Mining is tedious

Umm... it's like 3-4 ore for each bar in Terraria, and 60-90 bars for just a set of armor alone. Total ore counts per armor set seems to range around 250-520 depending on tier.

Starbound bars are 2 ore each (excluding diamond, but it isn't an armor tier,) and sometimes 1 coal. It's a flat 67 bars for all armor, totaling 134 (or 201 for coal) ore per armor tier (although some tiers can't be skipped as in Terraria.) But they're rarer, as you stated.

 

Terraria with normal tools is excruciating compared to Starbound. I had no idea how tedious it was until I started a new character while waiting for the "final" wipe over the weekend.

 

Sorry i meant 200 ores not 20 lol

I left out a zero >_>

Edit: checked wiki

3 ore = 1 bar

cobalt as example: 20 bar for chest, 10 bar for one helmet, 15 for leggings

drill pick, chain saw = 15 bar, 10 bar, one weapon = 10 bar

add it all up 20 10 15 15 10 = 70 bars

210 ore for full set armor 1 pick/drill 1 saw 1 weapon

200 ores was a rough estimate and I think its close enough

 

I totally hear you on that one. I also tried to play Terraria again with no mods (normal tools) and wow, that was even more tedious than playing Starbound without my speedy tools. But hell... Just changing the amount of blocks that the pickaxes can dig from 3 in vanilla Starbound to 4 makes the game so much more pleasant.

I remember asking if there was a technical reason that the tools only dug 3 tiles high but the character requires 4 to walk through in Starbound and the answer I was given was something like "just for lolz". Thank goodness that Starbound is moddable, else I'd not have nearly any time in it at all if it could only dig 3 blocks high with no chance to change that.

There is another game similar to Terraria and Starbound that I was thinking of buying, and I asked the author if I could mod how many blocks their tools could dig but the answer was "not at this time, I am looking into making that moddable" to which I then had to pass as it only dug out one by one block like Terraria and I just don't have the patience for that anymore, yeah... Old man here, Now GET OFF my lawn! Lol.

 

I just played terraria like 2 weeks ago because of the announced final wipe or something

while it was quite slow mining, I found ores in a higher frequency so it didn't feel as slow as I got to gold pretty darn fast

Whereas in starbound, I didn't feel like it was that slow until this patch?

Did they do something with the ore spawns? I couldn't find a lot of diamonds or platinum until gamma sector so it made mining super slow.

I ended up giving up on full vanilla run and starting modding the hell out of starbound after I beat the dragon

Modding the hell out of = super mining laser, matter manipulator +, MOAR ORES, crew spawner, base in a box, customizable ships, e.t.c. e.t.c.

 

I don't get what all the fuss is about. Currently I haven't even defeated the Penguin UFO yet but I hollowed out at least 3 planets entirely (1 Forest, 1 Snow & 1 Desert) and am busy carving out a planet with a huge obsidian vein as I write this....never had a problem with my digging speed (I'm at a platinum pickaxe now).

Maybe some ppl forgot that;
* If your pickaxe has no durability left it will slow down your digging speed significantly
* The hungrier you get; the slower you start to dig...
* Naturally; tougher material types require more ticks to mine...

So when I have the feeling I'm starting to slow down on mining speed I always check my durability and hunger levels.

As for getting the resources to get that far...dig out desert/snow or arid planets to get Ores fast, use bombs to blow up large pockets of "tough" materials, and open any and every chest you can get your grubby little fingers on (worked for me fine, both before and after the latest wipe).
Then again; I do follow a certain strategy for this.

1) I dig out Desert/Snow/Arid planets for fast ore and pixels.
2) I dig out Forest/Jungle planets for building materials like dirt and wood.
3) I migrate from planet to planet depending on the need I have for above 2 Material Types
4) I store excess materials at "home" (in solo) to provide me with a buffer in case I encounter a planet on which I want to stay for a prolonged period of time (Planets with huge Magmarock or Blast stone deposits

The strategy also made me wonder why ppl are complaining about the lack of coal....I have a tree "roof" on my homebase for that and at any given time I have 5000 excess Coal in my stocks.

 

You're a locust.
But really, good tips. I do these things as well, but didn't know hunger affected. I try to keep off either way.
I also farm trees for coal, they renew very quickly and I have stacks of saplings in different locations now. I 1000 fuel at almost all time and stacks of wood and coal to keep it going.

 

Finally, somebody that knows what they're talking about.

I almost feel like this single post needs it's own thread for the resource hungry and patient lacking.

 

It really is that easy though. I have enough saplings, wood, coal, seeds, wheat and other resources to practically keep my ship and hunger taken care of indefinitely. Even if my "home" got taken out it's just a farm at this point, I could easily plant elsewhere and get my feet back on the ground.

 

I don't mind the mining speed too much, but I wouldn't mind if picks and drills could mine a 4 x 4 area instead of a 3 x 3 area.

 

I did not read all the comments in this thread but wanted to add my $.02. I've got a diamond pickaxe and want to collect some smooth stone for my base. . 12 hits. .Mining enough of this stone to build a base will take forever so I'm not going to do it. It's not fun for me to just bang on rocks all day. . So some of the fun is sapped from this game because I can't really make my base how I want.

 

I don't know if I would say that the balance needs to be adjusted...maybe just "more things need to be added." Mainly because diamond is the highest tier you can go for mining equipment but that isn't the highest tier for materials. Impervium drill, anybody?

 

You know what this game needs? More explosives.

Mining with bombs is fun.

 

I have said this before, I will say this again. You are playing a member of a highly advanced species, you know how to fly and service a ship, you have a damn lot of automation onboard and my the time you build a beacon you qualify as a very competent engineer.
So why would building an automated drilling rig be beyond you? If anyone here remembers the Clonk series, you most likely remember how interesting it was to set up a resource supply chain there. So, dear developers, if you are reading this, please, give this a thought. It's not "cheap", it's a relief from crushing early-to-mid-game boredom. Building a rig shouldn't be easy, of course, but at least give us an ability to do so.
Automation, automation, automation. Our PCs now step into "mini-server" category with their 8-core CPUs and insanely powerful graphics processing hardware, I don't think sparing some cycles to basic AI routines would stretch their capabilities so much.

Of course, there is a matter of engine... But I think there is a number of ways a tile-based game can implement a drill that mines straight down and deposits whatever it deems valuable in a storage box on the top.

 

Way to bring this thread back from the dead.

When mining and exploration is a core part of the game, making a system to bypass it is silly.

 

Not against anything here but need to tell you one thing, not everyone has a eight core PC with a high end GPU. Starbound shouldn't be too intensive though.

It's completely fine to revive a thread with on topic discussion.

 

He's not saying anything that hasn't been said a dozen times before in a much less abrasive ways. If it were some hip, new take on why mining is good/bad, I wouldn't have said anything xD.

 

It still counts as on topic even if it has been restated. He added in his own view and opinion so that should be weighed also.

 

Weighted and thrown off a bridge?

On-topic, I think that mining speed is painful right away (am I punching the stone? is that why it takes so long?), but then okay/decent through the early game, going up to quite nice for the mid/late game, and then becomes painful again at endgame.

Matter Manipulator is bad and takes way too long. That's why early game feels painful, because you need to make a pickaxe, then you want to make an axe, and then you can ditch the autopuncher.

Once you get a pickaxe, I think the mining speed feels okay. It's a bit slow if you want to build (good luck harvesting any dungeon blocks), but you're more than able to collect ores and coal and wood.

Once you get drills, the game jumps up speed (does anyone make platinum/diamond pickaxes?).

At endgame, though, the game feels slow again, at least for me. I think it's a matter of perception, because the only materials I don't have "enough of" at endgame are the dungeon materials, which still take forever and a day to mine. 3x3 area is good, but 6-12 hits for the hi-tech blocks? Man, that takes more hits than the last miniboss I found.

 

If it's possible to throw virtual text off a bridge go for it!