/tg/Station 13

Posted: **Tue Nov 30, 2021 4:02 am**

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)

Posted: **Tue Nov 30, 2021 4:19 am**

Lavaland mobs, and by extension megafauna, have inflated HP values because Kor didn't want people being able to go to lavaland and just kill shit with their normal lasgun for that sweet gamer loot, and to preserve sancticity of megafauna leaderboards.

Posted: **Tue Nov 30, 2021 4:45 am**

ardentarclight wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 4:19 am Lavaland mobs, and by extension megafauna, have inflated HP values because Kor didn't want people being able to go to lavaland and just kill shit with their normal lasgun for that sweet gamer loot, and to preserve sancticity of megafauna leaderboards.

This is why I mentioned making the mobs more based on swarms of enemies instead of singular really tough ones, so that the people with station guns would just run out of ammo if they tried to take on enough of lavaland to get to the megafauna.

Posted: **Tue Nov 30, 2021 9:34 am**

datorangebottle wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 4:45 am
ardentarclight wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 4:19 am Lavaland mobs, and by extension megafauna, have inflated HP values because Kor didn't want people being able to go to lavaland and just kill shit with their normal lasgun for that sweet gamer loot, and to preserve sancticity of megafauna leaderboards.
This is why I mentioned making the mobs more based on swarms of enemies instead of singular really tough ones, so that the people with station guns would just run out of ammo if they tried to take on enough of lavaland to get to the megafauna.

That would probably kill performance.

Posted: **Tue Nov 30, 2021 11:47 am**

Mining as it is could get some incremental improvements.
At first, I would suggest building auto turrets outside the main entrance. This means that if miners are having trouble with mobs, they can run home and have the turrets take care of the rest. These also could get emagged for shenanigans.
The next would be an ore collector. Instead of only collecting minerals underneath you, with this item in your pocket it checks the adjacent 8 tiles for minerals, picks them up and puts them in your bag. Like the bolt collector in Ratchet and Clank, it would be a minor QoL upgrade

Posted: **Tue Nov 30, 2021 1:07 pm**

Helios wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 11:47 am The next would be an ore collector. Instead of only collecting minerals underneath you, with this item in your pocket it checks the adjacent 8 tiles for minerals, picks them up and puts them in your bag. Like the bolt collector in Ratchet and Clank, it would be a minor QoL upgrade

This would make it trivial to lag the server to death.

Posted: **Tue Nov 30, 2021 1:22 pm**

In terms of solo mining being more efficient, a potential idea is to switch mineral collection to be based on ore drill installations; the miners would have to explore with their local scanners until they find promising veins, then call down a drill with a beacon, from a station-shared pool of ore drills that recharges over time. While it does not remove all incentives to split up, the limited pool means that ore gain no longer depends on miners covering separate areas and they can manage the same by grouping together for safety.
Extensions to this formula could include monsters infrequently attacking drills, and requiring an organized defense; special ore veins found under tendrils or dangerous ruins to clear out; ore drills functioning as fast travel hotspots for miners after a certain tech level.

Ideally by pairing this with a generally increased danger level (even better if it scales with player pop) it might give an extra push towards group mining, which would be nice since player interaction is the main element that gives variety to rounds.

Posted: **Tue Nov 30, 2021 5:44 pm**

XDTM wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 1:22 pm In terms of solo mining being more efficient, a potential idea is to switch mineral collection to be based on ore drill installations; the miners would have to explore with their local scanners until they find promising veins, then call down a drill with a beacon, from a station-shared pool of ore drills that recharges over time. While it does not remove all incentives to split up, the limited pool means that ore gain no longer depends on miners covering separate areas and they can manage the same by grouping together for safety.
Extensions to this formula could include monsters infrequently attacking drills, and requiring an organized defense; special ore veins found under tendrils or dangerous ruins to clear out; ore drills functioning as fast travel hotspots for miners after a certain tech level.

Ideally by pairing this with a generally increased danger level (even better if it scales with player pop) it might give an extra push towards group mining, which would be nice since player interaction is the main element that gives variety to rounds.

I like this idea.

Lavaland Wave Defense Mode would be very epic. + It'd also give Cargo more to do, as they'd constantly be trying to make money to send up more limited resource filled weapons to lavaland to give the miners a boost.

Posted: **Tue Nov 30, 2021 6:50 pm**

Rohen_Tahir wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 9:34 am That would probably kill performance.

The server can already handle miners on icebox fighting multiple mobs at once.

Helios wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 11:47 am At first, I would suggest building auto turrets outside the main entrance. This means that if miners are having trouble with mobs, they can run home and have the turrets take care of the rest. These also could get emagged for shenanigans.

+1. Would be a huge boon to newbie miners so they can run and let the wildlife turrets take care of the mobs if they get overwhelmed. Only issue I can see is if bubblegum starts too close to the base and the turrets shoot at him.

XDTM wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 1:22 pm In terms of solo mining being more efficient, a potential idea is to switch mineral collection to be based on ore drill installations; the miners would have to explore with their local scanners until they find promising veins, then call down a drill with a beacon, from a station-shared pool of ore drills that recharges over time. While it does not remove all incentives to split up, the limited pool means that ore gain no longer depends on miners covering separate areas and they can manage the same by grouping together for safety.
Extensions to this formula could include monsters infrequently attacking drills, and requiring an organized defense; special ore veins found under tendrils or dangerous ruins to clear out; ore drills functioning as fast travel hotspots for miners after a certain tech level.

Ideally by pairing this with a generally increased danger level (even better if it scales with player pop) it might give an extra push towards group mining, which would be nice since player interaction is the main element that gives variety to rounds.

I love everything about this, especially the idea that cargo can load special drills that are more efficient / have more features, like fast travel spots(built-in fulton beacon?).

Posted: **Wed Dec 01, 2021 2:05 pm**

Solution to all 4 problems: remove mining and allow cargo to order the minerals directly.

Posted: **Wed Dec 01, 2021 6:46 pm**

A "Core Drill" or something like that where the miners (and perhaps engineers and medics they can shenanigan into helping) get mineral income that ramps up in an S curve for defending a static Thing would be incredibly fucking cool. Make sandbags and other defensive emplacements matter, bring a bunch of monster loot to one place, etc.

Posted: **Wed Dec 01, 2021 9:00 pm**

Pandarsenic wrote: ↑Wed Dec 01, 2021 6:46 pm A "Core Drill" or something like that where the miners (and perhaps engineers and medics they can shenanigan into helping) get mineral income that ramps up in an S curve for defending a static Thing would be incredibly fucking cool. Make sandbags and other defensive emplacements matter, bring a bunch of monster loot to one place, etc.

I feel like it may have an added benefit of making the powergamer miner loot useful.

By the time you get the loot, you've pretty much cheesed and slaughtered everything on lavaland and it's null and void. But if it's wave defense and you need that cursed heart regeneration/cursed katana damage, or a power-miner holoparasite to support you to survive waves and waves of enemies. It actually gives it a central lavaland use.

Posted: **Thu Dec 02, 2021 1:41 pm**

The problem with focusing on "group mining" (which I think is a good idea, but...) is that it basically kills low-pop mining. Oh? There's a whole one Shaft Miner signed up for this shift, when their work is designed for groups of 2-3? Oh? They died in ten minutes because they got swarmed by a horde of goliaths that stunlocked them to death? Oh? Now the entire station is starved for materials because just one Assistant getting a PKA isn't going to cut it anymore? Uh oh!

Miners dying early and causing material starvation is a prevalent enough issue, even without a massively more dangerous Lavaland. Punishing people for playing low-pop is a poor idea.

Posted: **Thu Dec 02, 2021 4:08 pm**

The ideal way to counterbalance that would be to scale the encounter frequency and difficulty (and loot?) to the amount of active miners, but calculating that without leaving room for powergaming would take some forethought.

Additionally the station should start with some basic limited supply material drills already set up in close proximity to the mining station, along with more basic deposits in close safe locations, so the station's needs are met to a minimum. They'd be the equivalent of initial power supply and wiring the solars for the station power network.

Posted: **Thu Dec 02, 2021 4:31 pm**

just implement https://hackmd.io/@bazelart/rkNyIweOt

Posted: **Thu Dec 02, 2021 4:52 pm**

Valorium wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 1:41 pm The problem with focusing on "group mining" (which I think is a good idea, but...) is that it basically kills low-pop mining. Oh? There's a whole one Shaft Miner signed up for this shift, when their work is designed for groups of 2-3? Oh? They died in ten minutes because they got swarmed by a horde of goliaths that stunlocked them to death? Oh? Now the entire station is starved for materials because just one Assistant getting a PKA isn't going to cut it anymore? Uh oh!

Miners dying early and causing material starvation is a prevalent enough issue, even without a massively more dangerous Lavaland. Punishing people for playing low-pop is a poor idea.

Ask the HoS to let you into the armory because your the only miner lol

Posted: **Fri Dec 03, 2021 6:59 am**

The Core Drill sort of thing wouldn't have to be the only method, just a more efficient one (if people work together) in theory? You could still have deposits and tendrils and such as-is for lowpop, but once you have some upgraded PKAs and armored plates and plasma cutters, you can gather up and go for the big, high-efficiency looting group activity.

Posted: **Fri Dec 03, 2021 7:47 pm**

XDTM wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 4:08 pm The ideal way to counterbalance that would be to scale the encounter frequency and difficulty (and loot?) to the amount of active miners, but calculating that without leaving room for powergaming would take some forethought.

This is why I suggested making minebots not suck. If you have a team of miners, things would get too crowded and annoying, but if you only have one, then having a swarm of minebots helping you out is livable.

Posted: **Mon Dec 06, 2021 6:37 am**

Helios wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 11:47 am Mining as it is could get some incremental improvements.
At first, I would suggest building auto turrets outside the main entrance. This means that if miners are having trouble with mobs, they can run home and have the turrets take care of the rest. These also could get emagged for shenanigans.
The next would be an ore collector. Instead of only collecting minerals underneath you, with this item in your pocket it checks the adjacent 8 tiles for minerals, picks them up and puts them in your bag. Like the bolt collector in Ratchet and Clank, it would be a minor QoL upgrade

The idea of base defenses would be fucking ideal, and maybe a way to ensure megafauna don't spawn within a certain distance, like 30 or so tiles. Nothing kills a mining run like touching down for the first time ash side, only to see an ash drake or colossus chilling in the lava river right outside the dock. Another QoL for miners would be a low cost emergency distress implant from the vendor. All it does it broadcast a "Urist McNewbie in critical condition at GPS coordinate X,Y,Z" over medical channel. Has a secondary use of giving them to high priority crew members to make sure they aren't randomly ganked in maint while no one is looking at the crew monitor

Posted: **Sat Dec 25, 2021 12:59 am**

Helios wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 11:47 am Mining as it is could get some incremental improvements.
At first, I would suggest building auto turrets outside the main entrance. This means that if miners are having trouble with mobs, they can run home and have the turrets take care of the rest. These also could get emagged for shenanigans.
The next would be an ore collector. Instead of only collecting minerals underneath you, with this item in your pocket it checks the adjacent 8 tiles for minerals, picks them up and puts them in your bag. Like the bolt collector in Ratchet and Clank, it would be a minor QoL upgrade

Bay uses a heavy mining drill that you deploy on a space with ore beneath it. Then you must lock the drill in place with braces, install a power cell, and ensure it's emptying box has enough capacity. A simplified version of this (RNG on the ore created from whatever spot, based on a richness value of the rock beneath it, over time) would make a great alternative for non-fauna-killing miners, like myself. I like digging and search out for ore, I just don't like having to deal with the BIG BOYS that can snap me in a second. I want to mine, not necessarily become the most decorated slayer of dragons.

This would also function for Research and Cargo when all the miners die and they just want a stream of resources, but can't fight fauna effectively.

/tg/Station 13

Mining Changes?

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