Automated Mining and Manufacturing

Since this is a futuristic game, swinging a pickaxe or a shovel shouldn't be the only method we have access to for acquiring resources. Are there going to be automated resource harvesters (such as deep-core miners, drilling stations, harvesting drones, etc)? Once we've scanned or surveyed a planet, will we be able to set up large-scale (or relatively large-scale) resource mining operations and equipment?

Going further, will we be able to mass-produce, and will we be able to automate the refining and production of resources (I.E. smelting, purifying, compositing)?

 

Perhaps have something a little like EVE, with mining ships and orbitals lasers.

Or even just orbital lasers on their own. Lasers are awesome.

 

I can see auto-mining being an end-game thing.
Also there is the issue of people going AFK and idling on servers waiting for their automatic equipment to do the work for them.

 

What would you need such a large resource income for? Building a hypermassive base, city or arms for a whole legion seems like a novelty at best.

End-game players will find most fun looking for rare resources anyway.

 

I don't think that anything specific has been said about it, but, the wiring system is much bigger in Starbound than Terraria - so it could end up being a thing.

 

I see how it would be cool, I cannot really see how it would be usefull and/or practical. First I'm not sure how it could work without breaking up and making the landscape ugly and for other reason than building huge base what those ressource could be used for. Then again I didn't really look into the game feature much as I dont want to spoil too much.
And yeah, try not to release rogue Von Neuman machine on the universe will you? No one like a swarm of self replicating mining robot literaly eating out all their planets.
Huh wait.... isn't that what the glitchs do? self replicate? mmmh... got to keep an eye on those guys...

 

Didn't the devs say you can have multiple homeworlds, but it'd soak up so much resources that it really wouldn't be practical? Automated mining changes that.

 

Research and development, manufacturing costs, upgrades (both to spaceship and station, and terrestrial settlements), energy (fueling ships, shields, cities, or whatever can't be cheap)... The possibilities are endless, as is the speculation until we find out exactly what you can do in Starbound in regards to big endgame. And, of course, there's always interstellar trade and the pixels that come from it... Pixels...

 

I really like this idea but it should have some limits.

Some ideas to keep it from being too easy.

Maybe the orbital mining laser would need a mining crystal replaced every now and then.
Mining crystals are specific to a certain type of block or ore. (ex: A yellow crystal can mine gold and precious metals while a blue crystal can mine common blocks like dirt and rocks)
It should be very expensive to build so players can't just use one right away.

 

Automated mining is as good for resource harvesting as for digging big deep holes in the surface for easier access to bottom layers (or even digging out a cave for your future base to be built in).

 

I could see small scale or limited automated mining to keep balance. But once you start massive "high efficiency" resource gathering you can throw the game out of balance fairly easily.

 

Was thinking another type of resource, I.E. resources that couldn't be harvested by hand at real speed. Think stuff you'd need to use in mass quantities.

 

The personal appeal this has for me is the aesthetics and immersion of it, the idea of running around your planet and seeing the fruits of your labour cracking sweet rocks out of the floor is a cool one, gives the impression you came and conquered.

 

I was all on board for this due to my preference of avoiding the tedium of repetitive tasks, but then I remembered that I literally have spent hundreds of hours mining in games such as Terraria and Minecraft. Add a good music playlist in the background and it's almost like sleep, rests my brain just a little.

I don't think I like the idea of depopulating entire worlds of blocks, it seems like that might cause some bugs if it happened (and really isn't useful to most people anyway.) Isn't automation generally frowned upon in multiplayer games as well? I'd be fine with it as a thing for singleplayer though (people like to build stuff with tons of blocks.)
One more caveat: since there's been pretty much no mention of material collection/crafting on a mass scale, maybe this thread belongs in Suggestions instead of FAQ?

 

What about semi-slave labor? Like my Maid-Uniformed-Female-NPCs doing some...
Mining..."automated"

 

The only forms of automated minning i would like to see implemented into this is picaxes and things that work better than picaxes yet are still a form of tool. In terms of a combination between machinary and a picaxe prehaps a minning machine (similar to my profile pic mech just more of a digger than killer) that you could sit in and use to mine quickly and efficiently minning several blocks each second, however to downside to this may be that this machine requires fuel to be powered seeing as there will be no durability implemented as far as i know and that it is slow to travel with so people cannot abuse it as both a travel and minning "super mech."

 

I guess I wasn't as clear as I could have been. By resource extraction, I was actually referring to resources that 1) can't really be acquired by running around and harvesting them by hand and 2) have real use and value, and merit stocking up on. I'm not saying that it wouldn't ever dredge up material you could use on a personal level (such as for crafting), but only as a byproduct of the main purpose: to acquire resources which may be turned into energy, pixels, used for large-scale projects, or otherwise build personal capital and worth.

What I'm NOT talking about is anything that manipulates the terrain or tears up blocks. It's not that kind of resource extraction.

An example? A resource extractor that is designed to pull geothermal energy from the core of a planet... or a mining laser that taps into exposed resource veins or pools and draws out quantities of useful resource (which may have to be sifted, sorted, or refined into a useable form)... or a drilling station that sinks its claws into the background in search of useful material.

 

Just to put it out there, how about on you spaceship there is a probe launcher where you can fire probes from orbit to see if there a valuable minerals below the surface. Then you could send down a mining drill or something automated. You would send it down via the spaceship because it would be bigger than the player and not fit in the backpack. Then, you go down to the planet to locate, power, and activate the machine. Also, the mining would be in real time, not plant time so it wouldn't invalidate the game. Yes, I got the probe idea from Mass effect.

 

Something that doesn't tear up terrain yet seems to gather energy... I like it. Seeing as the wiring system in starbound seems to be far superior to most games of similar genre I think the idea of extracting energy from geothermal craters, wind power farms, hydroelectric and others would work quite well and this energy could be used for an endless possibility of things, such as recharging armour / overcharging giving it a temporary boost in damage reduction (could work for weapons as well). However on the other hand there should probably not be an endless supply of these resources otherwise you could just be afk for a while, come back and have tons of energy. Also if these were too easy to make it would end up making things too easy and OP. Things like these should be mid-late game perhaps getting more efficient and interesting extraction equipment towards end game at the cost of more resources and time spent crafting them. - Sorry if this went on a bit too much and a little off topic.

 

Another thought is, having planets with resource extractors on them as a stock of sorts. Like, "I need to control three sources of energy and two sources of steel (example) in order to construct this type of satellite."