Oolite Bulletins

I think that asteroid mining could be very cool. But automines should be very expensive.

Logically they're big gear, and should probably cost as much as a reasonably decked out ship, at least. Maybe even more expensive than that.

That way they could be something for experienced players to gradually add, until they eventually have maybe an asteroid in each galaxy or even more than one per. The mine could steadily kick out a slow flow of gems or whatever based on game time. Maybe make the rate a bit higher if the plyer is more or less living there at the time.

There could be a chance of a mine asteroid being found by pirates so that when the player comes to collect up what it has, there's a swarm waiting in ambush. Logically the automine would have automated defenses (or they would be a costly add-on), so ambushing the player would be the logical game AI reaction, but there might also be a ver very small chance that they'd get frustrated over it and hit it with a Q-bomb and the player would go to a mine and it'd be nothing there but dust.

So having mines in more than one galaxy and/or system and making regular visits to them would be the way a player would have to work it to actually have a steady and prosperous income off it. That way the amount of time and work it takes could act as a balance to the income.

Of course it goes without saying that high level pirates would be more likely to stalk such a player, since rumours would get around that they are paying for most everything with gems or gold or platinum.

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

Interesting / exciting subject.

I always planned to claim a rock for myself....but I kept snagging on my asteroids looking like turds. Mind if I try to code a sub-oxp at some point?

'Course not, sounds interesting.

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

Your asteroids, objects as large as a station can often been seen from the witchpoint...
If you want the rocks to be really invisible until found, you could create them as seed generated locations (as a missionVariable/ scriptproperty), then have them spawned only as the player comes within X range. specialist scanner could also improve such range. playercentric, but whatthehell.
I guess this is not what you want, still...

I genuinely think that the spawning on arrival is a clever suggestion and kinda wish I'd thought of it as it would have solved nearly every problem I've been wrestling with in one foul swoop, it would blip the framerate for a second or two, though. Are you a coder? One of the reasons I am writing this is for the exploration of the systems which we hardly get to see and so I'm not too sure, maybe for other people's asteroids it could be implemented as I have been considering a possibility to buy a cloaking device/sensor mask for high earning mines, to be offered on acquisition. I might even add in a mission or two for long term miners, maybe finding a rumoured mega-mine or something. But that's the future.

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

I read that taking over mines requires resources, may i suggest in addition to slaves and supplies, also taking firearms for a hostile takeover and machinery for starting up your own mine. (or for increasing productivity)
Amount of slaves and machinery could determine mining yield, amount of firearms reduce the chance of the mine being claimed by jumpers, food could be used up by the slaves.
at a certain size overseers are required, a passenger berth to ship him/her there. luxuries and wines etc for upkeep.
Hire a local small trader to shuttle ores to the mainstation and food to the mine.
oh, the possibilities are endless!

Indeed they are. You can already improve productivity with narcs and liqs and I think that machinery and firearms are logical additions to that, perhaps the guns would decrease the likelihood of getting taken over or a well defended asteroid might spawn better defenders.

Ganelon wrote:

Logically they're big gear, and should probably cost as much as a reasonably decked out ship, at least. Maybe even more expensive than that

I could implement a cost, but recouping such a large amount would take a lot of shuttling the metals back for sale unless I awarded credits directly perhaps with gems and such as bonuses. I plan to implement new kinds of pirates, or even modify the pirates of the game to take the mines into account. I'd like to try my hand at creating drunk miners who weave their way between stations . Should be possible.

I'm going to convert the whole thing to OOP, as far as JS allows it, as it will allow for faster development, more code reuse and less bugs (hopefully). This is my first outing with JS though, so I may foobar it all up.

Thanks guys.

Yes, I dabble a bit in coding, not many of my projects have come to fruition though.
You may want to check out my current "WIP trumbletreats"
As it is my first foray into JS country as well, there are some good suggestions made by several of the board's javadeities.
Such as on the use of JS variables (intra function) and JS scriptlevel properties for storing longterm variables in stead of using oolite missionvariables, for example.

A tonne of slaves... that is how many?
if 20% of the container is lifesupport, I'd say about ten specimen.
How much does a slave eat?....depends on the rations really. You may want to have an option for that. minimal rations: 1tfood/1tslaves/year, high attritionrate.to high rations: 2 food/slaves/year, low attrition.
I guess, shipping fresh slaves in will be more an issue than the food.

How putting an option for legal minig, like hiring miners?

Can I make a small appeal for the possibility to run mines without using slaves? I have moral qualms about using slaves (in fact, I find myself unable to eject any scooped pods with slaves in them, even if there are loads of other, potentially high-value, pods floating around out there).

Don't get me wrong, I like the moral qualms, and I love the idea of giving players these kinds of choices! But there needs to be a choice. Maybe you could make mines that ran much less efficiently, running on just machinery and radioactives, instead of slaves and food. Adding computers would have a similar effect as giving your slaves liquor or narcotics, and increase the productivity a bit.

Automated mines should have lower production (or certainly lower production of gold, platinum and gemstones). I've always assumed that there's no such thing in E/Oolite as true AIs, given that the ships all have organic pilots and slavery (cheap slavery, at that) continues to exist, so robot mining will be pretty dumb and brute-force, and liable to miss the impact rubies hidden amongst the rubble.

Perhaps it could be done with assigning mining points, e.g.

1 ton of machinery + 1 ton of radioactives = 2 mining points (to a maximum of 10 tons)
1 ton of computers = 2 points (to a maximum of 50% of the active machinery)
1 ton of slaves + 1 ton of food = 5 mining points (to a maximum of 10 tons)
1 ton of liquor & wines = 2 points (to a maximum of 50% of the active slaves)
1 ton of narcotics = 5 points (to a maximum of 20% of the active slaves)

The more mining points you have, the more chance you have every X days of producing something valuable. A fully-equipped mine would consist of

* 10 tons of machinery running on 10 tons of radioactives (20 points)
which could be augmented by
* 5 tons of computers (10 points)
in addition you can (but don't have to) have
* 10 tons of slaves running on 10 tons of food (50 points)
which could be augmented by
* 5 tons of liquor and wines (10 points)
* 2 tons of narcotics (10 points)

... which comes to a nice round 100 points. Every time you dock with a mine, the game would make a calculation based on number of days since your last visit x number of mining points, and stock up your mine with appropriate amounts of minerals, radioactives, alloys, precious metals and gemstones for you to collect. More mining points = more stuff in general and a greater chance of valuable stuff being found. Your mining equipment would have to wear out over time (including slaves), so you'd need to keep your mine topped up.

Does that make sense? Would that be workable/desirable?

Disembodied wrote:

Can I make a small appeal for the possibility to run mines without using slaves? I have moral qualms about using slaves (in fact, I find myself unable to eject any scooped pods with slaves in them, even if there are loads of other, potentially high-value, pods floating around out there).

Perhaps this excellent-sounding OXP could be merged with Trumble Treats so you can have a Trumble workforce doing something useful for a change.

Smivs wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

Can I make a small appeal for the possibility to run mines without using slaves? I have moral qualms about using slaves (in fact, I find myself unable to eject any scooped pods with slaves in them, even if there are loads of other, potentially high-value, pods floating around out there).

Perhaps this excellent-sounding OXP could be merged with Trumble Treats so you can have a Trumble workforce doing something useful for a change.

Smooth (though now you'd have "slave trumbles" - LOL!)

I doubt trumbles are intelligent enough for mining. But they could be used instead of food.

Hmm ... I think trumbles are liable to eat slaves (and the contents of escape pods too – I don't know about passengers, but it's a sobering thought). Still, that might be an interesting little wrinkle to put in: the mine suffering from a trumble infestation: first they eat all the food, then they eat the (biological) workforce ...

Disembodied wrote:

Can I make a small appeal for the possibility to run mines without using slaves? I have moral qualms about using slaves (in fact, I find myself unable to eject any scooped pods with slaves in them, even if there are loads of other, potentially high-value, pods floating around out there).

Don't get me wrong, I like the moral qualms, and I love the idea of giving players these kinds of choices! But there needs to be a choice. Maybe you could make mines that ran much less efficiently, running on just machinery and radioactives, instead of slaves and food. Adding computers would have a similar effect as giving your slaves liquor or narcotics, and increase the productivity a bit.

Excellent idea. Slave labour has always been the way to build civilisations but an automated option sounds good to me, I share your qualms. If rescuing slaves in your oolite worldview is as simple as selling them on the commodity market how about an option to rescue slaves from other people's mines when stealing them?

Disembodied wrote:

Does that make sense? Would that be workable/desirable?

You have convinced me. I was always fumbling towards the mining points idea, but the design of that will come with the balance. Thanks.

Trumbles.. may be a possibility. Although, I tend to delete them from my game when I can. *ducks* Where are the klingons when you need them?

could have the option to run a mine as a coop, emancipating the slaves you unload on your rock.
Unhappy employees will want to leave your mine though and will riot if you won't let them.
Then again, slaves could just be the term used to describe real slaves, illegal emigrants up to corporate state employees.

Not a clue as how to set up a handy way of setting such an option...maybe as an equipment option or as a missionscreen only activated as you dock with the mine and access the shipyardscreen...if all other interactions with the mine are through missionscreens, an additional option won't jar as much as a useless screen that always appears on docking.

@docwild: just another reason to hide trumbles in every oxp I make.

It would be kinda of nice if there were some way that slaves could be emancipated. Like if they could be dropped off at a GCW station and the "sale price" could be a reward and have such action viewed as a service under GCW law. That could be consistent with the current thing of how it is only a crime to *leave* a GCW station with slaves onboard.

There was a discussion about this in the past, and I think at the time it was agreed that freeing slaves should be its own reward, i.e. if you want to free slaves, you do it for free!

Whatever the concept, it's fairly doable via oxp: all you need is a missionScreenOpportunity that checks if you've got slaves on board, and if so, it offers the extra options via a mission screen. The tricky bit is to not offer the extra options if the player has just bought the slaves at that very station!

Kaks wrote:

There was a discussion about this in the past, and I think at the time it was agreed that freeing slaves should be its own reward, i.e. if you want to free slaves, you do it for free!

Whatever the concept, it's fairly doable via oxp: all you need is a missionScreenOpportunity that checks if you've got slaves on board, and if so, it offers the extra options via a mission screen. The tricky bit is to not offer the extra options if the player has just bought the slaves at that very station!

The previous discussion was this one, I think. Good to hear though that it's now (relatively) easy to script! I definitely think that virtue should be its own reward: if there's a financial incentive then it makes it too easy to be good. But if it costs the player something – time, money, trouble, all three – that makes it more of a test of character.

I don't know if there's a need to not offer the player the option, even if they've just bought that slaves. It could provide a feel-good money sink for the incredibly rich: go around the galaxy, buying slaves and liberating them on the spot. Of course, if the slaves were then turned into so many tons of refugees looking for a lift back to this or that system, then that would be another test for the player's conscience ... plus it would be a quick way of generating lots of mini-missions, and a way of giving players another reason to go places.

One thing that would need to happen though would be for the cargo check to come after you've dropped off any rescued pilots, as they're classed as slaves until you dock.

Back to the mining OXP, though, being able to emancipate other people's slaves would definitely add a moral gloss to robbing other people's mines ... and indeed a whole new way of using the OXP: no need to be a miner at all, if you don't want to be, just be a liberator of the oppressed with a touch of Robin Hood, too! But if there's an Emancipation.oxp that checks for slaves in the inventory, then you could do it on the spot.

give the slaves a few credits while your at it.

edit: you do realise that 'resqued' pilots are perfectly able to reach port in their escapepods, right? otherwise, A small bit of scripting could remove a tonne of slaves when you scooped an E-pod just before docking, and display a consoleMessage from the resqued pilot. IIRC legal records are erased after jumping ship, but the type of thanks you get may vary according to the rating of the resquee.
...might want to add a missionscreen, first time. What to do with the pilot? Free him/sell him/free always/always sell them. (no more screens)

Another thought on the exploration aspect:
could sell rumours and solarmaps at the shipyard of possible unclaimed asteroids at the same system and/or in several other (nearby*) systems. (planting a beacon at the location if inthesystem at systempopulation, 50% are just locations far out in the outerreaches without real mine opportunities, part are recently claimed, etc)

It would cut down on the aimless wandering, should you choose to hide 'undiscovered' rocks, as I suggested previously.
"No sir, our asteroid belt has been exhausted since the 30's, [feel free to look for yourself though, you might find some boulders yet.]/[the astromines here are all used up, only pirates now.]"

Added benefit is that the randomised destinations on the outside, will give the player a fixed direction to follow. Even if the direction itself is not a rock, player could find one on-route.

In fact, I suggest selling a trojan**-beacon frequency with any mining scanner.
* I'd have to investigate the method to retrieve systems nearby.
** trojan is the only astrological term that came to mind, is totally wrong though. concept is several beacons at 'trojan points' 3 planet-solar distances out from the sun. player can then navigate more easily to the 'outeredge' where asteroids roam. beacons != mines. but it is where they usually are.