More interesting way to farm for minerals.
Nurkas
Finland Join Date: 2015-11-01 Member: 208890Members
Finland Join Date: 2015-11-01 Member: 208890Members
Let me start by saying what a beautiful game you're making I've enjoyed every moment so far it's brilliant!
I've been playing this game quite a bit now, enough to get a good picture of the game. According to steam I have 19 hours played on the game and I've been doing all the usual stuff, building my deep sea bases, Cyclops and everything with organically grinded stuff. At some point I noticed my Cyclops and base storages running low on basic minerals such as Copper, Silver and - to an extent - Titanium. After thinking(and searching the wiki) for the most efficient way and location to farm these minerals I realized there's no way around clicking through the limestone nodes one by one for each unit of Copper. Since I've done this process hundreds of times, I figured it's finally time to call the console to the rescue.
As I see it, this game is about exploration so it could use some more interesting less painful methods of farming for resources. Seems farming for organic materials is already been worked on and about to be released in the next update. So here's my idea on how to make the mineral farming cooler and a more rewarding experience:
I propose putting huge chunks of Copper and other minerals to the deeper biomes (caves in sub 400m. or Dunes/Grand Reef levels of depth maybe Mountains) that would act like a physical object that you could haul with your Seamoth into your Cyclops to be dissected for large amounts of Copper/Silver/Gold or whatever. Since we already have the terraformer I imagine it should be possible to make farming for these chunks done by using somekind of mining explosives that would remove ground just like the terraformer (possibly with some effects like bubbles and sand blowing out) but leave the possible chunks of minerals intact to be hauled away. You could have a constructable module for base and possibly an unlockable upgrade for Cyclops to dissect these chunks. I imagine an animation with lasers - something like in the fabricator animation - dissecting a huge 1m x 1m chunk of mineral into bits that are then put in the module's storage inventory, but since you have such beautiful animations for the Seamoth docking and so on, I'm sure you could make it much better than I can imagine. You already have physical objects like storage cubes and dead fish and stuff so I imagine it wouldn't be that difficult to create these objects. This would also be consistent with your design of beautiful physical containers containing actual physical objects like the supply crates on and around Aurora the design of which I found particularly captivating (and the currently empty first aid cabinet inside the rescue pod).
This would also act as an incentive and a goal for going to explore the deeper parts of the sea further binding the farming process with exploration.
It should be simple enough to balance the rarity of these chunks (in addition to them requiring equipment like a module in base/Cyclops), to still make it reasonable to collect stuff one by one in the early game. While the small pieces of Aurora's hull help with the mining of Titanium you could also do this for Titanium and make bigger pieces of Aurora (something like the uninteractible ones you see inside the Aurora radiation zone already) available near Aurora crash site for hauling and dissection in your base/Cyclops module for larger amounts of titanium.
I feel like the mineral farming could be done in a much more interesting and engaging way than breaking tiny nodes and collecting small cubes in your inventory one by one, this would be one way of doing it.
I've been playing this game quite a bit now, enough to get a good picture of the game. According to steam I have 19 hours played on the game and I've been doing all the usual stuff, building my deep sea bases, Cyclops and everything with organically grinded stuff. At some point I noticed my Cyclops and base storages running low on basic minerals such as Copper, Silver and - to an extent - Titanium. After thinking(and searching the wiki) for the most efficient way and location to farm these minerals I realized there's no way around clicking through the limestone nodes one by one for each unit of Copper. Since I've done this process hundreds of times, I figured it's finally time to call the console to the rescue.
As I see it, this game is about exploration so it could use some more interesting less painful methods of farming for resources. Seems farming for organic materials is already been worked on and about to be released in the next update. So here's my idea on how to make the mineral farming cooler and a more rewarding experience:
I propose putting huge chunks of Copper and other minerals to the deeper biomes (caves in sub 400m. or Dunes/Grand Reef levels of depth maybe Mountains) that would act like a physical object that you could haul with your Seamoth into your Cyclops to be dissected for large amounts of Copper/Silver/Gold or whatever. Since we already have the terraformer I imagine it should be possible to make farming for these chunks done by using somekind of mining explosives that would remove ground just like the terraformer (possibly with some effects like bubbles and sand blowing out) but leave the possible chunks of minerals intact to be hauled away. You could have a constructable module for base and possibly an unlockable upgrade for Cyclops to dissect these chunks. I imagine an animation with lasers - something like in the fabricator animation - dissecting a huge 1m x 1m chunk of mineral into bits that are then put in the module's storage inventory, but since you have such beautiful animations for the Seamoth docking and so on, I'm sure you could make it much better than I can imagine. You already have physical objects like storage cubes and dead fish and stuff so I imagine it wouldn't be that difficult to create these objects. This would also be consistent with your design of beautiful physical containers containing actual physical objects like the supply crates on and around Aurora the design of which I found particularly captivating (and the currently empty first aid cabinet inside the rescue pod).
This would also act as an incentive and a goal for going to explore the deeper parts of the sea further binding the farming process with exploration.
It should be simple enough to balance the rarity of these chunks (in addition to them requiring equipment like a module in base/Cyclops), to still make it reasonable to collect stuff one by one in the early game. While the small pieces of Aurora's hull help with the mining of Titanium you could also do this for Titanium and make bigger pieces of Aurora (something like the uninteractible ones you see inside the Aurora radiation zone already) available near Aurora crash site for hauling and dissection in your base/Cyclops module for larger amounts of titanium.
I feel like the mineral farming could be done in a much more interesting and engaging way than breaking tiny nodes and collecting small cubes in your inventory one by one, this would be one way of doing it.
Comments
It makes more sense to have veins of ore built into the rock that can be drilled out using a tool. This way you can gradually increase the size of the veins at lower depths/further away from the life pod to allow for much larger hauls while strongly encouraging players to go out and explore (ore veins would actually be built into the terrain rather than spawning on it like nodes, so once they are gone, they are gone). It would also encourage more cave exploration since ores would more easily be found in caves.
These ore veins can be put everywhere, even the starting area, and players will easily become familiar with the system and notice that the veins grow larger the further they get from the starting area, as opposed to having really exclusive chunks that people will likely not go for in favor of just punching away at nodes, or never be aware of unless there is some kind of weird hint that they exist.
I also feel the crystal system should be reworked in a similar way, with large crystals spawning that you take chunks from similar to the way coral tubes work. The small crystals we have now should not be as abundant as they are (nor should they be growing out of sand on the sea floor). They should be exclusive to caves and much less abundant at that (The large crystals should more than make up for this since you can get several chunks of crystal from a single source). The large crystals would also start out rather small with smaller yields and grow in size the farther you get from the surface/life pod. We could even have a crystal caves biome somewhere really deep down in the map.
You're going to have some amount of minerals X that you're going to get in some measure of time, the value of X is trivial to adjust and tweak. What changes is the distribution of minerals you're going to get and how is the gameplay leading to gaining that amount of minerals going to be like. If it's going to be click-click-click untill your inventory is full I don't think that's going to make for particularly interesting experience and it's not worth it for aesthetic concerns such as realism.
You're supporting exploration, but finding an ore vein just seems to mean that the next 5-10 minutes you're going to be clicking furiously and swimming between the vein and your Cyclops to empty your inventory. There's not gonna be any "larger hauls" cause you're limited by your inventory space. The uncreative, boring and unfortunately extremely common way to solve this is to add backpacks or other inventory extensions. This game could have something better than that.
If the devs want to emphasize more cave exploration sure they can put more resources in caves doesn't matter if they're "chunks" or "veins". There's nothing about the alleged realistic nature of ore veins or unrealism of chunks that would swing one eitherway about putting more or less resources into caves. The real reason for putting more resources into caves from good game design perspective would be that the caves provide a more dangerous and exciting environment so you would hope to find more precious loot from there, to have some risk/reward thing going on.
Not that able to gradually adjust is exclusive to the ore vein dynamic that you described but I just want to point out how gradually adjusting things isn't always even something worth pursuing. Players want big hits; when you're exploring and then you find something amazing that makes your exploration process feel even more valuable than just the sceneries, an impending tedious mechanic isn't going to cut it. Even if some people might happily hack away at the veins for the first few times with $-signs in their eyes, it doesn't mean that the mechanic is good, just that they're willing to accept it cause they're only seeing the big payoff at the end. After they lose their appreciation for the coveted item, they're going to stop playing and they will lose the appreciation if the game is mostly composed of uninteresting gameplay mechanics. Being able to gradually adjust some variables can be good for balancing, but if you get everything smoothed out, everything about your progress stops mattering for the gameplay and it just becomes a boring game.
I don't see how "ore veins" would be more intuitive than a chunk of whatever mineral is in question textured to look much like a bigger chunk of what the individiual piece would look like. All the hint that you need would be to have the module in your build menu with a building description like any other building there that read "Dissect chunks to gain minerals.". There's nothing weird or exceptional about the way this information would be conveyed to the player. It wouldn't differ in any radical way from the kind of pondering the new player would have to do to figure out how any of the other items on the fabrication or build menu worked. It might only serve to create more excitement about what are these "chunks" (or whatever they would be called in the end) that the item description of this building is talking about. Which is what should happen when you first time stumble upon a new mechanic.
One thing I agree with you is that the distribution of minerals could be less symmetric and caves specifically could provide an environment of specialization into some forms of minerals, be it crystals or whatever.