It’s well known that mining SUCKS. A powergaming role where people go off to play a practically singleplayer, get powergamer gear and MAYBE get some gear for the dogshit science team, afterwards returning to base with the best non-traitor gear in the game to ruin the round.
ISSUES WITH MINING:
A. LACK OF INTERACTIVITY.
- Usually, only miners ever touch mining, whether it be on Lavaland or the asteroid. There’s no reason for anyone to go there at any point, unless there’s no miners, at which point a lone nerd usually gets forced by the RD to get them mats.
B. LACK OF PURPOSE.
- There’s no real goal to mining past the first two to three excursions there. You get all the materials needed for plasma guns on the first one, all the ones for a bluespace satchel on the second one and all the ones needed for the RND department for the next 50 minutes in the last trip. Afterwards, the only things you get are powergaming gear from ruins, bragging rights from megafauna and annoyed traitors with you as the target.
C. LACK OF CREATIVITY.
- Mining is, functionally, a role that works exactly the same every time, with no variety besides what megafauna spawn where. Naturally, this means that miner mains are either autistic, powergamers or play the game once per week.
D. LACK OF COOPERATION
- Similar to A., but more related to the station at large. You don’t even have to deliver your goods, all you do is dump them in the material storage(an awful feature added to have even LESS interaction with other people) and then fuck off. Once you get your materials, the only other thing you need to do is to yell at science to research something.
CONCLUSION: MINING SUCKS.
PROPOSAL: TURN MINING INTO A FACTORIO-LIKE EXPERIENCE THAT INVOLVES MULTIPLE DEPARTMENTS.
HOW IT WORKS:
The dedicated cargo department sends out scouting ships to find out sites with materials, at which point the miners land there to secure the site while engineers start deploying the automated mines, refineries and either transport the ores that get shit out or use rail-cannons to shoot them at the station, to be decided. The mines spit out a limited amount of resources and then run out. The mines activation starts attracting mobs that either come in waves or constantly(to be decided), whose difficulty depends on the rarity of the ores, volume of ores and amount of mines.
DEFENCE:
Bugs drop specific “research” items that Science needs to use to develop better mining drills(faster/access to rarer materials(?)), refineries(higher output), and DEFENSIVE TURRETS. That’s right baby, we’re turning this into ACTUAL Factorio. These turrets would need to be RESUPPLIED, either manually or automatically using BELTS, using FACTORY BUILDINGS, which are structures that produce items using either ore(lower efficiency) or refined materials.
OFFENCE?
While most miners would want to stay and keep watch on the base, if the defences are plenty and the base is secure, they could go explore for artefacts.They would spawn in random locations and require a specialised drill(man portable) that would summon a wave of thematic enemies, which would then drop the artefact. This could be a weapon, armour, some unimportant fluff items like clothing or misc items, research materials or traitor items. This is added to keep the exploration and personal combat aspect in the game. PERFECT SPOT FOR MEGAFAUNA
PROGRESSION:
This one’s pretty simple. Mobs give items that are used to research upgrades for machines. Examples would be fire creatures giving off fire-resistant scales that allow refineries to work at higher temperatures thus be more efficient, ice creatures giving off a better coolant, thus increasing the mining speed of the mining machines, and such. Getting Science involved would decrease the amount of materials needed at the expense of having to actually talk to someone, you autistic fuck.
Secondly, the items can be used to either directly upgrade your current items, or research better personal mining gear. Better guns, hardier armour, detectors for higher quality ores and artefacts, etc.
HOW IT FIXES ISSUES:
- Multiple departments would work on setting up the mines, researching the results and keeping the machines functional. This encourages inter-departmental cooperation and forces the scientists to do something that isn’t just pressing a fucking button to get free materials.
- A combination of scarcity and progression ensures there are multiple mining outposts built and constantly defended, while the presence of artefacts ensures the continuous exploration by multiple miners of multiple drop sites.
- The random generation of asteroids/lavaland combined with randomised upgrades and detected sites ensure a different experience most of the time.
