Recource collection

I was also wondering how the resource/material collection in the game is supposed to work? Will it be "minecraft style" (lol love that YouTube vid :p) in that you dig your own mineshafts and whatnot to find ores and such? Or will there be pre-existing caverns you need to find and exploit...or will there simply be surface deposits? Also will ore and other material need to be processed in someway (like with the furnace in MC)?

Or will it all be done by the drone in your ship?

There will be no minecraft style digging. On planet surfaces you will have to find deposits and harvest them using tools or the mining bot. Space asteroids can only be harvested using the mining bot for now however we are considering a mining laser similar to that of the Wayfarer mini game.

Another question I have is when you "use up" an ore vein or some other kind of resource node on a planets surface....does it disappear forever? Or will it replenish? Asking because in other posts explaining the sizes of explorable areas on planets...you mentioned some might be smaller than others...and if its a resource that's unique to a small area on a select few planets and resources do not regenerate...in a game that's been going on for a while...resources might become a little scarce

Since it's a sandbox, it should really be able to go on and on and on. I think resource regeneration will have to be a thing, or else you might get yourself in a situation were there's no ore left at all.

I agree with the resources issues. There's nothing worse in a sandbox game than running out of raw materials or things to kill. Especially the things to kill.

A slow respawn makes most sense (so that you have to explore other areas, and not simply farm your starting area until you're kitted out to the gills and filthy rich to boot), with maybe an optional "depleted is depleted" mode for the hardcore crowd. Fast enough to keep the universe from running dry, slow enough to keep the players moving.

You could also add levels of difficulty, for example, if an area is "drained" perhaps stronger monsters will be attracted when it is replenished, don't know if that would work from a story line perspective however....

Or, it could be time based, so that the longer you stay in one spot, the more things pinpoint your position and begin attacking. you could time it so you can drain the resource fairly quickly, say 30 min of direct mining, but it takes 3 hours or more of in game time to replenish, so you could, (in theory) stay in one place, and continue to mine the same rock for almost forever, but it would get harder and harder, and less and less efficient, making it not worth the time to stay in one place.

Airsofter wrote:
Or, it could be time based, so that the longer you stay in one spot, the more things pinpoint your position and begin attacking. you could time it so you can drain the resource fairly quickly, say 30 min of direct mining, but it takes 3 hours or more of in game time to replenish, so you could, (in theory) stay in one place, and continue to mine the same rock for almost forever, but it would get harder and harder, and less and less efficient, making it not worth the time to stay in one place.

We really like the idea for waves of enemies attacking you as encamp yourself around a resource. Our idea at the minute is that there will be certain spawn locations where resources can spawn with the contents of the deposits assigned randomly. By harvesting the resource over a period of time, sticking around too long will defiantly attract unwanted attention(We're not sure about drain rates yet!). By leaving a location and re-entering it such as flying into space before landing back on a planet will cause the spawns to be reset. That's the idea at the moment, keep up the good suggestions people!

I would like to see a set time, assigned randomly, so just flying into space and back wouldn't reset it. My thought would be players would just wait till it was getting too hard, then pull out, go to space, and then go mine the same resource site. anywhere from a 20 minute "respawn" to 3 hours. that way, if you wanted to come check, you could, but it more likely would be more time efficient to look for another supply.

(Disclaimer: I'm just poking holes... its what I do. I'm sure I'll be happy with whatever you guys do. This game is looking more and more awesome every day.)

it is unlikely that a mineral rich area is depleted within a lifetime with equipment that can fit inside a small space ship... many coal and other fields have been in constant operation for hundred of years now... so completely exhausting a location or anything like that should be very rare...

to me, there should be 3 'faces' in any 'mining and prospecting' operation of which any player ships can do the first two

1. prospecting, doing the science required to locate the minerals, be it simple visual location or with scanners
2. limited mining, digging up minor quantities to be processed on the ship or sold, refined or not to other entities (the station)
3. full scale industrial mining, this is reserved for actual mining companies with large and expensive mining equipment, large scale operations

good thought! that does make sense, maybe a cool down on the site, kind of a combination of both ideas? perhaps using the "mining laser" would create radioactivity, that could be dangerous, so the longer you mine, the more it effects your health or shields on your person or ship, perhaps interfering with navigation or something, and the creatures feed on such radiation, and are attracted to it. the longer you mine, you could build up an immunity, or you could get special shields to protect your ship/person. then, if you stop mining for 10 min, you could mine for 5 minutes, before radiation becomes overwhelming again. stronger lasers might create more radiation, but you would be able to mine more faster.

Eg.
begin mining, 10 minutes later radiation begins effecting the shields of the team, causing damage to slip through easier, 20 minutes later shields are non-functional, 30 minutes later radiation sickness comes in, reducing overall health by 40%, 40 minutes later severe radiation sickness, causing the team to begin losing health at a set rate, and can be countered by either expensive anti-radiation shots, or by going to the ship. but the creatures follow you because you are covered in radiation...

anyway, you get the idea.

We're still working on how resources are generated / handled, but Craig is the expert on these kinds of balancing issues. Just keep in mind that we're not looking to make this game realistic, we just want it to be simple and most importantly fun.

Where things spawn / the amount / quantity / quality does not need to be consistent. It's fair to say you could go to a planet and find a good deposit of ...HQ Metal, get what you can from it, fly off to another planet and when you return its not even there any more.

Saying that, it won't be possible for you go down, mine everything you can find, go into space, come back down and have everything respawn straight away. Planets themselves will have cooldown periods before they can spawn loads of new resources.

Ah, thanks for clearing that up. I approve. :-) That's why you are the game designers, and I am the constant thorn in your side. :-)

I always thought it was a cool idea to survey for rich areas and place down equipment which takes it out the ground and fills a hopper similar to SWG, you'll need to maintain your equipment, maybe defend your little mining outpost (set up a camp nearby). If you leave it and wander off to another planet bandits/scavangers/pirates may help themselves to your hoppers contents, steal parts of the machinery? Ya know just an idea which adds some gameplay, variety and some roll play opportunity. Also gives you more things to do/maintain/protect/check on...but allows you to get on with the game or more exciting stuff while you wait for your resources to be sucked up out the ground. You'd have different types of machines for harvesting different types of energy/resources. Haha, set up a mini solar field way out in the scorching desert plains of Kraz.