Ore Processor: Don't Like It

[Llywylln]

When I first read this thing was in the game, I got excited. I 'thought' OH, I'm going to be able to actually mine away Asteroids and get useful stuff from them.... boy was that wrong. You don't mine away asteroids, it is just another surface deposit in practice. The body of the asteroid is unchanged. You just need a new gimmick facility to make it work. You spend a little of your drill which costs you have a hull block and half an iinfrablock to make, so mining it has a cumulative cost besides time and energy. The first sector I mined had two asteroids in it and one of them had 2 Base Metal and a Noble and the other had 2 of each. So for all the effort i get 0.2 of several resources.. not even a single usable one after clearing the sector. I get 0.3 Hyp & ENg... Wow, in three more sectors like this I'll accumulate enough to have 1 of each! Oh Boy! I used to waltz into a sector and see 7 of them on an asteroid.

Then there is the other problem: you can use 0.3 of anything. Sure, if you had a full block of it in your machine being consumed, it can consume it in small increments, but I can't take hte 0.3 hyperium and put it into a hyperium hyperdrive... Also if I have to move that machine I'm gonna lose all my fractional materials. Then there is this 'specialization' of the Pods, so I need to have twice as many of them now... You could just keep abandonning them and remaking them in you have an unlimited supply of Electronic Components and Infrablocks... that gets expensive.

If that wasn't bad enough, the Discomfort for the OP seems to slide right through walls.

In most games, I love the mining schtick. Free Resources! But having to run through at least 5-6 sectors just to get 1 crate is ridiculous.

[FizzlePopBerryTwist]

My recommended solution to running out of stuff: SOLAR PANNELS. A lot of them.

I also built the entire chain of stuff you need to refine and whatnot and it does cost and reaches into the endgame quite a bit and to do so you have to travel A LOT which means blowing money on fuel to keep the lights on. Literally.

Solar pannels remove pretty much the need for fuel.
= more money and energy to blow on travel and other systems, or trading...

Once you realize that fact it seems kinda obvious.
The first time around i just ran dry a lot and suddenly i had more resources than cargo.

Kinda imbalanced like that :i

ps. the obvious: batteries... use em. Those are the biggest hurdle in solar. Batteries = $

[Llywylln]

I built solar panels in my last run but that was A15... they've 'adjusted' them, so I don't know that this still works.

[aksel_bugbyte]

The Ore Processor was meant as a more specialized mining feature. Not intended to be the main source of resources as there are still resources at the surface of asteroids, which require no ore processor.

In general, our thought with the Ore Processor was more in the vein of the Composter. Build 2 or even 3 and become good at processing ore to resources, as a ship specialized in mining.

But, the ratio might be too small still to have a few Ore Processors be useful and worth it. We can look into balancing them with time.

Additionally, I responded to your bug report about the Ore Processor and I do believe you are right that the discomfort is not properly dropped by walls. We will look into that as well.

[Llywylln]

A 'FEW' Ore Processors??? How would you feed them in such a manner as to need more than one? If you only get a few ore per sector it will take the entire star system just to cap off a single crate of each. You wouldn't even be able to replace your drills with what you mined because they would break before you got even one crate done. One Mining Event used to give you 1 crate or 100% of a crate. For the OP, the Specialized Mining device, you get either 20% or 25% of a crate, adding all of the components up. So you spend more to get less. Usually, Deep Core mining gives you richer deposits and is a real compensation for the extra expense and effort...

[aksel_bugbyte]

There is still normal mining as before, with resources on the surface which give as much as before when mined that way, directly by the mining pods. This works automatically, so just need to select which resource to mine.

The ore processor is a supplement to the surface mining. The idea would be to have more than one Ore Processors processing, to speed up their production. They do not need to be capped, it is enough there are some ores in there. I'm not sure how well the AI distributes them at the moment but it is something that can be tried.

[xerxes0]

I like the new Ore Processor mechanic. Good job

[Stardustfire]

my main problem with the ore processor is that it dont spit out anything it looks like, it works nonestop and is good filled most of the times, but i NEVER seen anything get shoved out of the output flap. as it is it seems like a waste of space/resources/power....

[Llywylln]

Well it takes 20 Basic Ore to get 1 Base, 1 Noble, 1 Carbon and 1 Chemicals to be completed or 10 Exotic Ores to get 1 Hyperium and 1 Energium... it takes a long time to get anything. I have no idea if the animations are broken, since it takes a lot of hunting star systems to get that much ore...

[Emilija]

Originally posted by aksel_bugbyte:

There is still normal mining as before, with resources on the surface which give as much as before when mined that way, directly by the mining pods. This works automatically, so just need to select which resource to mine.

The ore processor is a supplement to the surface mining. The idea would be to have more than one Ore Processors processing, to speed up their production. They do not need to be capped, it is enough there are some ores in there. I'm not sure how well the AI distributes them at the moment but it is something that can be tried.

I can safety say i never needed more than one ore processor and i mined all deposits, i feel like ore deposits (only the underground ones, the surface ones are fine as they are now) should be massively buffed with the quantity of ore,maybe even by a factor of 10 to make ship being turned into miner viable!

[Llywylln]

Yeah, at least x10 maybe x20. In addition tot he time you are spending, you spend a lot of space for processors and entra mining pods. Being a dedicated mining ship should produce valuable ore faster than just jumping into a new system and surface mining everything. You should get much more... I suppose that they can't tie the ore production to a skill, since the machine automates that, but maybe they could adjust how much ore you get by the skill of the miner???

[Barleyman]

So wait.. What do the numbers on asteroid mean? How do I know what's surface and what's deep? I was not aware of this deep mechanism at all, presumably that ufo red beam activity is surface collection? But without the processor some resources were simply unavailable?

It doesn't seem to take that long for a lone mining pod to empty the asteroids, if that's what. Actually happens. The processor keeps running fairly long time, though.

[blackrave]

My biggest gripe is that you can't store excess ore, once processor is full.
Forces you to just wait in the sector if you don't want to leave resources behind (and I'm greedy)
Not the most exciting way to spend time in the game.
Plus you can't sell ore.
Seems like an arbitrary limitation.

[Stardustfire]

also recogniced that this ores seem to dig in the other resources spawning. never seen so few chemicals/metals/high metals. and when i found such a spawn it was super little.
best seen in resource rich sector. 5 chemicals spawn in resource rich (what is identical to the none resource rich sectors) is way to less. before the patch it was 20+ at a spawn like that. and all this ores that need to be refinded first block the refiniery after the first stop because all drills are 100% filled and need years to work on that stored stuff.
a big storage is much smaller that the refiniery but can store tousend times more stuff it seems.

[Llywylln]

I also miss the old Pods; having to keep separate pods for mining and building sucks. It isn't as though they are small items in your ship. Surface mining is basically free but this deep mining has a considerable cost. You spend time collecting it, and then processing it. So you get less than 1/5th as much for your time as you do in surface mining. It takes 20 basic ore to give you 4 resources. It also takes you a whole lot of sectors to get 20 ore and all that time in teh processor. Lastly, your drills aren't free, they take resources to make and they degrade over time.

Possible ways this could be salvaged: First, I don't like the fixed 5% nonsense for each of the minerals. That makes no sense. It's easier to program, sure, but it is really lazy. I think each deposit should have a chance to be a certain kind of ore. But that is a small gripe, the more important is the ore quantity. I think every 'Ore' should give you 200% of a resource crate bu i think the actual division should be random at the time of processing, unless you implement the previous system to determine random ores for each deposit. Basically, it would work like this: You bring back 2 Ore, so you have 400% of a resource crate. Since this is basic ore, then you have a mix of 4 other things. RNG gives you, 125% of a carbon, 75% of a noble metal, 1.40% of a raw chemicals and 60% of aa base metal. There, now you have made the system profitable, slightly less predictable but still worthwhile to invest your time, resources, and ship space for. Without the randomness, you would basically get 1 of each of the 4 resources for every 2 ores and that would be kind of boring. A little RNG in the mining makes sense and add an element of tension if you are really in need of a specific resource.

Oh, and the Ore Processors should be faster. It should be WAY faster than Composting. As a compensation for speeding it up and increasing the yield, you could add in a small cost in water for the processor to work. I do mean small, but non-zero. Like 5% of a water per ore processed.

[blackrave]

I had an ideas for ore rework.
1.No more ore deposits. At least initially.
2.Two stage mining. When you arrive at the system all you see is surface level resources (base metal, ice, etc.) that can be collected by any pod (maybe give speed boost for mining pods). Once those are collected deep ore deposits are revealed in their spots. Those can be collected only by mining pods.
3.Refineries do not have drills, mining pods do. And they eventually break and need to be fixed (but instead of refineries, it happens at pod hangars)
4.Ore can be accepted by refineries and ore depots(once refineries are full). Ore depot is storage for ore. It either functions as ordinary storage or (if possible) linked storage that can be built right next to refinery and supply it directly.
5.No more exotic or basic ore. It's all just ore, but exact composition is defined by source (ore from ice asteroid will have higher proportion of ice, with low ammount of other raw resources, for example). Once this ore gets deposited into ore processor or depot, it mixes with the rest of ore and composition changes accordingly. Let's say you drop off 2 units of ice ore (0.1 ice, 0.05 the rest) into depot with 8 units of carbon ore (0.1 carbon, 0.05 the rest). Depot will now show 10 units of ore with composition of 0.06ice, 0.09carbon, 0.05 the rest. Every ore addition will change composition accordingly.