I'm not sure if it's the consensus of the Starbound community or not but I think that mining for ores would be out of place in Starbound; a game that is set in space and over multiple worlds. For mining to work (I believe) it would have to be either an automatic process that is either initiated by the player (a mini-game or whatever) or for the ores to be easily found by the player. Similar to the process on Mass Effect 2 wherein you have to scan the world to find the highest concentrations of an ore to collect it (bad explanation, I'll find a video on YouTube that explains it better). There could be an interface where a player could choose to scan a world for the available items; depending on the player's ship only certain minerals would be available for collection. I have two ideas for this method; METHOD A: The first is almost a carbon copy of the Mass Effect, you have a limited number of probes that you can have at one time in your arsenal. Each planet has certain spots with high/low concentrations of certain minerals and you have to manually fire the minerals. Sometimes a frequency would be picked up initiating some side-quests or extra loot would be collected. METHOD B: The second is that there is a limit that can be fired on each planet; say 2 for a small world, 5 for a medium etc. Once the limit has been reached, the planet either has a cooldown or cannot be mined again. The HUD would be easier to read to give the player more of a chance. An alternative to the above: The ores can be seen above ground; either in caves or on the surface and interaction with the ore would result in a drone coming to collect the resource or it would collect the ore. EDIT: I didn't believe that this would be a thing that would be available instantly in the game; it's more of a end/late game mechanic. Sorry if there was confusion.
I actually like mining to some extent. Starting from scratch, I think the player should be forced to mine his way to find ore, rather than just directly detecting it and automatically extracting it. However, I also like the idea of automated robots that could do the job for you at some stage of the game. Or even remotelly controllable robots that would mine much more quickly than a player. There was already some discussion about it in another topic.
Making the mining automated an Option but not the ONLY option. And its a sandbox game, there really isnt anything out of place. Limiting ideas just because it doesnt seem "right" isnt good.
I agree completely with you that mining is fun and enjoyable. But it wasn't my intention that this was an ultimate and limiting option; I meant that later on in the game you could do the things suggested. I must have missed that topic.
Personally I sort of enjoyed mining in Terraria, especially if it was in a dangerous environment. But for high-level games, I suppose there should be ways to augument and automate the mining process. For instance, the idea to scan a planet for resources is great! Maybe there's only certain resources on certain planets... Scanning in ahead of time could give you vague infos on the resources available on the planet. Of course, better sensors would give more detailed results. Also a very expensive mining drone could be bought/built and unloaded on a planet. The player can then either let it carry on on it's own, with a small chance that it gets stuck or destroyed by something it encounters beneath... Or a guard it as it decends... these drones would be equipped with sensors and seek out all, or just pre-defined resources!
Then I agree with you, more elaborate methods of mining should be available in later stages of the game. Also being able to upgrade your starship to get better scans and such sound great ^^
I think automated mining systems could be an option once the player unlocks late-game progression. They'd have to already have a well-established home base, a UFO, and plenty of tech upgrades. Even then, the rare resources, most likely located in the deepest layers of a planet, would still have to be extracted manually.
Whats say we get a giant mining ship, generally pull off large sections off the planet and break it down into its metals and materials until the planet is destroyed. But if we find a alien artifact beneath the surface that mutates people and raises the dead then I retract my post .
Maybe later in the game you could use a tractor beam/vacuum on your UFO. Basically, it has inventory space and you just suck up all the blocks below you in a certain area.
I like the idea of starting with basic equipment and throughout the game finding better and better ways to mine/acquire materials. Maybe a progression something like pickaxe, jackhammer, energy-drill, tractor beam. I'd like all upgrades of this type (mining related or not, that drastically alter/enhance gameplay) to be pretty rare and reasonably difficult to acquire, otherwise the game would feel too fast paced IMO.
I would hate it if ores were obtained similar to probing in ME2. That shit was repetitive and got dull in 10 seconds flat. Mining should be somewhat similar to Terraria, but I wouldn't mind that, in the late game, you're able to obtain automated mining equipment, but it can only gather low-tier ores like copper, iron and the like. I'd much like the idea of all ores remaining constantly useful throughout the game, as was suggesting in this thread.
The ME2 mining thing was pretty weak and over-simplified. Not to say that you later in Starbound should have the ability to build a Planet-Breaker (Dead Space style) and let it break down the whole planet, this should be very end-game though. But, I do love to diggy diggy hole myself too
I'd personally prefer to dig under myself for it, it could be for late game, when you need MASSIVE amounts of some types of ore in order to build better stuff. I'd like to see a way to find relevant info on the ores of the planet before I touch down too, nothing would annoy me more than finding that a planet lacks what I need, and eventually, and usually accidentally, getting sucked into something else and forgetting what I was trying to do. I'd also like to see flags and markers that you can place down over PoI, points of interests, like ore under ground, or a cave you want to explore, so you can go back and do it later. Maybe even make it a flag with a sign near it that lets you write things on it, "mine down later", "cave underground", "hotspot, be careful", or "research material here".
Being able to scan planets for their material content should be possible, once you researches or otherwise gains the tech to do so, agreed though, even if I was able to "Planet Break" I would still enjoy diggy diggy'ing.
An alternative to your alternative version of mining is the method used in Universal Combat (the uber-combat-sim that was too complicated and ran at unplayable speeds because of PC's at the time) is have your ship drop off automated mining probes via shuttle or orbital drop. In UC there was one probe per shuttle, the largest carriers had four shuttles/probes. Let's keep it simple and say one for now. So you drop this probe off. For laziness let's say this probe can crawl with treads along the bottom of lakes/oceans so that way it can be dropped anywhere. Anyplace short of sheer cliffs or floating islands (a la Avatar) this probe would be able to get to easily. Then it starts scraping up dirt and filtering out useful materials. Say a planet has high readings of Silicon, then the majority of what the probe would filter out of the dirt would be silicon. Once it's full it sends a signal and you send a shuttle to get it back. Not sure how to retrieve it without any sort of orbital ships, it would require a large rocket to re-launch into space and lots of fuel. EDIT: Totally forgot to mention in my post that you can mine like you do in Minecraft or Terraria. The probe is just a slower and automated way to get materials at a constant rate without requiring user input, and doesn't get much if any of the rarer elements because it's basically a dirt sifter type mechanism. Also adding to my post, sorry this is getting quite long by now, is that you can research to get more probes on hand to improve your automated mineral intake. As higher tech items get more expensive to research and produce, you will need to compensate with higher mining capacity. More or better probes would fit in well.
Why relay on probes? In all honesty, I found the mining mechanic in mass effect to be quite boring, simply because it almost had nothing to do with the dominant gameplay, and you are forced to do almost nothing to gain resources. -The following might spoil the game to virgins of mass effect 2, click on your own risk!- I am NOT considering how the collected resources effects the ending of course. We all could hope the mining mechanics work similar to the browser-based game, motherload. This is the idea that allows players to use vehicle, or something more petty (Arm-drill anybody?), to mine instead. Maybe a bit less repetitive and unforgiving way to execute this than motherload, but vary similar to how Terraria handled gathering resources. I have high hopes for this conclusion, but if done, I would like to see it be the final tier of mining, not something you start with. It would also be cool, in an RTS fashion, to have robots to do the mining for the player, could imagine all the time saved with out indulging into massive mining grind.
I would REALLY love to see this, and have them ported from planet to planet when resources run dry. They expressed already to having NPCs be helpful in some situations, so I don't think it'd be hard for them to do this.
So first you said you didn't like my idea, then you say you have an idea that happens to be identical to mine? As I said in my edit I forgot to mention that the probes (or what you called robots) would go much slower than the player mining, but they could do it constantly so as not to completely bore the player by having to gather large amounts of common minerals. This way if you need a large amout of minerals for a project you are focusing on you can go and mine yourself.
