Alpha 7 - FAQ and Feedback: Mining

Difficulty of control. You have to angle the HV down while continuously dragging the mouse down over and over until you get a hole started. After you get the initial hole started you're continuously fighting the ship bouncing around which seemingly makes it seem like the ship is fighting you.
The mining turrets them selves work fine. It's the HV control while you're mining that makes it a pain. This is why the devs from Destiny 2 removed recoil from pushing weapons up as you fire. It feels bad to have to keep dragging the mouse over and over to keep the turret on point.

It would be nice if we could get the HV to "float" in the hole almost like a SV. Where it doesn't bounce or try to realign to anything unless you bump into a wall.

That or make the turrets automatically mine so you don't have to aim them.

Edit: I should add that I realize "fixed mode" does a lot of this, it doesn't allow you to turn at all. Being able to float like while in fixed mode but turn would be amazing for mining and make it easier.

 

Hummel, I'm honestly not trying to be snarky here, but at this point all vehicle based mining is really boinked.
And, frankly, there've been so many comments about the issues that I honestly feel like the most reasonable way to address this in total is to push it back onto Eleon.

-Not- trying to be a jerk here. I truly have no idea what the intention is regarding mining right now.

What are the goals?
How _should_ HV mining be better than hand mining, is it even supposed to be?
What purpose is the HV mining turret supposed to fill?
Should CV mining be 'better' than hand or HV mining?
Was it intended that mining turrets should have such a narrow Up/Down range? Was this tested to quantify the significant limits it imposes?

I believe you have in-house testers; if so I think a few simple tests would clearly illustrate the pain points.

Start a basic Akua game, go to nearest node, mine until deposit is exhausted. Seven tests (obviously same seed for each);
1) first person hand mining - no scanner
2) drone based hand mining - no scanner
3) first person hand mining - w scanner
4) drone based hand mining - w scanner
5) HV w Tier-1 drill/s
6) HV w Tier-2 drill/s
7) HV w turret <--- yes, just a turret. Point of the tests is to expose the pain points .

Based on the recent, and significant changes to mining, I'd guess that more than SSORs are in the works.

And while I know Eleon hasn't historically laid out their goals for a given change, I think that for mining, well, even a little bit of info might be beneficial. Broad goals/intentions, even if they're all future plans.

 

Actually this is by design. Look up the corresponding yaml file, you will see a lot of ressource deposits are configured to be in range of the (military) POIs...

 

Reason I mentioned, or questioned, if HV mining should be "better" than hand mining was simply because I didn't know. Thank you for clarifying.
It wasn't intended as a wise-a$$ comment. I could make an argument that hand based mining should be 'faster', compared to HV mining, since you're (nominally) exposed to greater danger hand mining.

In general that thought could be applied to the mining turrets. Not saying it -is-, just attempting to explain that I honestly don't know which method is supposed to be faster/better than another. And that possibly Eleon has or is weighing in with broader game play considerations, which is, of course, totally fine.

To my subjective experiances and suggestions;

HV mining general: HV movement has resulted in motion sickness for me. Locking with Ctrl+O is somewhat useful to tunnel down, however the inablility to turn while locked on an incline greatly limits it's usefulness, much more now with the SSORs.
T1 drills: Their constant power drain doesn't seem 'right'; would expect they'd only draw power when being used. Hard to determine their area of effect, so deciding on location is hit or miss (thinking newer players). Seem noticeably slower than hand mining SSOR deposits (small special built HV miner w 4 drills).
T2 drills: could see these being faster than hand mining but for the current difficulty controlling the HV. Right now I prefer hand mining since it takes about the same time to mine a deposit and I don't have to have a special HV, or run back to base to get it. <-- I think this last bit is important to consider balance wise. Most HV miners are purpose built, so not ideal for 'general' use. That, to me, means their mining advantage needs to be significant enough to warrant not only building one early when resources are tight, but also the dedicated 'mining run' round trip. If I can simply swing by a deposit I just discovered and hand mine it in noticably less time than it would take to return to base and grab the mining HV, then there isn't much point, at least in SP, to build one at all.
HV mining turret: when these first came out there was a fair amount of comments related to their very small down arc. They could still be useful early on, since we had blobs, and turrets were much earlier in the tech tree, so you could 'skim the top' and gather a few hundred ore. Now, well, other than designing my miner to have a spot for one, and checking to see if it had been given a greater up or down range, I haven't really used it. I just now stuck one on the front of my general-purpose HV and drilled a few boulders & tried to drill a 'down ramp'. For boulders it's better to use a fixed drill since you just drive up and mouse-activate vs. having to go through the hoops to 'get in' to operate the turret. Down ramp wasn't much fun, the 15 degrees or so negative isn't enough, when combined with the range, to dig very far/deep at all. Should note I had turret mounted horizontally (normal) and on top of a layer of blocks (the lower most layer).

HV mining suggestions: for drivability bringing back the old method where the HV always stayed level to the gravity field as a single key On/Off would be very useful. Or allowing Clockwise/Counterclockwise turning while Ctrl+O is On. This might also allow building a small HV with a -single- HV Engine which might greatly reduce the Left/Right/Nose-Up/Nose-Down motion sickness inducing rolls.
As others have mentioned, if the HV has enough newtons, then if it stayed in place on an incline instead of sliding down, that would be helpful.
Fixed drills: imo they should only draw power when 'on'. Until the HV control is significantly improved it's hard to tell if the fixed drills are fine or not.
Mining turret: scrap the current design. Go with a 'mount anywhere, facing any XYZ' ball type turret with a large area of effect. Like 90 degrees or more. The "ball" would allow the same degrees for Up/Down/Left/Right. I'd envision it's role as a middish game add-on for your general purpose HV, so if you were sapping into a POI, it's digging the tunnel, or if you're on the back side of the planet from your special HV miner, it's a bit better than drone mining.

CV Mining turret: used this recently on a few asteroids. Works okay. Maybe 10-20% faster than a T2 hand drill? Kinda depends on how the ore is on the asteroid. One I mined had a large area with very shallow crust of ore; I got out and hand mined it after a couple repositions of the CV.
Suggestion: go with a ball design over the current. I'd personally prefer to have a 1-block-tall ball turret mounted on the belly of a CV. Heck add a spotlight function to it so it could act as it's own targetting spot and CV mining might be fun .

 

Drills should be toggle-on, toggle-off instead of requiring me to hold LMB. Even with the slightly faster speeds, I still spend way too much time looking at the ground, and it frankly hurts my hand after a while.

Thanks to the new system, the old "set a book on the mouse button and go make a sandwich" method is no longer viable.

 

I don't know if this has been mentioned but I would like the halo's for the ore boulders to brighter and visible from further away. Quite often I get out of my hv and use the drone to spot halo's that I've missed.

 

They've made some tweaks in experimental 7.3 that may help; https://empyriononline.com/threads/alpha-experimental-7-3-convenience-and-re-balancing.27039/
"- Increased gun elevation of drill and tool turrets
- Tweaked ranges of turrets: TurretGVDrillWeapon: 25m -> 35m, DrillAttachmentT2Weapon: 10m -> 20m, TurretGVToolWeapon: 28m -> 50m
"
(I -think- "GV" means Ground Vehicle aka Hover Vehicle, not sure though)
"- Fixed: Drill dust particles blocked Ore Scanner view"

Didn't see a specific mention that they increased the scanners range in the above thread.

I think Hummel implied (somewhere) that they would add Tiers to the scanner; maybe earlier in this thread?

 

You can actually do that with Win10's MouseKeys feature. If you first enable the feature, you can then press numpad 0 to have left mouse-button toggled on.

 

Well, there's been improvements, but after several tests i'm still firmly in the 'avoid hv mining altogether' camp. My first several attempts after the last patch had me drilling at an angle to reach the ore, only for my hv to stop moving altogether. I couldn't figure out for the life of me what was wrong, only to get out to have a look and discover i'd somehow managed to dig a vertical hole straight down. Maybe i'm just 'bad' at hv mining in general, but even when i manage to get a 'successful' attempt, it's just a lot harder and more work than say digging with a drone.

I'll ungracefully bow out of the thread, i don't think it's likely that i'll ever be a fan of hv mining (although i like the concept in theory). The level of difficulty compared to the supposed rewards is just not there.

 

I have gotten used to HV myself, but still i do have to admit something needs to be done about it at least when digging tunnels. It tends to try flip around too easily, and it's missing a UI compass to tell current orientation.

But if you want to know easy way to mine with it, few tips:
1) Never mine tunnels. Mine so wide paths that the HV will never touch walls, roof included.
2) No digging straight down. You can start by going in at 30-45 degree angle from roughly 50-100m away.
3) Think of ore vein as a cake! First mine all cream on top, then the next layer, next layer.. and so on. You will always be moving horizontally, placing the HV itself around the middle. You can mine the middle section just a little bit lower than the sides, to make it easier to move there.
4) While digging those layers, keep in mind where the entrance was and keep it flyable.
5) Obviously have Ore Scanner in inventory (not in actionbar) to see blue outlines.

Following these, and even if it sounds like alot of work, one vein should be done in around 5 mins using 6 x T2 lasers. Time depends on size and depth of it. But i have seen veins so deep that standing inside SV's room and mining with drone i get connection issues to most bottom ores.

 

Ore scanner rock outline shoud be more contrasted or a different color (red/orange) with night goggles on.

 

i like mining with a hover, its fast..but F*** its so uncontrolable in tunnels.. hover movement is total chaos, and so easy to lost orientation, hard to exit tunnels, need a navball or a way to make sure your not digging even deeper when you try to get out of there ...

 

one more thing that just happen... i notice the multi turret for HV, its written "used in space only" ..a hover!!
anyway, also, i was in space, need to move a hover to his proper parking.. but now that hover is doom, cause noww, even with gravity generator active, the hover cannot move up or down, it just "float/fly" the way it want, cannot dock it again on the CV... fix it plz!!!

 

Why is it that every other rock (about 50% of them) does not return anything when I drill it with Stone Removal? All too often, I get nothing, not even Crushed Rock... And I'm not even talking about those short, ugly "scrub" rocks or whatever they are because I've long since learned that those never give me anything (despite looking a lot like rocks).

I thought the whole point of gathering resources in a game was to reward the player for their actions - you know, so that they keep playing? Getting nothing is discouraging, not encouraging. If I could tell by looking at a rock whether or not it would give resources, that would at least be something. But this really does seem completely random.

 

Yeah, rocks probably should always drop Crushed Stone in addition to a chance at various other ores.

 

I dislike the new SSOR at the moment. Mining with the old voxel based was more fun for me. just my opinion.
i like the idea of mixed ore deposits, but not enough to say that i would prefer the SSOR mining.
Without the ore scanner, i sometimes need very long to find something.
With the ore scanner, i get headaches. i don't know why. i have to make much more breaks during mining, than with the old voxel based system, cause i can't look at it to long.

i would really wish if there would be maybe an option for singleplayer, for future, where you can decide between the old mining system and the new one.

 

Worst thing implemented into the game. Why even changing the mining system if no one asked you to? Won't play the game until this is changed. Why did you change something that was already unique but now it is ****. It used to be fun. I don't care if it is quicker. It's boring now. The old mining was maybe more time consuming but it was hell of a more fun than that.

Then at least implement the option to choose between mining system for Christ sake. You ruined the game for a lot of players by doing this thing that no one even asked you to do. And the biggest thing that makes me angry is that this will never change and probably this comment will be ignored.

I do understand that you have to deal with this every day but understand this. You messed with the important mechanic of the game. Changing something that everyone has to do or use in the game and something that is basically a must to do before you advance is the worst fucking thing you can do in your game. You can't just change mining system without giving us the option to use the old one at least. You just messed with mining. 100% of EGS players mine. You can't just change this like that and expect us to accept the change just like that. Give us an option to switch between mining systems.

Don't get me wrong. You are doing great things. This game is unique and really good, going toward the best game of exploration and space. I love the most of the changes but that just isn't fun for me. I lost all will when I saw this and I probably won't return because simply I am used to the old one and the new one is just empty. It isn't what it used to be. It's worse and just too sloppy. It's too easy to get **** now.

Until something is done about this... I'm out

 

Well i agree with some parts of what you said. I also prefered the old mining system.
But, its in an alpha state. This is used for testing and so they can implement new things to get feedback. i'm sure that if a lot of people wont like the new system, they will make a change in the future.
Beside that, you can get the alpha 6 version from steam. There you can continue playing with the old mining system.