This is partially ripped at the suggestion of Fronsis, from where I posted it in the Discord’s ideasguy channel, though it’s been modified a good bit as well as being elaborated upon much more.
People keep trying to get rid of Bluespace miners for existing so I’m putting forward an idea for how to make them less immediately impactful without crewmates actually putting some work in, while also attempting to not totally gut them as well as hopefully not severely negatively impact lowpop (my personal general domain) in the process.
– First, increase the crystal cost. –
5 Artificial Bluespace Crystals per miner would let a station get at most 2 BS miners running (without any mining occurring, of course) via someone tiding into both teleporters. This cost increase will also make them immediately beginning a process towards gray goo-ing nearly impossible without a person doing actual mining.
Them eventually being able to recreate themselves is nice in my opinion but seems to be a major sticking point with people who dislike the miners. Insert unironic between-2-absolutes centrism, this suggestion is indeed only some genocide.
– Second, the parts: –
Currently, upgraded parts do nothing. This is stupid.
Make the tier of the parts actually affect the functions of the machine.
Scanners : Scanners would determine what the Bluespace Miner could detect (and as such, what it can actually mine). Tier 1 scanners would only get Iron and Glass. Tier 2 scanners can bring up copper and silver. Tier 3, Plasma and Gold, Tier 4 Uranium, Diamond, and Titanium. You now have to upgrade the machine for it to snowball.
Manipulators : Manipulators would affect how frequently the miner generates materials; Better manipulators mean a bit less waiting for mats.
Matter Bins : Matter bins would dictate how much each load of mats generated would be worth. Bigger bin, more stuff being dumped out of the Miner.
Lasers : Lasers could be used to manage heat (which the miners would subsequently also radiate), with better lasers more effectively managing to only heat the ores they’re presumably being used to refine. Only tier 4 lasers would be efficient enough to not cause the machine to radiate heat into the environment. This disincentivizes rushing a bunch out, because they’ll literally slightly sear kill you if you don’t have Quad-Ultra-Micro-Lasers and make too many in one place.
For the Matter Bins and Manipulators, I feel tier 3 versions of the parts should essentially mimic the functionality the current in-game BS miners have in regards to the aspect the parts are now controlling. Tier 4 Bins and Manipulators would be slightly better than how the machines currently function in-game.
Something to keep in mind: Every part within tier 1 and tier 2 only requires Iron, Glass, and/or Copper.
tier 3 introduces silver, gold (for capacitors, which aren’t relevant), and uranium to part costs
tier 4 brings in Diamond, Bluespace, and Titanium to the costs, and every tier 4 part uses at least one of these.
For scanning modules in particular; tier 3 scanning modules need silver, tier 4s need Diamond and BS. With my proposed gating of resource types behind the scanning module tier, this would mean you’d need tier 2 to get silver for the tier 3 without ripping apart a surgery table, and that the tier 3 scanner wouldn’t let you jump to tier 4, because tier 4 scanning modules require Diamond and Bluespace Crystals, both of which would only be generated with a machine that already has a tier 4.
In summary, this proposed rework of sorts would make it so that while Bluespace Miners still serve their purpose of bringing in materials for the station, helping especially for lowpop, it’s going to be doing a much weaker job of it without actual boots on the ground mining, and will also be likely to never reach its full potential in said situation. They’re costlier to make, and weaker without tier 4 parts, but would end up being slightly more rewarding than they are now once tier 4 parts have been fully applied.
I should also mention that while a fair bit of the foundation of my idea seems similar to the PR “Bluespace Miners Nerf” (which the forum will not allow me to link to), I feel my idea is distinct enough from that because as far as I can tell parts in the miners as dictated by that PR congeal into a lump sum of general efficiency with hard thresholds based on the value of that lump sum, while what I’ve detailed is the parts having individual effects related to the part itself, making upgrades work how most other upgradeable machines treat them.