Proposal: Hydrocarbon Mining

[Azan27]

This proposal has been made several times by others in the past, but as far as I know, a verdict on it has not been reached, so I felt that I should reiterate it for your consideration.

Essentially, the current Hydrocarbon mining system is a leftover from Vanilla Freelancer, similar to mining water in ice fields. As it stands (unless some changes have been made to the mining system that I havn't been able to discover,) Hydrocarbon mining is a full field mining system with no bonuses and a commodity style supply chain within the trading system. That is to say that Hydrocarbon mining is diffrent from ore mining in several ways;

• Hydrocarbons have a droprate of ~2, as opposed to the ~6-8 base drop for most ore fields.
  
• Hydrocarbons are sold and priced within the regular Discovery economy, as opposed to being managed through a FLHook plugin as ore mining is.
  
• Hydrocarbons are sold at stations, as opposed to ores, which are minable only.
  
• Hydrocarbons are balanced as trade items, not minable commodities, due to their being sold on stations.
  
• The ID - IFF bonuses for Hydrocarbon mining are little to nonexistant.
  
• Hydrocarbon fields do not depelete (As far as I know. This may have been implamented.)
  

As such, I would like to reiterate the suggestion that Hydrocarbon mining fields be disabled completely within Discovery (but kept as trade commodities on stations, and balanced accordingly,) and a new ore - style commodity, possibily called Organic Compounds, be put in place in their stead, which would be minable with medium to high level bonuses by large industrial companies. The Organic Compound commodity would be minable - only, and its sellpoints would be controlled by the same FLHook plugin as ores. Essentially, Organic Compounds would be ores in all but name.

This proposal would have many benifits, if implamented. Firstly, it would bring the steady activity associated with mining to otherwise quiet systems, such as Tau-29, Omega-3, and Manchester. It would also increase the incentive for players to join a heavy industrial faction, such as BMM, EFL, Kishiro, Samura (whom I have been told do not mine Hydrocarbons directly, but I would suggest that they be able to mine Organic Compounds in Tau 29 with bonuses, seeing as how their supply chain is so dependant on Hydrocarbon related products such as Terraforming gasses and fertilizers,) or Kruger, who are often overlooked by the average player due to their high number of enemies and unappealing 'oppress the masses' line of RP. Whats more, this proposal could potentially bring activity to the Gallic core worlds, if an Organic Compound mining field with EFL mining bonuses was implamented within Gallia, or if Gallic factions were given Hydrocarbon mining bonuses in the Taus with a buy point in the Gallic core worlds.

This proposal would also have a few downsides. Mainly, it would increase the overall profitable mining sites in Sirius, spreading out miners and making it harder for pirates/ other hostiles to find interactions. It would also require a series of balancing tests to be conducted, which takes up valuble dev time.

Overall, I beleive Organic Compound mining would be a good addition to Discovery, as it would add more variability to mining, and utilize an otherwise unused commodity in a manner more akin to its in-RP description.

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Let it burn.