Mining Overhaul?

[Drayla]

To my understanding, I started playing regularly again near the end of the summer, and player mines had just become impossible to purchase anymore. I also understand that the reasoning for this was that there is a major overhaul coming to mining that is going to change it up quite a bit. The last I had heard of this, it sounded as though this overhaul was in the final stages and nearly complete, and the only reason the process of switching them out wasn't begun then was because it would completely break mining for a while.
So here is my question: what is the status of this update? I haven't heard anything new about it in over a month. Is it nearly upon us? Has it been set on the back burner for a while? I was looking forward to the update and seeing what it brings and what it changes. I'd just like a bit of intel on what its status is and when we can expect the switch to occur. Please?

[Rias]

The following are things that I want and hope for in the new mining system but are no way set in stone:

- Mines having resources appropriate to their area intead of just having a completely random constantly-shifting mish-mash of minerals.
- Players not being limited to a single mine for their entire life. However, I do hope mines end up being too difficult to maintain multiples of - I don't want people having like ten mines at once. But you could for instance start a mine somewhere, and if you don't like what minerals you've found available there, pack up and go start a mine elsewhere.
- Starting a new mine should be a considerable effort, so you shouldn't be able to try mining every single spot in the Lost Lands in the space of a month and find out where "the best stuff" is.
- Regarding finding the "best stuff": Sometimes there will be good stuff further down. Bob starts a mine, only finds a few small veins of copper over a large amount of time, gives up and goes elsewhere. Bill takes over the mine, ends up finding a trove of gold just a little deeper down. Neener neener, Bob! Should've stuck it out! So yeah, another step to discourage people simply starting tiny mines all over the place just to try and find where the good stuff is.

Anyway, those are my wants and hopes for the overhaul. It's not really close to completion at all, though. The current system just struck us as far too ridiculous to allow to keep growing. So when can you expect the new system to come out? Answer: Dunno.

[Bryce]

Put a cobalt mine out there somewhere so people can finally start selling it to me!

[Makkah]

The following are things that I want and hope for in the new mining system but are no way set in stone:

- Mines having resources appropriate to their area intead of just having a completely random constantly-shifting mish-mash of minerals.
- Players not being limited to a single mine for their entire life. However, I do hope mines end up being too difficult to maintain multiples of - I don't want people having like ten mines at once. But you could for instance start a mine somewhere, and if you don't like what minerals you've found available there, pack up and go start a mine elsewhere.
- Starting a new mine should be a considerable effort, so you shouldn't be able to try mining every single spot in the Lost Lands in the space of a month and find out where "the best stuff" is.
- Regarding finding the "best stuff": Sometimes there will be good stuff further down. Bob starts a mine, only finds a few small veins of copper over a large amount of time, gives up and goes elsewhere. Bill takes over the mine, ends up finding a trove of gold just a little deeper down. Neener neener, Bob! Should've stuck it out! So yeah, another step to discourage people simply starting tiny mines all over the place just to try and find where the good stuff is.

This all sounds awesome. Superawesome.

[Elystole]

It'd be really cool if surveying while on the surface would tell you what kind of minerals or gems are common to that region. Just the ones closest to the surface that would be easiest to find. Especially if you don't want people digging holes all over the place trying to figure out where to put their player mine.

[Drayla]

The way I understand it, his goals are to make starting a new mine or maintaining multiple mines a pain in the arse so that people -don't- just start digging holes all over the place. Plus, like he said, just because a mine only has copper and quartz in the first room you dig doesn't mean you won't find diamonds and gold in the fourth. I just don't see how with CLOK's level of technology it could be believable that we could survey what minerals were under our feet without digging a huge hole, which is basically what you do to start a mine.

[Elystole]

I understood that, but you can find surface signs of minerals: ore flakes in water, cracked open rocks, loose shards of stone worked up to the surface over time, etc. So you wouldn't survey and see the rare minerals under the surface, like the gold or diamonds in your example, but you could see that copper was common to the region around Shadgard. People have been prospecting long before modern technology.

I'm saying that being about to survey what kind of ore - or even if there is ore - on that surface layer, in that first room, would cut down on people digging all over the place. You'd at least know that you're starting a copper mine, an iron mine, whatever and then the rare minerals would be gravy.

[Drayla]

I think the addition of panning would be nice. Go to a river, start panning, hopefully gain nuggets of valuable metals. Of course, mining would always be more productive, but if you wanted to focus on finding gold and silver, panning would be the thing to do. It wouldn't get you much material though. I could see about a dozen nuggets equalling a one pound bar. Just a thought. Carry on.

[Lysse]

You can, to a degree, make a pretty educated guess as to what minerals are going to be present in an area based on general geological knowledge, which may reasonably have been around in the same time scale of Clok. It just takes knowledge of under what conditions certain minerals generally occur, and the types of environments they're found in, or clues to finding them.

That being said, I think it would be neat if surveying for hidden minerals always gave information, even in the instance of a failure. However, at a failure, it gives the wrong information, telling you (for instance) that a region is chock full of gold and iron, when it's really just a lot of quartz and copper. It could be tied into the Mining Mastery abilities as well.

[Vitello]

No objections to the current model being amazingly over powered. But what do player mines hold in the future?

I have to say I really loved the teamwork and coordination coming out of Gad's mine in particular when it came to coordinating digging out and maintaining the shafts.

Just random thoughts out of my head;

Geographical minerals obviously

Lower the decay/collapse rate since there will no longer be deep miners for more random uber minerals

Shareholders, so more than one person can open rooms and such. If one owner idles out no less chance of loosing the entire mine.

Efficiency bonus. Some way of boosting the yield or vein occurence if the mine is well maintained. This would encourage several characters to work together rather than everyone owning their own mine.

[Jirato]

The new mining system won't have stakes, claims, or "owners", it will be up to player characters to police them, if they so choose. The wilderness is a lawless zone. Anyone will be able to dig to begin, reinforce, or expand a mine. However, the amount of digging required will be greatly increased for both a realism perspective, and to strongly encourage teamwork in mining projects. Yes, the decay rate of mines will also be greatly reduced.

This has actually been on my mind a lot over the past week or two, and I've begun to work out how I'll attack it in the code. There's a lot of rewriting involved.

Once it's actually released in a usable capacity, the old player mines will turn into "legacy mines" and no longer be able to be reinforced/expanded, until they eventually collapse, at which point they will be removed. I've already removed all mines that did not have any rooms besides the entrance area from the game.

[Vitello]

Sounds awesome!

[sona]

I had to reread that twice to make sure I understood the changes, because they sound awesome.

[Vitello]

What about the worm/spider/drakolin. Will they get toned down since there will no longer be gem caverns?

[Dorn]

Any thoughts on how you're going to handle the actual ores and gems yet, Jirato? Going to simply put in the old chart for mines for now, while you ponder over regionals?

[Jirato]

Going to simply put in the old chart for mines for now, while you ponder over regionals?

I'm not going to make it live until I fix the ore/gem situation.

What I'm considering now is mineral types would be pre-determined during the creation of the room in a finite quantity (though fairly high, so it'll take a considerable effort to completely "exhaust" a room). Mineral choices will no longer just be a random pick from a list that is populated based off the current size of the mine, but rather from a weighted list based on region, with the most common minerals coming up the majority of the time and the rarer minerals being few and far between.

Mine stability penalties based off of size will also be re-addressed to compensate for the above changes.

Oh, and rooms wouldn't be entirely deleted and rebuilt from scratch upon collapse either, but rather you'd simply have to re-dig into them to reconnect to the old room.

[Dorn]

So... if I get this right... you dig down to room A. It has a list of stuff. You mine it all out, there are no replacement veins like in the current system so you dig down to room B to find new stuff?

That's very awesome. Ultimately it will lead to a lot of dead rooms of course and large ramshackle mines. Very neat but the first thought into my mind is that it could still potentially screw with new players. Not immediately, or even for a very long time but I imagine the first places that will get strip mined will be near the towns making it harder and harder for people to get into it (due to the travel time with full wagons) into the future as it becomes more time consuming.

Love the concept, but just my immediate concern.

[Fayne]

The only thing I'm wondering about is, if someone opens a lathe mine, it runs dry, and they let it collapse completely, will every mine opened in that area in the future also be dry?

[Jirato]

The only thing I'm wondering about is, if someone opens a lathe mine, it runs dry, and they let it collapse completely, will every mine opened in that area in the future also be dry?

Yes. Mines will only be dig-able on the wilderness grid in rooms with adjacent mountains. When a mine is created, a mine data file will be created that contains the coordinates of that wilderness room as the unique identifier for the mine, and then internal mine coordinates to keep track of every room dug and its mineral allocations. If a shaft were to somehow collapse and a new one built in its place, it'd still use the same identifier (wilderness coordinates), so it'd pull up that mine file rather than generate a new one.

Mines will be greatly expandable though, so there's not much reason to really abandon a mine or dig more than one. When I'm saying the mine decay rate will be adjusted to compensate for the new system, I'm talking months, not days. A mine room with support beams could potentially last half a year or more. Though it could also take a five person team over a day to dig a shaft, depending on how active they are.

[Jirato]

Should add that this is entirely off my head and I'm just chatting about how I want to see things happen. There's no guarantee the final product will be exactly as described. Or even that it'll happen in a timely manner. I probably shouldn't discuss it at all, but kinda wanted to throw you guys something since I know you've been waiting FOREVER.

My typical approach is to keep super tight lipped and just wait until it's release, but I figure y'all would like to know what my thoughts are and also to get some feelers out for what your reaction would be.

I want to make mines special. Something that strongly encourages team effort. I really liked that about Gad's mine and would like to see that expanded in team digging efforts.

[Vitello]

Really like the ideas coming out. I understand no promises set in stone but it's great to know gears are turning.

Though it could also take a five person team over a day to dig a shaft, depending on how active they are.

What if the game goes through a slow phase of low players though?

Another concern is Corvus wouldn't be able to muster such crew, though arguably they wouldn't deplete a room as fast as a large team in the Haiban/Mistral area.

[Lun]

I think it's an interesting way to bring a community together. Sure, the Corvus people might not all use the mine, but it would benefit them all as a whole to work on it together. I usually see 3-4 Corvites roaming around a few hours a day, I don't think it'll be too hard to dig out a shaft.

(Is a whole day 24 hours, or 8 hours of playtime?)

[sona]

Im curious if there will still be chanced access to rare minerals/gems, or will that just be casual stocking of the import shop in the future? Or instead of glittering cavern chance drops, have higher chances of getting super rare materials the deeper you go.

What happens if two people try to make a mine at the same co-ords? I'm guessing it should be one mine per co-ord.And if they dig directionally, is the entire mine matched to that coord, or is it meant to match to the co-ord of whatever direction they've now dug in?

[Jirato]

What happens if two people try to make a mine at the same co-ords? I'm guessing it should be one mine per co-ord.And if they dig directionally, is the entire mine matched to that coord, or is it meant to match to the co-ord of whatever direction they've now dug in?

Only one shaft will be allowable per wilderness room. Keep in mind these rooms are miles wide. I don't intend to write anything so that, for example, you've got mountains to the east, you build a shaft in one room, someone else builds a shaft in the room north of you, you dig northeast, they dig southeast, and all of a sudden you're connected in the same mine. The internal mine coordinates are completely separate and will just be used for tracking purposes of where stuff has already been dug out and unique to each mine.

Though I do plan on enforcing digging towards the mountains. For example, mountains to the east of you, if you start a shaft, you can't just suddenly start digging straight west.

[Jirato]

Really like the ideas coming out. I understand no promises set in stone but it's great to know gears are turning.

Though it could also take a five person team over a day to dig a shaft, depending on how active they are.

What if the game goes through a slow phase of low players though?

Another concern is Corvus wouldn't be able to muster such crew, though arguably they wouldn't deplete a room as fast as a large team in the Haiban/Mistral area.

Right now it's all in my head. I'll try my best to tweak things before I impelment them so that it feels challenging enough trying to dig solo to encourage a group, but not entirely impossible.

Do keep in mind though, when you associate yourself with the dregs of society, yes, there are penalties to that. If you choose to live life as an outcast, certain things are going to be more difficult than others. That's one of the reasons why Corvus Outpost isn't a starting area any more. It is certainly not my intention to make sure everything is "fair" for Corvites vs non-Corvites.