Posted by: Platys51
« on: August 02, 2021, 02:23:29 PM »This discussion could be made null if there was command: Collect all minerals, then go to next mining location.
Considering that freighting consumes resource - Sorium, for fuel production - while mass driver needs no more resources after that (except 1 sending, 1 receiving), Mass drivers are economically superior, at least, if you are staying in the same system.The 1km/s is just a simple trick to avoid divide by zero errors in various bits of code or having to write error handling code all over the place (and inevitably missing some) where speed is used in a denominator.
Going out to the other solar systems will need fuel either way.
Say folks, that 1km/s speed of stations and engine-less objects... Is it, working?
Say folks, that 1km/s speed of stations and engine-less objects... Is it, working?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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>
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.