Mining Stations

    Renewable asteroid mining, yay or nay?

    • Sounds good, beats the heck out of the way its supposed to work.

      Votes: 18 78.3%
    • No way, I enjoy the nomadic life, going from system to system and stripping it bare.

      Votes: 3 13.0%
    • Neither, just make asteroid respawn something thats supposed to happen every day.

      Votes: 2 8.7%

    • Total voters
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    Edymnion

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    So I've read that the current asteroid respawning is actually a bug and that this is not their intended behavior. Its also currently against many server rules to mine planets, because of the lag created by taking large ships near them.

    So how about the ability to build mining stations?

    First way of doing that which comes to mind for me would be blocks like factories which can be placed on asteroids that slowly produce ore/crystal/stone normally found on the asteroid on which it was placed. It would produce far less than simply eating the entire asteroid, but it would be a steady renewable supply of materials over time. Let factory enhancers speed up how fast you can extract material, and have an upper limit to how much you can get per tick based on the size of the asteroid you built it on.

    That way, when the asteroid respawn thing gets fixed, you could eat the asteroid with salvage beams for a quick boost, or you could invest the resources into building a full mining facility to harvest materials from it. Entire wars could be fought over control of a particularly large blue asteroid with a decked out mining station on it.
     
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    this is one of the best ideas i have ever read.
    im serious,this needs to be a thing!
     
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    This is a great idea :D it could even replace Planet mining if it's applied to planets and is more efficient over a longer time :D

    imagine hundreds of these guys on a planet sucking out the minerals :D

    And you can have the enhancers on top of the mining/extracting module kinda like an oil rig look. Maybe like 10 enhancers max so as not to be overused and abused. ( fix the rate at something not too high and not too low with max enhancers )

    And there could be a limit on how much a planet/asteroid can give out each tick so you can't cover the entire surface in miners/extractors and get a crapload of stuff infinitely :P

    I think this idea could transform the whole way "mining" is looked at, shading away from the archaic ways of Minecraft XD

    +1
     
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    This might passify resource gathering really bad... but also, especially if combined with variable richness levels around the galaxy, this would give spesific areas of space some worth.

    Reason to fight and to defend. A really nice, rich planet with right resources might get defensive and manufacturing stations built around it... with nearby sectors mined with area denial drones.
     

    Crimson-Artist

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    this is basically the popular notion of how planet harvesting should be handled but with astroids. According to schema astroids will be respawned with faction points.
     
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    This is a great idea :D it could even replace Planet mining if it's applied to planets and is more efficient over a longer time :D

    imagine hundreds of these guys on a planet sucking out the minerals :D

    And you can have the enhancers on top of the mining/extracting module kinda like an oil rig look. Maybe like 10 enhancers max so as not to be overused and abused. ( fix the rate at something not too high and not too low with max enhancers )

    And there could be a limit on how much a planet/asteroid can give out each tick so you can't cover the entire surface in miners/extractors and get a crapload of stuff infinitely :p

    I think this idea could transform the whole way "mining" is looked at, shading away from the archaic ways of Minecraft XD

    +1
    The enhancers should work in a "decay in enhancement per block added" way.


    Y would represent the amount added for each block, X is # of blocks
    [DOUBLEPOST=1429157042,1429156109][/DOUBLEPOST]Adding on to what I just said, I think that this could work with the two blocks, mining block and enhancer. The miner would feed out to multiple storage blocks. And make asteroids actual entities, so you can place stuff on them, or add a 3rd block, an asteroid marker block, where you mark the mining computer with the marker block to say "mine this asteroid. Of course you could add the miner directly onto a planet in which I would recommend making asteroid entities. We would see something like this:

    Materials mined (calculated per resource) per tick = ((# of Enhancers * (1/(# of enhancers/50))) * (total mass of astros / (# of bodys / 2))) / (total distance of all astros / 1000)


    There are a few problems that need to be addressed:

    1. Do the resources ever run out?
    2. Do we want the stations to be on site or remote?
    3. What components of a body does these miners mine (rock, establishments, or only ore)
    4. Can we select what we want to mine (continuing off previous)
    5. Can we have multiple miners on one body?
    6. Does this break current mining?

    Good idea though...
     
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    NeonSturm

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    Terra Prime
    Mining Station
    Resources per
    sec : .01
    min : .6
    hour: 36
    day : 864
    week: 6'048
    month 26'206
    year: 314'496
    cap : 1 day per default?

    Production cycle
    5 min, 3 units
    Production updates per visit, since last time visited?
    Product per cycle
    Ore . : 1 blocks
    Stone : 2 blocks
    Ratio dependent on asteroid?
    Maintenance per cycle
    Food . : X units
    Drills : Y units
    ...

     
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    Maintenance per cycle
    Food . : X units
    Drills : Y units
    ...

    Hmm, so you are saying that mining stations should require resources to mine materials? I don't know, seems that it would take the fun out. Perhaps the thing requires a drill every X units to prevent people from simply leaving the stations for months on end. But how much would these drills take in terms of resources themselves. Just don't want to spend more resources than you can mine mining...
     

    NeonSturm

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    Hmm, so you are saying that mining stations should require resources to mine materials? I don't know, seems that it would take the fun out.
    The E-Cell cycle:
    Food (maybe a few ECells) -> Silicon-Mine : silicon
    Silicon -> Solar Station : Energy-Cells
    Energy-Cells -> Agrarian Stations : corn, ... -> Food refinery : compressed food​
    The output of this Station-Squad was balanced in a way that there were always more resources cycling between stations than what was produced.
    ((This way the surplus product can only be <x% of total stock,
    but as the chain is not balanced out perfectly, some products may have a bigger surplus or some stations have some idle-time))​
    The economy : players + NPCs have to buy at shops which have their production stock full and sell where a requirement stock was low in order to keep it running.
    If nobody cares to deliver supplies, they stall requirements and wait for new requirements before continue production.

    Thus it requires player attention to continue production.​
    Of-course you could build Agrarian+Solar Stations as one Station + Silicon-Mine+Food-Refinery in one Station in StarMade.
    But mixing all together into one station should be prohibited by the requirement of «ECells+Food -> Mine» and «Silicon (or empty ECells)->Solar-Station»

    I suggest to make the required resources in the circle (primary charged|drained ECells, secondary Food|Dung) have >=80% mass|volume compared to 20% total surplus per cycle.
     

    Winterhome

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    The E-Cell cycle:
    Food (maybe a few ECells) -> Silicon-Mine : silicon
    Silicon -> Solar Station : Energy-Cells
    Energy-Cells -> Agrarian Stations : corn, ... -> Food refinery : compressed food​
    The output of this Station-Squad was balanced in a way that there were always more resources cycling between stations than what was produced.
    ((This way the surplus product can only be <x% of total stock,
    but as the chain is not balanced out perfectly, some products may have a bigger surplus or some stations have some idle-time))​
    The economy : players + NPCs have to buy at shops which have their production stock full and sell where a requirement stock was low in order to keep it running.
    If nobody cares to deliver supplies, they stall requirements and wait for new requirements before continue production.

    Thus it requires player attention to continue production.​
    Of-course you could build Agrarian+Solar Stations as one Station + Silicon-Mine+Food-Refinery in one Station in StarMade.
    But mixing all together into one station should be prohibited by the requirement of «ECells+Food -> Mine» and «Silicon (or empty ECells)->Solar-Station»

    I suggest to make the required resources in the circle (primary charged|drained ECells, secondary Food|Dung) have >=80% mass|volume compared to 20% total surplus per cycle.

    In X3, you were able to link stations together for factory loops, thus turning them into larger individual stations.
     

    Edymnion

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    Benefit of having it on asteroids as opposed to planet based is that asteroids are already recognized as distinct entities, and they are always the same kind. Planets are random which resources they get, but turning on asteroids in your navigational settings show that not only do we already have code in place saying that the asteroid is a distinct object, but it can read what kind of minerals it has.

    Which means any kind of mining block would only have to check the type of the nearest asteroid, and produce that.