Orbital Mass Driver

[Carthar (OP)]

Idea: ship module: orbital mass driver to make asteroid mining more automated

The 'go to next asteroid ore body' is a really nice standing order for orbital miners.   The annoyance is getting the minerals off the asteroids.   Especially asteroid fields with lots of small ore bodies.

I can either have a freighter that I have to redirect every time a miner moves on, or I can have the miners each carry a mass driver which I then have to pick up and put down each time.   This sort of defeats the automation of the standing order and is a lot of micro management.

An orbital mass driver module built into the orbital miners would save a lot of time.   If the target of the mass driver would stick between asteroids hops then I wouldn't need to micromanage the fleet every time a miner finished its work nor have to deal with picking up the minerals from all the mining sites.   It would make getting the smaller asteroids worth the hassle by concentrating the stockpile on a single body for an easy cycled pickup.

Just a thought. . . . .

[RougeNPS]

I think this would be nice.

As a bonus we can make orbital bombardment easier. 

Though i would just generally love the ability to move asteroids completely.

[TMaekler]

Great idea. I think it was suggested several times over now. And according to my memory Steve never said anything about this idea. Does he support or completely disapprove... who knows. I for one would love to have such a module... .

Think about what could be done if used in space stations... one would only need a jump capable transport ship, two stations and mining is on its way from the neighbouring system...

[Demonides]

Think about what could be done if used in space stations... one would only need a jump capable transport ship, two stations and mining is on its way from the neighbouring system...

THIS !!! 

[Kristover]

I love the idea of having an orbital mass driver module for stations though I imagine there are some coding difficulties involved - ie what happens if station is destroyed or moved?  I would prefer to have the orbital bombardment with mass driver packets option removed completely.  I have had a couple of VB6 games ended because a mass driver got destroyed or inadvertently moved by the contract system and next thing you know you have lost a billion pop and all your industry because 10 CMCs worth of mineral packets some launched six months earlier wipe out the home world.  You mean there are no failsafes to blow packets in transit in my future society?  To get around that risk I establish a mineral reception hub on Luna (or a couple of hubs in the Belt) and transport minerals the rest of the way with commercial engine shuttles.

[nuclearslurpee]

One question to consider is what would make an orbital mass driver module mechanically different from a surface mass driver?

Most of the orbital modules offer a distinct option compared to their planetary counterparts - orbital miners are limited to small bodies only, sorium harvesters only harvest from gas giants, maintenance modules do not produce MSP, and so on. It would be ideal if a new module carried on this pattern instead of just being the same thing on a ship instead of the ground. Notably the exception to this are the terraforming module and facility, which are basically identical except that the facility is more expensive and requires a population to run (basically it is useless). Ideally let's not add another module to the game that makes another planetary facility useless once 10k RP have been spent.

[ZimRathbone]

 I would prefer to have the orbital bombardment with mass driver packets option removed completely.  I have had a couple of VB6 games ended because a mass driver got destroyed or inadvertently moved by the contract system and next thing you know you have lost a billion pop and all your industry because 10 CMCs worth of mineral packets some launched six months earlier wipe out the home world.  You mean there are no failsafes to blow packets in transit in my future society?  To get around that risk I establish a mineral reception hub on Luna (or a couple of hubs in the Belt) and transport minerals the rest of the way with commercial engine shuttles.

Damage from mineral packets was recently removed (1.13? 1.14?) - actually i thought it a bit of a shame as one of the "rites of passage" for Aurora was accidentally removing the last Mass Driver from your capital and blasting yourself to smithereens  (I never did it more than twice) but Steve introduced a warning against that way back in the VB.  Kids these days have it too easy, in my day..... <segue off into Monty Python sketch>

[nuclearslurpee]

Damage from mineral packets was recently removed (1.13? 1.14?) - actually i thought it a bit of a shame as one of the "rites of passage" for Aurora was accidentally removing the last Mass Driver from your capital and blasting yourself to smithereens  (I never did it more than twice) but Steve introduced a warning against that way back in the VB.  Kids these days have it too easy, in my day..... <segue off into Monty Python sketch>

As funny and, um, nostalgic as it was, I think for most people it happened most commonly because the !#@*&!# civilians kept taking the last mass driver because the civilian contract code was fairly buggy (until 1.14? we shall see...). Probably a good change even if the rite of passage is now unfortunately lost to time.

[Droll]

One question to consider is what would make an orbital mass driver module mechanically different from a surface mass driver?

Most of the orbital modules offer a distinct option compared to their planetary counterparts - orbital miners are limited to small bodies only, sorium harvesters only harvest from gas giants, maintenance modules do not produce MSP, and so on. It would be ideal if a new module carried on this pattern instead of just being the same thing on a ship instead of the ground. Notably the exception to this are the terraforming module and facility, which are basically identical except that the facility is more expensive and requires a population to run (basically it is useless). Ideally let's not add another module to the game that makes another planetary facility useless once 10k RP have been spent.

IMO I don't agree with the post purely on the basis that mass drivers don't need population on the surface and due to the amount of drivers you need on large/populated mining colonies it would be cheaper gallicite and fuel wise to just have a few freighters move them around over time as opposed to being forced to slap and engine to each MD. The main issue with surface terraformers is that they use up workers and their orbital variant doesn't.

However, if you really wanted to add some weird quirk to mass drivers either be lazy and use the same one as orbital miners or instead of adding an orbital mass driver component, allow ships with cargo capacity for at least one whole mass driver to use the mass drivers inside their cargo holds (round down if it stores 1.99 MDs).

I can't think of anything interesting you can do with an orbital mass driver in addition to just shooting minerals around. You could make it so that the surface variant can somehow shoot mineral packets through JPs but the orbital one cant.

Note: The sorium harvester is also special because despite its name, it doesn't actually produce sorium but directly converts it to fuel.

[ISN]

I love the idea of having an orbital mass driver module for stations though I imagine there are some coding difficulties involved - ie what happens if station is destroyed or moved?

Planets already move around, so this might not be a huge issue, but regardless I imagine the easiest way to implement this would be like orbital habitats or terraformers: they would provide some mass driver capacity to the planet they're orbiting, but couldn't operate on their own without a planet.

[Garfunkel]

You would still need to set the target of the mass driver each time it moved as it cannot remember its last target since that could be in a different system. So, you're not going to be able to create fully automated mining operations, you're only reducing the number of clicks required each time a mining body is emptied.

Personally, I'd like to get rid of mass drivers completely and just rely on freighters and civilians. To be honest, I'm not really seeing the point in this module - just seems a way to make a portion of the game play itself, though I do understand that for some players, the ultimate endgame is to make a perfectly efficient self-contained empire that is 99% automated.

[kilo]

I like the idea of having orbital mass driver for mineral transport, but I would love to see them to have one additional ability. Now that we have piracy in the game, it would be nice if they could receive and steal mineral packets. This would make mass driver packets vulnerable to empires and pirates and add a new layer of economic warfare.
They could work like mobile tractor units in EVE Online and capture friendly mineral packets, which are addressed to them and hostile ones if they come close enough for an intercept.

[QuakeIV]

I'd prefer a ship mobile version over having to unload onto a planet.

[Droll]

You would still need to set the target of the mass driver each time it moved as it cannot remember its last target since that could be in a different system. So, you're not going to be able to create fully automated mining operations, you're only reducing the number of clicks required each time a mining body is emptied.

Personally, I'd like to get rid of mass drivers completely and just rely on freighters and civilians. To be honest, I'm not really seeing the point in this module - just seems a way to make a portion of the game play itself, though I do understand that for some players, the ultimate endgame is to make a perfectly efficient self-contained empire that is 99% automated.

If there was strong automation revolving civilians and minerals, as well as more tools to make state owned freighters to automatically drop off minerals to designated worlds while respecting any mineral reserve levels sure, remove mass drivers. Especially since mass drivers cant actually shoot minerals through JPs, you still need freighters to move minerals across systems.

However with the current IMO poor (but better compared to previous versions) state of mineral transport automation hell no, mass drivers are important to preserve my sanity and hairline.

[nuclearslurpee]

In fairness, we do now have (or will have - is this a 1.14 thing?) an order to load minerals until full, which can be cycled along with refuelling orders to give reasonably efficient handling of ship-based mineral transport.

In my mind the biggest "problem" with mass drivers is that they consume nothing once built (and are very cheap), so fuel-consuming freighters will struggle to compete unless my fuel harvesting infrastructure is in excess of my needs otherwise. However, I think mass driver design is largely WAI by Steve and personally I do not usually mind it as I have a lot to do with my freighters as it stands, so I can accept that the RP option is clearly worse in this instance in return for being more flavorful.