Mining, in its current state, kinda sucks. It has some problems!
Powergaming
Currently, mining is incentivized by giving miners cool powergaming gear to grab that they can only get if they do at least a little bit of mining. That, and their main medical supplies and gear rely on points they get from bringing in ores. Problem being, they don't have many practical uses on lavaland for the things they do find- most of it is either useless, or only good for validhunting on the station, with very few cool and unique items in between.
Ash Storms
Ash storms suck. There are four outcomes to ash storms and they all suck.
- You have a capsule. You get to sit in the capsule and tab out until the storm is over.
- You don't have a capsule, but there's a nearby ruin. You chill out in the ruin and tab out until the storm is over.
- You don't have a capsule or a ruin. You run around frantically and blindly and probably die.
- You're ash storm immune. You stand in the same spot and tab out until the storm is over because you can't see anything and don't want to run into a chasm.
See a running theme? The solution to an ash storm is to find a safe place and sit there for several minutes. The game is deliberately wasting your time.
They also conflict with mining's loot-centric design because you have to either plan around the ash storm or get fucked because one came up in the middle of a boss/tendril fight, being forced to disengage or die.
Finally, there's the difference with Icebox- namely, it doesn't have any storms on the second or third levels, which is where most miners do their work, so you end up not needing capsule pods except if you want a quick breather to AFK/heal or track where exactly a location is; this is great gameplay niche for them.
Solo-gameplay
As it is, mining encourages going alone. You get less powergamer loot if you're sharing it with another miner. You cover half the ground and get less minerals and points because you're splitting with other miners. People just tend to leg it around on their own unless they're new and learning. Miners just carry GPSes and scream on the radio if they're about to die, sometimes getting rescued and sometimes not. Oranges has gone on record that he doesn't want to support solo gameplay- so why is mining in its current state?
Inflated numbers
Why are PKAs a heavy laser cannon with infinite ammo?
Why are station weapons so arbitrarily impractical on lavaland?
Why don't proto-kinetic crushers work on some mobs?
These things don't make sense. Lavaland mobs are arbitrarily resistant to station weapons to the point of silliness. This causes a problem with certain mobs- for example, when elites or megafauna get on the station and wreak immense havoc and destruction. We no longer have the incredible burst damage of buckshot combat shotgun, so I don't see why the numbers on lavaland are still so ridiculous besides 'nobody has pushed through a PR to nerf them'.
I do have a couple solutions to put forth; i'm not just here to bitch about how current mining is kinda shit.
► Show Spoiler
Rework lavaland mobs
They should be strength-in-numbers, not tanks that need ridiculous weapons to fight. The impracticality of station weapons shouldn't be that they don't deal enough damage, but that you run out of ammo too quickly- PKAs and crushers have unlimited ammo, making them ideal for handling the nigh-infinite legions of lavaland for the stretches of time that mining requires to do anything productive.
Ideally we wouldn't be removing the existing mobs, but adding more variants to them- like a goliath that is more fragile but explodes when killed.
Replace ash storms.
They suck. Get rid of them. They only serve to make mining more boring / slower and replenish ground ash for more glass, which isn't something that's really needed because there's a TON of ground to dig up. Are they cool and thematic? Yes. But they ruin the mining experience by making players sit out of the round when they could be shooting goliaths. Capsule shelters can stay as an emergency 'AFK chamber' / a place to rest, plus a place to slowly heal.
Replace them with
earthquakes. These would keep with the theme of lavaland being a hostile, dangerous environment. Have the earthquakes spawn caves similar to the ones on Icebox that continuously spawn monsters. Encourage miners working together by presenting these dangers that spawn many mobs which might overwhelm less experienced miners.
Make minebots less of a trap option and more of a legitimate ghost role
Make them able to take more damage and slightly faster. They should be useful to the miner that needs them because nobody else signed on to be a miner this shift, even if they can't be sentient; they should have something similar to the pet commands system that Ian and McGriff have, so that when they aren't being controlled you can rapidly point at yourself to have them follow you, point at a monster to have the minebot attack it, point at the wall to mine it. Also, make their lights brighter.
Add Mining Objectives
Mining should have its own objectives similar in design to station ones. Essentially, the idea is to give the mining crew their own mission for the round. Things that encourage miners, cargo, and perhaps different roles on-station to work with each other. Have them show up on the end round screen just like station objectives, and give some sort of reward for completing them. A few objective ideas:
- Take out an enemy outpost. Potential variants/rewards: Enemy loot(less stuff like deswords, more useful niche items like chameleon gear). Drone factory variant that, once overcome, can pump out sentient minebots on demand.
- Recover leftover gear from the previous shift's failed mining expedition Potential rewards: free mining gear, an auxiliary base with a hookup for the ORM, so you don't have to walk as far to return your ores
- Defeat some lavaland elites(which would need a rework anyway under these suggestions). Potential rewards: a safer lavaland, centcomm drops in machines that stop/suppress earthquakes now that it's safe to do so.
Give the MRLD to mining as a research/vendor reward
I'm sure miners would love to have a glowstick gun / an upgrade to the mining marker beacons. I know I would. Marker beacons are currently too clunky to use, but giving them a combat application to rapidly light up an area as an earthquake is happening so you don't have to worry about not seeing enemies is nice. (I honestly don't know why this piece of equipment goes to engineering instead of mining anyway)