Mining: Reducing tedium and strain

[Enko]

As a returning player I've been interested in quite a few systems but one thing that essentially is virtually unchanged: the mining process.

Freelancers mining was never meant to be done at scale and I think it shows, most people tend to agree that you can do like 15 minutes or so of mining at a time, and it's not really a good scale career choice because it requires a group of players to make optimal but most people prefer solo trading.

What I suggest is the following:

Use FLHook to alter the way mining zones work, specific ships like asteroid miner, drone or whatever small list of suitable ships can go into the zone and go stationary.

The ship then types a command like /mine - and the mining begins. This process then perhaps does something fancy if possible, but if not it works similar to the jumpdrive where it gives you progress feedback in the log and then delivers cargo into the ship every so often (or the mining pod if such is targeted instead). This would be tuned to be on par with normal mining rates and could even be lowered some for balance/reduced server strain.

To combat afk mining you could also do something where you are required to move the vessel a certain distance around in the mining zone from where you created the command, or create multiple zones in a small area that get depleted and respawn quickly, quick enough so 2-3 mining ops can exist at a location but slow enough that it is better to move than to not.

Overall when I was trying to ask players for help creating a mining op to try it out, most players said they just would only be the transport because they hate the mining aspect. I tend to agree its tedious, strains the hand and does not respect the player if you're seeking to do this long term.

The other bonus of this is to simply lean more into PoB use as basically this all ties into PoB more, and would make the use of them and mining as an option far more healthy.

---

[DragonRider]

I do agree that mining can easily get tedious. But I'm sorry, making it AFK or even semi-AFK isn't a solution.

By it's nature Freelancer is an interaction heavy game. In a RTS or Eve Online you can give your guy a command and alt-tab into YouTube for a few minutes, knowing full well your lil guy will do the work. In Freelancer, you're doing all the actions and work. You can't AFK trade or fight, so it doesn't make sense for you to AFK mine as well.

Even if I put aside my "heavy intractable game" view, AFK mining is still boring. I sentence you to to 1 hour of mining in Eve Online for you to realize that (click rock, click mine. AFK 10 minutes, rock gets mined out, repeat).

If you'd ask me to suggest a solution myself, I have two possible:
- reduce the amount of time you're required to mine. Simple one. If now you need, say, 5 minutes to fill a 5k-er, drop that time to 2-3 minutes. Less time doing mining, the slower it becomes annoying.
- make mining way more intractable. There was a clip that Jammi posted on the Discord, showing a CSV orbiting a rock, shooting at it's weakspots. Upon doing so, ore chunks would fly out and wait to be collected. Now that's cool. As I understand that requires some new FLHook version or something, which might not be doable. But hey, worth a suggestion.

[Traxit]

Passive mining? Sure.
But it should not replace the existing method as that sounds unappealing.
Logically, it would have to be slower than the current, proactive system.

---

The best Video Game OST
Just Got Better

[Ashyur]

faster mining would require adjustments to prices, so you'll end up getting less out of it?
a slower one with semi afk method would be more balanced as traxit suggested

[Haste]

We're kind of looking to do the opposite in the medium to long term, namely turning mining into cutting chunks out of bigger asteroids and revealing juicy chunks of ore inside. So, making it more interactive. I don't think we're very interested in passive mining.

As I understand that requires some new FLHook version or something, which might not be doable. But hey, worth a suggestion.

It does not "Require a new FLHook version". It'll likely require some FLHook work to spawn these asteroids (although technically there is another option, which is to just spam a crapload of them so they don't run out before a server restart). The most substantial amount of work is modeling the asteroids. Everything else -- besides the FLHook component, which I am unfamiliar with, but expect to be fairly doable -- is close to trivial.

---

[Fab]

if anything requires passive mining, it's the hegemon. thing is massive, slow, and can barely fire its mining array. would be a cool niche if you ask me.

---

ARES / Faction Information / Feedback

[StellarViss]

There was a clip that Jammi posted on the Discord, showing a CSV orbiting a rock, shooting at it's weakspots. Upon doing so, ore chunks would fly out and wait to be collected. Now that's cool. As I understand that requires some new FLHook version or something, which might not be doable. But hey, worth a suggestion.

Now this would be good and better you hand as the current way can hurt you hand.

[Enko]

We're kind of looking to do the opposite in the medium to long term, namely turning mining into cutting chunks out of bigger asteroids and revealing juicy chunks of ore inside. So, making it more interactive. I don't think we're very interested in passive mining.

For the most part the suggestion is intended as a stopgap, as my impression was that the video shown was not due anytime soon. However if its not that far to go then seems fine.

As a returning player the mining system seems one of the most outdated systems and a lot of people comment they don't like doing it, but the idea of cracking asteriods and doing it that way is the best of both, making it so that its still interactive but less APM.

---