Archeology tends to balance speed vs. carefulness, as some archeological finds are quite fragile. Ruins also might block building modern things (assuming that you choose not to bulldoze them). Some types of scans and searches to discover loot would be more expensive than others.
Hmmm, so how about something like this:
- ruins have 3 grades of "undigging": basic, advanced, complete (could use better names for these)
- you have limited number of archeologists, they work automaticly, they first try to uncover all ruins to the Basic level before they move on to Advanced/Complete (you have an option to set a certain planet/ruins as "archeological priority" in such case they will do that one first to the Complete level and they assign max archeologists there)
- you can set "speed vs carefulness" (globally), speedy makes archeologists work faster but increases a chance for a failure (in such case the ruins change to "collapsed" and can't be explored further)
- you can assign more funds (globally) to archeologists (so you, kind of, have more of them)
Metagame:
In addition to standard undiggning reward there is a chance to discover "ancient tables/scriptures", these are kind of "archeological experience points" and when you reach certain amount of these you unlock certain knowledge (like can see transdimensional rifts on the map, unlocks some non standard technologies, get to know more of the game lord (history of the galaxy)).
Also, all idle archeologists have a chance to discover these ancient tables too (without the need of ruins).
[categories of diggables]
Sounds cute, if you have more of these, post.
I thought that was a pretty complete set of categories, unless you wanted more examples per category.
As far as excavating, that's actually quite different from what I was vaguely imagining. I was thinking:
Scan - Examine a specific excavation site for X specific resource - costs N, requires 1 archeologist, takes T time (maybe 30s or 1 min), has 100% accuracy, does not actually excavate anything, just tells the player if it is there. This is used if the player urgently needs a particular resource, to figure out where to excavate.
QuickNDirty Excavation - gains 0% of fragile category items, 50% of delicate category items, 90% of sturdy category items, and 100% of indestructible category items. Costs 3N per site, requires 2 archeologists, takes 3T time. Afterwards, the ruin is gone and can be developed with normal buildings.
Slow Excavation - gains 100% of everything, costs 4N per site, requires 2 archeologists, takes 6T time. Afterwards, the ruin is gone and can be developed with normal buildings.
Costly Excavation - gains 100% of everything, costs 6N per site, requires 2 archeologists, takes 3T time. Afterwards, the ruin is gone and can be developed with normal buildings.
Demolition - gains 0% of everything, costs 0N, does not require any archeologists, takes 2T time. Afterwards, the ruin is gone and can be developed with normal buildings.
And for all of these you could get a bulk deal by doing a whole planet at once - save 10% or 20% of the cost.