Maybe mining needs to be more interesting

I've seen a lot of recent complaints of "this isn't MC or Terraria, it shouldn't be about mining", "why do I have to spend all my time digging", "it should be about exploration, why would you limit that?", stuff like that. I was thinking about it, and maybe it's less about the time it takes to dig or a desire to have the universe at our fingertips, but maybe it's a more subtle issue with the mining mechanic?

Between digging 3 x 3 at a time, seeing through walls, and taking advantage of ore in loose sand and gravel, digging in Starbound is far less work than similar games. However, it still manages to feel tedious for me in a way that it doesn't in games like MC and Terraria. The times I legitimately enjoyed it happened the first time I reached the core (which was neat until I realized there wasn't really anything to do down there and magmarock takes forever to dig), the time I stumbled upon an underground sewage biome, and every time I pull the bottom out of some gravel or fine sand (watching it collapse is very satisfying).

At first, I thought the "this game shouldn't be about mining" complaint was just whining from people who wanted everything given to them, but maybe there's some legitimacy. The first hour or so you're in an uncharted hostile world; you cobble together what you can, build a shelter, build some tools, etc. That's exciting. Then you might go exploring or you might hunker down to start making better equipment so you can hold your own. After that, you want to explore and see what each world holds and you don't want to be sitting in some hole trying to earn the right to go explore. If you circumnavigate a planet, you know you've seen almost all there is to see and if you dig down, you're likely going to just find dirt, rock, and ore until you get all the way down. It's at cross-purposes with the whole idea of the game.

Now, I don't think removing any bits of the mining aspect or making it cheaper to travel or making some ore more abundant is the way to do it. Getting to a point where you can explore new worlds should feel like an achievement, else it'll be cheapened. I powered through tiers 1-4 really quickly (after the crafted weapons were properly nerfed so I wasn't one-shotting bosses anymore) because I wanted to see how a power gamer would approach it and managed it in maybe 6-8 hours of playtime. Maybe instead we need more incentive to go and explore underground. More unique underground biomes, perhaps, maybe underground settlements or dungeons, maybe something to do at the core, stuff like that so that digging itself satisfies that exploration instinct.

 

That's a constructive suggestion that adds to the game instead of taking away. A larger amount of non-mining related stuff underground isn't a bad idea at all.

 

The ore abundancy fix should make this problem just fine.

Yesterday, before Frustrated Koala (which broke ore spawning pretty badly), I played a lot and went through a few cave systems. It was a lot of fun, they recently upped the amount of secrets and treasure chests that spawn underground.

 

Finding a chest underground is just about my favorite thing in the game. Even when the reward is some ore I already have in abundance, there's something incredibly satisfying about discovering the chest. I would love to get more of that feeling from exploring underground.

 

I'm definitely in the exploration instead of mining camp. Had I not played Minecraft and Terraria already, I suspect this wouldn't be the case, but I have and I'm all mined out.

I can understand how manual mining fits into the early game but I still think it should be faster. Late game, I don't think mining should be a thing at all. We should be able to go find veins of resources and then send in NPCs or a Machine to do the boring work.

 

I definitely agree, though I feel Starbound has the potential to give rewards other than "get more stuff". I think if you go anywhere in Starbound it's because you want to see what's there and if they can harness that, that gives them a really powerful tool in providing incentives to players. I know that underground sewage biome and stuff like that really added a lot to my experience. I also think the Mining Facilities are really cool settlements. I think if people knew they had a good chance of finding neat stuff underground, then mining wouldn't feel like a chore. It'd be just another place to explore because there's much more territory below the surface than above.

 

Maybe when we can upgrade our ships we can install a ship based mining laser. Activate it and warp down to find a massive hole already laser mined down to the juicy bits. The draw back would be all the resources that would have been there get obliterated. Houses, chests, trees, diamonds. Risk vs reward.

 

To add to the exploration bit, I'm wondering if they could add a system that allows you to scan planets at a minimum and get some rudimentary data on what is on the planet. I'm thinking the player activates the scanner from his ship and gets back the following:

- Number of above ground structures on the planet
- Presence of underground structures
- Density of ore types
- Maybe a kind of special indication of anomalies (like rare spawns or a unique biome or structure that is hard to find)

It wouldn't tell the player where to go to find the items listed, but at a minimum it would help to get the player excited about the planet they just flew to and provide motivation to want to go down and get to the exploring!

As for the exploring versus digging, I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to have more developed cave systems that are more interconnected? Right now, you start traveling down a cave on the surface and usually it dead ends just a short distance underground forcing you to have to start digging to get to the next pocket. Although you usually find the next pocket quickly, I have noticed that nothing about underground exploration gets me more excited than when I break into a big open section of cave and I have room to move around and explore. Whether I find a chest or a few big pockets of ore to mine out, that is a MUCH more exciting moment than trying to dig around in the dark and actually find that big section.

If the cave spawning did more to connect surface entrances with these larger underground caverns, I think it would help to promote deeper exploration of the planet while still preserving the need to mine for minerals. Maybe these bigger caves can have slightly higher ore concentration to reward the player for finding them?

 

They need to add some sort of sonar tool or item you can use or consumable that lights up the ores on your screen and maybe things like chests too. Spelunker potions made mining in Terraria WAY less of a hassle in the later parts of the game, especially once you get to hard mode and have to find all of those tasty hard mode ores. As far as ore concentration goes right now it's between good and ridiculous. A decent dig in the Beta sector netted me over 100 diamond ore, as well as around 800 iron and silver, as well as more gold, and platinum than I think I'll ever use. A similar dig on my starter planet gave me enough silver and gold ore to upgrade my pick and craft the armors. I'm also a little more interested in going between worlds to explore instead of mining down but if there was some way to see that there's something worth exploring for down there I wouldn't mind mining more. As of now I just mine down in the first planet I find in that sector, mine up all the ore I figure I'll need (usually around 150-200) and then do surface only exploring after that. I have found a tech chest or two mining underground pre-wipe (that's how I ended up finding Targeted Blink) so it can be very profitable but it can also be super boring and annoying when you can't seem to find that next cavern system and you're just digging around randomly hoping to hit something. I have found more varied biomes underground which is cool and helps spur exploration underground for me.

 

The only issue I have with mining is how insanely slow it is to mine through many of the deeper, vastly more common minerals even WITH Diamond-level picks. In fact, from my experience even though you can mine in a 3 x 3 radius the mining speed overall is actually noticeably SLOWER compared to Terraria or Minecraft when it comes to "hard minerals". It digs through dirt, sand, etc faster than anything else by far, but many other minerals are actually slower even with the 3 x 3 mining. The time it takes to mine that 3 x 3 at once is longer than doing them individually in the other games.

 

Not sure if i got a bugged world or what, but with the new patch (frustrated koala) my new starter world has ZERO minerals once i get down to the sand/gravel/bones layers. Explored multiple cave pockets, peeked through walls, dug through sand, etc. and nothing for more than an hour. Giving up on this one and trying a new character.

Also disappointed that they changed it so that the matter manipulator won't let you scan past your range anymore. It was very useful before and made cave exploration more enjoyable with less random picking a direction and digging.

 

To me, mining in itself is just as much exploring as when you're on the surface. The sense of discovery is what I thrive for, and there are always heaps of caves to explore. even if I can see through the walls at times, I still open them up to see for sure what could be inside them. Even in a mining trip where there isn't a lot of ore to be found, I still enjoy exploring new places. basically finding the ores I want/need or finding treasure is just a bonus.

 

I agree, I have this problem too. Mining isn't boring, but it is tedious at times. You can very easily spend days underground.

 

My main issue with mining is that you're 4 blocks tall but you can only dig 3 blocks tall in a single go.

That unecessarily wastes your time, specially when you're digging harder materials like Dire Stone.

 

Well, I think it's pretty useful when there are monsters on the other side of the wall, and you don't want to necessarily just let the monster eat your face. You can take out the harder underground monsters by only opening up a select amount of blocks.

 

I actually modded my miningtool files because of this EXACT issue haha. Very annoying to have to go through an extra cycle of digging just to get that extra block of space open.

 

I haven't paid attention to that, are all monsters 4 blocks tall?

Regardless, you'd still keep the option to mine single blocks for cases like this. Maybe you could even have more size options with different mining times, if the code supports that.