While I love the idea of mining, I hate the idea that there's predetermined tiers of materials. Why? Because there's no sense of discovery when you're mining and after a while, you stop using the lower tiers for anything. You simply start looking for the "diamonds" and almost nothing else. I propose that materials (types of wood, ores, stones, etc.) should be created procedurally per planet which might have different properties such as durability, hardness, electric and thermal conductivity, corrosion resistance, toxicity, etc. This would allow you to always have new exotic materials to find that might be able to enhance your weapons, armor, etc. For instance, finding a high durability material in Planet X, would encourage you to mine it to create gear that wouldn't wear out as quickly, but later on, you'd find another material with slightly lower durability but high hardness which might increase the effectiveness of armor. Or maybe, you'd find a material that would have low heat conductivity making it ideal for armor you'd use in fiery, hot and cold, icy planets, for example. So, to this end, all materials would have to have several properties that could vary such as: Hardness (Makes gear created from this absorb more damage but makes it where less "planks" or reduced units can be extracted from this material) Durability (Items created with this don't wear out as quickly) Maleability (Might yield more fabric, foils, or plates per unit of material) Ductility (Might yield more wires per unit of material) Thermal Conductivity (The lower, the better it works to insulate the player's gear or building against the elements, the higher the better suited for cooling parts such as heat sinks) Electrical Conductivity (The lower, the less damage you take from electric damage when making gear from this, the higher the better suited for wiring and batteries) Oxidation Resistance (Makes things created from this more resistance to rust) Corrosion Resistance (Makes things created from this more resistance to caustic substances) Biological Resistance (The ability to resist organic substances or organisms such as viruses, bacteria, parasites, etc) Flammability (The ability to resist catching on fire. While good when building, it'd be useful for an item to be highly flammable if used as fuel) Density (The higher, the more weight per unit. Making it less desirable for things like weapons and armor.) Toxicity (How damaging it is to the player or other living beings) Examples from real life materials (The numbers are meant to be illustrative only, no need to correct them to be more "precise"): Wood: Hardness: 10 Durability: 20 Maleability: 0 Ductility: 0 Thermal: 10 Electrical: 0 Oxi Res: 100 Corrosion Res: 10 Bio Res: 20 Flammability: 95 (Will burn in fires or heat above 5 units) Density: 40 (Floats in liquid with greated than 40 density such as Water) Toxicity: 5 (Only those with really weak constitutions would be affected by this material) Copper: Hardness: 50 Durability: 50 Maleability: 50 Ductility: 80 Thermal: 85 Electrical: 65 Oxi Res: 30 Corrosion Res: 10 Bio Res: 95 Flammability: 15 (Will burn in fires or heat above 85 units) Density: 75 (Floats in liquid with greated than 75 density such as Mercury) Toxicity: 20 (Only those with somewhat weaker constitutions would be affected by this material) This way, this makes material more useful in a variety of situation. For instance, while you might like copper to make wires, plating, and armor, you wouldn't wear a copper armor in a fire world as it would barely provide any protection. And while wood is a good thermal insulator, you wouldn't use it in a fire world to create buildings because it's highly flammable but it'd be ideal for ice worlds. Now, the biggest problem I see with this system is the inordinate amount of materials one might accumulate after a while and how to find what you need. The only thing I can think of to solve this would be a sorting and filtering function so that you can multisort your materials by their properties. For instance, if you're building in a swamp planet, you might want the materials with the highest Bio Res and Oxi Res. Here's an example of how I see tooltips could be done in simple and advanced modes so that those players who don't wanna deal with the all the mat's properties can just simplify them to little icons that highlight some important properties for that material. The underlying mechanics and properties would remain the same but the display would change depending on the option the player selected:
That sounds really interesting and I would love to see something like this ingame. Procedurally created items sounded cool already, but procedurally created materials would be really awesome.
This sounds like a pretty solid idea. The only thing I would add, is you'd need procedurally generated names built into categories with light caps on materials, otherwise things would get kind of crazy. On one planet you might have to mine wood, or find a substance that is identical to copper on another world named wood, etc. So instead, categorize the items and provide occurance parameters. For example, looking at wood again: Item Category: Wood Allowed Prefixes: Stone, Petrified, Iron, Neonic, Glowing, Suprenal, Stark Allowed Suffixes: Wood, Bark, Tree, Vine, Growth, Seed, Leaf Growth Pattern: Surface, varying heights, thickness between 1-3 blocks, max height of 10-30 blocks Wood Types: Hardness: 10-50 Durability: 20-60 Maleability: 0-30 Ductility: 0-5 Thermal: 10-50 Electrical: 0-20 Oxi Res: 30-100 Corrosion Res: 10-50 Bio Res: 20-50 Flammability: 45-95 (Will burn in fires or heat above 5 units) Density: 20-90 (Floats in liquid with greated than 40 density such as Water) The prefixes and suffixes could be then used to determine graphics or statistics - Ironbark might be a slight greyish brown wood with a certain texture pattern, would be stronger than basic wood (Which could still be found), be less flammable, but also heavier and less resistant to rusting. This would add sense and structure to the different materials. Then one could lump in neat names for different ore types under various subtypes of ore and rarity of ore that lean towards various specializations. Copper-types would always provide high levels of conductivity, but would vary in malleability, density, etc.
Good idea! It makes so much sense since you'd know that wood is generally flammable and that it might work as an interim fuel or that copper is usually good for wiring, etc.
It also adds a basis of what kind of things show up where, etc. With the whole wood thing, it would add a multitude of different types of trees around the universe giving way to many different environments.
I'd like to but I'm not sure how. I thought they simply read the forums but I'm sure my idea gets lost in a sea of posts. Not to mention the prefixes would allow people to be able to tell, at a glance, whether the material they're looking at is something they need or not.
That's generally the idea. We could come up with an entire compendium of base materials then easily branch off from that creating some really interesting combinations. From what I understand mods and devs cruise the forums to gather information, but I can poke one of the devs on the IRC sometime and direct them here if you're so inclined.
i like the idea, the more complex the more you can do. but in a 2d game you are somewhat limited to the dimension. for weapons and such not so much. but building with these could.
I disagree, i think that weapons and armour could have certain Hardness or Durabillity requirements to get a type of weapon the higher (or lower if it requires) Traits in the material creates the stats.
This is a great idea, and Zolon's suggestion seals it up nicely. Let's hope the devs pick up on this at least a little bit, a big problem in Terraria was definitely how copper was essentially useless endgame, and even iron for the most part. Set in stone tiered systems for resources certainly make progression easier and more intuitive (particularly in a game where the only progression is gear-based, and thus the means to acquire said gear), but the amount of depth offered by the customization these ideas propose would make a more enjoyable, longer lasting game in my opinion.
If there were certain materials which were always around on planets in varying amounts like gold, iron, mercury, and other elements so that even if you do end up finding a better materials elsewhere, there will be enough of the lesser materials that you could rely on them for a steady amount of resources. Like finding many planets with iron allows you to make stuff related to iron and steel and trying to switch to using only a super rare tough metal would be harder. The idea is that you can use Unobtainium to fuel your Deathships but you would always have a reliable source available like Helium-3 which might be less efficient and powerful but would be cheaper and more cost effective. This way if you do manage to find a large amount of tough material like Red Iron you could still use it to make a crazy powerful offense/defense and it would be worth it to use both old and new materials, maybe even together.
I don't really see a need for base elements like "regular" iron or whatever. The point of these materials is that you would have to explore and survey the current materials. There would never be "regular" materials that you can simply settle for. That sort of defeats the purpose of this idea.
this is really interesting, but i think the game would become a little tad heavy, dunno though, if they could add this the game would be even more infinite than it already is...
There should also be a location sorting option, with a mention whether you mined it yourself or not. Like so: Origin: Xi-25-Omni (Mined/Vendor/Trade/Loot) or Origin: Xi-25-Omni Acquisition: Mined/Vendor/Trade/Loot If something is mined, then you found it personally, a Vendor is a store of some sort where you paid in credits for it, a Trade is when you traded with an NPC or a co-op or online player, and Loot is if you found it on some enemy's body or in a treasure chest. Still though, I think this is a great idea. The information can be discovered via laboratory experimentation (Give 1 to 5 units to the lab to experiment on. The more units you give, the more properties you find out. Other identical materials you find will give you all the information you know via research). It gives a laboratory extra value.
I just really hope mining isn't over 1/2 the game, which I basically know already it's not. Mining is extremely boring, and all you do is go down a cave and search for shiny ores. I want the mining to be something different than mining in other games, like Terraria and Minecraft. OT: I don't like the durability idea. I hate breaking things. Also, trim down the effects to maybe, say, 5 of them? There's too much in that list.
I'm not sure you've understood, endingcredits. Why do you think you'd be prevented from making armor at the beginning of the game?
