Mining droprates general

[paprika]

This thread is for feedback on my buff to mining turf mineral droprates. Please respond to the poll above and tell me what you think. In about 4-5 days of this thread and playing on sybil I will make a new droprate PR depending on the result of the poll and the feedback in this thread/ingame.

I'm looking to hit a sweet spot in the balance for risk vs reward in regards to monster hunting or regular mining, but I fear I may have buffed droprates too much, so I'm leaning towards scaling the full mineral rate to somewhere in between now and what they used to be. I want your feedback though, especially the mining-inclined players, so if you don't have a forum account now is the time to make one and input your feedback on it.

Ideally, mining should be able to return with a decent amount of minerals 20-30 minutes into the round. That's enough time to get in before the station is totally trashed and competent scientists will have research mostly maxed at that point and be ready to decon uranium/etc. What I'm noticing currently is a huge influx of minerals only 15 or so minutes into the round just by heading over to the west section, so I might up the chance for monsters to spawn while lowering diamond from 3 to 2 in normal mining turfs(it was previously 1 in the weighted list)

Feedback towards the meson change seems mostly positive, on another note.

[paprika]

A link to the PR that was merged (and is now live) for clarity:
https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/3961

[paprika]

Guys you should at least actually play the new droprates before voting that they should be raised come on.

[Lo6a4evskiy]

Guys you should at least actually play the new droprates before voting that they should be raised come on.

Oh jee, somebody else realized that polls absolutely and utterly suck, what a step forward.

I'll play some mining and be back with feedback then. I suggest you use actual posts with explanations instead of polls.

From what I can see in the code, you actually buffed up all of the chances pretty heavily.

Okay, well, I got all of the minerals to R&D at 15 minutes point. East part of asteroid. Got like 2500 points or something like that. Used resonator to mine.

I think east part of asteroid should lack some materials outright. And west part needs some hazardous locations, like I dunno, lava that is blocking the path and you cannot go over or something. Or may be it does a lot of damage to you when you walk over it, something like that.

[Timrod]

I think the mining changes from 7/12 are a largely positive thing and should remain in the game. That said, I still think the ore rates should be buffed to what they were before Erro fucked everything.

[Incomptinence]

Ergo =/= erro.

[Lo6a4evskiy]

By the way, I haven't seen gibtonite at all.

[Incomptinence]

Poked around a bit and the rate of most things is highly satisfactory. I still think plasma should be almost as common as iron so I voted more but I am mostly happy. Ecstatic about mesons cutting through the darkness again, if I can think of anything that made me play less a narrow shaft into red framed darkness was probably the main thing.

Would like the points exchange machine to be on the mining station and be able to make plas steel so it could replace the old smelter but that is a tad off topic.

[Lo6a4evskiy]

Would like the points exchange machine to be on the mining station and be able to make plas steel so it could replace the old smelter but that is a tad off topic.

Then there's no guarantee that miners would actually bring the goods instead of just farming points. Currently you'd have to specifically put a crate or something, dispense all materials and drag them into cargo, why would you do that. On the other hand, many people would be too lazy to get materials down to the station.

[Incomptinence]

If they are just farming points the qm , hop or one miner can do the hauling.

Research could lure them with non mining gear, since that stuff still has a point. I think the resonator is too good a mining tool and breaks the old research mining interaction but oh well.

[Pennwick]

This is a lot of ores. Almost too many. With a resonator I can get a sampling of ores within 3 minutes of leaving the mining station on the west side and with the upgraded melsons I don't even have to risk nicking any of the monster tunnels. Within 10 minutes I probably can get at least 10 diamonds and 15+ of everything else, Enough to surpass 2000 points on my card.

I'm probably back to Science within 15 minutes with all that and either splitting it up between RnD and Robotics or finding RnD empty and just chucking it all at robotics. On those rounds I typically keep some of the Uranium for myself, grind it up and mix up enough Cola to put myself into some sort of perpetual sugar/uranium rush.

Ultimately I kind of agree that the resonator mines a bit too effectively. I'd estimate it about as fast as a sonic Jackhammer that you need to manually click. I feel with the pickaxe the mining rates may be spot on. I've yet to see how this works out in Blob mode. Any semi competent miner will be able to get a dozen silver and Uranium by the ten minute mark.

As a side note with more plasma being found its kind of made Plasteel more economical. However Miners get no points for it and if you're using a crate its kind of all or nothing due to having to empty the thing all in one go. Perhaps a Plasteel Smelter could be developed to place next to the Refiner. Insert x sheets of plasma and x sheets of metal, receive x plasteel. I kind of like the charm of the old miner and it has its uses if Cargo is unpowered but Plasteel is a pain however you do it.

[RG4]

Took a little journey on mining few hours ago and noticed one thing. There is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY to much Uranium. I'm all for mining being useful again but 50 sheets of uranium is a bit much.

[cedarbridge]

Took a little journey on mining few hours ago and noticed one thing. There is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY to much Uranium. I'm all for mining being useful again but 50 sheets of uranium is a bit much.

I think we might have overstepped when there are miners building uranium walls in the hallway with it.

[RG4]

Atleast plasma is in good supply, makes enough sense that it is good supply because it's the whole reason Nanotransen is there in the first place.

[paprika]

On the plate for the next update to mining droprates after the feature freeze is a nerf to uranium sitting in between plasma and silver in rarity and a general scaling back of droprates on normal (west asteroid) turfs.

[RG4]

IMO the rarity of minerals should go as followed
Silver - Common
Plasma - Common
Gold - Uncommon
Diamond - Super Rare
Uranium - Super Rare
There isn't much for basically have a tier system but diamonds and uranium need to the least common mineral while gold,silver ad plasma are in decent supply.

[Incomptinence]

Mineral walls are beautiful and cargo bay should be converted into a glittering palace. Hey it beats guns.

[Cipher3]

IMO the rarity of minerals should go as followed
Silver - Common
Plasma - Common
Gold - Uncommon
Diamond - Super Rare
Uranium - Super Rare
There isn't much for basically have a tier system but diamonds and uranium need to the least common mineral while gold,silver ad plasma are in decent supply.

You think that makes sense until you've actually played RnD or Roboticist. Uranium is actually used far far more widely than gold.

[paprika]

Well, uranium being commonish is good for mining with mechs since you don't have to use energy relays, you can just feed your cell with uranium.

[bandit]

This is a lot of ores. Almost too many. With a resonator I can get a sampling of ores within 3 minutes of leaving the mining station on the west side and with the upgraded melsons I don't even have to risk nicking any of the monster tunnels. Within 10 minutes I probably can get at least 10 diamonds and 15+ of everything else, Enough to surpass 2000 points on my card.

I'm probably back to Science within 15 minutes with all that and either splitting it up between RnD and Robotics or finding RnD empty and just chucking it all at robotics. On those rounds I typically keep some of the Uranium for myself, grind it up and mix up enough Cola to put myself into some sort of perpetual sugar/uranium rush.

Ultimately I kind of agree that the resonator mines a bit too effectively. I'd estimate it about as fast as a sonic Jackhammer that you need to manually click. I feel with the pickaxe the mining rates may be spot on. I've yet to see how this works out in Blob mode. Any semi competent miner will be able to get a dozen silver and Uranium by the ten minute mark.

As a side note with more plasma being found its kind of made Plasteel more economical. However Miners get no points for it and if you're using a crate its kind of all or nothing due to having to empty the thing all in one go. Perhaps a Plasteel Smelter could be developed to place next to the Refiner. Insert x sheets of plasma and x sheets of metal, receive x plasteel. I kind of like the charm of the old miner and it has its uses if Cargo is unpowered but Plasteel is a pain however you do it.

Yeah, now that I have done more mining, the drop rates are a bit high and there is way too much uranium and too little plasma.

[iyaerP]

I like the new droprates. There still exists the problem that nothing in the vendy really helps against goliaths directly. I would really like to see some kind of improved version of the proto-kinetic accellerator that RnD could make so that once we have given them our goodies we could blast goliaths.

[Zsword]

Giving RnD more toys to make for Mining would be great, something more than the 'Hi, thanks for the diamond drill you'renevergonnaseemeagain'.

A more advanced Kin Accelerator that had more than 2 freaking range would be great for that, maybe take away the resonator from the vendomat and make it something that RnD has to make (because I'm sick and tired of this Resonator Master Race mining has right now.) Maybe even an advanced mining drone that actually, like MINES? How about upgraded Mesons that function like pre-analyzer mesons. (Though you'd still need your analyzer for Gibtonyte and making your drone drop stuff.)

... Back mounted Blue space drill that automaticly deposits mined goods into the 'backpack', combining the Botany/Janitor spritsers with Ripley's auto loading, all in a personel package that any miner can utilize without having to be a loud stompy mech?

... and this is a little unrelated, but can we get ripley some ore scanners? Kthx.

[Lo6a4evskiy]

Ripley received mining scanner and speed buffs as well

[ExplosiveCrate]

Can it actually get out of the explosion radius of gibtonite now?

[paprika]

Don't crack gibtonite in a ripley champ

[ColonicAcid]

Ergo =/= erro.

Error has become the boogeyman.
If you're lacking a few braincells and you want to blame a change on a mechanic that you don't have two shits of a clue about just blame Error.
Works 100%.