Player Mine Changes

[Jirato]

Brief recap of what's already in the devlog, for anyone reading this in the future when it's buried beneath a bunch of other updates, or to clarify/expand on it if anyone wasn't sure what all it meant:

Player mines are now tracked as a grid. Previously, any tunnels you dug were just point to point, but they could actually wind up overlapping. For example, if you dug east, south, west, and north in that order. the last room you dug would actually be a new room altogether, even though, speaking from a directional perspective, it should be the room you started from. That has been corrected, and under the new system you can now "dig into" existing mine rooms. You can have a series of intersecting tunnels and freely traverse your mine.

With the above changes, mine rooms no longer collapse (get deleted) when they reach 0 progress. Yes, this means mine rooms are permanent now. I may add a system in the future where the exits collapse and you have to re-dig into it, but the mine room itself will always be there. These permanent mine rooms will make things such as installing sconces (And in the future, minecart tracks) much more practical though.

With the above change, the rarity of the minerals in a mine is no longer based purely on the number of rooms you have, but now how far you are from the origin (mine entrance). For example, in the previous system, all you had to do was dig 25 rooms in your mine and you'd have access to the rarest possible resources in every room of your mine. Under the new system, picture a square around your mine entrance. Now picture a larger square around that, and a larger square around that. The first, smaller square, will have the most common materials. The second square will have slightly rarer materials, and so on and so on.

Additionally, as you continue to uncover veins in a mine room, you will gradually deplete the number of available minerals. Once this counter reaches 0, that room will be considered a "depleted" room, and no more minerals will be found there. The counter is astronomically high for the first layer of rooms closest to your mine entrance, and gradually gets lower the further out you dig. There is a rare chance (determined at time of room creation) that a room will be a "treasure trove" and have a considerably higher (2 to 5 times more) counter than other rooms at a comparable depth.

Considerations for the future:
Removal of mine-size based penalties (more frequent cave-ins and gas-leaks)
Minecarts
Possible collapsing exits that need to be re-dug.
Ability to specify a direction to dig as the mine owner and then have other people assist in digging it with you.

[Edoras]

When you say "picture a square around your mine entrance" do you really mean a cube, in that digging 'down' is still travelling in that direction?

As well, I'm picturing that this means the best way to get the 'rarest' materials will be to dig in a single direction, correct?

[preiman]

this might make me unpopular, but I think I'd be okay with rooms eventually vanishing completely, even entire mines eventually vanishing back into the wilderness if not attended to after long enough. I think it would help keep the wilderness from becoming littered with too many of them, as long time inactive mines would eventually be gone.

[Lun]

I'd be okay with player mine claims being taken from them if inactive for a year. However I don't think this should be automated, this should be something done via guru intervention.

By inactive I mean the entrance has closed. There are prime examples of at least three mine claims abandoned and collapsed to only the entrance.

[jilliana]

I love the mining changes. I think you've done a great job, Jirato. However, I've already noticed something with someone else's mine. The room deteriorates really fast. It may be due to there not being the complete number of supports in the room, but even so, that's really fast. Is this meant to be done or what's the deal with that?

[Lun]

It depends on use.

If you're using the room a lot and it crumbles a lot it deteriorates quickly if you're not taking good care of it by digging it out every once in a while.

It only goes down about 2 points a night. Maybe a little more or less. It takes four rounds of digging for me to clean a room up. Note that low mining skill players and non artisans take longer to dig than well trained artisans or even well trained normies.

That being said, yes, it takes at least two hours of daily digging to maintain a 30 room mine. They're time investments!

[jilliana]

Thanks for the deets. :)

[Lun]

Hey, J, just wanted to give some feedback after using player mines for a month or so.

Mine digging speed/rate: I really enjoy the kind of progressive feeling we get as we attain higher levels of mining, which correlates to a higher digging speed. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with how quickly mines deteriorate and the amount of work needed to maintain them. There's a healthy balance where an appropriate sized mine can be maintained by one person working a few hours a day.

Mine resource availability: I've seen a pretty wide spread of materials. Overall, I think the rate of rarer materials is a BIT too infrequent, as copper, obsidian, quartz, tin, coal, and lead tend to overcrowd even the deepest areas of the mine i have. Iron is also surprisingly rare. Overall, it's fine the way it is. I blame my luck for poor spawns.

Mine random encounter rate: Pretty good. They're rare at best, and when you do, it's either incredibly inconvenient or incredible.





I noticed that you posted there's a mine-size penalty that causes greater amounts of caveins and gas leaks. I recently broke into the 30 total rooms mark, and I've noticed that no matter what layer i'm mining in, I'm getting frequent caveins. Frequent as in once every few minutes, and a master mining unlocked Artisan reported the same issue in my mine. I have 1789 mining, but I'm triggering caveins every five minutes or so, and I see my mining rate has slowed by about 30% due to frequently needing to stop to dig.

Would it be possible to put in a collapse <direction> command for mine owners to reduce the number of rooms we have, in order to reduce the penalty, or to consider lightening the penalty that additional mine rooms cause? With mineral depletion, eventually, a player mine will be more unstable than a glittering cave at the current rate, as we'll need to dig new sections every so often.

I would simply allow a segment to deteriorate, but like you said, a 0 durability room isn't collapsed, it's still there, just inaccessible, and thereby exerts an effect on the mines cavein rates anyway.

If you're willing to complicate the formula a bit, maybe a well-reinforced and well mined shaft with %healthgreater than 65 has a reduced chance of caveins, whereas shafts with health >30% can't be mined in at all. I have the room dug out to fully reinforced with two supports, but still face a lot of caveins due to the general mine size.

[Edoras]

I noticed that you posted there's a mine-size penalty that causes greater amounts of caveins and gas leaks. I recently broke into the 30 total rooms mark, and I've noticed that no matter what layer i'm mining in, I'm getting frequent caveins. Frequent as in once every few minutes, and a master mining unlocked Artisan reported the same issue in my mine. I have 1789 mining, but I'm triggering caveins every five minutes or so, and I see my mining rate has slowed by about 30% due to frequently needing to stop to dig.

From the last thread J made about mines:

In the future:
MINE command not being available until stage 5 or above.
System to calculate the "depth" of a mine (how far the room is from the entrance) to determine ore and gem availability and rarity).
With the above, the elimination of mine size requirements for gem rarity, and also removal of mine size penalties for stability/cave-ins.

It would seem like J had already intended to lower or remove the overall mine size penalty for cave-ins, but didn't get around to it in the last pass.

[Aranon]

Being playing with these for a little while now. Any chance the considerations at the bottom of the OP have been considered?