Here's my idea: To keep it somewhat canonical, and to keep a progression of sorts, why don't you simply add a line to the opening quest about your matter manipulator being damaged slightly - and hopefully you'll find some ore to repair it soon. Start on the planet and you have to make a stone pickaxe that upgrades from an iron pickaxe to maybe a gold pickaxe. From there you make a platinum drill - Diamond drill. After you reach maybe level 4 or 5 or so, you use maybe titanium or durasteel or cobalt or whatever to "repair" the matter manipulator, and then more powerful ores to upgrade it. I think the 2x2 of the "broken" MM works great, but maybe expand it to 3x3 or even 4x4 once it's repaired/upgraded. This way you aren't "downgrading" to an iron drill from a diamond pickaxe, first of all (which doesn't make sense, no diamond pickaxe will ever out mine an iron drill), and you also have this slow progression of "wow I have to start at the stone age because all I have is a ship and a broken futuristic tool" to "okay now we're getting places, I have a drill!" to "Okay great! Finally my tool is fixed and things are futuristic again!" It would add a ton to the story, IMO. EDIT: And I agree with Dembai on the first page - to have a MM do everything for you from the start is sort of a let down and doesn't get me involved in the story.
Works for me. I don't see any particular reason that all shouldn't be included. I'm not even particularly concerned with balance in this case, as long as each one makes sense realistically, and in the progression. In fact, if each type required different materials, they could each maintain distinct upgrade tiers. The MM is pretty advanced, so maybe altering its functionality could require blueprints, or even completing a particular quest for the ship's AI. Also important to note that the MM has a slight advantage already, since it can mine at a distance. With upgrades that added increased mining speeds and a selectable digging area, it could still remain very useful even with picks and drills in the game.
I like the progress so far, Armagon. I noticed that you stated that pickaxes will not be repairable. I recommend instead that they end up being much more expensive to repair than they are now; perhaps separate bars for the head and handle will work for repairing pickaxes. As for drills, I recommend against removing their repairability; instead, I recommend making the repair cost much higher due to how much they are capable of mining with a single full bar.
I still don't see why having pickaxes/drills be short-term/limited-use items is a bad thing. It seems like trying to keep them around as perma-tools is a lot of extra work, both coding and gameplay-wise, for no substantial gain, given they're working on the upgrading path of the Matter Manipulator. And again, one would think that focusing on a visually-distinctive game device that functionally performs the same job but doesn't look like the same generic tool so many other "building sandbox"-type games use would be a good thing. I mean, we keep seeing comparisons to Terraria, let alone Minecraft... I'd think moving away from those in various ways would be encouraged.
At least to me: Half of this game is about Role-Play. The other half is about functionality. Multiple tools can serve either purpose: By being either visually different or functionally different. The key here is: 'Options'. Options are pretty much what all Sandbox games are about. For example: Maybe someone wants to pretend to be a Glitch miner. They did indeed use pickaxes in the Medieval eras. So having something that visually looks like a mining pick would be beneficial to playing roles like that. Being a Medieval Glitch and possessing and using a futuristic MM to mine makes no sense at all. It destroys that form of role-play for all players. Likewise, a pickaxe can be functionally different. For example it could mine slower but in a wider area than the MM. Having both as an option gives the player a deeper functionality within the game. And coding-wise it's actually harder (by a very small degree) to make one a rare one-use drop and one the only multi-use tool available than to make both available and just swap-balance a few stats. Neither would be difficult, though. It's probably more of a testing and balancing issue. And in this case I'd personally say that swap-stat balancing would be easier than trying to balance two completely different types of tools.
I can agree to most of your points, but I have to think that the immersion would be broken when your medieval Glitch digs a mine shaft and then pulls out his matter manipulator to build a house right next to it. Personally, I can go either way for the argument, so long as the MM isn't an afterthought to a decently-tiered pickaxe like it is in the current stable builds. Of course, we all know that even if they take out craftable pickaxes, as soon as the update hits stable somebody's going to make a mod to put them back in, right?
Cool, I like this approach. Great thinking guys!! EDIT: @AstralGhost Wait what, your immersion is not broken at all by your medieval person being a robot coming from a spaceship?? Well okay, that's very odd, but I think the game you're looking for if you want medieval immersion is "Life is Feudal," not a science fiction game that is about traveling to different planets.
Please. Lets continue to have basic tools as starting items, mining/harvesting rare materials to upgrade the matter manipulator into something which will eventually out perform a diamond axe in strength, block size, and height. Later tier stuff can add functionality, such as template shapes(hollow square, etc) and grabbing objects from a distance.
I like this suggestion, very early on when your ship is completely broken i can tolerate pickaxes. just get rid of pickaxes made of rare valuable metals like gold.
Meh. I'm in favor of replacing all crafted tools with an upgradeable MM. It just seems a bit odd to be going around the galaxy, in a spaceship, with a pickaxe. I MM.
I dislike the pickaxe changes proposed. Why not make the pickaxe a faster mining tool than the equivalent-upgrade-tier MM, without any of that unrepairable and rare bullshit? The fact that you have to get up close and personal to the ore with the pickaxe should be rewarded by faster mining. The MM has range and convenience, so it should come at a price. I for one much prefer the more traditional mining style offered by pickaxes, forcing you to make your way to the ore.
I get what you're saying, but you can't mine from that far away & need to be relatively close to the dropped blocks to pick them up anyway. EDIT: Compare the mining laser from "Edge of Space." I don't think it takes anything away from "the mining experience," if I can call it that unironically without sounding too douchey.
@Armagon Okay, so I was thinking, the mining progression seems a little thin. To flesh out the game, make pickaxes and MMs work in parallel. So let's say, you start out with a 1x1 MM. You mine some wood and copper to get a copper pick. With the copper pick, you can mine some iron and more copper in a larger area for a MM upgrade. After making the MM upgrade, you can mine iron more efficiently and begin mining silver. You can then use iron and silver to make a Iron pick, which can mine silver in a larger quanitity. This process could repeat itself and eventually change to something else mid-game. If you don't like that idea, here's this one: Start of the game: Focus: Pickaxes Midgame: Focus MM upgrades (It only makes sense to upgrade the MM with somewhat better materials with something other than copper and stone-age ores) Endgame: Focus: Drills The balance would be Pick's: Faster than initial MM and larger area of mining MM upgrade: Upgrade the area by a bit and the speed by alot. Something like 4x4 and then 5x initial speed. Drills: 3x3 area but faster than fully upgraded MM So in all, the MM would be the moderate tool, without completely making Picks and Drills obsolete.
