What if the player could have access to a mineral processor (either they can get to one or they can buy and place it themselves). Then their ship can have a tractor beam that allows them to tow asteroids to the processor to be processed into minerals.

There are several different types of mineral and each processor can only process one type. So the player has access to a scanner that can determine what type of minerals are in each asteroid (there can be several type in any one asteroid so the player has to decide what minerals to try and get from it), and how much of those types. Also, some asteroids might have alien tech (or other bonuses) that the player can get access to (but first have to scan for) if they take it to the correct facilities.

Scanners could also be keyed to certain resources (or alien tech), have certain ranges, beam width (they report all the materials in the beam, not which asteroid specifically), detail (some scanners might report which asteroids the resource are in), and so forth.

You can also have the player pay for access to the processing stations (or for running it if they own it) so giving a gameplay choice of the player (they might really need Plotonium, but the amount they get from the asteroid is not much, but the processing station charges a lot to extract that resource). This way, rare resource can have a high cost associated with them as it is expensive to gather lots of it because of the amount of asteroids need to be processed to get that amount of the resource, but common resources will have higher concentrations and so will be able to extract more for the cost of processing.

As this is a 2D scroller (I am assuming it is not just a vertical scroller, but that the player can fly in any direction they choose), then this type of gameplay can be integrated into the current game system easily enough, you just need to add tractor beams to the player's ship (and so allow an object to follow the player) and processing stations that if the player docks with them while carrying an asteroid they will process it for a fee (or if the player owns it just process it).

You could use a menu system to allow the player to decide what material to extract, or just have separate types of processor (really just a set of variables to change from a standard template and graphics - to allow the player to know what type it is).

So this gameplay would require the player to have the right equipment to scan for the materials they need, have them make a choice as to what materials they need (despite there being different materials available form the asteroid - and they might not know what all the materials in the asteroid are), the (player) skill to bring them back to the processing stations and expend resources (eg: money) pay for the processing (or owning the processing stations).

It also utilises the existing mechanics and only needs to add in a couple more: Tractor beams (which could also be used in other situations in the game not involved in gathering resources), and Processing Stations (which is really a simple mechanics: destroy an object - the asteroid - and give a resource - the one they chose from the asteroid).

You might also have pirates, with more powerful tractor beams, that can pull an asteroid out of a players tractor beam. The player might choose to upgrade their own tractor beam so that the pirates can't just take it (but they could attempt to destroy the player's beam or ship to get at the asteroid), or attempt to fight the pirates off (it also give a logical reason for mobs to exist that the player can grind on - if pirates spawn near asteroid fields, a player has to defeat the pirates to be able to gather the resources).

Easy question, easy answer. The way to handle grinding in a game is not to include any. Why would you purposely design a major feature of the game in a way you feel sucks so much it needs to be "made less noticeable", and at best, players are "willing" to tolerate it in order to get to the good stuff?

If something can't be improved to the point where it can no longer be called a "grind", axe it.

Quote:Original post by Drethon
What Edtharan said is pretty similar to the way my thoughts have been drifting plus what Wavinator said.

I've been thinking of mining requiring a special mining laser that would be used to cut off chunks of an asteroid, these chunks could then be pulled in with a low power tractor (takes up less space and uses less power) to keep the player engaged in mining.

I would steer clear of having a special mining laser as it eliminates choices the player has to make. Instead a better solution would be to have the different resource in an asteroid react differently to the power of the laser.

The more powerful the laser, the more of the more volatile (and rarer) resources in an asteroid are lost (even to the point where by they are eliminated). This way a powerful a laser might blast apart an asteroid in no time, but leave you with only the most common resources, but a weaker laser would take slightly longer (not much mind you) to break apart the asteroid but leave you with most of the more valuable resources intact.

As the more powerful laser is better for dealing with pirates, then this would be a good reason to tech up. But a weak laser would be cheap and readily available, but would be almost useless in battle. The player now has a gameplay choice as to the power of their lasers on their ship.

As an extra, you could have certain lasers better designed not to vaporise the more expensive resources, and so be potentially more powerful than what would normally be used for that type of resource, but as this kind of tech would need a lot of research and Development, it can cost more than your standard laser of that power level. Also, as it has to be tuned to a particular resource, if players want to change to another resource, it provides gamplay in switching costs vs rewards for mining the new material(s).

Quote:Original post by Drethon
Additionally I've been thinking of making ships with large capacity very expensive but making cheap containers available that can be moved by tractor beams. As a result most mining will off load into these containers to be tractored back to the station (or if the player is confident of his skills the containers can be slingshotted back to the station to be caught by another ship).

You could imagine a whole string of such containers, each with a tractor beam on the rear of it to pull the next container along. The power for this might come from the player's (or even computer controlled) ships, so there would be some limit to the number of containers that could be pulled.

This could also form missions, to either transport goods from one place to another, or even to collect the sling shotted containers and deliver them to the base (this would indeed take some fancy flying - and could be quite good gameplay).

Quote:Original post by Drethon
A container being tractored can be hijacked by a pirate with a tractor beam if the pirate latches on an tries to accelerate the container hard enough at a right angle to direction the transport ship is moving it. This allows fast combat ships an alternative to blowing up the other ship, just grab the loot and run. Also if ship has a large enough tractor the pirate ship can be tractored back to the station and captured.

Having it at right angles is going to be hard to do, why not use the perpendicular (at right angles) force of the pull to determine the breaking chance. However, if the player or pirate is not quite at right angles, you can calculate the force (using vectors) that would exist at right angles to the tractor beam. You could also (if you want) compute forces caused by manoeuvres (turning and such) and add these vectors to the equation and so allow the player to either enhance or weaken the perpendicular force on the container. It could also be applied in flight, so that if the player makes too tight a turn, they could loose their tractor beam lock on the containers without there being an enemy trying to steal them.

It would also tie in with your previous paragraph about containers, with container being sling shot from location to location and the player trying to capture them, they might have to manoeuvre their ship so that they minimise the perpendicular force from the container's motion on the tractor beam.

Quote:This one I need to toss around a bit. I don't want standard lasers working as mining equipment but I can see using mining lasers for offensive weapons, if much lower power than a weapon laser (miner swarm!).

If a laser can tear a ship to chunks, then why not an asteroid? Especially if you are also going to include lasers that are weaker but can tear chunks of asteroids.

I think retaining consistency will go a long way to making your game world more believable. It is the inconsistencies that can break immersion and frustrate players.

The system I was proposing was allowing all lasers for mining, it was just that powerful lasers would be useless at getting the more volatile and expensive resources out (as they would be vaporised by the more powerful lasers). You can blast away with the powerful laser and tear great chunks out of the asteroid (moons or even planets ;D ) but all that you will be left with will be mostly the more common materials which might not even be worth the fuel used to get them back to the processing plant (although powerful lasers could blast away big chucks and so you might make a profit with bulk jobs).

Quote:Additionally I'm placing this game as being late this century so technology has advanced beyond current technology but not exceptionally further. Lasers exist but are very expensive and power hungry yet are immensely powerful next lower tech equipment.

Remember Moore's Law. It seems to also apply to other forms of technology too. IF we take this to its logical conclusion, then many forms of technology, by the second half of this century will be so far beyond what we can imagine that we are rally unable to speculate on it (as an aside: the really interesting one is medical intervention to life expectancy. By around 2050, if Moore's law holds then for every year that passes, we will be able to extend life by another year. At this point we will be pseudoimmortal - not dying of old age).

If you are looking to extend technology just a little bit further, then what you will most likely see is mining by robot. This is almost doable today. We have robotic cars that are capable (but not licensed for) driving in real world traffic conditions. We have robots that can (and do) operate heavy machinery (far better than people can in some circumstances). We also ahve robots that can operate in hostile space environments (just think of the two rovers "Spirit" and "Opportunity" currently on Mars). We have robots that can land (and even take off - all rocket launches are actually done by a computer, which makes these rockets robots) from planets.

So, it is not all that much of a stretch that robots could be sent onto asteroids to mine materials from them and bring back those materials.

But, in mining each type of material (ore) needs its own processing to properly extract it. This tends to also make it difficult (without special consideration in the initial extraction) to get at any other materials left. So you can still keep this kind of gameplay (where extracting the ore from asteroids must be selected for at the loss of any other type of ore) but have remote mining robots that a player sends down to these locations and picks up packages from them at regular intervals of the ore they want. The robots could also be picked up later and moved to a new location.

There are currently projects to make self contained factories in the form of a 3D printer which can print with multiple print heads, but that can also print themselves (Von Newman devices). SO far they ahve been able to get it to replicate around 60% of the parts of its self, and improvements are occuring rapidly. If the robotic mining devices had this kind of functionality built into them, then they could extract common raw materials in quantities need to set up everything they need from a small package (which is the bit that gets picked up and moved from site to site).

So if you are looking to implement a system that would likely to be used if asteroid mining were to occur later this century, then this is the kind of system you might be looking at:

A Semi Von Newman robotic package that would be dropped on a potential mining site and would replicate all the rest of the bits needed for the mine. It would construct the cargo containers and the launch vehicles needed to get the resulting ores into orbit around the asteroid. It would build power plants (solar collectors, or even mine radioactive materials to be used in a nuclear power plant - probably by using the thermo electric effect to generate the power rather than by heating water into steam), mining robots, repair and construction robots, etc. Anything that was needed, including replacement parts for itself.

I just suggested blasting things with lasers because this seemed to be part of the game you were describing (blasting things with lasers like enemy ships) and is a common gameplay and setting element for the type of genera you are making (and is also much simpler to design and code). However, if you want the more complex system because of the realism, it would certainly make the game world more believable (but I am not sure how it would mesh with the other gameplay elements).