I think the mistake most space games make is they try and make the act of mining interesting, which imho it can never be. Swinging a virtual pick is always going to be inherently uninteresting. Its the decision making around scouting and prospecting which is the interesting part. So the more mining is sit back and chill as the ship automines while you figure out the next rock to go look at the better imho. If that makes sense?
I don’t know, I always thought the act of mining should be kind of hard and a slog. Just reading hard sci-fi, the miners never have the glamorous profession, right? It’s always a tough slog. Boring, but hard blue collar work. So I thought the mining at launch in E:D was spot on in terms of fitting that mold. It was the least glamorous activity. It was hard, it was a slog. And it felt like blue collar gameplay activity as opposed to trading, exploring and bounty hunting. I was glad to have tried it for a few days, and gotten a decent blue-collar equivalent amount of money, and I knew enough about it that I knew I never wanted to do it again.
Mission Accomplished, I thought.
Now, if, on the other hand, you don’t want to be consistent with that hard sci-fi notion of mining, and instead want to make it an activity as appealing as the other activities, then that’s different.
Good point. Yeah it makes sense RP wise. I kinda like Elite’s mining although I think it could use more variety in terms of rewards.
I have no idea why Jumpgate got mining so right or whether it was just my tastes.
Totally. I will be interested to see what you think of it when you try it I would love to have my mind changed :)
I agree that there could be more variety, even if it helped a bit that engineering materials can be acquired through mining. Mining currently doesn’t really offer anything that cannot be found faster/easier by other means.
I recently fitted out an Anaconda for mining in resource extraction sites. Not only are the rewards there higher, but I also get some variety by having to fend off attacking ships. Sadly I was not able to fit a fighter bay - it would have been nice to fly around in a Condor while waiting for the limpets to do their job.
K, still having connectivity issues – the Frontier folks are slow, but engaged in helping – but I see squadrons are now in-beta, so please feel free to apply to the Wildcards when you have the opportunity.
I’m back on once the beta goes live version. Just enough changes to get me interested again.
yup, me too. I also really like the new look of things.
I think mining would be more cool if it was like pumping oil wells or collecting maple syrup. I.e. you set up the equipment, possibly at multiple locations, and go check the bins routinely to see if they’re “full”. And maybe a separate refinery to purify the ore.
Kind of like Star Wars Galaxies
Patch 3.3 just hit. I am excited for the new lighting and exploration! I have quite a backlog of podcasts I want to listen so off to space I go!
The new lighting system really does look amazing. The engineers at Frontier continue to knock it out of the park. The audio team in particular deserves the video game equivalent of an Oscar for the work they’ve done.
You guys can log in? I’m seeing “Issues Detected” On the launcher.
I got on for a bit, but it keeps dropping me. Guess they don’t like the entire population leeching the patch all at once. Where is your glorious peer-to-peer networking now, FDEV?!
The same place space legs are.
K friends, the Wildcards squadron is all set up and accepting applications. :)
It’s in the right hand panel. You can do a search and apply there. It’s still slow as balls though.
Thanks, I must have missed when I was looking last night. I shall find it. Hopefully my thrustmaster is calibrated now. Landing a python with no shields while it is yawing to the right was entertaining. :)
Whew got the yaw problem solved, but not before a $3M mishap with a combo of that and the thrusters being in reverse at the start.