possible idea: point mining drones at planets?

Make a suggestion & let the community sound it out. Almost all the best activities in game came initially from a player suggestion!
Post Reply
User avatar
Akkamaddi
CE Official Supporter
Posts: 364
Joined: Sun Jul 20, 2014 5:47 pm

possible idea: point mining drones at planets?

Post by Akkamaddi »

I'm not sure if this would be considered an unbalancing idea, but I think this would be a benefit to the miners, and a good idea given staffium is becoming a building resource. It may get shot down.

Add to the CE Store a captain update, "Mining Drone Transport".

If the captain has this, the "deploy mining drone" icon will appear when you are docked on a planet with a Commercial Storage front. The captain can deploy a drone while docked on the planet's promenade. Coops has the design choice of either only having the icon appear in systems with an Orbital Refinery, or have the deploy fail if there is no OR in the system. (I would guess it would be easier to have "If (CS and OR) then...".)

When deployed on a planet, the interface goes to the players commercial store on that planet. The player then picks one, and one specific, resource.

At that point, the drone then acts as a courier ferrying that one specific resource from that one specific planet's commercial store to the local OR. If the resource empties, the drone becomes inert. The transport is the drone's regular mining rate.

Regular mining drones (including player crafted and Deep Core) will only carry ore. Personally, as a miner with over 700K units of ore in my store, I would love to see some of that converted to refined ore without nearly a thousand ship transfers. For lower level miners, directing one mining drone to their primary planet would make mining ore more appealing, because extra fuel is not burned getting it to an OR.

For advanced mining drones, the one resource obviously has to be an ore that the drone could normally mine and place in the OR. (You can't fill your advanced ore storage with corn.) (EDIT: Oh my gawd, Coops, please let us make Refined Corn!!!) You loose the diversity you are getting from the drone actually mining, and you are not actually getting anything new. However, if you need, say, 4000 units of Droffalt (or Escardonium) for a POD :| or towards your guild's starbase, you can use what you have to get what you need, rather than waiting on your drones getting another batch of that one ore you are missing.
pikolinianita
Posts: 862
Joined: Sun Jul 20, 2014 6:36 pm
Location: Quantum Chicken Caravanserai, Umbari, Sphere

Re: possible idea: point mining drones at planets?

Post by pikolinianita »

There are titan refinery pods :)
User avatar
Akkamaddi
CE Official Supporter
Posts: 364
Joined: Sun Jul 20, 2014 5:47 pm

Re: possible idea: point mining drones at planets?

Post by Akkamaddi »

pikolinianita wrote:There are titan refinery pods :)
Yes, I know. And don't think I shy away from throwing money at the CES. :oops:

A Titan requires fuel, and I can do a much better conversion at the OR. 8-) If you haven't put much into Refining, a Titan can be a useful investment.
Post Reply