would force you to actually have to build ON the planet.

"hotspots" would only be viewable through planet scanning, and would be visualized similarly to the new ship scanning proposals in the power 2.0 release.

These resources from the hotspot would have to be new and unique (they could be used to replace another resource needed for block creation in factories at a higher efficiency), or simply in much greater abundance on planets. This turns planets into a steady but slow passive supply for resources vs small but fast mining of asteroids. This, also, makes home-basing a planet more attractive as you have 1 permanent steady supply of resources protected by fraction invulnerability.

I think the resources gathered from the planet either shouldn't actually be tied to blocks or be tied to blocks but be highly efficient in the amount of resources gathered per block. This will prevent the planet from suffering too much passive terraforming issues caused by the mining. The resources could be visually displayed via scanning but be tied directly to the planet core for tracking as to not overly effect the geography. obviously, a radius around the "drills" cause some geographical changes slowly over time, but not so widespread that it causes the planet to slowly "shrink" as it drains of blocks(resources).


This would add a lot of value to planets, give us a reason to build on planets, a reason to home-base planets, fight over planets, and actually explore/scan them. I feel like it also would be fairly easy to implement since it would be a copy and paste of a "soon to be" existing system in the game. It could simply be renamed and scaled as required, and would require a "small" tweak to planet resources to function.

this are all very basic and unrefined suggestions so feel free to add your 2cents.

 

[Panik Attak]

bump for feedback?

 

[Dr. Whammy]

I understand that Schine thinks the power system needs an overhaul to rebalance the game but I don't think the same thing can be said about mining. The unpleasant truth is that most people take a very lazy approach to mining due to faction arms races and the desire to operate capital ships. This is further fueled by ridiculously high mining bonuses set by server admins on nearly every multi-player server. Because of this, I cannot support yet another attempt to make mining "easier" when it is already easy.

I also think resources should continue to be tied to blocks in the same way the are now. Like modern environmental concerns, there should consequences to strip mining entire planets; whether they be resource depletion or huge ugly craters. There should be incentive to not only land on a planet but to explore, colonize, conquer and defend additional planets or failing that; move from region to region to mine planets as your faction nomadically moves through the galaxy. One should not expect to sit and turtle at their base with an invincible planet, automatically yielding endless resources. I'm a huge proponent of faction home base protection but even I think this is a bit much.

Regarding automated mining as a concept; I think anyone not wanting to deal with mining drones or manual mining should be aware of the fact that planetary mining can already be automated using logic and rails. I used to do this all the time using either manually operated turret miners or slowly rotating extractors.


This is one of my "terraforming towers" I use them primarily for flattening terrain for cities but I receive a large amount of resources from their use as well.


Here is a basic city with a tower still docked (far right). You can modify the dimensions and/or orientation of these kinds of devices to create drills, bucket-wheel excavators and other cool mining structures. Your only limit is your imagination.

Schine is busy and understaffed. If we're going ask them to reinvent the wheel, I think it's best that we only ask them to do so on systems that need rebalancing and let the creativity of the community fill in the gaps.

 

[Panik Attak]

well the intent wasn't to replace current mining practices for resources, but more to find a way to make planets desirable. The resources acquired from what I proposed don't even need to be physical resources. the "planetary mining facilities" could provide the resources needed to maintain home base invulnerability, but the resource collection could be given a maximum limit forcing the need to have multiple planets at once in order to maintain invulnerability.

I'm not looking to reinvent the wheel, which is why I suggested a system that would be a near copy paste of a new system they are already working on.

 

[MacThule]

This is a good, creative notion. Unique in ways, but I've seen roughly similar sentiments here before, so you are not alone. I would support it, IF done right. The notion of taking the dynamic of the new power system to organize a planet-side mining operation is pretty intriguing.

I half suspect that something along these lines is in store later... crew have been held off a long time, the new planets would seem to be essentially done but not released, and there is an impending overhaul of not only resource distribution but star distribution - a substantial universe upgrade. Based on how often I've seen players suggest that crew be somehow linked to resources from planets, the hold up on some of these may in fact be related to the developers working out how to put that all together.