Forums » Suggestions
Time to ressurect the old thread... :D Plus I noticed that the skills one was going off topic slightly, so here's a place to put those ideas. Anyway, here's my suggestion of the day: Ever seen Star Trek: Insurrection? That had a great mining thing. For those of you who don't know, it essentially consisted of a ship with large sail thingies. The ship launched small probes into the rings of a planet, and the probes directed the valuable (they made people younger, essentially) dust from the rings into the sails. I'll look for a picture tommorrow, but it's 10:50 and I should get to bed... :P
Picture would help
Pfft 10:50, it's 11:09 now =)
Pfft 10:50, it's 11:09 now =)
My idea on minning is that you have some kind of rocket, but instead of a pointed nose, it has a funnel. You fire it at a roid, and after so many seconds it boomeranges back to you. It would leave a pyisical tunnel, and after so long the "swiss-cheesed" 'roid falls apart.
I like to think you would be able to "park" on top of a roid and activate your mining laser (S-port weapon) and as you did you would gradually gain widgets. Certain roids would yield certain widgets. i.e. you could get hydrogen fuel from ice roids and precious metals from dense rock roids. Some roids would yield very little or nothing at all.
Once a dynamic economy is in place, I envision roids being depleted of widgets if they are heavily mined, just like a trade route becoming less profitable if it is heavily trafficked. Over time all things would return to their equilibrium if left alone, naturally.
Once a dynamic economy is in place, I envision roids being depleted of widgets if they are heavily mined, just like a trade route becoming less profitable if it is heavily trafficked. Over time all things would return to their equilibrium if left alone, naturally.
Morphable terrain eats up too much bandwidth to be practical. Also, in a persistant universe, if a minable 'roid eventually is depleted it goes away, leaving no resources for newer players. Finally, if resources respawn, alla Ultima Online (or Neopets for that matter), then alot of your time 'playing' the game devolves down to sitting at a 'mine' clicking the button as fast as you can in hopes of being one of the few players who actually gets a resource during the few clock cycles before they are completely consumed.
My idea is that you have a homing missile called 'Mining Drone' or something. You target the 'roid that you want to mine and fire the missile. It glides over to the missile (at 55 m/s or something), parks, and spawns an animation that cycles depending on your 'mining' skill and the quality of the resource. After the necessary time lag, the drone glides back to your ship as best as it is able (and if you are still in the sector!) and 'docks'. When the drone docks it deposits a new 'ore widget' of the appropriate type (depending on the resource type) in your cargo hold if space exists, else it jettisons the new widget into space.
An alternate plan would be to have a 'mining beam' which you held on a target for a certain length of time, after which a new 'ore widget' would 'boil' out of the 'roid. You then picked up the widgets just like any sort of cargo.
There are advantages and disadvantages of both plans, but I prefer the drone because 1) it doesn't force you to stay still while mining, thus reducing the tedium of the task, 2) mining with multiple drones is easier and more visually evocative than mining with multiple beams, 3) because the widget is dropped directly into your hold its less easy to scoop someone elses work, and 4) mining drones and similar AI would have a 'cute' sort of pal or sidekick quality to them which would be welcome in what is otherwise a lonely, dull (but profitable), job.
Of course, in a perfect world we could do both and let people pick the one they preferred.
PS: If either gizmo took up a weapon slot, it should take up a large weapon slot. There should be serious advantages to having a ship with large weapon slots, and significant differences in how the ships are used. Having the 'economic weapons' fill a large slot would also greatly improve the utility of the Centaur.
My idea is that you have a homing missile called 'Mining Drone' or something. You target the 'roid that you want to mine and fire the missile. It glides over to the missile (at 55 m/s or something), parks, and spawns an animation that cycles depending on your 'mining' skill and the quality of the resource. After the necessary time lag, the drone glides back to your ship as best as it is able (and if you are still in the sector!) and 'docks'. When the drone docks it deposits a new 'ore widget' of the appropriate type (depending on the resource type) in your cargo hold if space exists, else it jettisons the new widget into space.
An alternate plan would be to have a 'mining beam' which you held on a target for a certain length of time, after which a new 'ore widget' would 'boil' out of the 'roid. You then picked up the widgets just like any sort of cargo.
There are advantages and disadvantages of both plans, but I prefer the drone because 1) it doesn't force you to stay still while mining, thus reducing the tedium of the task, 2) mining with multiple drones is easier and more visually evocative than mining with multiple beams, 3) because the widget is dropped directly into your hold its less easy to scoop someone elses work, and 4) mining drones and similar AI would have a 'cute' sort of pal or sidekick quality to them which would be welcome in what is otherwise a lonely, dull (but profitable), job.
Of course, in a perfect world we could do both and let people pick the one they preferred.
PS: If either gizmo took up a weapon slot, it should take up a large weapon slot. There should be serious advantages to having a ship with large weapon slots, and significant differences in how the ships are used. Having the 'economic weapons' fill a large slot would also greatly improve the utility of the Centaur.
Good post, Celebrim, although I must disagree with you on the point of depletable resources.
"Also, in a persistant universe, if a minable 'roid eventually is depleted it goes away, leaving no resources for newer players."
You mean the 'roid would dissappear? I don't think that would be neccessary. Simply have it slowly regenerate widgets over time. Well known 'roids would not be very profitable since they would generally be overmined, thereby encouraging exploration.
A simple algorithm could be written that would randomly adjust the equilibrium of widgets within existing 'roids throughout the universe over time. Some roids that used to be barren would suddenly prove fruitful (perhaps due to a shift in the 'roid's rotational axis.... rationalize it any way you want). Others would become less bountiful or even barren.
This would prevent players falling into a pattern of making the same mining run over and over again. An exploring newb could just as easily stumble upon a 'roid newly ripe for mining as a veteran player.
"if resources respawn, alla Ultima Online (or Neopets for that matter), then alot of your time 'playing' the game devolves down to sitting at a 'mine' clicking the button as fast as you can in hopes of being one of the few players who actually gets a resource during the few clock cycles before they are completely consumed."
I actually envisioned it as being an automatic pocess (more like EV Nova) where you would sit down on the roid, fire up the mining laser, and widgets would gradually accrue in your cargo bay. True, over-mined roids would not prove very fruitful, but this would encourage exploration. See above paragraph.
I like your idea of the mining drone, and I agree that players should have both options. The laser would probably be cheaper (and more effecient?) since miners would need to remain stationary and in contact with the roid. The drones would probably be more expensive (are they re-usable or do they consume ammo?) but would allow the player to multitask by targeting multiple roids, fly around and wait for them to make their way back.
Also, in the MMORPG version it would be good to have a "mining license" which players could get through the miner's guild (or government or whatever). That way miners would have a comparative advantage over others when searching for minable resources, i.e. some pirate wouldn't be able to blow everyone in a sector up and then decide to go looking for minable roids. If a player was caught mining without a licence, they would face punishment from the miner's guild or the government which owned that particular sector. ( I actually favor the latter possibility).
"Also, in a persistant universe, if a minable 'roid eventually is depleted it goes away, leaving no resources for newer players."
You mean the 'roid would dissappear? I don't think that would be neccessary. Simply have it slowly regenerate widgets over time. Well known 'roids would not be very profitable since they would generally be overmined, thereby encouraging exploration.
A simple algorithm could be written that would randomly adjust the equilibrium of widgets within existing 'roids throughout the universe over time. Some roids that used to be barren would suddenly prove fruitful (perhaps due to a shift in the 'roid's rotational axis.... rationalize it any way you want). Others would become less bountiful or even barren.
This would prevent players falling into a pattern of making the same mining run over and over again. An exploring newb could just as easily stumble upon a 'roid newly ripe for mining as a veteran player.
"if resources respawn, alla Ultima Online (or Neopets for that matter), then alot of your time 'playing' the game devolves down to sitting at a 'mine' clicking the button as fast as you can in hopes of being one of the few players who actually gets a resource during the few clock cycles before they are completely consumed."
I actually envisioned it as being an automatic pocess (more like EV Nova) where you would sit down on the roid, fire up the mining laser, and widgets would gradually accrue in your cargo bay. True, over-mined roids would not prove very fruitful, but this would encourage exploration. See above paragraph.
I like your idea of the mining drone, and I agree that players should have both options. The laser would probably be cheaper (and more effecient?) since miners would need to remain stationary and in contact with the roid. The drones would probably be more expensive (are they re-usable or do they consume ammo?) but would allow the player to multitask by targeting multiple roids, fly around and wait for them to make their way back.
Also, in the MMORPG version it would be good to have a "mining license" which players could get through the miner's guild (or government or whatever). That way miners would have a comparative advantage over others when searching for minable resources, i.e. some pirate wouldn't be able to blow everyone in a sector up and then decide to go looking for minable roids. If a player was caught mining without a licence, they would face punishment from the miner's guild or the government which owned that particular sector. ( I actually favor the latter possibility).
Phaserlight: Please don't take this personally, but based on your comments I don't think you really understand what is at stake nor why I have said what I said.
"I actually envisioned it as being an automatic pocess (more like EV Nova) where you would sit down on the roid..."
No offence, but EV Nova is not to my knowledge a massively multiplayer game and as such has absolutely no bearing on this conversation. You are completely missing the point.
"You mean the 'roid would dissappear? I don't think that would be neccessary."
I was addressing Sir Blastalot's suggestion that roids would be tunneled or fall apart when mined. It's not feasible in a multiplayer game to deform the terrain. Not only is it not necessary, but its not possible.
"Simply have it slowly regenerate widgets over time. Well known 'roids would not be very profitable since they would generally be overmined, thereby encouraging exploration."
And I don't think you understand what it is like to play a game in a universe with thousands of other players. If resources deplete and slowly (or suddenly) regenerate over time, then if your game is popular at all there will be 24 hours a day/7 days a week around _every_ practical resource producer a group of players hovering waiting for thier oppurtunity to get some resources. If 100 resources are produced say on the hour, you can garauntee that at a given resource producer all the resources will be gone by 5 minutes after the hour and you'll be lucky to get any from the most popular resource producers because there will be a queue of players making requests to the resource continually in hopes of getting to the head of the line. If resources are finite enough that they run out, then there will be frantic resource acquisitioning. If resources are not finite enough that scarcity is actually a concern, then you are wasting server time continually updating the quanity of resources available in 1000's of resource produces because there will seldom be a practical difference between infinite resources and more than the community can use.
Rather than encouraging exploration, depletable resources would encourage and reward people that patiently waited for whatever length of time it took for the resource to become available because chasing down a new resource in a finite universe (a given) with finite resources is a fool's errand. More than likely where ever you go someone or three will already be setting thier waiting for the resource to respawn. Those that spend thier time traveling from one empty site to the next will, because of the time they put in travelling, lose out on average to the resource campers.
That isn't the sort of game play that I want to see encouraged.
"I actually envisioned it as being an automatic pocess (more like EV Nova) where you would sit down on the roid..."
No offence, but EV Nova is not to my knowledge a massively multiplayer game and as such has absolutely no bearing on this conversation. You are completely missing the point.
"You mean the 'roid would dissappear? I don't think that would be neccessary."
I was addressing Sir Blastalot's suggestion that roids would be tunneled or fall apart when mined. It's not feasible in a multiplayer game to deform the terrain. Not only is it not necessary, but its not possible.
"Simply have it slowly regenerate widgets over time. Well known 'roids would not be very profitable since they would generally be overmined, thereby encouraging exploration."
And I don't think you understand what it is like to play a game in a universe with thousands of other players. If resources deplete and slowly (or suddenly) regenerate over time, then if your game is popular at all there will be 24 hours a day/7 days a week around _every_ practical resource producer a group of players hovering waiting for thier oppurtunity to get some resources. If 100 resources are produced say on the hour, you can garauntee that at a given resource producer all the resources will be gone by 5 minutes after the hour and you'll be lucky to get any from the most popular resource producers because there will be a queue of players making requests to the resource continually in hopes of getting to the head of the line. If resources are finite enough that they run out, then there will be frantic resource acquisitioning. If resources are not finite enough that scarcity is actually a concern, then you are wasting server time continually updating the quanity of resources available in 1000's of resource produces because there will seldom be a practical difference between infinite resources and more than the community can use.
Rather than encouraging exploration, depletable resources would encourage and reward people that patiently waited for whatever length of time it took for the resource to become available because chasing down a new resource in a finite universe (a given) with finite resources is a fool's errand. More than likely where ever you go someone or three will already be setting thier waiting for the resource to respawn. Those that spend thier time traveling from one empty site to the next will, because of the time they put in travelling, lose out on average to the resource campers.
That isn't the sort of game play that I want to see encouraged.
Here's how I think it should work: each roid has an infinite amount of resources. HOWEVER, the rate at which you retrieve resources varies with the mining activity and roid type. For example, you might get 10 widgets/minute from a huge roid nobody else mines, 5 widgets/minute from a smaller roid nobody else mines, 2 widgets/minute from a huge roid that tons of people mine, and .25 widgets/minute from a smaller roid that tons of people mine. This would encourage people to find their own roids, but would also prevent it from turning into a clickfest (a la the oil rig in the southeast in Project Entropia).
Edit: Oh yeah, it would also vary with the mining equipment used and the mining skill of the character...
Edit: Oh yeah, it would also vary with the mining equipment used and the mining skill of the character...
I like Pyro's idea. I think the Mining License is also a good idea. Having a "Mining Guild" for each nation would add a great element of resource control to the game. Although Gold, not being a unified nation storywise, probably wouldn't have it's own guild.
I think mining is great. But, if you mine in xyz sector, you get xyz's native widget, there should be 3 different grades of widget purity\quality low, normal, high, the equipment you have would get the same chance of mining those no matter the quality of the equipment, but lvl 2 equipment could jettison the low purity and keep the higher ones this costs time though. Lvl 3 could try to purify low grade materials, 2 lows could make one normal, 2 normals could make 1 high, the higher the level of equipment would increase the chance of it purifying the ore or what not.
/me reads SL's idea.
/me drools...
/me drools...
/me laminates his post so the drool doesn't ruin it.
Also, some high level miners could run around the lvl 2 miners collecting the low level ore they reject and purify it.
Or 4 lvl 2 miners can link up to 1 high lvl miner, then the miner can reject the high level ore it has and send it to an even higher level miner, which then trys to combine 2 high level ores into 1 perfect ore, being that the process to do so is extremely difficult and the ore could make great armor for ship makeing it would sell extremely high.
Also, some high level miners could run around the lvl 2 miners collecting the low level ore they reject and purify it.
Or 4 lvl 2 miners can link up to 1 high lvl miner, then the miner can reject the high level ore it has and send it to an even higher level miner, which then trys to combine 2 high level ores into 1 perfect ore, being that the process to do so is extremely difficult and the ore could make great armor for ship makeing it would sell extremely high.
*drool* Kinda like the link gun in UT 2003, but not! :P
Stop drooling over my ideas! I doon't have enough laminate!
Pyro: great idea about the mining rate being related to the number of miners! That seems like a good solution. A) you don't have ppl using the same mining run over and over and over and B) you don't have ppl camping out the roids waiting for resources to respawn.
/me applauds Pyro's idea heartily.
Celebrim: True, I do not have much experience with MMORPG's, so you could be entirely correct about the depletable resources thing and I do see your point. I am just arguing from my current observations on the vendetta test.
Vendetta has a rather static economy at the moment: precious metals will always cost 1,000cr in s14 and sell for 9,000cr in s15. Since this is a rather profitable run, players use it all the time knowing the prices will never change. Of course in real life it doesn't work this way. Basic laws of microeconomics dictate that if the s14 metal market has a high quantity demanded the quantity price will increase. Once this happens, the run would no longer be as profitable causing traders to search for other runs until the quantity demanded and quantity price of metals returns to equilibrium in s14.
What does this mean in terms of gameplay? Trading would be dynamic, no longer simply repeating the same profitable runs hundreds of times. This makes the game more interesting and challenging.
What does this have to do with mining? The same principles apply. If resources are static, people will do the same mining run over and over and over again like a lab rat. Dynamic economies and resources forces the trader/miner to use their skills to search for/predict where the most profitable runs will be.
Now this may be a terrible idea that would never work, I don't know. But in my humble opinion it would take trading/mining to a whole new level and make the game far more realistic. I don't think it would be that hard to implement, just a few simple governing economic principles (laws of scarcity and choice) and the rest follows naturally just like in real life.
/me applauds Pyro's idea heartily.
Celebrim: True, I do not have much experience with MMORPG's, so you could be entirely correct about the depletable resources thing and I do see your point. I am just arguing from my current observations on the vendetta test.
Vendetta has a rather static economy at the moment: precious metals will always cost 1,000cr in s14 and sell for 9,000cr in s15. Since this is a rather profitable run, players use it all the time knowing the prices will never change. Of course in real life it doesn't work this way. Basic laws of microeconomics dictate that if the s14 metal market has a high quantity demanded the quantity price will increase. Once this happens, the run would no longer be as profitable causing traders to search for other runs until the quantity demanded and quantity price of metals returns to equilibrium in s14.
What does this mean in terms of gameplay? Trading would be dynamic, no longer simply repeating the same profitable runs hundreds of times. This makes the game more interesting and challenging.
What does this have to do with mining? The same principles apply. If resources are static, people will do the same mining run over and over and over again like a lab rat. Dynamic economies and resources forces the trader/miner to use their skills to search for/predict where the most profitable runs will be.
Now this may be a terrible idea that would never work, I don't know. But in my humble opinion it would take trading/mining to a whole new level and make the game far more realistic. I don't think it would be that hard to implement, just a few simple governing economic principles (laws of scarcity and choice) and the rest follows naturally just like in real life.
Having a dynamic economy is somewhat different than having enforced scarcity. The devs have said that the feature set includes a certain amount of dynamism to the economy. I have no problem with a limited sort of price adjustment based on the number of buyers and sellers in a sector over a period of time, but would protest anything that leads to exclusionary resource hoarding and collecting.
Bump for an essential read.
You certainly dont want stations to adjust their prices based on stock on hand, or you get that wonderful farming exploit where players can simply buy and sell to the same station with a suitable delay to get the prices to ajust to reflect the new surplus/scarcity. Ive seen that ruin the economy in other games.
Regarding the mining... Either the location of good minerals changes, or it does not. If it does not change, then you ahve a camping situation. If it does, you are stuck explaining graphically or or otherwise why *this* roid field has no natural resources any more.
A possible solution is to make asteroids individually depletable. But, to create an asteroid belt that swings through the sector over time. This would involve changing the map over time which is not ideal - you could use some tricks to represent a large cluster of asteroids as just a single point, and a rng seed that generates the cluster around that point, then each of those points can be a moving object (but a very slow moving object. It might take a week of realtime before a noticable difference in the sector is seen id guess.
Still - there are the bandwidth considerations inherent in tracking the depleted status of every minable rock in a cluster - which might not be a problem if the number of minable rocks in a cluster is kept small compared to the total cluster size, and the minables were destroyed. Or something.
At any rate - visually it would be nice to have an asteroid field left behind even after its all mined out... (thus prompting newbie cargo pilots to check it out in case anything small was left behind).
Its a hard problem, but one that, if solved "right" provides both an opportunity for players to engage in exploration - possibly the sale of positions of minable resources - as well as encouraging miners to go somplace new when the old place gets mined out.
Regarding the mining... Either the location of good minerals changes, or it does not. If it does not change, then you ahve a camping situation. If it does, you are stuck explaining graphically or or otherwise why *this* roid field has no natural resources any more.
A possible solution is to make asteroids individually depletable. But, to create an asteroid belt that swings through the sector over time. This would involve changing the map over time which is not ideal - you could use some tricks to represent a large cluster of asteroids as just a single point, and a rng seed that generates the cluster around that point, then each of those points can be a moving object (but a very slow moving object. It might take a week of realtime before a noticable difference in the sector is seen id guess.
Still - there are the bandwidth considerations inherent in tracking the depleted status of every minable rock in a cluster - which might not be a problem if the number of minable rocks in a cluster is kept small compared to the total cluster size, and the minables were destroyed. Or something.
At any rate - visually it would be nice to have an asteroid field left behind even after its all mined out... (thus prompting newbie cargo pilots to check it out in case anything small was left behind).
Its a hard problem, but one that, if solved "right" provides both an opportunity for players to engage in exploration - possibly the sale of positions of minable resources - as well as encouraging miners to go somplace new when the old place gets mined out.
some ice roids are targetable. perhaps if drones are implemented, all a player has to worry about is where their drones are placed. I think that there should be an upper limit to how many drones each player can have working at once (what if I were to cover a big roid with 100 drones?) to further encourage exploration.
Two things:
1. I don't see why all roids have to be minable. You could save a lot of bandwidth by making "special" roids, ones that have certain types of minerals. Non special roids would just be hunks of dull rock that you can do nothing with, but special roids can be mined in the ways said above... I particularly like both the laser and the drone way. I agree that there should be many types of raw ores.
2. Ore should regenerate in the special roids in a efficient way. If there are to be Mining Companies/Guilds that refine the ores and sell them, there have to be patches of special roids, maybe in a large regular roid belt. That way, a station can be built and people belonging to that company can simply mine ores and come back to dock. When ore needs to be delivered to stations owned by the government/larger guild that owns the mining guild, people can just take it all from the station and trade it.
1. I don't see why all roids have to be minable. You could save a lot of bandwidth by making "special" roids, ones that have certain types of minerals. Non special roids would just be hunks of dull rock that you can do nothing with, but special roids can be mined in the ways said above... I particularly like both the laser and the drone way. I agree that there should be many types of raw ores.
2. Ore should regenerate in the special roids in a efficient way. If there are to be Mining Companies/Guilds that refine the ores and sell them, there have to be patches of special roids, maybe in a large regular roid belt. That way, a station can be built and people belonging to that company can simply mine ores and come back to dock. When ore needs to be delivered to stations owned by the government/larger guild that owns the mining guild, people can just take it all from the station and trade it.