basically and in theory both FL 1.0 and Discovery offer the theoretical possibility of asteroid mining. Small pieces of asteroids blow up when hit and in some cases drop various sorts of goods from water through valuable minerals to priceless alien artifacts. Even despite that, mining in the form presently availible is not worth the time, needed to acheive a sizeable profit. There is even a mining ship availible for purchasing. Some time ago, I've discussed the matter with the players ingame and here's what it brought
The mining ship is perfect for the task of asteroid mining, it's big enough to sanction the generous cargo hold and not too big to move relatively smoothly in asteroid fields.
The most serious matter is the efficiency with which the asteroids are being blown up and the amount of goods inside each one of them. Both these factors should be augmented in my (and lots of other people's) op(s)
This can be aceived by creating a special type of weapon, which would have a near-zero firepower (barely any is needed to crack an asteroid open) and a large area efect in order to blow up many asteroids at the same time.
Another piece of equipment would be a long-range tractor beam. Its range would b the same as the weapon,mentioned before (500-700m would be logical, since this is the maximum distance at which asteroids appear, maybe less).
Both these pieces of equipment would be buyable with the ship only, similarly as the spyglass scanner or marsflyer equipment.
Last, but not least, there are only a few goods, worth trading with, most minerals unforunately (including artifacts) are not amongst them. Increasing their prices, where possible would not only make mining more profitable, but attract people to new trade routes, not only the two, which quite simply became boring long before I even starded playing FL. So many commodities on disco, with which noone wants to trade...reinland military vehicles, kusari optronics, luxury food, drugs...Making them more expensive in certain places surely wouldn't hurt. I bet there would be more smugglers IF smuggling was more profitable than legal trade (as it is in reality);)
(I wonder, how ridiculous these ideas will be considered)
I like your miner ideas. Very interesting and clever. Has anything like that ever been tried before?
I think most commodity prices are fine, and just about every commodity (except for stuff like food rations and oxygen) has at least one profitable route associated with it.
Templar, great you posted this. Mining REALY needs a serious upgrade. Igiss needs to look into this and see what he can do. Cause with the stuff mining is like now, Mining is NOT worth it. I ocasialy Role-play mining, shipping things Like Cobalt to Honshu and other things, but thats only for fun, and not for serious profit. Miners should be able to make a serious profit, and it would be great for role-play. You could have a bunch of Miner dudes sitting around and they would need escots cause if some pirate came over he could own them. It would be fun and ROle Play
Mining can and does work, you just need a few things;
An Asteroid field that gives you at least one chunk of goods for every two rocks killed
A freighter with a middle sized/large cargo hold
Several people in fighters who are willing to hang around for a time and just 'mine' & guard the freighter.
How it works
*Before you commence mining operations, you should decide how people are going to be 'paid', either after each load or at the end of the days operation. I prefer after each load. money/people= payout.
After finding a suitable asteroid field, park your Freighter in a 'good' position in it.
The freighter can now proceed to 'mine' materials, tractoring them in as they work.
The fighters should also start to 'mine', but they shouldn't tractor anything.
As the areas around the various fighters fill up with mined goods, the freighter should move into that area and tractor in the goods.
Eventually and you will be surprised how fast it happens, the Freighter will be full.
At this point they go to either the nearest place to sell the mined goods or the closest place where they will get a 'decent' price for them.
While the Freighter is doing this, the fighters now tractor in the items being mined (to save it from being looted by marauders) and continue to mine the field.
When the freighter returns, there should be quite a bit of mined material ready to be tractored in, speeding up the process quite a bit.
Ive tried another mod called excelcia a month or so ago and their asteroids dropped more than one cargo peice at a time.
atm an asteroid (say in magellan near mactan) drops 1 cargo of water but in the aformentioned mod in one of the systems an asteroid of the same type would drop like 60-70 units at once !
I say it's probably moddable if they did it and making more guns a tractor beams would be much more work in my oppinon than just upping the number of cargo units an asteriod drop.
then if you can manage that all there is to do is work out a basic how much should drop in wich feild and at wich frequency list for minable feilds (for example scrap metal...like 80 cargo a pop but niobium 10 a pop...)
I have noticed, that most of the good feilds in the mod, drop at least 2-9 units per rock thats actually drops something. This includes Hydrocarbons in Omega 3, Diamons in Omega 11, Cobalt and Copper in Omega 7 and Dresden, Noibium in Tau 37. This does make it better, but it could be improved alot more.
i would much like to see this done but others have sugested it in he past, i think mineing would be a nice thing if it was upgraded lol.
the pirce altering is a bit of a consern to i do sugest if the mineing idea finaly falls through. up the pirces a bit on the mineabule stuff. and some other thing's to incress sumggleing, becuse summgleing dosent bring home the money like it should u are at high risk after all.
me and others have sugested the mineing thing before, in the past but i guess mabey soon it could happen? it would add alot to RP for shure more people willing to actualy mine, becuse u could make the money and have fun then, and also take a big risk if ur were to solo mine, also this would open opertunitys for all in the universe.
miners need protection+pirate's will atack in force if they notice mineing ops=work for bounhy hunters and mercnarys=big payouts for them and the miners and shipers=very much needed bost in RP.
clans will have roles for shure in this endever the most profitabull feilds will be a great way to fund ur clans. also a sorce of RP conflicts.
increse in profit for the sumggled good will mean more risk taking on for all involved the illeagle good's will also bring alot more RP lawfuls can mass cordnate Drug bust and covert ops on unlawful players, rp would be greatly inhanced this = no more boreing trade runs, also a sugestion high profit summgleing shoud not have the sell system be in NY. this way lawfuls can crakdown.
with this, i beleave fun will be inhanced as with the mineing and RP improved over all.
Wars: whatever they seem to be waged over, their true objective is resources. The war in Tau 31 is in fact over its resources.
Should the idea of the specialized mining vessle be enacted, I think it should be the only ship fit (and maybe even allowed) for mining. Because of the somewhat bulky dimensions of the mining ship, it is not as easy to move around as transport ships. That is how a symbiosis could be formed. The miner gathers minerals, the trader comes to him and buys a full hold. Later, he sells it with a sizeable profit both for himself and the miner. I don't know about you, gentlemen, but I can see the first symptoms of free market in FL. The prices would no longer be fixed values.
Clans, especially house clans would benefit greatly from mining, mostly in terms of RP. We all know, that states don't rely mostly on trade to balance their budget. They gather resources and sell/process them. What is more: there could be something like mining concessions, exclusive mining rights, illegal mining operations suppression...All these would add greatly to the gameplay and the clan's budgets. A clan, controling a system, where there are valuable minerals (no matter, what kind) could sell a mining concession to a player, who pays a predefined sum. There could even be auctions about exclusive mining rights, referring to a certainf asteroid field. All this and more could take place, provided mining becomes equally or more profitable, than trade in the form seen today.
i must say i total agree with u there panzer but do u rember our conversation about wild systems? that being a possbility in the far off future would be kool i would take up moding for that idea alone if it was aproved of corce lol, some thing me and u should discuss with the mod man him self lol.
but yes after all clans or sector powers as u have it be would more then benifit form this and even a freelancer with his wits about him.
rember how we RP true to life settings in this world of freelancer, all though not all things but most, a force/clan/power/army can not make as much progress then others if there is no resorces for it, this resorce being credits.
tradeing is all good and fine but it's been the main drive of the player for so long years now.
i dont know about any one else on this subject matter hear, but arnt u guys tired of seeing the npc's hold the cards in every aspect look at the npc's welth with mineing instalations.
i personaly love to see us players run some thing fimlear to that, olny thing u can do with the mineing ship is trade to make money and mineing is fun but it wares off if u have no felling of progress..
RP is fun granted but it's even more fun if u can RP and make desent progress. it may take time to do this idea but i fell it's well worth the time, he would have to im shure of alter the mine filds in the game to drop more. granted ur idea on the mineing gun it a great one i like the idea.
that would be unique even more, but id still be happy with the just the multipal drops of ores and what not. like the lower grade cheap selling thing would drop in big numbers then the higher up's would be droped more then one like a good 10 for the second highest and 5 for the best ones.
granted we could take it a step farther to give all a chance to mine but also be conformed in the actions of mineing on the faction ID.
this could look like so: mineing ID
the polit careying this id is a miner, freelancer miners are not bound to a set faction in terms of ID and thus may join a npc fation of there chosing but must have an affliation to a npc faction. polits in other factions/clans may have this id on a ming char but must be affilated to a facion of set by there group. miners can olny defend them selfs and not atack unprovoked.
alowed ship: mineing ship olny.
also since id's are also tractors in order to save time whilest mineing they should also have there tractors heavly modified with the extention speed being almost instant if possble wicth i have seen it before lol in a mod.
also since mineing would be an quite the indever to under take the id should be very expincive since it's like a permint to have a mineing ship.
the should at least cost 50mill i think any ways lol mabey to steep for biginers but any one that can trade will make it quite quick and it would pay it self off many times over so id see it being very worth it.
this are just sugestion and idea's. let me know what ya all think of my 2 cents lol.
sorry if im getting ahead of my self, i do that some times lol.
Yeah, I remember tose "wild systems". To all yet unaware (I think this was already suggested by someone), those systems would be completely free form human/nomad life. No civilization at all, something the Gaians would worship lol. Those systems would have all the naturally occuring things, planets (uninhabited naturally), suns, asteroid fields, all the nice-looking stuff. What would attract people to such places (remote, long way to get to them and complete lack of tradelanes in systems the size of Newcastle) would be minerals (unexploited=lots=expensive=attractive) and other goodies, like some valuable equipment on wrecks (I'd love to see a battleship wreck with loot on disco some day). BUT since those systems never saw civilized life, they would be full of dangers. Explosive gasses, deadly radiation (like near the neutron star in omega 41), in other words, all the nastiest things, nature could conceive to make a pilot's/miner's life miserable.
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