That's one thing I miss from SE is the mining. It scales a lot better than in Empyrion. In Empyrion once you get a T2 hand drill you're pretty much set as far as mining goes, the only possible upgrade then is the CV laser drills but those only work on asteroids. There's little need for a HV miner because drone mining with a hand drill is almost as fast and means you don't get stuck in a deposit.
I decided to tackle the Zirax "Support Base" POI this evening, quite a formidable challenge alone with no combat oriented SV or HV to help. The old me used to love going in guns blazing using a paper-thin SV, armed with only Gatlings and rarely a rocket launcher, to neuter the POI and take out any pesky Drones. I'd then enter the base where the real fight started... That was the old me, current me is fatter and lazier than before so I've started digging tunnels. I know this is a fairly old tactic, but it's not something I've done in a while, so I've been finding it fun again. This is how I tackled the Support Base. I landed my CV - armed, but no shields - about 600 metres from the POI in a natural recessed dimple in the landscape. I assessed outside conditions - minimal rads, but pretty bloody cold - and equipped accordingly. I didn't use an EVA Boost due to the armour hit it has, so just used heavy armour, one Armour Boost, One Temperature Boost and one each of Jet Pack and Mobility. I'd potentially get chilly, but I brought a Heater, O2 Generator and Portable Constructor too. Digging my way to the target was a bit of a grind, but the Drill changes from a couple of versions back made it enjoyable by comparison. I collected a lot of crushed stone, as you'd expect, on my trip, more than I could carry. However, once I got underneath the POI, I plonked down the Portable Constructor, added the crushed rocks to that then set down the Heater and O2 Generator as my little safe spot. I dug out more underneath the POI, popping any rocks into the PC, looking for any weak spots. I've found exposed Generators, Cores and other exploitable points on some POI's since playing with this technique again, but it's more usual to just be greeted with solid Combat steel lol. When that happens I usually make a strategic hole to the surface, building up terrain (fill mode) to help protect me from Turrets. Quite fun. While scouting the underside of the POI I found some...points of interest (no spoilers) and considered it my best route of entry. I'd packed 32 Charges all together, so I set about gaining entry. After setting off the first charge, there was a cacophony of explosions from above. Unexpected. I'd either hit some delicate Deco, or maybe taken out a Robot or two. Nice. I placed the rest of the charges I needed and I was through into the base. I jet-packed up into the POI and was immediately hit by a hail of bullets from one of those little mini-tank robots. I didn't take much damage due to my Heavy Armour, but while dodging fire - the bot was shooting through a small diagonal gap between some blocks - I stumbled into a pair of Zirax, who also opened fire and there was a Sentry Turret on a ceiling behind them too! Trying to stay cool, and not know where might be safe to take cover, I opened up on the Sentry first but then realised it wasn't firing. It was partially obscured by a half-block, so I assumed it perhaps didn't have LoS. I re-prioritised and took out the two Zirax. The Bot, luckily, was unable to regain LoS on me, so I didn't have to worry about him too. Zirax dead, I took the opportunity to take out the Sentry Turret before I strayed into it's line of fire. Immediate danger taken care of, I popped my head around the corner and took out the Robot too. Nice. Feeling a bit more secure in my immediate area, I started to scout around a little further. Walking into one area, right next to my entry point, I stumbled upon two more Sentries, but spotted them quickly and dodged back behind the cover of a wall. Poking my head out, I took them both down...luckily they didn't get chance to fire...a bit slow reacting it seems. Also luckily, the spawner in that room didn't spawn and more foes...unless that's where the earlier Zirax had come from... Exploring a bit more, I began to notice something that should have been obvious... Sentries weren't shooting at me and, while I was encountering Zirax and Robots, there weren't as many as the number of Spawners would suggest. Then it dawned on me... that cacophony of explosions after placing my first charge....that was only the bloody CORE going pop! Lol. The POI had effectively been neutered upon the first shot (explosive charge) being fired. Classic! I did debate, momentarily, placing a Core right away - yep, I had one with me - but knew there were a number of Drones hovering around the POI. I popped outside and made short work of them, thanks to emerging from the cover of the POI its self. Nice. So, that's where I am now as I type this. The POI is as good as MINE. That was fun, lucky, but fun I think my next step will be to bring in my CV and make this my first Base on this planet - all the Alien Turrets are intact, so that's some ammo-free damage dealers there! Thought I'd share this as it was rather enjoyable. Scoob.
Maybe give this thing a try (one of my workshop creations from last week) - By far the best ground miner I have used in this, though still a bit of a fiddle until you get used to the quirks of large drills. Still MUCH prefer my SE flyer miners though. Some of my SE miners: I mainly used the two cylinder miners (small block on the left for ground boring, the monster cylinder at the top for asteroids - wish we could build these in this). The little 6 drill is an earlyish game ground and orbital miner (for those who know se thrusters and getting to orbit fun, then this could make orbit and back). I think the little 1 and 2 drill miners (very early game miners - similar in tech progression to maybe level 5-7 in this) are about equivalent maybe to a typical level 10 6 drill HV in this. Typically I would be using the small 8 drill cylinder as soon as I could make it, while the large block cylinder is obviously a late game miner.
I kind of like the hybrid approach - use a miner HV covered in big f******* guns to tunnel below and attack from below helped along with some detpacks
Did some tweaks to my solar system configs and tested it to make sure nothing broke. Here's a molten planet and a luminous red supergiant: The plates contain ore deposits that require an auto miner, but also have ore on the surface you can mine by hand or with a ship.
HA one of my first big scale projects in SE was the build a huge massive tunnel bore ship to grab huge amounts of ore to process and it looked similar to one of those, my take on the design though had a few drills mounted all around the front on the sides, top and bottom to help with keeping the thing stead and not ram into walls while mining. Worked pretty well with mods that made the mining sphere larger until KEEN screwed the code up for that for mods.
Same old story. I hope if/when these guys properly open this game for mods they can learn that lesson without making the same mistakes and breaking nearly every mod every patch.
Tried that CV @Robot Shark created the Treefrog. Stopped at a mine and proceeded to mine it out. Well I felt like I was making Swiss cheese with those two drills so far apart. Once I was done with that I headed to the moon. A quest started all up on it's own. This was different so started playing it out. Was different having to dig the poi out made why way through it all. Once I got to the mainframe things got interesting. Quest got to the end to flip the switch. WARNING the place is about to blow up. I run all the way back to the teleport to get out of there. Just about to hit F then it blew. Yep stuck on a dead teleporter on the mainframe with no place to go. By this time was getting low in O2. I was not a happy camper was also low on food and health. Didn't have a sv in my hip pocket ready to pull out. Wasn't going to jump off was along ways down and was a good distance from my Treefrog cv So I did what any solo player might do and god moded in a core and teleported out making my way back to my CV I now own the main frame.
Oh yeah the Treefrog CV wasn't too bad might change the drill some but the ship was ok and one I might be using more.
Well - based upon info in this thread (https://empyriononline.com/threads/modding-blocksconfig-ecf-for-beginners.93135), a quick and dirty proof of concept rebuild of my flying 8 drill cylinder miner from SE in EGS: It works, it can drill in any orienation, but ideally the drills (both these and the laser) need slightly higher drill radius to work with adequate clearance (and avoid center rock 'noses') given how much more easily blocks tend to catch on things in EGS than SE because of the cheap way hit bounds seems to be done in this. Anyway, with 16k ore cargo - it can fill a large block cargo container in one trip and is SO much more pleasant to use than HV miners Reproducing this in EGS also bring home how overpowered thruster power/mass/volume seems in this. OK, so I am using loads of the T2 thrusters (8 each way), but on the SE version I had way way over 100 small thrusters on it (cant remember how many, but it was crazy, and yes - SE thruster are way underpowered instead). In this I just don't 'feel' the weight of the full 16k ore test load of iron (5k iron ore weighing 82.4t out of the 300+t lift I have available). In fact this 'miner' handles better than most fighters I have tried in this even with a full ore load
I screenshotted my successes and failures today. So, I finished the biggest part of Reforged Galaxy... for now. Which is all the blocks. I'll leave the new blocks until i've got the rest of the thing working without bugs. So... onto weapons, components, food, medicine and all the other items. Brought back the handheld mechanical drill. Tested some Landmines. Probably won't keep them because they're useless. Overhauled all laser weapons to use laser charges as a multi-charge battery, which will require reworks in every other aspect. Basically, instead of loading a laser pistol, laser rifle, pulse laser cannon, pulse laser turret, etc... with X amount of ammunition, you only load it with one laser magazine that fully charges the battery for X number of shots. I wasn't sure if it would work on turrets and other mounted weapons, but it seems it does. Tested the Flamethrower. Needs more work. It looks bad. Needs a bigger cone of flame and a better model. A set of tier 2 enhanced armors and a new set of Tier 2 boosters, including a backpack-capacity booster. Resurrected the old fuel tanks. I might use them elsewhere at a later date as an alternative to the current fuel tanks. The resurrection of the old promethium fuel tanks. Landmines. New enhanced armors (they glow) and the new tier 2 boosters... and some more landmines. I really like those models, so i'll see if I can find a use for them.
The model is. This is all the stuff that'll be added in the A12 version of the Reforged Galaxy mod. Coming soon...
Well, you can use both together... when it's done. It's a mod, not a scenario. I will be making a seperate modded scenario later though: ADRIFT. The entire scenario will take place in a massive wreckage field with no visitable planets. Salvage to survive, no factory.
Maybe put a light source in the middle and make them ploppable torches, i.e. for clearing out POIs, lighting up your surroundings in the first night? I gotta admit i never used a portable work light, so not sure how good they are.
I wonder if the Land Mines could be brought into the 24th Century by teaching them how to Hover & act sorta 'magnetically attracted' to targets detected in a certain proximity from them...? Land Bound Land Mines that make people have to step on them while not even Camo'd are SO 20th Century.
Make me think that the faction need some hover tanks as well as air drone. Then magnetic highly explosive mines may would have a good use. The biggest problem with anything like that is this game as I think the spawns have no concept at you attacking and clearing, so stuff seems to just spawn wherever around you despite that you have already cleared that zone. OTOH if there was some natural and logicaly predictability - like patrol paths, emplaced defences etc, cleared zone remaining clear unless an obvious troop drop etc occurred, then land mines etc could have a place. Around you own base, I would expect they would be pretty much useless as well - if a troop transport makes it through you defences, then with a larger base they make drop on the base. For smaller outpost they could be useful as I have often found the landing zones to be predictable enough for me to use detpack to blow them up as they land. I have often thought that it would be better if the detpacks were changed into manual remote detonation detpacks instead. As for these land mines - they seem like the kind of thing that could be cool if you dropped them and when an enemy comes within say 50m, they popup a sentry gun. Even better if you could cluster drop them from an SV
An excellent point indeed... 24th Century Anti-Tank Mines... Edit: For the Topic: It took forever, but i've finally gotten something built for the first time in who knows how long! It's a humble li'l L1 Starter HV, so something tended to be outgrown quick, so i'm too lazy to make a whole fancy schmancy Exhibition Post outta it, so will just drop a Workshop Link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2094422496 Ironically it might be more useful as a Noob Bumblemobile to limit damage they can do with it while learning how to HV then for its actual use as a starter HV, cause 99% of the time one has Pac Manned enough Corn Dogs to make & pop out a L5+ HV by the time one can pop out any kinda HV in Survival.
