Your pick-axe hate is misguided: DRILLS are the enemy.

I read your original post haltus, and first of all, I'd like to say that I whole-heartedly agree that being able to upgrade and diversify your matter-manipulator is a fantastic idea that needs to be implemented in the game; we have FTL travel, teleportation, melee weapons which produce energy projectiles, all-purpose 3d-printers, mobile refineries and high-tech crafting tables and whatnot, so why not expand upon the infinitely useful - and cool - portable matter-manipulators too?

Now, the contentious issue of the drills... heh I get your reasoning, but I would argue that having hot-footed it off your home-world hastily and landing on another planet far away with only a basic matter manipulator and some seeds - and a sword - to be found in the ship you jumped on, at least having the option of upgrading to a drill once you've made a pick-axe or two to do the basic mining to procure a decent store of materials and metals is one I think is worth preserving in the game, until you can find merchants who'll trade you the technology, circuitry, energy sources etc. necessary to upgrade your matter manipulator to a point where you no longer need picks or drills or anything else of that ilk. if you're able to achieve that aim nice and quickly, then you can forego the use of drills altogether, but in our world we do use drills, and I don't see why just because they've been rendered largely obsolete by the timeframe of this game, they cannot be built at all by the player if the player so chooses! even though technology is moving at a swift pace in our world, we still have communities who live in a 'traditional way', using outmoded tools and equipment to farm, build etc. simply because they choose to and wish to preserve those ways in a world that is modernising around them. we've got bluray discs and cloud storage and whatnot but a lot of people still use hard drives, DVDs, CDs, and I wouldn't be surprised if a few people even still watched VHS tapes and that. I've got a whole box full of cassettes which I'd actually really like to record the contents of over to DVDs, I just haven't got around to getting one of those players that plays both yet. I also think that it would not be easy, on a random planet where you're having to scrape everything together yourself, to so rapidly find and gather the necessary things to upgrade your M-M anyway;

however, I have digressed and rambled considerably, so I apologise, I would suggest that lessening the tiers of drills would perhaps be an acceptable middle-ground, as others on this thread have said already; also, there's no reason why they can't look sleeker and more SF, and have some more futuristic functionalities; what those could be, I'm not entirely sure though... perhaps there could be a blueprint so that you can craft some iron and copper and whatnot into a little circuit-board that has a sensor, which could tell you what ores are present in the surrounding area...

But, I'm absolutely all for the M-M being able to be upgraded in the first place, in fact I think that's a necessity and I'm very keen to see that implemented!

I also agree that you should be able to upgrade the metal the M-M is made of as well, and to build upon that idea, perhaps putting more advanced tech, and energy sources like a more powerful battery, inside a copper or iron shell, would cause the tool to break quicker, to signify the necessity for a stronger shell like one made of diamond or impervium?

one last thing, I also agree that a silver, gold, platinum, titanium etc. pick should not be better and faster, please correct me if I'm wrong but aren't all these materials in fact softer then iron or steel? diamond perhaps, but that's also brittle, but I think you can get away with that still making a stronger pick, and especially making a stronger drill.

I do also wish to point out this post I saw in this latest page of the thread, and whole-heartedly agree with this, too. having sectors and tiers in space is geared towards providing the player with a progression-ladder as they explore the universe, but it also removes an element of the randomness and uniqueness of each planet you're visiting. after all, you can choose not to beam down to a planet which your ship's sensors are telling you looks relatively hostile and/or dangerous, but if you want to chance it anyway, then you should be able to, if you are reckless enough? after all, you were initially reckless enough to jump on a ship and mash your face on the FTL travel button with nothing more then a basic matter manipulator, some seeds and a sword, right

 

I think the manufacturing process can be done via the 3D printer / robotic crafting table. You don't need to know where each of the raw materials are being used, or what they're doing once they're placed there; you just need the schematic for it and the materials for the crafting table / printer to shape and assemble. The only time you need to 'jury-rig' something is when you don't have access to that cool sci-fi tech, which is where the pick comes into play.

 

Tech, circuitry, and power sources would all be necessary for a drill too. Sure they're much more simple than a MM, but even in sci-fi setting, you wouldn't be able to just *make* a drill if your only resources are what you've chopped from trees or mined from the ground.

So, you wouldn't be able to make a drill without the merchants and such either, but if you've got access to those, why wouldn't you be buying parts for / looking up schematics / etc for the MM or some other sci-fi device instead?

While true, our characters are clearly not stuck in a 'traditional' mindset. Our characters are the ones piloting FTL spacecraft, turning off gravity, shooting down flying saucers so that they can scavenge parts from it... all the while being surrounded by "traditional" cultures who are literally still living in bamboo huts and sleeping in wooden carts.

Not necessary at all! I would MUCH rather read a wall-o-text that explains why you feel the way you do, than a "No, drills should stay!" ...and nothing else. So, +1 for actually discussing this!

Perfectly acceptable alternative. If drills could be made to fit the setting, then... well, they'd fit the setting, and that'd be a win-win for both sides of this debate.

Titanium is fine, I think, for that kind of application. Hell, I use a titanium hammer at work. It's a very light metal, and if I understand its properties correctly, it's much more flexible / springy, and much less malleable (susceptible to things like getting dents, or bent [without springing back]) than, say, iron or steel.

So for a pick? Yea I could see that. The question is, however, by the time our characters have worked up the ability to process and shape titanium, should they still be using a pick? I gotta think 'no'.

For a drill... I gotta think titanium would be a poor choice for a drill bit in light of its flexible nature... maybe it's strong enough to off-set that? The only time I use a drill at work is through wood, so I'm not sure which material would or would not be plausible in a mining capacity. /shrug. Would probably be great for the other parts of the drill, though, to keep the weight down.

Making those tools out of gold? silver? That's just stupid.

 

Random little trivia in response to a brief discussion about fuel on page 2. I'm a factfreak, sorry about that

 

Ah, gotcha. With the "sorry" at the end of that remark, I thought you were trying to debunk something with that fact, which was confusing since we've yet to discuss nuclear energy here.

As Einstein put it, "That's a hell of a way to boil water."

 

As Einstein put what?

i like how were all talking about drills and pickaxes, and yet no one has mentioned that we fly our FTL spaceships with coal.

 

Nuclear power plants. Which use the radioactive materials (which are very hot) to heat water to boiling... the steam produced turns turbines, which is what actually creates the electricity.

What's wrong with coal as a power source? It's got quite a high energy content. Yeah, burning it in an enclosed space would not work well, but who says that is how the spaceship is using it?

 

why cant you power it with guns or meat or something? or dirt.....

 

Ask the ship engineers? /shrug

 

That's not a very logical explanation. You don't have the coordinates to your home planet, or any other extremely advanced planet for that matter. It's also bad from a gameplay perspective (you want to be continously be progressing in technology, and not just have tier 2-10 be the same exact things but in different colors causing higher numbers to pop out). Also so it makes sense for you to be finding only planets of the appropriate threat level. You don't want to beam down onto a tier 10 threat level planet right after the starter planet and get instakilled by a tiny kitten with 500,000 times your strength. It wouldn't make any sense for that sort of thing NOT to happen under the scenario of immediately finding the highest tech.

 

And that would probably be fine, if:

A: The progression was always forwards (i.e., not going backwards to earlier materials, such as the jump from high-end pickaxes to a copper drill), and

B: The progression was not, itself, already quagmired in "the same exact thing but in different colors causing higher numbers to pop out" (i.e., six-ish tiers each of pickaxes and drills, with each tier being nothing but a stronger recolor of the previous ones).

Which could still be avoided in a mixed-threat single-sector galaxy. Just to throw out some examples:

1: Higher threats could correspond to larger planets, with upgrades being required to deal with the stronger gravitational forces (e.g., powered exoskeleton technology).

2: Hostile atmospheres (anaerobic, or even corrosive)

3: Electromagnetic disturbances that require ship upgrades to overcome.

The first two could have armor tier requirements, where you have to have armor of a minimum tier equipped before you can go there. The point being, it's entirely possible to prevent players from traveling to grossly difficult planets prematurely without using the arbitrary system of having uniform-threat sectors.

 

First off, I'm all for the improvement in pickaxe progress. Gold digging equipment will NEVER make sense (save for maybe the matter manipulator, it would make a lot of sense there).

I don't agree with removing drills entirely, they have their place and I'll try to give my best explanation.

When i was using the matter manipulators mod i was solely using my diamond MM (digs roughly the same speed as the pickaxe counterpart). I was digging straight down and to my surprise, saw my friend pass me doing the same thing, but a little to the left and using a diamond drill instead.

I like this. It would give a nice reason to change up your tool every now and then. The matter manipulator is endlessly convenient (with the range and being able to scan materials that light can't reach. It's the ultimate multi-tool. However, sometimes you come across some extra tough material or are feeling a bit impatient and wanna get your hands dirty. Bam! Whip out the drill and start chewing threw that dirt (magmarock).

So, here is my proposition on digging tool progression.

stone pickaxe > iron pickaxe (copper has it's place, but not on a pickaxe) > steel pickaxe > diamond pickaxe? > basic drill (steel feels right) > reinforced drill (durasteel?) > diamond drill > LASER DRILL !! (now copper and gold make sense, plus the drill head already being diamond should make a decent lens for the laser) > onward and upward (let your imagination soar with the cool technology that would put a laser drill to shame. there are a lot of high end metals not used in digging tools so there is much room for further progression)

All the while, your matter manipulator should be progressing as your badass multitool should and just dig slower than it's pick/drill counterpart of equal progress.

 

I love this. Subtle tool specialisation is something that I've always liked, mostly for my lack of love for linear progression. I'd enjoy having to weigh the options of whether to use one tool or the other to accomplish a certain task, much the same as choosing two one-handed weapons versus an equivalent two-handed weapon.. Not a whole lot of difference, but they each have their advantages.

Of course, I still feel like a high-tier mm would outperform even the best of drills in a more realistic environment, so this really shouldn't apply to all levels of tools in the same way. Perhaps have some overlap between each kind of tool in the transition stages, and then have variants within each type of tool to further that? Factoring in mining area opens up a vast array of possibilities for that.

The only problem there is whether or not something like that would be too complicated for the playerbase. While I am personally quite fond of added gameplay complexity, a lot of players seem to disagree with that philosophy.. the forums are filled with players opposing even the minor level of complexity already present, and even more that try to shoot down ideas that they deem challenging to their playstyles. Just about anything suggested that adds more layers to the game gets at least a few people complaining that it'd make the game too hard.

An argument could be made for them being a vocal minority, but my recent experience suggests otherwise; I write lore for a Minecraft-based project over at Aegis Gaming, and even with our carefully-screened playerbase, we've recently found that some of our progression structures are just too complex to be practical for them. The idea that a game with as much potential depth as Starbound should be watered down to suit lazy players is one that I find hard to stomach, but it's not good to just ignore them.

Something interesting that I saw suggested was an option to toggle off certain gameplay features, to ease play for people that didn't want the challenge. Maybe the problem of impatient players could be solved with even more complexity, by having multiple different tool systems available? Or am I just taking this too far now? Gah, sleeplessness makes me ramble.


...Also, why do I feel like the praising response to my first post on this thread was sarcasm?

 

I say you spent too much time on something not making a real breakthrough, it's simply saying "because reallife reasons, substitute drill with matter manipulator". I feel many suggestion posts forget this is a videogame, not some engeneering program to make the perfect-most-accurate-to-real-life-experience game ever... I mean... it IS a videogame, when did videogames HAD to make sense to be good in the first place?

Although giving as many possible space hitechy like features is always a plus, exagerating on adding reality would break the game into something painful to play, for example... It's like suggesting "humans get tired, add a stamina/exhaust bar so player has to sleep" <- , that is like killing the joy on deep cave mining or planet exploration... also things like they get forced to walk or stop because they get tired running and such... just imagine Link from Legend of Zelda getting tired in boss fights, or when running in the endless grassfield, it would be annoying and hella stupid...

Finally, I do agree on upgrading the matter manipulator, but the whole "kill the drill" idea is like telling to the pixel artist "you wasted your time, we don't want it"... oh you forgot people had to work on that? Yeah... every bit of the game is made out of hard work fruit of development, not just sitting and typing complaints-suggestions from the comfiness at home.

 

I just wanted to say. A suggestion is a small thread with some qualification.

I just went into this thread for curiosity and had a "wtf feeling". It's not a suggestion, but a discussion as I guess. How about moving it into General Discussion

I guess nobody think that a dev would read all six pages of this novelle to come to a conclue for this simple feeling-what-is-better, which is no game mechanic at all

 

I dunno.. I think being able to craft something as crystalline as a diamond into a pickaxe and not have it shatter is either witchcraft or CRAFT OF THE FUUUTURE>

 

Not sure if anyone mentioned this before, so heres my take:

As much as I love this idea...

Why not make it so that Matter Manupilators are not craftable?
You'd need to buy them. After all, you are some dumbass who FTL'ed
his way to glory. You don't have the brain needed to make this stuff.

Matter manupilaters are awesome, but why not make something different?
Why does it have to be a MM, why not make say... a Sonic Screwdriver Emitter?
Or... a Plasma Cutter ala Dead Space? So many possibilities.

Drills could still be there, except as a mid ground.... WAIT!
A mid group in terms of cost, these high level maguffins won't
come cheap. Drills are cheeaaaap!

 

I'm all for tool specialization, I just don't think modern tech is an appropriate selection for any job in this setting.

So, you'd have the pick axes for early game, then your options would branch out into several categories which have their own set of tiers?

• Mining Lasers, would excel at shooting through only a block or two, but would penetrated far behind it, allowing you to make tunnels fairly rapidly, especially downward.

• Mining Mechs, which could have a fairly massive mining grid (9x9 or something), which would clear through weak blocks (dirt/sand/etc) but would get hung-up on harder materials like ores or obsidian.

• MM, which could have a 4x4 or so grid, and act as kind of the middle ground, being able to make tunnels or clear out large areas of blocks, but not as effectively as the other two get it done; and the MM would excel at extracting clusters of ores with it's 4x4 grid.

That way we'd have a reason to switch from one to another depending on the job ad hand. Need to rip open a tunnel through some dirt or tar or something? Hop in a mech and show nature who's boss! Find a cluster of ores you want? Don't waste time trying to scoop em out with the mech; hop out and hit it them with the MM! Got a straggle or two that from that cluster that was outside the MM's grid? Shoot it out with the laster! Want to just go straight down? Point your laser at the ground and don't blink, or you'll be swimming in molten rock before you know it!

One challenge introduced by the lasers would that it couldn't really follow a grid system like the other tools - I mean, a 2 x 3 or something would work great if you were aiming straight down or straight to the side, but what happens when you aim it diagonally? So, the laser would have to use projectile mechanics, pissibly with the ability penetrate tiles to start damaging layers behind the surface... so, instead of a grid, maybe just give it a limit of being able to hit 6 tiles at once, and which 6 tiles those happen to be would depend on how you aim it.

All 3 items types would have their own progression tiers, giving players a lot more to work toward. By introducing all three of them at the same time, players would have to work their way up to high-end materials on one, just to drop back down to copper or w/e on the next tool - they'd all be (or should be) advancing more-or-less together.

...and look! no modern tech where it doesn't belong! Win win? ^_^

 

That's sad. No quicker way to ruin a game than by making everything easy / instant.

It was sincere. After 5 pages of re-addressing the same "problem" over and over again, even though it was already addressed in the OP, your input was the first in favor of keeping drills for a reason that actually made sense; and even though that input goes against my suggestion, it's intelligent input just the same, and I always welcome intelligent input.

So really, don't take that comment as anything other than what was stated directly.