The presence of stars and gas giants does so far (to my knowledge) present no opportunities for interaction and/or exploitation by the player. This could be changed by the addition of some form of "mining beam array" (MBA), these devices could operate by projecting a starwars-style tractor beam across interplanetary space to siphon a small stream of matter from a non-solid celestial body. This mechanic could also be used to motivate interstellar exploration by having different kinds of stars provide different resources; mundane main sequence stars could provide basic elements such as hydrogen and helium (or fancifully named equivalents) while stars of greater size could provide increasingly dense/valuable elements but also be increasingly rare. It would also seem logical that the bigger the star, the bigger/stronger the MBA required to overcome the stars gravity to siphon matter. The most powerful MBA varieties could be capable of extracting end-game tier resources from very rare stars, like siphoning neutronium from a neutron star. The effect of an MBA on gas giants could be less varied then on stars as to provide a more consistent source of materials with all gas giants sharing the same resource composition. A low-power MBA could be limited to siphoning light materials from the planets surface layers, but the more powerful the MBA the deeper into the planet it penetrates for more and rarer resources, with a sufficiently powerful MBA being capable of penetrating all the way to the planetary core to extract the rarest and most valuable elements. Building and activating an MBA should of course not result in an infinite stream of free resources, the device should probably have some sort of resource requirement to operate, like needing some kind of reactive material for power or needing regular maintenance. I realize this suggestion is probably lacking in several respects, but hey, I'm just throwing things out here.
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Sounds very late game, but I don't want to be able to rely on this thing for all my resources. Perhaps whatever it runs on cannot be gathered by the machine itself, making you have to go to the planets surface to mine anyway. Probably best to put this material on harder planets too, to avoid making it just a casual trip to mine some fuel, then off we go planet cracking again (Oh shit Dead Space, it's happening again). Also is this beam cutting a hole in the ground and sifting out all the valuable ores, or just picking them out through the ground itself? If the former, it should leave visible scars on the landscape which you can see if you were to beam down to the planet. That's my thoughts on it, otherwise it seems pretty practical and very handy to get large bulks of cheap resources which are too mundane to gather yourself. (Chopping down hundreds of trees just to build your space-capable Viking longboat what?)
Every so often a suggestion comes up where someone seems REALLY intent on mining gas giants and stars. Again I have to ask what is it that you're mining for here? Why do we HAVE to be able to grab stuff from giant balls of gas and plasma? It seems like an arbitrary addition that stems from people wanting it for the sake of it existing rather than having some creative or in-depth use for it. No offense intended but the fact that you acknowledge that this idea is lacking in several respects and that you're just throwing it out there doesn't really help either.
I feel as though he is referring to mining and harvesting materials from gas giants and stars exclusively rather than terrestrial planets that could be actively mined and exploited by a player from the surface. The MBA would make a nice addition to the space ship. It would be nice to see such a thing be craft-able and apply able to our vessels. The resources that are mines could also be used as various fuels and materials for weapons and vehicles. Perhaps mining these planets would provide more efficient tools and fuels than could be found on terrestrial bodies.
Oh right yeah I see where I got confused now; he started talking about planet's cores and layers, but I reread it and he meant the layers of gas. Found out too, that it's impossible to tell if there is actually a landmass behind all that gas anyway. Had to look it up, it's pretty interesting if you care lol. http://www.universetoday.com/14470/does-jupiter-have-a-solid-core/
To me it just seems like harvesting "giant balls of gas and plasma" would be the most sci-fi-logical way to acquire significant quantities of gaseous elements that usually only exist as trace elements in the atmospheres of rocky planets. If the question of what is mined is not clearly answered to you, let me clarify: We are near-exclusively talking gas. What an MBA could be capable of extracting is the stuff that the celestial body is made up of, gas giants currently known to science is predominantly composed of hydrogen and helium, as is most main sequence stars. So what would be initially extracted is just that since it stands to reason that the outer layers would be occupied by these light elements. But because denser gases would sink closer to the core it would seem logical to have heavier gasses such as krypton and xenon occurring in useful amounts near/in the core depending on if a solid core is present. The only non-gas elements I can think of would be neutronium and "strange matter" from neutron- and quark stars respectively, and both of those are theorized to be something resembling liquids. And just to clarify, I would rather not have this mechanic in the game then have an MBA just be a single item you just craft and just place on the ground, constructing a MBA should be a major undertaking requiring significant construction work. Also, note that there is a "probably" before "lacking in several respects", if I knew the lacking respects I wouldn't have posted it. And why shouldn't we be able to grab stuff from giant balls of gas and plasma? It would probably make reliable source of starship fuel allowing a planet with an MBA to be used as a refueling station instead of having to land and mine for coal/oil/uranium or whatever every time you are running low on fuel.
The clarification is appreciated, I assure you. Most suggestions about "mining" stars and gas giants don't bother going into details and are usually the result of people wanting it for the sake of it existing and nothing more, instead of actually thinking of a plausible reason for it aside from simply having another unspecified thing to collect. But anyway, what sort of use would we have for actually collecting all of these gases (other than fuel, I'll get to that in a sec)? Are there things you'd want to see implemented alongside this that would benefit from having these gases? Because as it stands, collecting something like this still needs a use. What does significant construction work actually entail in-game though? Will this MBA have a construction timer that players have to wait out, or do you simply mean it'll require a lot of blocks before it can be functional? Like I said, players shouldn't be able to grab stuff from these bodies if it's redundant. You have to keep in mind that all of these things take time to implement, and I personally wouldn't want to see the devs work on a bonus feature that ends up being arbitrary or undercuts another feature in some way. To challenge this idea further, I want to point out that part of the reason that fuel is something players have to get from planets is that it's a way of encouraging players to keep exploring new planets. Aside from that I don't believe that it's been stated what it is that fuels our ships anyway, but as far as I can tell it's at the very least implied to be something that is found on planets and either used directly or converted into space fuel. This is just my interpretation of it of course, but it sounds like the devs intend to have this fuel source specifically be planet-side. If that's the case then I don't know how keen I would be about having an alternative that goes around the original intent of the devs. I've always been against games having features that trample on each other (seems to be more common than you'd expect these days), and I wouldn't want something like this implemented if it only serves as a way to have players avoid beaming down on planets for more resources, even late game.
One needs not look further then the real world for a plethora of uses of these elements; Since vehicles are going to be in the game: both hydrogen and helium can be used of lighter-than-air flight, since farming is going to be in the game: hydrogen in combination with nitrogen can be used to create ammonia for fertilizer, since oil will exist in game: hydrogen is a vital component in breaking down crude oil into useful substances. Helium is useful in the creation of semi-conductors and vital in the fabrication of fiber optic cable. Not to mention hydrogens potential as fuel for fusion power and liquid hydrogen is, IIRC, the most efficient coolant known to man. What I would personally like to see is something remotely similar to the "beacon" in Minecraft where a general type of structure is required to produce the effect and the scale of the structure determining power of said effect. Of course it would probably be best to have the blocks required for the MBA to be of a more specialized nature, like beam emitter blocks to produce the beam itself, beam focus/boosting to increase the power of the beam and collection blocks to collect the "mined" material as it reaches the array. This is one of the reasons why I would rather not have the MBA-mechanic in game if it is something you can just create with a minimum of effort, so that you can't just put one down whenever you run out of gas. An MBA should be something profoundly stationary and there is only so far that you can get on a full tank of space-fuel. The fuel-output of an MBA would enable smoother travel within the area where you can reach it to refuel. Building an MBA just to get fuel to keep going forwards would be colossally more time- and resource-consuming then mining for fuel manually.
A couple of these like the fertilizer idea I like, but a lot of these sound like they may over-complicate crafting certain things. Not only that but when you consider that player suggestions aren't going to be looked at/implemented until post-release, a lot of these would end up being tacked onto crafting recipes after they already exist and some players may not be too happy about recipes suddenly requiring an additional special material to gather and use on what they previously were able to do without. That's under the assumption that there are no gases to collect to begin with anyway. I don't recall seeing gases mentioned anywhere so it's probably worth asking a dev next they do a Q&A. Or maybe in IRC, people seem to get answers out of them often enough in there. I'm not familiar with Minecraft's beacon but I think I understand how construction of the MBA would work. Sounds like something that would be difficult to balance. If it ends up being too time consuming then players may not find it worth while unless it's really useful. But then if it is really useful, what's to keep players from simply getting started on it right away and circumventing the gathering of the fuel material planet-side?
