3.19 mining changes detailed in ISC

[Thalstan]

This post will go into the mining changes being proposed per today's (Feb 23, 2023) Inside Star Citizen video (found here https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/19142-Inside-Star-Citizen )

1. This is a major revision of the mining systems. It will touch everything from equipment to what you mine, to where you mine it, to how your HUD displays it, to values of ores. It also sets it up to "future proof" mining locations and will also be used to support the future crafting system.
2. Changes are being made to help both the novice miner out so it's easier to get into mining and learn how, and to challenge those that are very skilled in mining.
3. All mining equipment is being revised, and data on what each piece does will be made more clear. What are the benefits of using an item, what are the drawbacks. This goes from mining heads to mining gadgets.
4. They noted that certain mining heads might be more effective against certain materials. This would force you to travel to different planetary systems to gather materials you would need to create an item.
5. They have added Iron for mining by ships like the Prospector and MOLE
6. They have added a hand mineable that will only be found in caves. (Genelite?)
7. They have changed the HUD around some to make it more "effective" in the information it displays. From what I see, this might be the case
8. There are Standard materials (aluminum, copper, etc.) and Quality/Rarity (I think they meant Rare) materials.
   1. Standard materials will only be found in certain places. In the video, they mentioned that things like Aluminum (Aluminium) will only be found around Crusader, while Copper can only be found around MicroTech
   2. Standard materials can be found elsewhere in rare occasions in planetary systems, and other places like asteroid belts will have more diverse spectrum of standard materials.
   3. Each of the standard materials will have rare or rarer materials associated with them
9. There will be a "ease of mining" indicator on your HUD. This means that you might see that something is easy to mine, difficult to mine, or impossible to mine
10. A MOLE will now be a better choice to mine very large rocks. As a single ship, it is able to "synchronize" it's lasers reducing (or at least not increasing or not increasing as much) the instability in a rock. If multiple Prospectors try and mine a rock, it will increase the instability of the rock.
11. The mass of a rock will now be determined by it's composition, not it's size
12. With the change of mining locations for certain Standard materials, those materials will now be more valuable further away from that system. So if you take your Aluminum (Aluminium) that you mined on Yela out to MicroTech, you will get more aUEC/SCU

IN THE FUTURE: Number 12 will be a valuable boon to haulers/refiners if they ever decide to allow people to sell their (raw or refined) ores on some sort of market. So if I am a hauler, I can buy refined Aluminim at Crusader, haul to MicroTech, pick up a load of Refined Copper and haul back to Crusader, making profits each way. If there is a floor price enforced by a "we buy the ore here for X") it would mean that people could contribute to the economy more directly by introducing a supply side. Crafting will help introduce demand to balance it.

If you have more info than what I posted here, let me know and I will add it to the main post.

 

[Brictoria]

Hopefully this will kill off the "Quantanium is the only thing worth mining" approach.

I wonder if the mining outposts will also be affected, so that the commodities they sell reflect what can be mined in the area?

I'd also love to see the outposts changed at the same time, so that they sell the raw, rather than refined product - You can mine something yourself for "free", or buy it raw at a mining outpost. This then needs to be transported to a refinery (current ones, new surface ones, or ship based - Expanse, Galaxy, etc.) where it can be sold, or refined. As the refineries become loaded, the cost to refine, as well as how long it will take, should increase as well (several days to refine a load, with minimal profit if refinery too backlogged)... It could add a small amount of "complexity" to trading, rather than a "Buy at A, sell at B, repeat" that exists now:
Do you keep running the same route, decreasing profit?
Do you sell raw to the refinery, or put in a refining order?
Do you deliver to only one refinery, or do you split your refining across multiple refineries?

 

[CosmicTrader]

This post will go into the mining changes being proposed per today's (Feb 23, 2023) Inside Star Citizen video (found here https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/19142-Inside-Star-Citizen )

1. This is a major revision of the mining systems. It will touch everything from equipment to what you mine, to where you mine it, to how your HUD displays it, to values of ores. It also sets it up to "future proof" mining locations and will also be used to support the future crafting system.
2. Changes are being made to help both the novice miner out so it's easier to get into mining and learn how, and to challenge those that are very skilled in mining.
3. All mining equipment is being revised, and data on what each piece does will be made more clear. What are the benefits of using an item, what are the drawbacks. This goes from mining heads to mining gadgets.
4. They noted that certain mining heads might be more effective against certain materials. This would force you to travel to different planetary systems to gather materials you would need to create an item.
5. They have added Iron for mining by ships like the Prospector and MOLE
6. They have added a hand mineable that will only be found in caves. (Genelite?)
7. They have changed the HUD around some to make it more "effective" in the information it displays. From what I see, this might be the case
8. There are Standard materials (aluminum, copper, etc.) and Quality/Rarity (I think they meant Rare) materials.
   1. Standard materials will only be found in certain places. In the video, they mentioned that things like Aluminum (Aluminium) will only be found around Crusader, while Copper can only be found around MicroTech
   2. Standard materials can be found elsewhere in rare occasions in planetary systems, and other places like asteroid belts will have more diverse spectrum of standard materials.
   3. Each of the standard materials will have rare or rarer materials associated with them
9. There will be a "ease of mining" indicator on your HUD. This means that you might see that something is easy to mine, difficult to mine, or impossible to mine
10. A MOLE will now be a better choice to mine very large rocks. As a single ship, it is able to "synchronize" it's lasers reducing (or at least not increasing or not increasing as much) the instability in a rock. If multiple Prospectors try and mine a rock, it will increase the instability of the rock.
11. The mass of a rock will now be determined by it's composition, not it's size
12. With the change of mining locations for certain Standard materials, those materials will now be more valuable further away from that system. So if you take your Aluminum (Aluminium) that you mined on Yela out to MicroTech, you will get more aUEC/SCU

IN THE FUTURE: Number 12 will be a valuable boon to haulers/refiners if they ever decide to allow people to sell their (raw or refined) ores on some sort of market. So if I am a hauler, I can buy refined Aluminim at Crusader, haul to MicroTech, pick up a load of Refined Copper and haul back to Crusader, making profits each way. If there is a floor price enforced by a "we buy the ore here for X") it would mean that people could contribute to the economy more directly by introducing a supply side. Crafting will help introduce demand to balance it.

If you have more info than what I posted here, let me know and I will add it to the main post.

Great post. Thanks...

 

[Doyzer]

Can’t wait, hopefully it adds some variety to what mining heads and modules you use.

 

[Ayeteeone]

I have no opinion yet on how this will affect the act of going out and mining, but I am REALLY HAPPY to see that they are still watching the career and evaluating it against the gameplay goals.

Getting there ever so slowly.

Any bets that 3.19 brings that new 'large' RSI mining concept ship?

 

[Laramos]

Any bets that 3.19 brings that new 'large' RSI mining concept ship?

I hope so, I have the orion, and would love to take it out and make small moons into rubble. Get a lot of slav....er crew to assist.

 

[Bambooza]

Hopefully this will kill off the "Quantanium is the only thing worth mining" approach.

I wonder if the mining outposts will also be affected, so that the commodities they sell reflect what can be mined in the area?

I'd also love to see the outposts changed at the same time, so that they sell the raw, rather than refined product - You can mine something yourself for "free", or buy it raw at a mining outpost. This then needs to be transported to a refinery (current ones, new surface ones, or ship based - Expanse, Galaxy, etc.) where it can be sold, or refined. As the refineries become loaded, the cost to refine, as well as how long it will take, should increase as well (several days to refine a load, with minimal profit if refinery too backlogged)... It could add a small amount of "complexity" to trading, rather than a "Buy at A, sell at B, repeat" that exists now:
Do you keep running the same route, decreasing profit?
Do you sell raw to the refinery, or put in a refining order?
Do you deliver to only one refinery, or do you split your refining across multiple refineries?

It is my understanding that diversifying the distribution of goods was always the plan to facilitate trading as a viable game loop. Add on that Quantum game world simulator and you have a vibrant and dynamic marketplace that reacts to player and GM game influence. So while this change to mining and the distribution of minerals to different locations is new it was always part of the plan, just continued to be pushed back by higher priority things. I was a little lost as to why they made certain ore planet based instead of region or biome based and it is my hope that when they come back to it as part of fully implementing Quantum that it becomes far more granular in being region based and as you mentioned different POI's have different resources they mine.


As to the OP while I am glad for the changes to mining it just struck me as trivial changes that took a little bit of work to make happen. And so I am once again wondering where are all of the development hours being spent.

I have no opinion yet on how this will affect the act of going out and mining, but I am REALLY HAPPY to see that they are still watching the career and evaluating it against the gameplay goals.

Getting there ever so slowly.

Any bets that 3.19 brings that new 'large' RSI mining concept ship?

New as in new ship or new as in reworking an existing announced ship?

As much as I dream about the day when I can pilot an Orion I have a feeling that day is very far in the future, but I could see them finishing up the Expanse.

 

[Ayeteeone]

New as in new ship or new as in reworking an existing announced ship?

The new RSI brand large miner that was voted on by the community. Would not be surprised if the concept is released alongside these changes in 3.19, especially as RSI has a complimentary large Refining ship now in the Galaxy.

As to the OP while I am glad for the changes to mining it just struck me as trivial changes that took a little bit of work to make happen. And so I am once again wondering where are all of the development hours being spent.

Actually doing the programming is normally the easier part of development. Doing the analysis of the collected data along with the game theory work to develop a solution that comes closer to the goals (iterate, repeat, iterate, repeat...) can easily be the monster that eats the time. It gets exponentially more complicated with each variable added.

In this case it's not merely a tweak of the data, it's a re-write of the underlying relationships to forcibly alter gameplay in the direction of long term goals. This was going to happen eventually anyway, but its good to see that someone is actively paying attention.

 

[Bambooza]

The new RSI brand large miner that was voted on by the community. Would not be surprised if the concept is released alongside these changes in 3.19, especially as RSI has a complimentary large Refining ship now in the Galaxy.



Actually doing the programming is normally the easier part of development. Doing the analysis of the collected data along with the game theory work to develop a solution that comes closer to the goals (iterate, repeat, iterate, repeat...) can easily be the monster that eats the time. It gets exponentially more complicated with each variable added.

In this case it's not merely a tweak of the data, it's a re-write of the underlying relationships to forcibly alter gameplay in the direction of long term goals. This was going to happen eventually anyway, but its good to see that someone is actively paying attention.

It is honestly not that difficult. While it is true that game balance can be tedious and time-consuming to do right like what has been done with ship flight and combat. The changes they listed in the show would take no more than a week or two to implement given the scale of the changes made.

 

[Drowez]

This post will go into the mining changes being proposed per today's (Feb 23, 2023) Inside Star Citizen video (found here https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/19142-Inside-Star-Citizen )

1. This is a major revision of the mining systems. It will touch everything from equipment to what you mine, to where you mine it, to how your HUD displays it, to values of ores. It also sets it up to "future proof" mining locations and will also be used to support the future crafting system.
2. Changes are being made to help both the novice miner out so it's easier to get into mining and learn how, and to challenge those that are very skilled in mining.
3. All mining equipment is being revised, and data on what each piece does will be made more clear. What are the benefits of using an item, what are the drawbacks. This goes from mining heads to mining gadgets.
4. They noted that certain mining heads might be more effective against certain materials. This would force you to travel to different planetary systems to gather materials you would need to create an item.
5. They have added Iron for mining by ships like the Prospector and MOLE
6. They have added a hand mineable that will only be found in caves. (Genelite?)
7. They have changed the HUD around some to make it more "effective" in the information it displays. From what I see, this might be the case
8. There are Standard materials (aluminum, copper, etc.) and Quality/Rarity (I think they meant Rare) materials.
   1. Standard materials will only be found in certain places. In the video, they mentioned that things like Aluminum (Aluminium) will only be found around Crusader, while Copper can only be found around MicroTech
   2. Standard materials can be found elsewhere in rare occasions in planetary systems, and other places like asteroid belts will have more diverse spectrum of standard materials.
   3. Each of the standard materials will have rare or rarer materials associated with them
9. There will be a "ease of mining" indicator on your HUD. This means that you might see that something is easy to mine, difficult to mine, or impossible to mine
10. A MOLE will now be a better choice to mine very large rocks. As a single ship, it is able to "synchronize" it's lasers reducing (or at least not increasing or not increasing as much) the instability in a rock. If multiple Prospectors try and mine a rock, it will increase the instability of the rock.
11. The mass of a rock will now be determined by it's composition, not it's size
12. With the change of mining locations for certain Standard materials, those materials will now be more valuable further away from that system. So if you take your Aluminum (Aluminium) that you mined on Yela out to MicroTech, you will get more aUEC/SCU

IN THE FUTURE: Number 12 will be a valuable boon to haulers/refiners if they ever decide to allow people to sell their (raw or refined) ores on some sort of market. So if I am a hauler, I can buy refined Aluminim at Crusader, haul to MicroTech, pick up a load of Refined Copper and haul back to Crusader, making profits each way. If there is a floor price enforced by a "we buy the ore here for X") it would mean that people could contribute to the economy more directly by introducing a supply side. Crafting will help introduce demand to balance it.

If you have more info than what I posted here, let me know and I will add it to the main post.

Some exciting stuff! Can't wait for more content to be implemented.