Mining is tedious

I've been trying to do that for years, to no avail. I've found that it's more effective to instead "push" the person in question to write an open letter.

 

Nah, jk.

 

I am not bypassing exploration at all (in fact, I'd very much like to add to it), and I do not intend to bypass mining entirely, but rather make it less tedious.
As for the necropost issue - if I remember correctly, if there is a choice between necroposting a relevant thread and making a whole new one to address the issue, a user must always choose the former.
Yes, this thread is old, but the issue it complained about and discussed isn't yet fixed and, by the looks of it, not a single step was taken to fix it - early-to-mid-game mining was tedious back then, it is still tedious right now. Isn't it the whole point of early access, to be involved in game development process and try to convince the devteam to make changes before an accumulation of potential backlash and wasted time make these changes impossible?
I made an honest effort to search this thread for a drilling rig (not an autonomous mining bot, a drill) suggestion, didn't find it, so I made one.

 

I'm sorry, my comment about bringing this thread back from the dead was WAY out of line. I still disagree with the idea of making mining trivial.

 

Indeed. The dig speed is pretty tedious when starting a new character. But the improvement becomes HUGE by end game. But, as far as mining goes, what bothers me much more than the speed is game immersion and realism.

Yes. Digging with a pickaxe in Starbound is unrealistic. I've dug ditches with picks and shovels, including areas with hard clay and lots and lots of rocks. It's hard, back-breaking work and slow: Not very fun.

Indeed, a pickaxe isn't very effective in digging dirt. At the least, you must swap out for a shovel to remove the loose stuff. Rather, the pick is geared towards losening rocks and hard, packed clay so a shovel can carry it out. A good pickaxe can also bust up rocks. Though, a heavy, pointed steel bar can be more effective for big rocks in a ditch.

My point? I think the devs should take a long look at the nice mods in the Tools section. There are many digging tools there. And not all of them are made of 100% cheat (like the "Super Fishaxe"). Some of them are actually rather balanced.

If it were up to me:

1) The Matter Manipulator you start with would be much smaller, indicating that it is a cheap low-tier version. That, or it would be worn looking, like the Worn Matter Manipulator mod. No change to speed, though.

2) The first digging implement you could make at Tier 1 would be a Stone Shovel. This could be upgraded to better materials (the next being copper), but that would mostly improve durability, with only a modest change to dig speed. Oh, and it will dig quite fast through dirt, but it would be slow through stone layers - even slower than the Stone Pickaxes we have now. (It could still work to remove ore from soft stuff, though.)

This reduces the frustration new players have with the slow dig speed, while still keeping them more-or-less near the surface of the planet. If they want to dig deeper for rarer ores and more abundance, then they'll need to make a different digging tool.

3) Next, you can build an iron / steel / diamond / titanium / durasteel Pickaxe. (Diamond would have the highest durability of the 5 tiers, but titanium and durasteel would dig a bit faster.) None of that copper / silver / gold nonsense! (Those are far too soft to dig rock, let alone diamond! Gold is the softest room-temperature metal.)

Still, I'd slow all picks down from vanilla just a bit to give players a good reason to build drills, laser drills, and MM's. And none of these would dig as well as a shovel through dirt, slime, mud, ash, sand and such.

As for copper, silver, gold and platinum: These still have other uses. There are still other recipes that call for them. I think they should have a very high pixel value and used in high-tech recipes. And I think statues and trinkets made from them should fetch good prices when sold. Heck it'd be okay to still use these ores for repairing your digging tools as long as they're more-or-less kept out of the recipes!

4) After the Robotic Crafting Table, you could make Drills. The tiers would go: durasteel / titanium / diamond / aegisalt / ferozium. These would not be penalized for dirt and such, unlike pickaxes.

5) Then, with certain techs and/or materials, you could build a Laser Drill. Building them would require a rare fuel ore (Uranium / Plutonium / Solarium) and the tiers would go titanium / aegisalt / ferozium / cerulium / violium. Again, these would not be penalized for soft materials. (Or, instead of laser drills, perhaps Sonic Drills?)

6) Finally, with advanced techs and materials, you can improve your trusty Matter Manipulator or even build new, bigger versions. These would also require Plutonium or Solarium and the tiers would be ferozium / cerulium / violium / rubium / impervium.

7) In addition, I think there should be a few advanced digging tools found exclusively (and rare) as blueprints or techs in Tech chests and which must be built from materials and/or parts. I really liked the concept of the Mining Mech mod, especially the way it required a Robot Chest and Robot legs to build. I've also seen bulldozer mods, demolitions, laser mining tools, and guns that can destroy blocks. Some of it is OP, but there are some good ideas.

 

The "realism" of this game has been on trial since day one. The dev team has openly stated that they aren't changing the tiers to accommodate realism. I agree that there should be a way to make the matter manipulator useful after making the first pickaxe. Also the shovel/pickaxe thing has always seemed redundant to me. As I recall, it was also part of the argument for realism.