Kinda sad to learn...

[Smurff-a-thon2k]

Is there really no actual incentive to go out and mine minerals around the level? I really hope they change it up so that there is near requirement to be going out to mine minerals off the walls or in non-mission caves. Seems like such a solid part of the game neutered by just buying things up at each station pit stop...?

[Buggy Boy]

Some stations don't have everything you might need or want, sometimes there isn't a station at all. Mining and refining is one method of earning extra income as well, and from what I've seen so far it can be a dangerous task in the deeper areas to find the more exotic materials.

[FourGreenFields]

"Requirement"? Hell no. Just as bad as making pirate-missions a requirement, or wreck salvage.

Mining can bring in quite some cash (probably close to 1k marks per cluster depending on the minerals present?), or save you some. If you have a full fabricator set it can allow you to survive without needing stations - your own fuel rods, ammo, medicine (if you add plants and creature-loot to it)... all for free.

[Bwixie]

it's practically free to go out and mine? good enough reason for me.
money is for upgrades and crew which you can't replace by just going outside for a few minutes.

[rb303]

Mining is great for when you're having bad luck with stations not selling the materials you need, and can be a lifesaver for the lategame where you have no stations to buy stuff from at all; I only survived my first playthrough of the game because i got lucky and found a ton of thorianite to make fuel and materials to make ammo, since I was empty nearing the end.

[Greb]

It'd probably be more popular to nip out of the sub and mine up some minerals if the main nav terminal could have a mineral scanner on it. You can link it up to a status monitor or sonar monitor whatever, or you can use a handheld sonar to access one too, but if you're just navigating through the caverns you're probably not swapping back and forth between consoles to check for minerals.

You can have someone else operate the mineral scanner thing I think, but until you've got a lot of fuel rods to spare stopping is usually dubious at best when you think you're stopping for uranium but instead you just find some elastin or something lol. I guess you could use weapons or searchlights to scout the ores from inside the sub but, eh. By the time you have that many fuel rods that stopping every five minutes to do some quick gathering, you're usually at the point where gathering is mostly a novelty.

I love mining though myself, there's just something cool about gearing up, heading out, approaching the mineral vein and then setting to work with your hands or plasma cutter, orientating yourself in the water etc, it's just cool lol.

I'd love to see it expanded though. Some stuff you can't find anywhere else, for example. Some stuff like matured aquatic poppies that can be turned into extra strength morphine or something like that, perhaps. Flawless diamonds end up being worth a lot of money if you're lucky enough to find some, rather than just being turned into comparatively worthless carbon, etc. I think it'll probably see an expansion at some point, the fabrication and deconstruction system seems a little placeholdery to me. Especially how you break down plants and organs into stuff instead of processing them at a medlab, which is weird lol.

But uh yeah tl;dr I'd love to see mining become more important in the future. Maybe for exclusive stuff like upgraded stuff you can't get anywhere else, but ultimately aren't too essential in the grand scheme of things.

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by Greb:

when you think you're stopping for uranium but instead you just find some elastin or something lol.

Why would that happen? The mineral scanner tells you what minerals it has detected.

[Greb]

Originally posted by FourGreenFields:

Why would that happen? The mineral scanner tells you what minerals it has detected.

Most just in reference to me and my groups first run, before we even knew what a mineral scanner was lol. Skirting the surfaces of caverns and stopping for every green thing. That was also back when we thought those static background coraly objects were also the stuff we were supposed to mine and didn't know how to do it.

Actually, this game could do with a mining tutorial, thinking about it. We spent way too long thinking the white parts of the ground on the sonar could be minerals, and then trying to figure out how to mine those background elements, lol. It wasn't until we encountered actual ores that we figured it out. It would also be good if it mentioned the mineral scanner on the handheld sonar, as we didn't learn about that until like 50+ hours, lol.

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by Greb:

Actually, this game could do with a mining tutorial, thinking about it. We spent way too long thinking the white parts of the ground on the sonar could be minerals, and then trying to figure out how to mine those background elements, lol. It wasn't until we encountered actual ores that we figured it out. It would also be good if it mentioned the mineral scanner on the handheld sonar, as we didn't learn about that until like 50+ hours, lol.

I suspect more in-depth (pun not intended, but appreciated) tutorials will be made towards end of early-access. Not much use spending time on them while things still change as rapidly as they do. The mineral scanning is part of that, used to not be a thing at all.

[Smurff-a-thon2k]

should be able to train your pet to go out and gather the plant minerals on the walls...

[Greb]

It'd be cool if your sub could get covered in barnacles or something. They weigh the sub down and make it clunky, maybe each one is like a -1 Helm level debuff, but eventually could grow into poppies or something useful. You could just plasma cutter them off the hull or let them grow!

Originally posted by FourGreenFields:

I suspect more in-depth (pun not intended, but appreciated) tutorials will be made towards end of early-access.

True, I guess waiting until everything is fully released to make a tutorial for it makes a lot more sense, especially for an ever evolving Early Access game.

[Slaiiz]

In singleplayer, sure, although it's risky so I seldom do it.
In multiplayer, however, these always take forever.

[DuckieMcduck]

Only mining outposts really have spare raw materials, and exotic materials are not at all abundant in the shops either.