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Posted by: xeryon
« on: April 16, 2012, 03:05:56 PM »

Never really thought about an orbital with 50(0) asteroid miners on it, or some such.  I just giggled a little on the inside of the visualization of subjugating an alien home world and then following up with an orbital mining array that strips/decimates the planet and renders the surface near inhospitable in the extraction of the resources.  (a little combining of this idea and one I just posted in suggestions about player activities damaging the habitability of a body)
Posted by: dgibso29
« on: April 16, 2012, 02:57:25 PM »

Quote from: xeryon on April 16, 2012, 02:43:14 PM
I love Cocyte's idea for asteroid miners.  Instead of putting an arbitrary limit on body type or size have the miners work with a rate of diminishing return on any body.  Bodies up to the size of one that starts to round off are relatively full capacity for mining and bodies of size between asteroids and moons or even dwarf planets still work but are scaled.  If you wanted to add tech lines to support that there could be a place for expanding the capacity of the miners.  It would preserve the usefulness of auto mines and improve the flexibility of mining ships.
Since we are pretty far off the original topic here, but in the realm of mining ships, will we ever see a nebulae miner?

This. I like the idea of being able to have a massive orbital mining operation. Even if it IS a planet. Could be very, very cool. Orbital habitats, miners, etc, etc.
Posted by: xeryon
« on: April 16, 2012, 02:43:14 PM »

Quote from: Heph on April 16, 2012, 01:06:23 PM
Recently a a project was (crowd) funded that will search for exomoons. I predict that in 2 or years steve has to code a dozen complete starsystems :P

"Complete" might be pushing it.  We are still regularly finding sizable bodies in our own system!  The prospect of colonizing known systems has a certain appeal to it.  Takes the RP of the future of Earthlings to a new level if the systems we are working with are actually real bodies.

I love Cocyte's idea for asteroid miners.  Instead of putting an arbitrary limit on body type or size have the miners work with a rate of diminishing return on any body.  Bodies up to the size of one that starts to round off are relatively full capacity for mining and bodies of size between asteroids and moons or even dwarf planets still work but are scaled.  If you wanted to add tech lines to support that there could be a place for expanding the capacity of the miners.  It would preserve the usefulness of auto mines and improve the flexibility of mining ships.
Since we are pretty far off the original topic here, but in the realm of mining ships, will we ever see a nebulae miner?
Posted by: Mel Vixen
« on: April 16, 2012, 01:06:23 PM »

Quote from: Haji on April 16, 2012, 12:09:35 PM
Is there a possibility, in some future release, of real-life star systems included? There are quite a few, some with as much as six confirmed planets (like Kepler-11 with six gas giants inside the orbit of Mercury).  While those systems would still need some randomly generated objects, I think it would be nice to have some "fixed" systems in the game other than Sol.

Recently a a project was (crowd) funded that will search for exomoons. I predict that in 2 or years steve has to code a dozen complete starsystems :P
Posted by: Haji
« on: April 16, 2012, 12:09:35 PM »

Is there a possibility, in some future release, of real-life star systems included? There are quite a few, some with as much as six confirmed planets (like Kepler-11 with six gas giants inside the orbit of Mercury).  While those systems would still need some randomly generated objects, I think it would be nice to have some "fixed" systems in the game other than Sol.
Posted by: Cocyte
« on: April 16, 2012, 10:03:41 AM »

Quote from: Steve Walmsley link=topic=4766. msg48305#msg48305 date=1333578862
Another update:

At the moment, the planets, moons and asteroids in the Sol system are always at the same point in their orbit at the start of every game.  From v5. 70 onwards, every body in the Sol system will be assigned a random point in its orbit at the start of each new Sol-based campaign.  This means every game will be unique in terms of the Sol system starting layout.

Steve

Randomly? Not computed according to the date? I'm dissapointed!
Just joking, I'm very impressed by the amount of work you spent just to name "space rock #2561" :)

* Concerning L4 and L5 bodies, two things bugged me for some time. . .
- The first one is that secondary stars (which can be considered as bigger than usual superjovians actually) lack the intra-system lagrange jump point.  adding those may ease the exploration of ultra-large systems (if the primary have a superjovian around, it cut the travel distance by 2/3)
- Why is there only one lagrange intra-system jump point per body?

* Concerning the orbital asteroid miners, why not allowing them for all bodies, but with a variable yield depending of the size/gravity of the body?
(The smallest chunks being the fastest to mine - even faster than now if possible - and Earth-sized planets would be a waste of time for the mining ship)
For now, asteroids mining ships seems not very interesting compared to automated mines due to their low yield, but if they can outperform the mines on the smaller bodies, they can fit nicely in this niche.
Posted by: Brian Neumann
« on: April 10, 2012, 10:56:41 AM »

Quote from: Marthnn on April 10, 2012, 07:33:41 AM
Choosing where to search is currently a single system, or all of them. Manually choosing multiple systems could be nice, or even simply systems you control (as set in the Galaxy screen). That would give a practical use to that tag. Searching systems controlled by another race could help you determine if an invasion is worth it.
Another option that could help would be limit a search to a sector (same as the systems controled by a sector hq.)

Brian
Posted by: Marthnn
« on: April 10, 2012, 07:33:41 AM »

Since a game can get very large, with tens of systems, hundreds of planets and thousands of asteroids, finding what minerals you want becomes only possible using the Geological Survey Report screen. In my opinion, the solution to limit that micromanagement is to improve this screen. The System View screen (F9) is comparatively clunky with long loading times and tedious searches. So here are some suggestions.

There's a check box to limit search to asteroids only. Currently, comets aren't included, it would be useful to change that box to "whatever asteroid miners have access to", regardless of changes on that point.

And since mining ships are often very slow (or engine-less and towed at slow speeds), outsystem asteroids/comets are sometimes way too far to be accessed in a reasonable time, so a "distance from primary" criteria might be nice. This is a minor point since, currently, far asteroids are a pain to survey anyway, with the auto-survey default orders limited to 10b km.

Choosing where to search is currently a single system, or all of them. Manually choosing multiple systems could be nice, or even simply systems you control (as set in the Galaxy screen). That would give a practical use to that tag. Searching systems controlled by another race could help you determine if an invasion is worth it.

Limiting sorium search to gas giants can help finding rich deposits for harvester bases.


Also, I wouldn't go into a new tech line for asteroid modules. The module costs as much corundium as a regular mine, but can operate anywhere. If it could operate on large bodies, automines would be useless, so there needs to be a limit. Giving the ability to increase that limit means that, at game start, when the module is most useful (scarce corundium supplies), many possible deposits are inaccessible.


Hope it helps Steve.
Posted by: Garfunkel
« on: April 09, 2012, 03:07:56 PM »

Put a tickable box in the "find mineral resources" screen that you can select and name it "allows asteroid miners". That way I can search for specific minerals and immediately see whether I need auto-mines or not.
Posted by: voknaar
« on: April 09, 2012, 02:45:25 AM »

Quote from: Steve Walmsley on April 08, 2012, 06:27:29 AM

In fact, if we reduce whatever method we use to a simple "This can be mined with asteroid miners" flag (whether the underlying reason is gravity, size or body type), players would still want to see that flag on survey ship/team reports, the minerals sidebar of the system map, the Geological Survey window, individual colonies summaries and perhaps even the actual graphical system map. It would add a extra level of lookup to what is an easy lookup at the moment.


When I evaluate system bodies to mine I always use the System Generation and Display screen (F9) to find which has what minerals on it. That screen already has a body type field listed, so there is no need to add one there. But for everyone else I can see the need to have it for other screens. I personally like the choice of flagging the body type for asteroid mining. Simply because it's a non-issue for my method of decision making. In fact it makes choosing that much more simple to know the exact parameters of a asteroid mining module.   I just need to look at 2 fields: the body type (Asteroid, Chunk & Comet) and the minerals it has then add a colony there. I can do all that on the System Generation & Display screen. Even better I have a rough idea of where the mining target is because this screen lists by default bodies closest to the parent star to the most distant.
Posted by: Owen Quillion
« on: April 08, 2012, 10:06:56 PM »

So long as there's an easy flag (I considered this to be designation as a chunk or what have you in the F9 menu because that's generally where I make my mining decisions from), I think the added micromanagement isn't especially trying. And as long as whatever parameter controls it allows asteroids and comets to be always mineable, the player who can't be bothered with the extra micro (but can be bothered to micro asteroid miners in the first place) won't really notice a difference.

As far as the fluff/technobabble goes, I like the simpler option of making it any body which hasn't rounded itself (which according to my quick Wiki check means it would preclude the dwarf planets). Assuming this is what a moon being a 'chunk' means, it opens up quite a few options in the solar system, and in my experience generated systems have a lot of those as well. Mechanically I prefer it because I'm concerned about the impact adding more tech lines (to determine the size/gravity that's mineable) will have on the cost/benefit ratio of asteroid miners which is already somewhat tenuous.
Posted by: sloanjh
« on: April 08, 2012, 09:44:48 AM »

Quote from: Steve Walmsley on April 08, 2012, 06:27:29 AM
However having said all that, it just occurred to me that in the Sol system at least, because I just named all the asteroids, it will no longer be obvious from the name whether the body is an asteroid and therefore a suitable target for mining modules :). Therefore I probably do need to add a "can be mined with asteroid miners" flag. If I am doing that, I guess we can revisit the parameters from what is an acceptable target body.

Unless the rule is that "anything that's not a (non-dwarf) planet is eligible".  Then players only have to know the names of the 9 (or 8 ) planets.  Of course this brings the Pluto issue to the foreground :)

I never use asteroid miners because a long time ago I decided the ROI wasn't worth it compared to regular mining facilities.  Even if I'm wrong (e.g. engineless miners that get towed by tugs), I don't think it will be too imbalancing to expand the scope where players use them - I'd rather have this than see the display cluttered up with YAF (Yet Another Field :) ).

John
Posted by: Havear
« on: April 08, 2012, 08:22:18 AM »

I think I'd prefer a diameter-based or gravity-based option instead of an arbitrary limit. It really depends on what kind of description you want to apply to asteroid miner harvesting: is it because the minerals are on the surface since asteroids are chunks of unfinished planets, or because the low-gravity or small size facilitate mining on the body whereas a much larger body proves impossible.
Posted by: wilddog5
« on: April 08, 2012, 07:27:33 AM »

add an "(AM)" Asteroid module tag to the bodies name, that can be toggled with a tickbox for those who dont want/need to see it, in the system map, the system generation and population screens?
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: April 08, 2012, 06:27:29 AM »

Quote from: Zebulon on April 07, 2012, 09:28:10 PM
With regards to the asteroid module stuff;

Moons already track whether they're 'Terrestrial' or 'Chunk', right? Perhaps you could use that field to make the determination of whether or not a moon is mineable - if it's a captured asteroid (or dwarf planet or whatever), it would be available for asteroid mining modules. That seems to me to be a decent compromise between having to crunch the numbers to tell if a body is too large/small and only being able to mine in asteroid belts. All the player would need to do would be to scan along the Body Type line in the system display window to pick new targets.

I don't know if that would have repercussions for system generation or the like, though.

It isn't hard to do this, or the size or gravity, from a programming point of view. It's all about the extra micromanagement. If we used the above for example, anywhere that a player would look at mineral deposit information, they would also need to know whether the moon was a 'chunk'.

In fact, if we reduce whatever method we use to a simple "This can be mined with asteroid miners" flag (whether the underlying reason is gravity, size or body type), players would still want to see that flag on survey ship/team reports, the minerals sidebar of the system map, the Geological Survey window, individual colonies summaries and perhaps even the actual graphical system map. It would add a extra level of lookup to what is an easy lookup at the moment.

However having said all that, it just occurred to me that in the Sol system at least, because I just named all the asteroids, it will no longer be obvious from the name whether the body is an asteroid and therefore a suitable target for mining modules :). Therefore I probably do need to add a "can be mined with asteroid miners" flag. If I am doing that, I guess we can revisit the parameters from what is an acceptable target body.

Steve