Lets Talk about Mining

Honestly, I don’t like the new changes and feel they are more of a hindrance to gathering ore than they are at slowing down mega fauna loot.

I suggest a new general change to all equipment:

“Mining Equipment can be researched. Killing equipment must be bought.”

So items like plasma cutters, drills and mining scanners should be researchable and accessible from the lathe. While KA upgrades, keys, pens, stabilisers etc can only be purchased with mining credits. This would means things like plasma cutters aren’t stuck behind a 20 minute farm at round start. Which seems to have no other purpose other than slowing the amount of matts the station will get and having the station bitch about useless miners for the first half hour of every round. It would also mean a newly joined miner, can’t walk in, get an upgraded KA and go on a murder spree straight away.

I guess it could be argued that it’s easier to clear an area in preparation for a mega fauna fight with a plasma cutter, but you can do it pretty quickly using a KA and some gibtonite so it’s not a big issue imho.

This might improving mining QoL without making mage fauna runs easier.

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This is just completely untrue - PKA upgrades were made more available than ever before and the only things made especially harder to get were boss loot and the two plasma cutters. This includes previously very rare pka upgrades that dramatically improve its ability to mine, and are available in two tiers of research just as the two plasma cutters previously were.

An AoE mining PKA is a rough equal to a base plasma cutter at gathering ores while being slower at getting around lavaland - AoE mining upgrades took the place of plasma cutters for this reason. AoE mining only gets better when you add reload speed to it, which is available sooner than advanced plasma cutters, and the rapid repeater mod (available at same point as advanced cutters were) makes them arguably the single best mining tool in the game because rocks can’t dodge your shots and allow the PKA to continually fire very rapidly.


Big bag of items here, gonna focus on the ones that you think should be changed from current availability:

Plasma cutters

Are one of the greatest enablers of boss/ruins/loot rushing because of how quickly they allow someone to completely traverse all of lavaland. The loss of actual ore-gathering utility has more than been made up for with other changes.

Mining Scanners

I can see and understand a case being made for these being available via research, but everyone also starts with an automatic scanner in their lockers. Advanced scanners aren’t a necessity, but one of the many upgrades available. If it’s hard to decide whether to take a scanner over something else, it sounds like the progression choices are balanced appropriately.

KA upgrades

The fact you regard PKA upgrades as being exclusively for combat (as well as some things said later) leads me to believe you may not have even known the AoE mining upgrade was made readily available. The PKA is a versatile and modular tool that can be specialized into combat or non-combat or even function for both at the same time. The mods can even be swapped around.

Any miner using their PKA only for combat while complaining about their inability to mine has either never explored the options, or is too afraid of giving up extra kill speed in favor of mining better.


The purpose is slowing down the acquisition of mining equipment and having a more varied progression based on individual tastes, while also ensuring all miners can get a slice of the lavaland experience as opposed to one speedrun gamer playing connect the dots while the others can only follow in their wake.

The late join, less efficient, or non-rush focused miners will still have content to discover and bosses to fight on lavaland because a single miner can’t rush to all of the GPS pings at lightspeed anymore. These late join players will also not have plasma cutters and won’t any time soon, so it’s pretty disingenuous to imply they are somehow more enabled to murder spree than existing miners.

The fact late-join miners still have bosses to fight tells me that the update is working exactly as intended in that regard too.


I would legitimately never use a plasma cutter for clearing an area over a pka now that AoE mining is readily available. This is the other comment I was referring to when I said it sounds like you somehow missed that AoE mining PKA was now readily available.

I’ll say it again - plasma cutters are one of the single greatest enablers of fauna rushing. Nothing else except removing GPS signals from fauna and loot would be more effective at dissuading rush behavior, and even then a plasma cutter can methodically sweep all of lavaland pretty damn fast.

Also to note : plasma cutters are unironically great weapons with incredible delimb chance (thematic) and can double as welding tools. And I’m saddened that non-miner traitors can’t really acces them anymore.

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Was the delimb chance reverted? I swore it was nerfed into the ground here at some point for balance reasons. I checked and the delimb chance is only 20%. I’d really love an excuse to bring that chance back up without worsening other issues just because it was the soul of the item.

In any case, I don’t think it would be a good idea to re-enable it just for antagonists unless the item was totally overhauled in some way - perhaps as a modular, upgradeable tool like the PKA.

REMOVE MINING AND ADD A SET NUMBER OF UNBREAKABLE BLUESPACE MINERS ON THE MAP IT WOULD FIX LITERALLY EVERY ISSUE

Like guys, mining is never going to be fun if all you do is gather ore. It’s never going to be worth while to the station with stuff other than mining to do.

Perhaps dedicate miners to a terrestrial expeditionary group(IE: Explorers on the ground) that doesn’t have a main goal of gathering resources.

or make miners into the OG Curator, where they can just do their own thing in spess. Nevermind.

That’s why they’re tied together currently.

Re-add telescience, but use it to mine ores via the bluespace miners - literally anything other than “station passively generates x”.

That’s almost the current explo crew.

Mining would be better if exploring lava land was more fun, like you had to work to get some of the cool stuff you found.

Most of lavaland structures are: get obese and become a morph, turn into any complex humanoid and use a Fulton pack to get back to space, look up a puzzle cube solver online and get a loot box, hey look it’s a dead cult god (only useful for blood cultists), hey look it’s the ice terrarium where you get a antique laser gun while using, hey look it’s the beach resort (worst ghost spawn), hey look it’s a vet clinic (aka, free shotgun/heals/another bad ghost spawn), hey a free mining mech (rare but pretty nice if found at the beginning of the round), hey look it’s a second bomb testing area, boring xenomorph area, hey look I crawled on my hands and knees for 2 minutes and got bannanium (and the funny grief staff), and birthday party gone wrong.

Lavaland is extremely boring if you don’t have the pop/specific players that really enjoy the good ghost role spawns: Syndicate agents, ashwalkers, and then the Pod people. Pod people don’t add much to a round, but really great to learn how botany works and make shit that you can’t dream of on the station as a non-antag. Syndicate agents, with good players, can really enhance a round. I will never forget witnessing a syndicate agent cause enough chaos because of a stupid head of command that the station went into a civil war in a greenshift. Ashwalkers are just fun, if you’ve even been in a high pop round with like 6 ashwalker buddies you know what I mean.

I think lavaland would improve if more work is put into ghost role spawns, would at least make mining less of the antisocial job that it usually is. I’ve liked what’s been done with ashwalkers, would love to see a unique plant that is only found in the living terrarium that is able to produce oxygen to make the “making lavaland habitable” goal of the pod people actually achieveable. I also think making structure more puzzle-focused/creative would help with some aspects. Like I think going through a maze or needing ashwalkers/dragononic language to help understand riddles on doors, just something where you can’t just cheese your way to get the item. The bannanium structure and the ice terrarium structure are total jokes to get their rewards, it’s so easy to blow them open or just rest+move. As much as I like being a morph, it shouldn’t be as easy as being a lizard miner and using a dagger that gives you raw meat to become a powerful mob (if you swallow a cigarette butt or become a camera you practically become invisible).

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Kudzu is the secret to turning lavaland into the lush jungles that pod people dream of.

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Funny but i think last time i saw a podperson do it lavaland got mega laggy and an admin had to intervene

I’ve Suggested a possible path for podpersons lifebringers that could make them more engaging with a clear goal, it’s true that lavaland ghostroles and ruins could use a rework on certain aspects

It’s good until you get bwoinked for it. I have a note for releasing kudzu on lavaland as lifebringer.

Merge lavaland and exploration crew by putting randomly generated dungeons.

You can enter them via ladders. The ladder teleports you to a dungeon done like exploration crew randomly generated stations but lavaland themed

I have been thoroughly schooled. Will try mining again with a new perspective now. Thanks.

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How 2 Pimp your PKA

The generalist and pure upgrade.
Range mod, Basic cooldown mod, Basic damage mod. it’s vanilla as all hell but sometimes that’s what you need. can be aquired from vender or lathe. Slap on and forget.

Long deployment.
Mining/Combined AOE, Basic cooldown, basic damage. No need for a range mod for mining when you have Mining AOE, fighting Mobs like goliaths and watchers is just like standard PKA but somewhat faster. You can get alot of MATS with this and make the station very happy. Slap on and forget.

High damage CLASSIC.
Legit just 3 basic cooldown mods, it’s not as fast as repeater but technically speaking its more forgiving incase you MISS, which you probably at some point WILL.

High damage NEW.
Slap that repeater on and add a basic damage increase for good measure, it’s PKA chaingun time, you’re gonna miss and it’s gonna suck for your DPS though.

FAST mining.
Mining/Combined AOE, Repeater. You’re gonna blow through ALOT of rock very quickly like this. combat statistics wise, kinda like High damage NEW except you need to shoot more, Remember that AOE doesn’t activate the Repeater.

BONUS
Keep a crowbar on hand for uninstalling mods, 1 click and you’ve pried out all your mods.

Remember that a full mod kit usually leaves room for a cosmetic chasis upgrade, get a super or hyper chasis as a treat.

You can slap a Knife and a SEC lite on the PKA and can remove them with a Screw driver, the key to PKA Pimpin demands you enable the bayonase function

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This one is my favorite!

Rapid point generation from ores, maximum mining speed and not too shabby at cutting down basic fauna either… as long as I don’t miss from misjudging the short range.

Just remember the most consistant bet for attacking fauna is 2 tiles away.

To be honest, you don’t really need anything but cool downs and there isn’t really a purpose to buying a plasma cutter when hiero exists, it even makes it so you don’t have to waste your time using the shuttle by teleporting down and fultoning up.

Other option is to go 4 range upgrades for fighting bubble and colossus (way more reliable to deal damage that way, you never want to be close to the colossus and bubble is a bitch to hit because he runs away if you are closer than 4 tiles)

And honestly, with the way points work it’s just inefficient to buy anything that isn’t keys (or stabilizers, but I usually don’t buy those since you can just kill a fresh legion and then start the fight, you win/died before it expires)

Funnily enough rushing the hiero is by far the most point efficient way to get points and it completely replaces the cutter (you should kill the hiero before the first storm, if you pick up the boss ores + all the ores hiero generates during the fight + any good ore vains that’s around 4,5k points, standard mining usually only yirlds like 3,5k). Even better if a dragon is close to the arena so you can kill it there too, but I would not recommend doing a drake fight with no upgrades unless you are robust)

Could reuse some of the places you could once visit through the gateway for this too!

You sir are talking about megafauna hunting, which is boring.

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