Introduction:
Okay so, know how there's this fucking asteroid with a couple of very rare elements, one of which is the valuable and also rare plasma, the reason nanotrasen built the space station near it in some confined place of space, what if nanotrasen hired one or two more professionals to make mineral extraction more efficient, easier and smarter instead of throwing a bunch of miners in literal hell.
Okay cool, but what do you actually do?
Well, a geologist should have a couple of main jobs:
1- Facilitating the mineral acquisition for miners by designing mineral fields or veins of specific materials and relaying the informations to the miner's GPS from afar.
2- Finding weird rocks of unknown properties (and maybe examine them in the experimentor?) for research points and fun
3- Finding and setting designed mining areas that have an abundance in some kind of ore/s,including a small amount of weird-unknown rocks, and, rarely, maybe, other stuff, that can be... Well, mined for those very resources
4- Locating unknown old stuff stuck in the rocks
Sounds interesting, now to what matters: what's in it for me?
As a geologist you'd be wandering lavaland like the miners, but unarmed, which means you're having a risky job, and why would you do this? For the same reason you'd do with any other job: For the fun toys.
And what if I want to be useful to the station?
Geology in general is a multidisciplinary job, which means you'll be helping other departments:
Science: Slight-codependency behaviour, they need your rocks to speed their research, you need them to take a look and run tests on some of the minerals and rocks you find.
Cargo-mining: Help miners get the minerals, help cargo get money by giving them the useless but shiny minerals/rocks to nanotrasen
Botany: Maybe not all rocks are rocks, maybe some of them can be petrified seeds. You might not be able to plant them, but maybe you can shove them in the DNA extractor to get some of that sweet prehistoric lizard magic traits
The fucking curator: What does the curator have to do in this? Well he is technically an archeologist, or tomb raider, anyway, maybe he can be called down to lavaland to inspect and find some artifacts stuck in the ashes before the miners (accidentally[?]) destroy it
So... Who's the boss?
Despite pretty much working in lavaland and aiding the miners, the geologist answers directly to the RD as he's pretty much doing the scientific work of finding and seeing what the minerals in the asteroid do after many millenia of solid plasma exposure. Science may aid him, but there's still some manual work to do the old fashioned way.
He isn't the new miners's boss, he can just hint them where to go, but has no authority whatsoever over them.
So how does it actually work then?
Spoiler:
Warning: loose ideas below
Here are or should be most of the hows and how do I imagine it would work but a bit more in detail. The spoilers are to keep it compact, the general idea has already been explained above.
How do you find minerals?
Spoiler:
So from the beginning i didnt want this to become xenobiology 2.0 and have you stuck behind a computer, so, to make it more realistic, you have to go around lavaland for most of the mapping-deposit finding. The idea would be to get something like a scanner that you use on a rock or on the floor. When used on a rock wall, it will give you a certain amount of information that you can then upload into the computer, this will give you certain bits of data about the general (or part of the) layout of a determinated range, including normal mineral and special and unknown mineral deposits (that should usually be underground so that you can go after the miners or you have mined the above part) in a small map that should appear when you use the computer, and it shows the scanned parts of lavaland, and the different deposits with icons. If all of this is too weak you could make it so that the identified or "found" veins of different metals have a bigger ore output or something in that sense
How do I find, extract, obtain, use and get research points from a rock or mineral?
Spoiler:
Well, the finding part is pretty much what was stated on the previous question, scan, upload into computer, then see the respective unknown rock icon appear. Once it appears you take note of the coordinates, grab your GPS, head into the field and try to find it yourself underground, then once you're next to the spot use your robust Rock Pick until you get your unknown rock. Only after you identify the rock you can get the diamond mining drill and get as many as the deposit has (Its always at least 2, one for when it gets rock-picked and one for the other side of the rock i'm guessing), and it will give you the mineral instead of sand. To identify the rock you have your very own geologist tools on the field and a couple more back at your office (i.e: Test for hardness with hardness pencil, test for color of the streak color with the rough porcelain ball, use the magnifier to look at the crystalline system, lick it to test taste [No joke, its actually a thing, a dangerous one but still a thing] then, in the end, compare it with your NT mineral list, if its there, you might get some money from it and it might also have documented properties, or some terrible properties that will make you regret ever licking it. If you want to speed up this process, you can give it to science, and have them test with the experimentor, and once the testing is done, discover the mineral. Once the mineral has been discovered it can be thrown into the rock analyzer in the geologist's office to see if it has any research value.
To use an identified rock, you just, use it on hand.
If you want to add some flavour to it, you can say that the rock analyzer works with plasma bars because the tests are comparing the found minerals with the plasma for different properties it might have when combined, and, thus, getting research points from it
How do I find relics and other objects of archeological value?
Spoiler:
The idea for relics is to have them work in a different way and to be a bit more, and can only be retrieved with the rock pick (mining implements and lack of interest will more often than not destroy them), and since you don't know if you're getting a rock or a relic from the map/coordinates on the computer, the work is pretty much the same, but with the chance of getting something you don't care about (but the curator probably may). Okay, so, the idea for relics is to work as pieces of a puzzle that then the curator has to try and put them in different ways to re-build and make the relic reusable. He has a book that could give him a vague idea of what the object should look like, and he has to make it out with the objects he has
What do you have in mind for the rocks? And the relics?
Spoiler:
I guess they could work like drinks, some real life drinks that do some stuff mixed with sci-fi or fantasy stuff. As for the rocks/minerals and effects, i have some in mind, not all of them should do really all that exclusive stuff so that they might give the players actually different things to look for
Fluorite: Emits a faint glow that's different from each rock there is. When used on hand you'll lick it, and glow to for a short moment. Can be grinded for fluorine.
Cinnabar: Gives you 0.2 toxin damage for every second spent holding it. Can be grinded down to obtain mercury.
Vermiculite: When activated on hand it spawns a whole bunch of worms that give negative thoughts to everyone except yourself.
Iridium: Does nothing. Aside from slowing you down while holding it. A lot. And the 40 brute damage it does when thrown with all your might to anyone within one tile of you (melee range), can't be used as a weapon, too heavy. Can be sold for good money.
Moonstone: Does nothing. When held next to a sunstone, it can be activated in hand to make the lights near you go off for 10 seconds, and makes you emit an intense white glow, 1 minute cooldown. Can be researched.
Sunstone: Does nothing. When held next to a moonstone, it can be activated in hand to shoot three small lasers that will set on fire anything alive it comes into contact with. 1 minute cooldown. Can be researched
Uraninite: Does nothing. Can be sold for money. Can be researched.
Magnetite: Slowly attracts items on the floor to you. Can be researched.
Opal: When in presence of a source of light it will make the tiles you're standing on and you be illuminated by different colours that change whenever you walk. Can be sold.
All of the minerals and their effects mentioned here merely exist as examples.
The relics would work in similar way, but with base stronger effects that are based on the amount of parts a relic has, given that, in general, they take longer to put together. I.e: A 5 part relic would have a stronger effect than a 3 part relic.
So uhh yeah this is pretty much what i had in mind. If you're interested and I forgot to explain something feel free to ask me
Last edited by HiKewne on Tue Aug 27, 2019 10:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
