This may come of a bit of a shock to some of you but I have yet another opinion to relay. Mining on a planet, I first tried mining with the Survival tool and yeah, I enjoyed it, getting the big 3 base metals and hoping for a bit more than a retexture, but it was what it was, until... I played M110 mod and found Promethium in small scattered nuggets, now that was different (the quantity left never dropped below the 100% but bugs are bugs) but it made mining for this resource much more interesting than the others. So I wonder was it originally like this and it got changed to a paint/texture job to fall in line with the rest of the ores, or is it something from a future update that was used and integrated into the M110 mod? I ask because I like it, digging around not really knowing whether I have all there is to have or whether I should make a note to come back and dig around some more. I've no doubt that the all in one ball of ore mining is probably more efficient for those that are in a hurry, but that's where a game can loose it's way, Elite Dangerous forums were full of players wanting a billion credits an hour or it's not worth it missions, and that had a knock on effect in the game direction with more/faster/more/faster and it drove many away... or into hiding. So just to clarify... I like the nuggets, and wouldn't mind if the other ores were reworked in different ways, Having to pick ores up would be fine with me too, but that's another kettle of bullets
Those resource "nuggets", the non-voxel deposits, do happen for other resources as well, or at least previously have. I know I've found Gold that way - usually just one or two little lumps, but I do agree tremendously - these are a bit more interesting than the large voxel "veins", as a bit more like how mineral deposits really are. If it were up to me... a revamp of the resource systems would be in order, based first on the resource settings configured in the game settings, something like this: Large Deposits, Rich - 90% large voxel despoits, 7% medium voxel deposits, 3% small node deposits Large Deposits, Normal - 80% large voxel deposits, 15% medium voxel deposits, 5% small node deposits Large Deposits, Poor - 75% medium voxel deposits, 23% medium node deposits, 2% small node deposits And so on, through all the various configurations. I would also classify mineral deposits into 3 categories: Primary Deposits - this makes up the majority of resources on a planet (Iron, Copper, Silicon) for example would be Primary deposits Secondary Deposits - things found on a planet, but in much smaller quantities, such as Cobalt, Neodymium, or Sathium Tertiary Deposits - things found only in tract amounts on a planet, such as Zascosium, Erestrum, or Gold When calculating what the mineral distribution will be, the Primary deposits should make up the largest number of deposit types, and should mainly be voxel-based deposits. Secondary deposits should be either small voxel-based, or made up of larger numbers of small node deposits Tertiary deposits should always be small node deposits. I think this would give a more "natural" feeling to mineral deposits and planetary makeup, and would certainly make the ore detector device more useful, as it is pretty close to useless already, as this is what is needed to see the outlines of node deposits underground.
