Mining rework: epic floyd style

[Qustinnus]

hello gamers, seeing as material datums are practically done, I wanna work on somenthing else that relates to materials; Mining.

Currently mining is more of a side-chore for shaft miners, which is clearly not the intended purpose of a job called mining. The fun part of mining right now is exploring and combat. I think for a rework to work we should seperate these two things, an explorer role for people who want to beat up lavaland creatures, and a mining job. Now the main problem with mining is that people hate the gameplay, can you blame them? you click on blocks and chase ores. There's no real gameplay.

I'd like to change all of that and make mining something that is intrinsically rewarding (I'm also currently thinking of interesting extrinsic awards, avoiding the pitfalls we ran into with lavaland loot). I made a super small document here. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nZB ... sp=sharing and have already started coding it.

The major risk here is how fun it'll be, and I'm going to try my best to create an intrinsically fun game-loop and test it out with players, and expand depending on feedback. Besides that, I'm not sure yet if this re-work should give extrinsic rewards as I think giving OP loot to the miners might be a shit idea (Look at current lavaland as an example)

Just to specify, keep in mind that the automization part of this rework will mostly be the things such as moving the boulders around, while a lot of the other tasks are still manual labor. Besides that, I will hopefully think of interesting extrinsic rewards that make it fun to work towards a goal


simple chart (not everything on this will probably be in in the first PR, specifically the passive mining part)

[PKPenguin321]

Make mining something you do remotely via a console where you play an RTS that has you defend your ore silos, gather materials to build more ore silos, build mining units, build combat units (for defending your silos). If you can get to the RTS mainframe on-planet in person and move it to the station you can build RTS drones there that you can command to attack the crew

Think about it

[Qustinnus]

>rts
>byond

yeah ok id rather die than code that buddy

[PKPenguin321]

It would play like Blob does currently, probably not like a real RTS, but saying it's an RTS gives a good picture of what I mean

[datorangebottle]

I already gave you a ton of feedback, just came here to say that I like it and to keep up the good work.

[Kryson]

Will the boulders have randomized element contents or be based around mineral types?

In the real world the primary ore of lead; galena(mainly PbS), is also the primary ore of silver and the most important titanium ore; Ilmenite contain an equimolar amount of iron.

Certain minerals also tend to be found close to other mineral types such as ilmenite (FeTiO3) being associated with hematite(Fe2O3).

If you do choose the mineral implementation, will there be one mineral type per boulder or several?

[Whoneedspacee]

theres one of these threads every couple months then i never hear anything actually being coded or done.

[Qustinnus]

Will the boulders have randomized element contents or be based around mineral types?

In the real world the primary ore of lead; galena(mainly PbS), is also the primary ore of silver and the most important titanium ore; Ilmenite contain an equimolar amount of iron.

Certain minerals also tend to be found close to other mineral types such as ilmenite (FeTiO3) being associated with hematite(Fe2O3).

If you do choose the mineral implementation, will there be one mineral type per boulder or several?

I'll most likely go for randomized elements, for simplicity and to make it more gamey. The current implementation for non-vein boulders (Aka any turf you mine) is it picks between 70 and 95% how much of the rock is actually just rock (sand). After that, and this section is mostly a placeholder system as I'm not sure how to distribute it better, it picks between 1 and 3 extra materials. Then it decides what materials based on a weighted list (iron being very common) and then add its remaining share of that material (based on how many extra materials there are) to the boulder.


for example, an example non-vein boulder could be 82% rock, roll for 3 extra materials, get iron twice so 12% iron(18 / 3 * 2 = 12) and silver 6%(18 / 3) making a boulder of (82% rock, 12% iron, 6% silver) this rock can then be processed for the amounts required

theres one of these threads every couple months then i never hear anything actually being coded or done.

I made this thread for feedback because I don't want people to act as if I'm changing things without polling it with the players. The branch is active here if you'd like to see my progress: https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/ ... ningrework

[John_Gobbel]

I think this is a really good change to mining and will introduce a lot of interesting interactions between mining, the ashlizards, and freegolems. I think that the process you have is really good, but I don't do mining, so I hope some people who main/play it a lot come here to give you feedback.

One thing that I think would be cool is to have uncovering ore veins further out has higher risk but greater rewards and that miners setting up defenses/countermeasures for dangerous mobs would be a good idea. If a miner leaves their deposits alone for too long without proper setup, there should be consequences.

I also love the idea of having to go out and get deposits by fighting through a bunch of mobs and I think there's a lot of potential in that and for traitor-related gear that comes from mining with this change.

[PKPenguin321]

I like the flowchart you put in your OP, makes it very easy to digest
That said, the gameplay for it seems a bit simplistic. If you don't automate it, you're essentially just dragging boulders back and forth with very little gain (sounds kind of boring). If you do automate it, it kind of seems like you no longer have a job to do at all. What I'm getting at is that it could use more direct interaction outside of building automation infrastructure that isn't just hauling boulders

[Arianya]

I'm concerned about your lack of ideas for rewards, especially since you disparage the current lavaland loot

Bear in mind before trying to rip loot out that mining is currently a role that must be populated for several other systems (such as research/protolathes) to work as intended. Currently we don't have any issues with getting consistent mining players, and while there's nothing wrong with changing the gameplay loop, you need to think very carefully about the reward loop to avoid disincentivizing the role and causing knock on issues.

Also bear in mind that the way lavaland loot currently work gives a reward for dealing with tendrils/hostile mobs - if you disincentivize this you'll just see people walling off tendrils or whatever other method they have of avoiding the issue entirely.

[Qustinnus]

I'm concerned about your lack of ideas for rewards, especially since you disparage the current lavaland loot

Bear in mind before trying to rip loot out that mining is currently a role that must be populated for several other systems (such as research/protolathes) to work as intended. Currently we don't have any issues with getting consistent mining players, and while there's nothing wrong with changing the gameplay loop, you need to think very carefully about the reward loop to avoid disincentivizing the role and causing knock on issues.

Also bear in mind that the way lavaland loot currently work gives a reward for dealing with tendrils/hostile mobs - if you disincentivize this you'll just see people walling off tendrils or whatever other method they have of avoiding the issue entirely.

the new z level doesn't have monsters, it's not a monster hunter game. Besides that I'd like to make the job intrinsically fun, similar to how setting up a good SM is something some players enjoy doing..

Automation is also not actually going to be strong enough to allow you to quit working

[Arianya]

I'm concerned about your lack of ideas for rewards, especially since you disparage the current lavaland loot

Bear in mind before trying to rip loot out that mining is currently a role that must be populated for several other systems (such as research/protolathes) to work as intended. Currently we don't have any issues with getting consistent mining players, and while there's nothing wrong with changing the gameplay loop, you need to think very carefully about the reward loop to avoid disincentivizing the role and causing knock on issues.

Also bear in mind that the way lavaland loot currently work gives a reward for dealing with tendrils/hostile mobs - if you disincentivize this you'll just see people walling off tendrils or whatever other method they have of avoiding the issue entirely.

the new z level doesn't have monsters, it's not a monster hunter game. Besides that I'd like to make the job intrinsically fun, similar to how setting up a good SM is something some players enjoy doing..

Automation is also not actually going to be strong enough to allow you to quit working

My concern then is that you end up with the same issue engineering sometimes/frequently has, where no one interested in the SM is playing and either the station has to be jury rigged by volunteers or falls into powerlessness

Arguably this would be worse because you don't even have a "Chief Engineer" role who is obliged by the rules to ensure there is power - you aren't going to be able to oblige the QM (who isn't even a head) to go down and mine himself if his miners are AWOL/dead/non-existent

I'd be careful not to get blinded by tunnel vision - mining isn't a monster hunter game but that's part of what makes the role popular, especially for people who want to contribute to the round (minerals, etc) while not having to engage in general station life.

While it's easy to accuse mining of being a role not focused on mining, so long as the minerals get to station I don't think that's good reasoning in and of itself to rework the entire lavaland/job/mechanics/etc.

[Qustinnus]

I'm concerned about your lack of ideas for rewards, especially since you disparage the current lavaland loot

Bear in mind before trying to rip loot out that mining is currently a role that must be populated for several other systems (such as research/protolathes) to work as intended. Currently we don't have any issues with getting consistent mining players, and while there's nothing wrong with changing the gameplay loop, you need to think very carefully about the reward loop to avoid disincentivizing the role and causing knock on issues.

Also bear in mind that the way lavaland loot currently work gives a reward for dealing with tendrils/hostile mobs - if you disincentivize this you'll just see people walling off tendrils or whatever other method they have of avoiding the issue entirely.

the new z level doesn't have monsters, it's not a monster hunter game. Besides that I'd like to make the job intrinsically fun, similar to how setting up a good SM is something some players enjoy doing..

Automation is also not actually going to be strong enough to allow you to quit working

My concern then is that you end up with the same issue engineering sometimes/frequently has, where no one interested in the SM is playing and either the station has to be jury rigged by volunteers or falls into powerlessness

Arguably this would be worse because you don't even have a "Chief Engineer" role who is obliged by the rules to ensure there is power - you aren't going to be able to oblige the QM (who isn't even a head) to go down and mine himself if his miners are AWOL/dead/non-existent

I'd be careful not to get blinded by tunnel vision - mining isn't a monster hunter game but that's part of what makes the role popular, especially for people who want to contribute to the round (minerals, etc) while not having to engage in general station life.

While it's easy to accuse mining of being a role not focused on mining, so long as the minerals get to station I don't think that's good reasoning in and of itself to rework the entire lavaland/job/mechanics/etc.

I'd like to focus on making it intrinsically fun, and if that doesn't work I have ideas for systems that could make it more fun for miners in a similar way to how jobs like chemistry have cool things to do.

[bandit]

this kind of sounds like the drills that polaris has

[Balanced Breakfast]

So I decided to go ahead and make an account to discuss this, because shaft miner's a job I've been playing pretty heavily recently. I can't speak for everyone else who plays and enjoys the role, but I can provide my personal input based on experiences. That being said, currently I find there is a balance between exploration and mining minerals. With lavaland's layout, you will have to tunnel through the mineral deposits to find dungeons and enemies, and with how the point system works, miners are given incentive to bring back materials to the station so that they get better equipment. If, for example, I wanted to stock on a hardsuit and a jetpack in preparation for messing around in Pride's room or had plans to create minebots to help me deal with legions and goliaths, I know I'd have to farm ore to get the credits I need. I think it's fair to admit that mining at the moment is pretty easy. You just point and shoot with a kinetic accelerator or plasma cutter, so I understand if you think the gameplay's a bit too mindless in the status quo and needs some nuance. But right now, I think miners are incentivized to help the station. Sure, there's going to be one or two that wander into a boss and die, but you're never going to find a system or a policy that accounts for everything, especially idiots. If this is purely about incentive, one thing you can do is provide more rewards for miners. Better suits, weapons, and tools that might come in handy for dealing with lavaland's weather and monsters.

And I think that's my problem with the system you're planning to introduce. On paper, the concepts are interesting, where you have to prospect ore veins and set up equipment to harvest it, and upgrade that technology over time to get better results, but it starts to cross the line into tedium. From a gameplay perspective, I don't think turning the job into something similar to a cookie clicker is going to make it more interesting. The effect will be the opposite, where people will see the job as less of an adventure and more as a chore. I understand you want to breathe new life into this job, but a complicated idea is rarely a feasible one, and give that you feel that a flowchart is needed to articulate your idea, I think you need to step back and reassess what all is needed in your proposed rework and what all is clutter.

From what I see, the outcome is probably going to be as follows: most people will queue for explorer and only a handful of niche players or others who feel like somebody has to be gathering ore will sign up as miner. Because of the low turnout and the new system that decreases mining efficiency in early game until upgrades are made, you're going to have less of a resource turnout. In other words, the problem you're trying to fix would just get worse.

I'm sure you plan to test this idea before making the update, but what I'd advise is converting one of the unused servers (i.e. US Event Hall) into an open beta server where people can try the new system and give their input. Maybe I'm just grouchy because you're taking my toys away, but I don't think splitting the job into two parts and nerfing ore retrieval is going to help the job any.

[Qustinnus]

So I decided to go ahead and make an account to discuss this, because shaft miner's a job I've been playing pretty heavily recently. I can't speak for everyone else who plays and enjoys the role, but I can provide my personal input based on experiences. That being said, currently I find there is a balance between exploration and mining minerals. With lavaland's layout, you will have to tunnel through the mineral deposits to find dungeons and enemies, and with how the point system works, miners are given incentive to bring back materials to the station so that they get better equipment. If, for example, I wanted to stock on a hardsuit and a jetpack in preparation for messing around in Pride's room or had plans to create minebots to help me deal with legions and goliaths, I know I'd have to farm ore to get the credits I need. I think it's fair to admit that mining at the moment is pretty easy. You just point and shoot with a kinetic accelerator or plasma cutter, so I understand if you think the gameplay's a bit too mindless in the status quo and needs some nuance. But right now, I think miners are incentivized to help the station. Sure, there's going to be one or two that wander into a boss and die, but you're never going to find a system or a policy that accounts for everything, especially idiots. If this is purely about incentive, one thing you can do is provide more rewards for miners. Better suits, weapons, and tools that might come in handy for dealing with lavaland's weather and monsters.

And I think that's my problem with the system you're planning to introduce. On paper, the concepts are interesting, where you have to prospect ore veins and set up equipment to harvest it, and upgrade that technology over time to get better results, but it starts to cross the line into tedium. From a gameplay perspective, I don't think turning the job into something similar to a cookie clicker is going to make it more interesting. The effect will be the opposite, where people will see the job as less of an adventure and more as a chore. I understand you want to breathe new life into this job, but a complicated idea is rarely a feasible one, and give that you feel that a flowchart is needed to articulate your idea, I think you need to step back and reassess what all is needed in your proposed rework and what all is clutter.

From what I see, the outcome is probably going to be as follows: most people will queue for explorer and only a handful of niche players or others who feel like somebody has to be gathering ore will sign up as miner. Because of the low turnout and the new system that decreases mining efficiency in early game until upgrades are made, you're going to have less of a resource turnout. In other words, the problem you're trying to fix would just get worse.

I'm sure you plan to test this idea before making the update, but what I'd advise is converting one of the unused servers (i.e. US Event Hall) into an open beta server where people can try the new system and give their input. Maybe I'm just grouchy because you're taking my toys away, but I don't think splitting the job into two parts and nerfing ore retrieval is going to help the job any.

the idea isn't to change it into cookie clicker, as you're not going to be sitting around doing nothing while a machine does your job. The passive part of this is going to be extremely small because I dislike players being unable to do anything. I want the exploration part of finding the right minerals to be fun (Taking inspiration from Goon a bit in that sense).

I definitely think adding more weapons tools and gear for miners to use for their PvE tours is a horrid idea. There's already too much clutter in that area. The idea is that mining becomes its own fun little job like botany or chemistry that has it's own purpose, is fun to a degree on its own, and offers interesting rewards down the line.

but yes, I'll definitely want this testmerged for a relatively long time to get everything down.

feel free to DM me at @Qustinnus#8423 with feedback and ideas

[halitosisman]

I'm having some trouble seeing how this is fundamentally different from the existing mining mechanic. You're still effectively clicking on mineral deposits outside the base and then running back to a machine and clicking on it to deposit the ores.

Just a suggestion: Under your system, the refining and potentially some of the mineral transportation is automated. Why not automate the entire mining process? Building factories is fun. Clicking on ore deposits is not.

Also, your document doesn't elaborate a lot on this. What are your reasons for building an entirely separate mining Z-level?

[Swagile]

not gunna lie if you somehow made PKM's idea of a RTS kinda like blob but for mining, id 100 percent have shaft miner on high all the time

no offense but it sounds more rewarding and fun than trying to turn shaft miner into quasi-atmos/engineering, something that only like 20% of players enjoy truly delving into

[Qustinnus]

I'm having some trouble seeing how this is fundamentally different from the existing mining mechanic. You're still effectively clicking on mineral deposits outside the base and then running back to a machine and clicking on it to deposit the ores.

Just a suggestion: Under your system, the refining and potentially some of the mineral transportation is automated. Why not automate the entire mining process? Building factories is fun. Clicking on ore deposits is not.

Also, your document doesn't elaborate a lot on this. What are your reasons for building an entirely separate mining Z-level?

I want exploration to have a bigger role with less focus on monster hunting. I realize changing lavaland to be more difficult to travel through will just serve to piss off people who really enjoy hunting monsters and the existing content, so instead I'm opting in for a seperate z-level with its own atmosphere, challenge, and more.

For your other concerns, you can automate parts of the process, it's just more efficient to do things manually too but you can have a small degree of automatization.

Besides that, I realize I havn't talked about this much because I want to try out several things that seem interesting to me, but I'd like to focus on you not focusing on quantity (aka mining as many boulders as possible) but instead focus on finding the right boulders with good composition, as generic boulders will have shit amounts of resources.

not gunna lie if you somehow made PKM's idea of a RTS kinda like blob but for mining, id 100 percent have shaft miner on high all the time

no offense but it sounds more rewarding and fun than trying to turn shaft miner into quasi-atmos/engineering, something that only like 20% of players enjoy truly delving into

that first one is just not happening because of the work involved. besides that, I don't plan to turn it into anything like atmos/engineering, I hate those jobs. I think if you think that you're misunderstanding my idea. It's more about finding the right ore deposits and avoiding the environment while mining. Part of this will be fueled by the material datum system, where things such as boulders that contain plasma will literaly blow up if you fire a plasma cutter at them.












Anyways, in general I understand the concerns that we run into the same issues as we are now. I atleast like to think that by raising the focus on the finding of good ores in a fun way we can avoid this, the moving rocks around and clicking on machines should be 20% of the work, with the rest being focused on exploration and having fun.

I dislike having to admit this but I'm kinda thinking of the few good tycoon games Roblox (that weren't literaly just idle games) had where this loop worked really well. Lumber Tycoon 2 stood out in this aspect to me but in a different way and clunkier than what I want.

[PKPenguin321]

Only tangentially on topic, but I wrote a """competing""" design doc for my RTS idea (I'm not actively coding it so expect nothing of it, but I really liked writing the ideas I had for it down so yeah)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XuU ... sp=sharing

[Naloac]

Factorio proves this type of system already works as a good gameplay loop, wouldnt it be a good idea with piping and the chem lab rework to build this into the same "mining" job? At the same time I really like the idea of RTS mechanics.
Miners need something to keep them going or some type of challenge to keep em coming back. as you said most likely with the area being hazardous for the miners. Also wouldnt it be a good idea to have the miner be the one incharge of making ways to smelt down the ore then bring it to an ore silo and have it auto deposited? making the gameplay loop setting up converyers and factories to speed up production to do higher tier stuff, ala factorio ?

[Qustinnus]

like i said multiple times, RTS is not happening.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

why not some simple "you find a small hole on the floor" kind of small rooms where you can go in to explore by using a rope/send drone with inside ruins/caves/necropolis with traps for epic loot

[duckay]

this sounds great, though, i hope there are SCVs included in this

[Booktower]

the new z level doesn't have monsters, it's not a monster hunter game. Besides that I'd like to make the job intrinsically fun, similar to how setting up a good SM is something some players enjoy doing..

Experimenting with new SM setups or varying existing setups is interesting, doing the same thing over and over every round is not.

[wesoda25]

I think really we'd need to see it in action to really judge whether or not it'll be an improvement. What does worry me is that explorer will be powergamer plus since this would make it so that they have no obligation to the station, and literally only help themselves from exploring. I honestly thought that our method of forcing them to mine in order to be able to get loot successfully was a pretty good one, and if you were to make this a thing its destabilize that form of balance we had (in a generally unbalanced aspect of the game tbf). All in all mining/lavaland is a headache and rn its questionable if this will be an improvement, it'll definitely take a lot of work and revising after the initial PR, so get ready for the shit storm I guess.

Also though it'd be cool if the gas pockets could have rare gasses sometimes, like hypernoblium, or devastating things such as trit other times. Making it so that many different resources can be harvested from lavaland (the second part of the z level) would honestly be really cool, a little something for everyone (rare plants for botany, etc). Maybe the new miner role could start with gear to gather mats at first, and then can slowly unlock the ability to harvest better and better materials as they go? A sense of progression and achievement would be nice, make it almost like a minigame (similar to what the mining role currently is).

Kinda rambling but I'll still throw this thought in: explorers should have to contribute to the station in some way. Maybe you could plant rare artifacts on lavaland for them, which sell for lots of credits and therefore benefit their department. Building on this, a whole world of temples and ruins with dangerous traps and enemies inside guarding rare artifacts would be really neat, you could expand upon the whole legion temple thing at the north end of lavaland. That'd be a huge overhaul tho.... (also just had the thought, maybe the explorers would give the artefacts to the curator, who would "process" them, and make them able to be sold for a larger sum of credits than they'd normally go for. Would add some use to curator, and allow for him to be indiana jones and explore lavaland for his artifacts!)

[oranges]

the new z level doesn't have monsters, it's not a monster hunter game. Besides that I'd like to make the job intrinsically fun, similar to how setting up a good SM is something some players enjoy doing..

Experimenting with new SM setups or varying existing setups is interesting, doing the same thing over and over every round is not.

please don’t comment as if your experience is everyones

[PKPenguin321]

the new z level doesn't have monsters, it's not a monster hunter game. Besides that I'd like to make the job intrinsically fun, similar to how setting up a good SM is something some players enjoy doing..

Experimenting with new SM setups or varying existing setups is interesting, doing the same thing over and over every round is not.

please don’t comment as if your experience is everyones

To his credit, that is generally agreeable as a rule of thumb

[Dr_bee]

I mean, factorio mining would be pretty fun. especially if you had to solve engineering problems such as power generation to get it to function. One of the most interesting projects is making geothermal energy on lavaland, but its utterly useless.

Previously another person suggested a more engineering focused form of mining, and making floyd mining a cross between engineering, cargo and science would be pretty fucking cool.

[Kat]

[quote="Qustinnus"]hello gamers, seeing as material datums are practically done, I wanna work on somenthing else that relates to materials; Mining.
Currently mining is more of a side-chore for shaft miners, which is clearly not the intended purpose of a job called mining. The fun part of mining right now is exploring and combat. I think for a rework to work we should seperate these two things, an explorer role for people who want to beat up lavaland creatures, and a mining job. Now the main problem with mining is that people hate the gameplay, can you blame them? you click on blocks and chase ores. There's no real gameplay.
[/b]
TL;DR at bottom!

Personally, I disagree strongly with mining being currently a side-chore. Once you can get advanced plasma cutters, mining becomes easy and much more fun, you can strip-mine Lavaland and find all of the ruins whilst also getting an absolute ton of ore. Usually, people only stop mining when the ORM is full and they want to use that mining hardsuit to fuck around in space and make cool shit. That's just me though. There needs to be a reason to stay in Lavaland after the ORM is full.

This could be fun if implemented slightly different.
Remove the explorer part, miners should still encounter Lavaland creatures. A workaround to this is to increase the miner slots from 3 to 5. Miners who want to primarily mine can still mine, miners who want to primarily fight mobs can do that whilst other miners are mining. If all 5 miners decide they want to just shoot shit, then this is obviously a problem that should never be attempted to be solved OOCly. It's the QM's job to tell them to do their damned jobs. Keep the danger there. If you want different Z-levels, make it like the Stardew Valley mines. The deeper you go, the more dangerous but the higher concentration of ores. You can also have a much more dangerous Z-level as 'unlockable' by making rocks that require a lot more to break (Adv Plasma Cutter could do enough yeet-ery to destroy two rock turfs in one shot?). I'm not a coder so I don't know the BYOND method of doing things, but, you could just have rock_2 change into rock_2_d once damaged with a sprite to show small amounts of damaged, then rock_2_dd once damaged more, rock_2_ddd then after it just turns to an open tile. PKA then would take more hits to destroy and it sounds less code intensive than other solutions. You can progress to a dangerous Z-level earlier, however, you will struggle to get that far with just a PKA. To go from Z-level to Z-level, add a randomly generated shuttle into Lavaland modified to use an area with rock turfs instead of hyperspace turfs. This should allow vehicles and mechs to go down as opposed as the Stardew Valley ladder method, which would probably involve a ladder similar to the ones that spawn in the tear in the fabric of reality area. For the whole making rocks have to be dragged, don't use just mechs, have a dedicated vehicle. Maybe one prespawned at Lavaland and roboticists/engineers/somethings can make another. To give exploration of Lavaland additional benefits, maybe add challenge rooms with things that are useful for different departments, such as:
• Unprintable board for research points generators for R&D. Better ones in more dangerous areas. Imagine research mode radiation collectors except they need no radiation and just consume power.
• Strange objects.
• New objects as cargo bounties.
• Random bluespace parts for early upgrading of machines, not in
• Move deadly sins areas to more dangerous Z-levels.
• Random Fulton Extraction Kit, bluescpace shelter capsules, combat autoinjectors with chems already loaded, random upgrade parts for vehicles/PKA, 'legendary' weapons such as a PKA with 200% mod space or an auto-recharging plasma cutter.
• Botanical chem dispenser board that exists in the sentient ecosystem area for botany.
• Boxes of monkey cubes, rare seeds for botany, random maxed out plant data disks, boxes of medical supplies/surplus prosthetics etc.

TL;DR:
• Remove explorer role and keep it just mining, increase to 4-5 slots and just drop two more spawns and lockers into the maps in rotation.
• Have different Z-levels with different levels of danger and ore concentration like Stardew Valley (that's a fun method of mining). Mobs are faster, more dangerous and ore is more concentrated. To get to another Z-level, either an R&D tech for a specific teleporter or something to get there or spawn a structure with a mining shuttle modified to look like an elevator (replace hyperspace with rocks?). This way, vehicles can be loaded. Alternatively, just a ladder to get in or out, like the ones in the tear in the fabric of reality area.
• Add vehicles instead of just mechs that can carry lots of ore. Kind of like how CM's tanks. A 3x2 vehicle maybe with different module slots like how PKA has mods. Have a mining scanner upgrade mod that stacks, make it able to actually mine etc.
• Randomly spawned loot. Can be in new ruins that could maybe have dangerous mobs in them, hidden turrets set to kill etc. Loot should help other departments.

If you only want to consider one thing: Please don't separate mining into two roles. Let the danger exist for miners. If you want explorers badly, let it be something the HoP can give to assistants and have explorer kits in secure closets that only the QM can open or be in a locked room where only the QM can access so that explorers can be conscripted. Alternatively, explorer conscription kit and the QM has some vouchers to redeem some.

[Qustinnus]

hello gamers, seeing as material datums are practically done, I wanna work on somenthing else that relates to materials; Mining.
Currently mining is more of a side-chore for shaft miners, which is clearly not the intended purpose of a job called mining. The fun part of mining right now is exploring and combat. I think for a rework to work we should seperate these two things, an explorer role for people who want to beat up lavaland creatures, and a mining job. Now the main problem with mining is that people hate the gameplay, can you blame them? you click on blocks and chase ores. There's no real gameplay.
[/b]
TL;DR at bottom!

Personally, I disagree strongly with mining being currently a side-chore. Once you can get advanced plasma cutters, mining becomes easy and much more fun, you can strip-mine Lavaland and find all of the ruins whilst also getting an absolute ton of ore. Usually, people only stop mining when the ORM is full and they want to use that mining hardsuit to fuck around in space and make cool shit. That's just me though. There needs to be a reason to stay in Lavaland after the ORM is full.

This could be fun if implemented slightly different.
Remove the explorer part, miners should still encounter Lavaland creatures. A workaround to this is to increase the miner slots from 3 to 5. Miners who want to primarily mine can still mine, miners who want to primarily fight mobs can do that whilst other miners are mining. If all 5 miners decide they want to just shoot shit, then this is obviously a problem that should never be attempted to be solved OOCly. It's the QM's job to tell them to do their damned jobs. Keep the danger there. If you want different Z-levels, make it like the Stardew Valley mines. The deeper you go, the more dangerous but the higher concentration of ores. You can also have a much more dangerous Z-level as 'unlockable' by making rocks that require a lot more to break (Adv Plasma Cutter could do enough yeet-ery to destroy two rock turfs in one shot?). I'm not a coder so I don't know the BYOND method of doing things, but, you could just have rock_2 change into rock_2_d once damaged with a sprite to show small amounts of damaged, then rock_2_dd once damaged more, rock_2_ddd then after it just turns to an open tile. PKA then would take more hits to destroy and it sounds less code intensive than other solutions. You can progress to a dangerous Z-level earlier, however, you will struggle to get that far with just a PKA. To go from Z-level to Z-level, add a randomly generated shuttle into Lavaland modified to use an area with rock turfs instead of hyperspace turfs. This should allow vehicles and mechs to go down as opposed as the Stardew Valley ladder method, which would probably involve a ladder similar to the ones that spawn in the tear in the fabric of reality area. For the whole making rocks have to be dragged, don't use just mechs, have a dedicated vehicle. Maybe one prespawned at Lavaland and roboticists/engineers/somethings can make another. To give exploration of Lavaland additional benefits, maybe add challenge rooms with things that are useful for different departments, such as:
• Unprintable board for research points generators for R&D. Better ones in more dangerous areas. Imagine research mode radiation collectors except they need no radiation and just consume power.
• Strange objects.
• New objects as cargo bounties.
• Random bluespace parts for early upgrading of machines, not in
• Move deadly sins areas to more dangerous Z-levels.
• Random Fulton Extraction Kit, bluescpace shelter capsules, combat autoinjectors with chems already loaded, random upgrade parts for vehicles/PKA, 'legendary' weapons such as a PKA with 200% mod space or an auto-recharging plasma cutter.
• Botanical chem dispenser board that exists in the sentient ecosystem area for botany.
• Boxes of monkey cubes, rare seeds for botany, random maxed out plant data disks, boxes of medical supplies/surplus prosthetics etc.

TL;DR:
• Remove explorer role and keep it just mining, increase to 4-5 slots and just drop two more spawns and lockers into the maps in rotation.
• Have different Z-levels with different levels of danger and ore concentration like Stardew Valley (that's a fun method of mining). Mobs are faster, more dangerous and ore is more concentrated. To get to another Z-level, either an R&D tech for a specific teleporter or something to get there or spawn a structure with a mining shuttle modified to look like an elevator (replace hyperspace with rocks?). This way, vehicles can be loaded. Alternatively, just a ladder to get in or out, like the ones in the tear in the fabric of reality area.
• Add vehicles instead of just mechs that can carry lots of ore. Kind of like how CM's tanks. A 3x2 vehicle maybe with different module slots like how PKA has mods. Have a mining scanner upgrade mod that stacks, make it able to actually mine etc.
• Randomly spawned loot. Can be in new ruins that could maybe have dangerous mobs in them, hidden turrets set to kill etc. Loot should help other departments.

If you only want to consider one thing: Please don't separate mining into two roles. Let the danger exist for miners. If you want explorers badly, let it be something the HoP can give to assistants and have explorer kits in secure closets that only the QM can open or be in a locked room where only the QM can access so that explorers can be conscripted. Alternatively, explorer conscription kit and the QM has some vouchers to redeem some.

this just makes lavaland even more about PvE and loot hunting than it already is. I'm making mining into a fulltime job so I'm definitely seperating it from the explorer role.

[Whoneedspacee]

we already have jobs that are like this.

there's really no need to turn mining into a job that it isn't. if you want to setup big ridiculous structures of machines go grab an rpd and start messing with shit on station.

[GuyonBroadway]

Only tangentially on topic, but I wrote a """competing""" design doc for my RTS idea (I'm not actively coding it so expect nothing of it, but I really liked writing the ideas I had for it down so yeah)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XuU ... sp=sharing

To build on this, many moons ago back in the time lost age of 2015 on the hippie slack in the time before discord. We had an idea, imagine if you could outfit a mech with a remote control system so you could drive it from some VR pod on station. There would be a small unmanned mining depot on what used to be the asteroid and there would be some automated method of moving minerals to station... maybe some mass driver or something. Of course then we got to the idea of "what happens if it breaks?" and "How cancer would it be to have a remote controlled battlemech? And the idea got shelved with the advent of lavaland.

Now with a sort of RTS type deal we got going on, what if RC mechs only work in range of a transponder type structure? In order to dig deeper you need to expand and protect your transponder network in order to allow your mechs to dig deeper.

[Qustinnus]

I've got a simple video showing the refining process of mining. The exploration / scanning part is what I'll work on next.

In the vid, you can see how I mine a boulder filled with iron and then go through the process of making it go through the right machines, with iron rocks its relatively safe to use any of the machines, but you still want to avoid machines that can lower the amount of iron or cause damage.
https://streamable.com/ttzy6

this vid shows what could go wrong if you use the wrong machines for a rock filled with in this case, a fuckton of plasma. First I put some rocks through a rock cleaner, this causes rocks with plasma in them to evaporate into plasma gas. Then I let one go into a rock burner, and well. plasma hates that even more.
https://streamable.com/fh6ow

the idea is that you have to be careful about what machines you use for each boulder, as some boulders can have up to 4 materials inside of them.

we already have jobs that are like this.

there's really no need to turn mining into a job that it isn't. if you want to setup big ridiculous structures of machines go grab an rpd and start messing with shit on station.

mining isn't a job and there's no gameplay involved with mining. It's purely PvE thanks to lavaland. I hate gameplay like atmos and engineering and I'm trying to not make it like those jobs.

[Mickyan]

That looks really nice

I wonder if it's possible to set this up in a way that allows people with only access to the public mining area to contribute in some way, I'm told that gulagging actually gives you money and having something like that for assistants to help with mining (even just the more tedious part of actually mining rocks while refining is restricted to miners) would be pretty awesome

[wesoda25]

I don’t think non miners should have access to this place. After all, they could just take out one machine and the stations ore supply is cut off.

[SpaceManiac]

have you considered whether adding another new z-level will really improve miners being off in their own world?

will the new content justify the memory usage of another z-level?

[Qustinnus]

The biggest reason is that I want to slow down how fast miners get through the z level, change the environment from loot pinata land to a more interesting environment that doesn't rely on combat (most likely not in the first pr) and seperate miners from explorers. If I do any of this on the existing z levels, I'd ruin the current gameplay of lavaland.

[Shadowflame909]

I can't believe my comment got erased in the void.

Well, I'll take it as a sign as to not post it more than anything.

Wish you luck on this PR Floyd.

[Ghilker]

Hey hey, don't hate engi and atmos jobs, you could always integrate those jobs with your mining.
Like a machine that uses station power so that engies will work on more power supply (helping also in the long story of "we don't know what to do with that much power")
For atmos jobs you can have machines using heated gases that could be ordered from atmos, like o2 plasma mix or even fusion canisters.
This way you make the station more involved (at least from the engineering side) but miners don't have to rely on us to work, we can help them to make just more ores

[Tlaltecuhtli]

also you can add some processing that require meme gases, like if you use conveyor belts to move uranium in a room with tritium it turns into enriched uranium

[TrumpetPlaya]

I like the idea of utilizing gasses. Maybe some machines could be hooked up to different canisters to buff efficiency. I've done a lot of gas mining on lavaland to get cans full of farts or whatever, so it'd be interesting and fun to see some atmos involvement

[Taylork2]

The biggest reason is that I want to slow down how fast miners get through the z level, change the environment from loot pinata land to a more interesting environment that doesn't rely on combat (most likely not in the first pr) and seperate miners from explorers. If I do any of this on the existing z levels, I'd ruin the current gameplay of lavaland.

I honestly like the idea of separating mining and exploration on paper, but I see a shit ton of potential problems with it.
I don't think this will go well(or at least not for a very long time)


Explorers will have to rely on mining/cargo and science for gear and money, unless you use the crusher then kill the heiro. If someone else beats you to the heiro than too bad, you can't realistically fight and beat any other megafauna.

Mining will be done for just money? The experience of mining? With this they'll be even more removed from the happening of the stations until they decide they're done. Then what happens when they're done but a department still needs them? Can a borg continue the work on their own? The AI can't since it can't do anything on other Z-levels. Do people from other departments need to get access to mining, buy/steal equipment for mining, leave the z-level, do mining, then come back to continue their job?

Mining equipment broke because of accident or tampering? Unless you know about engineering yourself or have a VERY GOOD friend who's an engineer, it sounds like you're fucked. It's almost impossible to get an engineer to willingly come to cargo(unless it's for building a tesla) when the ORM is busted or something vital doesn't work, good luck getting them to leave the Z-level.

[oranges]

Yeah this guy left

[PKPenguin321]

Yeah this guy left

RTS mining time 8)

[Whoneedspacee]

show me some decent rts mining ideas and hoow it can be integrated into lavaland without breaking lavalands currently gameplay loop and ill consider making it

rts mining could maybe be a science job as well and act as a support to miners with upgrades and such, giving them incentive to upgrade their own stuff and therefore also the miners shit

just a thought

or it could just be a seperate z level or some shit

[PKPenguin321]

show me some decent rts mining ideas and hoow it can be integrated into lavaland without breaking lavalands currently gameplay loop and ill consider making it

rts mining could maybe be a science job as well and act as a support to miners with upgrades and such, giving them incentive to upgrade their own stuff and therefore also the miners shit

just a thought

or it could just be a seperate z level or some shit

Did you read the design doc I wrote? Or is it too at odds with the current gameplay loop?

[Arathian]

Floyd left?

So this is cancelled?

[Qustinnus]

no i'm just working in tranquility away from the discord and all other mediums.