What the heck is it with stone mining anyway?

[shmullster]

Yumpin' Yiminy! It's a darn tootin' shame how mah prospectin' taint got much ta show fer itself.

Why I jes put my pick in them stones and after a cupala swings, I gets me about 3 stones but half the mountainside taint got nuthin no more.

Mebbe dem there rocks oughta be more rare so's a mountainside kin gen'rate me more'n three stones fer mah efforts.

[Anima Mundi]

Just pick'em off the ground. I find it more efficient. or hell just put yopur excavators on it 100%. They'll fill up your storage pretty quick while you do important stuff

[Capuzzi09]

Originally posted by shmullster:

Yumpin' Yiminy! It's a darn tootin' shame how mah prospectin' taint got much ta show fer itself.

Why I jes put my pick in them stones and after a cupala swings, I gets me about 3 stones but half the mountainside taint got nuthin no more.

Mebbe dem there rocks oughta be more rare so's a mountainside kin gen'rate me more'n three stones fer mah efforts.

Could you please say it again without trying to depict any dialect in writing?
This might be funny and all, but there are a lot of players around in the forum who are not native English speakers (such as me), and I'll be honest: I don't understand anything you're trying to tell us.

[TheMole]

even as a English speaker it's double Dutch

[shmullster]

I sure can. I can even shorten it:

I find it odd that you bang away at a huge rock outcropping and get 3 stones (and occasional limestone) and the rest of the rocky area is "depleted".

Everyone has their own form of "realism" they want in this game. I look at the rock outcroppings as truly dumb. The mines makes sense, you don't have ore veins over every inch, but stone is effectively stone. A huge mountainside would likely provide unlimited stone.

And, to the dialect thing, that was to indicate I was being "tongue in cheek". It's not a serious criticism. There's little in this game that particularly bothers me, since I'm a slow-paced player and I get everything I need eventually.

I don't play on "base" settings, so I don't have the grief that many players here seem to experience. I have my views of the 3-day season, but plenty of people think it's fine, so I just shrug and am simply thankful the game lets me play differently.

Although, I still have a bone to pick about those wooden spears...

[Capuzzi09]

Originally posted by shmullster:

I sure can. I can even shorten it:

I find it odd that you bang away at a huge rock outcropping and get 3 stones (and occasional limestone) and the rest of the rocky area is "depleted".

Everyone has their own form of "realism" they want in this game. I look at the rock outcroppings as truly dumb. The mines makes sense, you don't have ore veins over every inch, but stone is effectively stone. A huge mountainside would likely provide unlimited stone.

And, to the dialect thing, that was to indicate I was being "tongue in cheek". It's not a serious criticism. There's little in this game that particularly bothers me, since I'm a slow-paced player and I get everything I need eventually.

I don't play on "base" settings, so I don't have the grief that many players here seem to experience. I have my views of the 3-day season, but plenty of people think it's fine, so I just shrug and am simply thankful the game lets me play differently.

Although, I still have a bone to pick about those wooden spears...

Thank you, now I think I know what you were about in your first post.

Well, yeah, it's never easy with "realism" in games. ;)
Related to the topic you pointed out above, I think the idea behind the yield from mineable stone deposits is to keep things in balance - sort of.
The idea is to prevent players with nothing but a stone pickaxe from getting, say, 20 limestone and 30 stone, that would simply be too much (my personal opinion).
So what should be done? There are two ways to cange things in this regard:
a) reduce the durability of stone picks.
b) reduce the yield of stone fields

The developers have obviously chosen "b" in this case.
It is always a certain problem to balance mechanics in a game halfway sensibly. No matter how you do it, the result can only be a more or less successful compromise. It's a game, so only partial aspects of a "simulated reality" (if you can speak of reality in games at all) can be depicted more or less convincingly.
In MD we have the problem that there are ore deposits on the one hand and stone deposits on the other. Both are mined with meanwhile 3 different tools and everything must somehow be brought into balance with each other so that it fits to some extent.
In my opinion (quite subjective) you can live with the result quite well, because the excavation shed is available comparatively early in the game. So I myself usually start with just picking up stones from the ground (since the latest perk in the survival skills this is a piece of cake) and as soon as I could build an excavation shed, I assigned a worker there with the procurement of stone and limestone.

I see your "problem" and I also understood that you don't take it too hard and I basically agree with you. It's just a game, you have to agree on a compromise every so many steps in a game. That's true for the developers, but it's also true for us players. ;)

[Anima Mundi]

I mean yea if it's the immersion part that bothers you i can get down with that. I thought you had issues farming enough stone.
If they were to do unlimited rock, they'd have to remove limestone and add another type of node like for ores.

[shmullster]

Well, no offense, but limestone isn't that valuable, as much as I can tell so far in my lazy playing style. About all it does (it seems) is add a couple of points of positive mood to the villagers. Hardly as valuable as the ores with their significant durability advantages.

Now, if the game updates ever venture into the area of weather events/natural disasters or large-scale bandit attacks (hopefully not), then they could use limestone in houses the same way they use ores in tools and weapons.

But, for now, limestone being "rare" does not seem to be that necessary.

And, as I implied, my need for realism is tempered by my recognition of the limitations of game developers. If one were to look at the wish lists just from this community, it's an overwhelming (and likely unrealistic) amount of work. My rock "complaint" is way down the list.

Not to disparage the requests of others, of course. Without all of those, the devs wouldn't know what would best please the greatest number of players. I do hope the amount of customization they have already built into the game continues, as I am quite happy to stroll around the "open world" all at my own pace. I only gain achievements incidentally, not as a goal.

[Anima Mundi]

Originally posted by shmullster:

Well, no offense, but limestone isn't that valuable, About all it does (it seems) is add a couple of points of positive mood to the villagers.

It also adds insulation to the house, decreasing wood consumption. Couple that with the easy endless stones right from the early point of the game, and you'll be building all in stone+lime, have a low wood demand and a much less almost bland challenging experience for your early growth.
Hence the need to separate it in case you made such change to stone nodes

[hOLDtHEdOOR]

yeah mountainside deposits are crap, the balance for stones is so off too since you can get infinite stones from small rock respawns making the pickaxe useless for stone, it's only useful in getting ores. If I remember right from early access only cave deposits respawn as you say and the mountain side and river side ones never respawn and can't be built upon which is annoying because it just becomes an ugly permanent scar on the land.

Respawning resources are to be expected in games so as to why the exception was made for non cave rock deposits I just can't understand. would certainly be nice to be able to farm the deposits near my town every time they respawn instead of going to fight the bear at the cave or scavenging the ground for rocks. But I'll have my excavation shed set up soon so not really something I'm worried about.

A realism setting where no rocks respawn would be cool though, rock deposits would need to have a few 100 stone each for that to work.

[shmullster]

Yeah, I’m a do a lot myself guy so I like pounding away with the pickaxe but it just reminds me of (beware! Dating myself comment) a scene from Superman 2 where Chris Reeve squeezes the bejeebers out of an orange and gets about an ounce of orange juice.

[an entire Roman legion]

Originally posted by shmullster:

Yumpin' Yiminy! It's a darn tootin' shame how mah prospectin' taint got much ta show fer itself.

Why I jes put my pick in them stones and after a cupala swings, I gets me about 3 stones but half the mountainside taint got nuthin no more.

Mebbe dem there rocks oughta be more rare so's a mountainside kin gen'rate me more'n three stones fer mah efforts.

why bro
why

[shmullster]

Originally posted by Albob:

Originally posted by shmullster:

Yumpin' Yiminy! It's a darn tootin' shame how mah prospectin' taint got much ta show fer itself.

Why I jes put my pick in them stones and after a cupala swings, I gets me about 3 stones but half the mountainside taint got nuthin no more.

Mebbe dem there rocks oughta be more rare so's a mountainside kin gen'rate me more'n three stones fer mah efforts.

why bro
why

Someone had to.

[Werric]

The style of the OP had me smiling and thinking of Yosemite Sam from the old cartoons.

I pick up stones/rocks in winter or keep them (well some of them) from mining in a mine. I do agree that it feels off that rock outcrops produced next to nothing. However I soon gave up on mining outcrops for hand gathering and then actual mining.

[shmullster]

Oh yeah, I totally get that the properties of the game do provide you plenty of opportunity for stone, which is why I did the "Dagnabbit, you varmint" style on the post. I find it dumb, but no dumber than those old cartoons you reference (which I grew up with).

Regardless, playwise, there's no shortage of rock. "Immersion"-wise, to pickaxe a mountainside and get 3 stone (and a lime or two) and then find everything else for "miles" depleted is...well...rassa frassa rassa.

I don't worry too much about the immersion factor. The game looks good and plays (customized) to my liking. Still, I figured it was a change from posts about kids and wives.

[Sarke]

Try mining copper and tin deposits. You'll get lots of stone that way as well.