After deploying a storage base for ore miners and playing with it for a bit, I thought up a few ideas about making the POBs more involved in roleplay, a bit easier to maintain, easier to build up, and more interesting for newbies and ordinary players - because now they are only interesting for rich veterans as production facilities for special equipment, which an ordinary newbie/amateur player does not need and does not able to afford it. So, here are my ideas about new base modules (not quite balanced, any comments are appreciated):
1. Station Biodome
A typical greenhouse which can be found on some stations, most notably Freeports. It produces food rations (or maybe other types of food should be added, like Luxury Food or Kyushu Rice), oxygen and water (from 200 to 400, needs to be balanced) each 10 hours (just before the crew FOW tick), effectively eliminating the need to bring life supports. However, biodome require Xenobiotic Filters (100-300 units each 3-7 days) to process waste, waste water and CO2 back into pure water and oxygen needed for the plants, otherwise it will cease to function. If biodome production surpasses crew requirements, excess FOW will go to base cargo. If the base owners do not want to waste space on so cheap commodities, they can issue a command for that module to reduce FOW production to level equal to crew consumption. Very useful module for a base located far from main supply lines, or for those who are too lazy to run regular supply shipments.
Building Cost:
20 000 Hull Segments
5 000 Robotics Hardware
7 000 Industrial Hardware
8 000 Xenobiotic Filters
5 000 Polymers
2. Asteroid Miner
An external module (like a weapon platform) which mines ore. To produce ore, it must be placed within ore field, and it will produce that type of ore which drops from the field where the miner is located in (like an ordinary mining ship). Mined ore is automatically transferred to base cargo bays.
Default mining speed is equal to shooting 5-20 stones in a minute (depends on field density), ore yield per stone is determined with standard mining bonuses and drop rates (miner activity also have influence on drop rate - so, if you leave a miner for a night, it will deplete the field, setting drop rate to very low numbers both for your miner and any ordinary mining ship who wants to mine ore here).
By default, Asteroid Miner has bonuses for mining ship and mining turret (although there's no real turrets). If a base affiliation is set, Miner's yield is further modified as for matching ID/IFF (for example, if IMG base mines Copper Ore, Miner gets a x3 bonus, because ships with IMG ID/IFF get x3 bonus for Copper). If no affiliation is set or if aff. is set to Freelancers, Miner gets bonus as Independent Miner (not to be confused with IMG - that's Miner ID).
Miner has 1.000.000 HP and it does not respawn after destruction - you will have to build it again. However, a miner is protected with base shield, and dealing damage to miner will activate base shield, thus protecting the miner. Miner suffers from Wear & Tear damage (100 hp/cycle) (200 hp/40 seconds), which is repaired by base repair goods. Miner also uses 1 Mining Machinery per 20 seconds when active, and if base will run out of Machinery, it will automatically shut down. It can also be shut down manually by a command (something like "/base miner <slot_index> <on|off>") to preserve Mining Machinery when mining is not needed (i.e. if base cargo is full with ore or if drop rates are lowered beyond profitable level).
Warning: Asteroid Miner has no weapons to defend itself. To keep it safe, base owners need to either have good relations with all who might "remove" the miner or build weapon platforms around it.
A POB Miner is conceived to be a costly and slower way to make money compared to mining 'by hand'. The only thing the Miner saves is time for those who are too lazy to mine or are too tired of monotonous asteroid shooting.
Building Cost:
20 000 Hull Segments
20 000 Hull Panels
12 000 Industrial Hardware
5 000 Optronic Arrays
15 000 Mining Machinery
2 000 Reinforced Alloy
2 000 Super Alloy
3. Multipurpose Smelter
The Smelter can smelt ores into ingots, scrap metal into manifolds, and ingots into alloys. The latter is the most important function for building self-sustaining base, as it can combine Tungsten and Cobalt into Reinforced Alloy, which is used for base repairs. Because it's pretty useless for anything except producing alloys, it's building cost is low.
Building cost:
10 000 Hull Segments
7 000 Industrial Hardware
3 000 Robotics
5 000 High Temperature Alloy
1 000 Optronic Arrays
4. Assembler
This facility can assemble alloys produced in Smelter with some other industrial commodities and craft base construction components. For example, it can combine Polymer, Hydrocarbon, Boron, Basic and Super Alloys to produce Hull Segments.
Building Cost:
10 000 Hull Segments
20 000 Industrial Hardware
20 000 Robotics Hardware
7 000 High Temperature Alloy
3 000 Optronic Arrays
5. H-Fuel Production Facility
No more Kusari monopoly on H-Fuel production! With this device base owners can mix Deuterium with Helium-3 to make their very own supply of H-Fuel. He-3 is mineable, while Deuterium can be obtained from Zoners, who are neutral to most fractions, thus effectively lowering base dependence on H-Fuel supplies.
Building Cost:
10 000 Hull Segments
10 000 Plasfoam Conduits
8 000 Optronic Arrays
15 000 Industrial Hardware
10 000 Robotics Hardware
5 000 Nanomembrane Filters
Discuss.
P.S. If the above modules will be integrated in game, I think that base module slot number should be increased - perhaps to 4 slots/core level.
