Salvage beams are boring

[Comradecolonel]

I don't really feel like beams are the big problem. It's really the tedium of mining. Asteroids are everywhere, especially after the new update. All you have to do is run around with your waffle array and you'll come back with a nice spread of resources. The resources themselves are easy to come by, you only need the tool to extract them. The whole process feels like a flat-line. You never really feel like you hit the jackpot. Just find a system with a few belts and you're good to go.

With more diverse sectors and maybe some junk asteroids in a sector, mining would feel a little more engaging. The nice cluster of 6 or so asteroids chock full of resources would actually be something that you hope to find, instead of it being the norm in every sector. Maybe you would run into pirates that would actively try to kill you and steal your resources. Civilian miners might even come along and mine it before you do!

Planet eating just feels ridiculous as well. You come along and rip a whole planet to pieces from orbit. It feel no different from mining an asteroid, just laggier and less efficient. Maybe a good thing to change would be that salvage beams cant work from orbit. You would actually have to mine in atmosphere.

For all the people who have ships made specifically for this, I'm sure you'd be upset! So why not have asteroids the size a planet plate? Nobody said that large scale mining has to die. An asteroid sector could have a small chance to spawn a mega asteroid. This big fellow could have even more resources than a planet plate and also be as diverse as a whole planet.

As far as drills I have an interesting idea. I do remember there being plans for passive resource generation. What if there was a block tied to the generation. You could construct resource extraction facilities on your planet and provides resources for the whole family. Attach it to an asteroid and maybe it can deconstruct it ala shipyard style.

There's definitely ways to spice up resource collection without making it too different. This is a game about doing things how you want, so I see no reason to restrict people to magic beams as the only way to get ahead in Starmade.

 

[Valck]

Risking to sound like a broken record here, but mining might be more of a challenge if cargo were actually meaningful and you couldn't just run around with a sector full of asteroids in your suit's pockets, much less a planet or two.

I'm certain there will be an outcry over how tedious and boring this has to be, but bear with me please; I can only ask you to try it out for yourselves in a fresh universe, with an open mind, and not drop the shutters before even reading the next paragraph ;)
Also bear in mind that what I'm posting here is only my opinion and not a recommendation for the dev team or anything.

I have adjusted the default cargo values by a factor of 100, to have no space compression (CapacityPerBlockMult* = 1 instead of 100) beyond that given by BlockConfig, no mass reduction at all (VolumeMassMultiplier = 1 instead of 0.01), and one unit storage volume for all factories and inventories (*BaseCapacity = 1 instead of 100; 20 instead of 2000 for the player's personal inventory, mostly because meta items take up 1m³ each...).
For those of you who don't know, BlockConfig defines the volume and mass values for all the blocks; most blocks currently have a stored volume from 0.01m³ for terrain to 0.25m³ for advanced armour, as opposed to the actual cubic metre they occupy in world space. Even after my tweaks, that is still a 4:1 to 100:1 compression ratio, i.e. 100 blocks of asteroid minerals still only take up one m³.

The volume changes result in requiring several trips to harvest a full asteroid spawn with a smallish (~ 150t, 2500 blocks) mining ship, and not reducing mass-in-storage keeps balancing engines versus cargo space challenging despite the greatly reduced storage capacity, something to keep in mind if you want to be able to land on planets too.
It also requires to set up warehouses and storage tanks, and generally only works towards slowing down player progression.

So why would a (subjective) "increase of the grind" be a good thing? Because it affects everyone on the server, resulting in less gigantic ship builds, and slower overall expansion. Overall, nobody loses out, only the absolute ship sizes are smaller.
In my opinion it feels more of an accomplishment to mine even a single asteroid this way, without even changing how mining works at all.

Taking it in smaller steps can help prevent the onrush of gigantism, and in my view that goes a long way towards retaining the challenge and sense of achievement a fresh game start brings for longer.

For those who absolutely want to build big, or feel their creativity curtailed, remember there's creative mode, there are shipyards that let you design anything you want without the need to mine even a single resource, and there are servers that hand out millions of credits per hour and other freebies just for being online, or ahem... just the default game configuration - all valid styles of play, just not quite the right ones for me.

Thanks Schine for making this awesome game, and for making it configurable to suit widely different tastes so the weirdos among us can try out weird stuff like this. I can only wish for even more configuration options in the future, and I have a feeling I won't be disappointed.

EDIT:
Attached example config. I had sent that to badmojo as a PM but failed to reply in thread, which may explain the apparent whole in the conversation below...
I figure if anybody else would want to give it a try, maybe a prose description alone isn't enough.

 

[terra mining corp.]

with the cargo update they have made it so you have to build big loot pinata to be plundered

 

[badmojo]

Risking to sound like a broken record here, but mining might be more of a challenge if cargo were actually meaningful and you couldn't just run around with a sector full of asteroids in your suit's pockets, much less a planet or two.

I'm certain there will be an outcry over how tedious and boring this has to be, but bear with me please; I can only ask you to try it out for yourselves in a fresh universe, with an open mind, and not drop the shutters before even reading the next paragraph ;)
Also bear in mind that what I'm posting here is only my opinion and not a recommendation for the dev team or anything.

I have adjusted the default cargo values by a factor of 100, to have no space compression (CapacityPerBlockMult* = 1 instead of 100) beyond that given by BlockConfig, no mass reduction at all (VolumeMassMultiplier = 1 instead of 0.01), and one unit storage volume for all factories and inventories (*BaseCapacity = 1 instead of 100; 20 instead of 2000 for the player's personal inventory, mostly because meta items take up 1m³ each...).
For those of you who don't know, BlockConfig defines the volume and mass values for all the blocks; most blocks currently have a stored volume from 0.01m³ for terrain to 0.25m³ for advanced armour, as opposed to the actual cubic metre they occupy in world space. Even after my tweaks, that is still a 4:1 to 100:1 compression ratio, i.e. 100 blocks of asteroid minerals still only take up one m³.

The volume changes result in requiring several trips to harvest a full asteroid spawn with a smallish (~ 150t, 2500 blocks) mining ship, and not reducing mass-in-storage keeps balancing engines versus cargo space challenging despite the greatly reduced storage capacity, something to keep in mind if you want to be able to land on planets too.
It also requires to set up warehouses and storage tanks, and generally only works towards slowing down player progression.

So why would a (subjective) "increase of the grind" be a good thing? Because it affects everyone on the server, resulting in less gigantic ship builds, and slower overall expansion. Overall, nobody loses out, only the absolute ship sizes are smaller.
In my opinion it feels more of an accomplishment to mine even a single asteroid this way, without even changing how mining works at all.

Taking it in smaller steps can help prevent the onrush of gigantism, and in my view that goes a long way towards retaining the challenge and sense of achievement a fresh game start brings for longer.

For those who absolutely want to build big, or feel their creativity curtailed, remember there's creative mode, there are shipyards that let you design anything you want without the need to mine even a single resource, and there are servers that hand out millions of credits per hour and other freebies just for being online, or ahem... just the default game configuration - all valid styles of play, just not quite the right ones for me.

Thanks Schine for making this awesome game, and for making it configurable to suit widely different tastes so the weirdos among us can try out weird stuff like this. I can only wish for even more configuration options in the future, and I have a feeling I won't be disappointed.

What files do I edit to try this out? I looked around but couldn't find the ones for cargo settings.

 

[badmojo]

Trial #1 was a spectacular failure, I managed to settle on a planet and construct factories and a capsule refinery, a storage box with over 100 cargo, and I had just placed a build block when the pirates showed up. I think that's my first time dying while still trying to get established. I had also changed shops to never spawn, so I was still working on getting the resources to make shields and hadn't even considered making weapons.

I like it, it's still the same starmade, but just takes longer to get established, making you vulnerable to attack for a lot longer. Mining was still boring, but at least my ship was filling up before I got too bored. I probably did 3 mining trips before the pirates showed up and ruined me.

 

[Lecic]

How can they be fixed? Off the top of my head I would suggest lowering their range & effectiveness. But, really I would rather see a drill type system be introduced. With the new rail based turret setups we could make some really nice mining systems. I would love it if we had to do something like dock to an asteroid/planet and then use a drilling arm to dig down into it.

Having played SE, drills are even more boring than salvage beams. At least with salvage, I can look around a little in third person and watch other stuff.

Also, holy collision lag batman

What if mining worked totally differently? What if that one little asteroid you watched some noob mine had as much resources as a plate of a planet, but it also took a lot longer to extract the resources? And that planet you are casually wiping out of existence simply passively generated resources as opposed to acting as a massive asteroid?

That's more of a change to how resources exist in the world, rather than a simple change to salvage beams. Not to say it's not something I want to see, though.

 

[Ravenskysong]

I'd like a mining tool that I hit to charge up, like I do with the jump drive. only when I hit it it eats up the entire asteroid. and only asteroids. The time it takes to charge the drill might only be a little shorter than using salvage beams. yet I find most of my salvage time is spent trying to hit the single blocks I missed the first time. although that could just be because I use the checkerboard mining laser

 

[Bkwrm]

Personally I don't see how actual drills would be that different from salvage beams in the end, it would just be a visual change. You would see weird arrays of tons of drills being pushed into a planet instead, big whoop. Life (players) finds a way.

I do agree that salvage beams is rather boring though. I rather like the idea of constructing resource extractors on planets/asteroids. Basically the same as salvage beams, but would NO LONGER destroy blocks. Needs powered and a chest to deposit everything into, and than it just extracts various resources based off what the "beam" extractor is firing into over time. Only X number can be used on a given area/planet/asteroid/whatever. Players would want to build defensive structures around this of course.

Would lead to fighting and defending extractor structures as ways of defeating supply lines or planting your own after eliminating an enemies supply structure on an asteroid that supplies a rare resource. Or for a total d-bag to use a planet destroyer on and wipe it out for everyone (leading to a huge bounty and war when the owner checks their logs). Or figuring out when a player is making the rounds to pick up their mined resources and than collecting your tax from them (also known as pirating the hell out of them).

My 2 cents.

 

[whooplaah]

One of the main drawbacks I think that the salvage beams have that no one else has mentioned is that I end up with a bunch of crap. I go to an asteroid and I want the ores and shards, but end up with a butt load of dirt. Sure I can make paint out of them, but that's really not as valuable or useful.

If we do as Valk said and change how much room blocks take in storage and apply that to a server, I think it is more likely that players will start to jettison dirt into space so they can keep mining for ores without having to make extra trips.

I don't think that salvage beams are really the problem. I think the problem is that there are no real alternatives to salvage beams. StarMade has 2 options: fight pirates and collect scrap, or mindlessly grind planets. One is highly engaging but completely random, the other is extremely boring but predictable.

I think that the addition of 'eco-friendly harvesters' that passively generate resources over time without destroying a structure would be an interesting addition - but shouldn't replace mining beams. Salvage beams are fast and efficient, but deplete resources and look ugly. Eco-harvest stations are slow, but infinite; and you can have multiple going at once if you can defend them all. This would give different incentive for faction expansion - rather than faction relocation because of resource depletion.

 

[Lecic]

One of the main drawbacks I think that the salvage beams have that no one else has mentioned is that I end up with a bunch of crap. I go to an asteroid and I want the ores and shards, but end up with a butt load of dirt. Sure I can make paint out of them, but that's really not as valuable or useful.

Are you kidding me? Turn that stuff into carved rocks, sell it to shops for huge profit.

 

[Employee763]

Hopefully crews will make this less boring. You can walk around the interior of your ship and interact with them while mining, that'd be fun