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.

[jammi]

I'll second this. Seems good to me.

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[Ceoran]

I don't know where that fancy idea comes from Samura would actually be conducting Hydrocarbon mining operations in Tau 29. Nago is a Kishiro station. Shinkaku, which is the Samura station in that system, does Terraforming gases and Fertilizers. Samura buys their Hydrocarbons from Fuchu prison in Shikoku. So from a Samura POV it's definately a 'no' since we'd lose our source of Hydrocarbons that way (and you'd need to entirely repurpose Fuchu).
Make a second ore-type commodity just like with the other minerals if you need to, but keep the initial one. It also has some nice runs nowadays too.

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My Stories Outcast laws and structures Join Samura|-

Go play the game, within the given limitations. That is how role play games are played. Not by trying to work around those limitations or whining about them.

[BaconSoda]

To be honest, the best idea might be to make (another) catch-all commodity for hydrocarbons, fertilizers, and terraforming gases. Organic Molecules might be a neat name. It would cover ammonia and methane from Tau-29 and hydrocarbons from Tau-29, Manchester, and Omega-3.

But the big problem with hydrocarbon mining is that the stations are almost universally really close to the fields. It would have to be a really low profit margin to balance out the low risk. Douglas and Rugen are at most 20k away from the edges of those fields and Nago is at most 30k away from the mining zone. The farthest station from a field is Birmingham where the field is reasonably far, however there's also a Border Station and a Gaian Station to take into consideration.

It's a really crappy situation for balance, really. One of the best solutions I could think of would be to mine in the Oxygen Asteroid Field in Tau-29 and the South Sheffield Ice Field in Manchester, but honestly looking at those names, mining those materials there is just silly and it leaves Omega-3 out of the loop completely. Really it's better to leave the Hydrocarbons as they are so they have some small purpose.

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[8:32:45 PM] Dusty Lens: Oh no, let me get that. Hello? Oh it's my grandma. She says to be roleplay.
[12:49:19 AM] Elgatodiablo: You know its nice that you have all that proof and all, Bacon... but I just don't believe you.

[Hone]

Yes please, it doesnt make sense that O7 has full mining, and O3 none. Although remember IMG has a base in O3 too.

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[Azan27]

Revised original proposal to suggest that a brand new commodity be introduced, Hydrocarbon mining to be disabled and replaced with mining fields for this new ore-style commodity known as Organic Compounds (Thanks BaconSoda for the cool name,) and for Hydrocarbons to remain as a tradeable commodity.

@Ceoran, noted, my mistake. However, I would like to suggest that Samura be given Organic Compound mining bonuses anyways, seeing as Hydrocarbon related products are so intigrated into Samura's overall supply chain within Sirius.

@BaconSoda, the proximity of the mining stations to the fields is very close in most cases, so I would suggest having a small active field within the larger inactive field, some distance away from the stations, similar to the Niobium field in Leeds. As for the risk - reward ratio, I would suggest that Organic Compound mining be balanced in regards to regular ore mining, but at the same time be a wholly unique expereince, diffrent from normal mining. To do this, I would suggest scaling Organic Compound mining such that it had a 30% higher droprate than normal ores, but a 45% lower sellprice than regular ores, and have all the rouits be Medium Short to Medium Long in range (As opposed to the current ore pricings, which are grouped into Short, Medium and Long range rouits only, with the Long rouit being vastly more profitable than any of the other rouits.) As such, Organic Compound mining would overall yield less profit per second than regular ore mining, but would have the benifit of being able to turn a full 5k in much less time, and possibly fill the same customer twice. It is my beleif that a higher yield, combined with shorter rouits and less profit, would lead to miners and transports spending less time sitting in a field, but spending more time in space overall, thus leading to a net increase in activity. I would like to stress that these balancing suggestions not be taken as part of the initial proposal, but as a side suggestion to the initial idea. I would like to see some sort of Hydrocarbon style mining implamented, even if it did not follow the balancing strategy I just laid out.

@ Hone, actually, with the Cross - Vandimeer Comet, O-3 actually does have a mining field now, but it is sadly underused. As for the IMG receiving Hydrocarbon mining bonuses, I have absolutly no idea what the IMG does in regard to Hydrocarbon mining and processing. I know for sure that Samura, Kruger and BMM (and Kishiro... Dunno why I forgot about them at first.) have a history of Hydrocarbon and Polymer processing, so that is why I proposed those factions get bonuses. However, if the IMG does have a basis for Hydrocarbon mining in server lore, I see no reason why they should not receive such bonuses. That being said, I would be very glad to see Hydrocarbon style mining implamented, no matter who gets the bonuses.

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Let it burn.

[Hone]

@ Hone, actually, with the Cross - Vandimeer Comet, O-3 actually does have a mining field now,

What is that?

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[pitockm]

What is that?

A mining field near the o3 sun. Copper ores.

[ryoken]

Just make Hydro carbon worth mining. Also could add Crude oil as a minable comodity. That would also give Gallia something to mine.
Just change buying locations to even out profit like other ores. Would spred out a few miners.

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[Tachyon]

Make Hydrocarbons an easy and fast to mine commodity with low-profit droppoints in close distance to the mining area (so basically a very safe mining commodity for new players as an alternative to Pennsylvania's Helium field)

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