CLOK BBS

Two new commands:

MINE FOCUS - (In the 5-10 seconds of roundtime) After you've found an ore or gem-type, you can choose to follow the vein and focus on the area around where you found the goodie, in order to get a higher probability of getting that ore or gem-type again! Maybe each mining attempt after that depletes the potential vein before the bonus eventually wears off.

MINE IGNORE - The opposite of MINE FOCUS! When you stumble on YET ANOTHER copper-ore, you can choose to ignore it and move somewhere completely different, for a lower probability of getting that same thing again.

Keep in mind there's only a few second window to put these commands in, so people will have to BE ON THE BALL!


Not only do I think these features will make mining a little more interesting, I think they'd be helpful for, say, when you don't want a grossly skewed ratio of coal to iron!

These are good ideas.

We do have plans to update mining to make it a bit more interactive and dynamic and give the miner a choice of what materials they persue in an area. These plans include, moving back to a vein based system with some veins much more rare than others and not always in the same location in an area. Quantities will also be limited... so if you find that diamond vein, yay! But once you mine that vein dry, it won't always be there in that same room when you come looking for it.

As things sit currently, once you've reached a high enough skill level to find a gemtype, you pretty much have unlimited access to that resource which I don't like. So rarity settings along with a challenge rating is definitely something I'd like to update to the mining system.

I plan on getting this updated soon-ish, hopefully. Rias promised me we would work on this a few weeks ago, but alas server crashes and other dev issues have taken priority. (It's always Rias' fault!) I may start to attempt this project by myself now that I'm getting a little more comfortable with coding. We'll see.

Let me add that we are definitely open to player suggestions and any ideas regarding how the mining system will be reworked are certainly not set in stone. (See what I did there?) A lot of the best ideas in CLOK have come from the players themselves. To me, that's what kept me coming back as a player and why I wanted to volunteer as a GM.

So, keep those awesome ideas flowing, hopefully we can make them come to life in one form or another.

Sooo, I got bored today, and went into a code frenzy. (I only broke the game once or twice this time.)

viewtopic.php?pid=2501#p2501

Just wanted to make a few comments about mining. The mine in Shadgard is a good place to learn mining since it is convenient. At a point, a players skill becomes high enough that they are able to mine precious ores and metals in other areas of the world. But it is nice to come back to Shadgard and mine. My concern is having to swing my pickaxe 20 times before I actually find copper. Also my roll chances to find anything are reduced due to three random events: shades, cave-ins, and gas pockets. There have been many times when I have spent 10 minutes dealing with those three events and not finding anything. I would like to think that my skill is high enough to find something fairly quickly in the Shadgard mine even if I have to deal with shades, cave-ins, and gas pockets. To me it feels that the throughput is not proportionate to the skill.

A few points I'd like to make:

- Mining is still easily the most lucrative crafting skill available. As such is should be the most challenging.
- As skill increases, the chance for cave ins and gas slowly decreases, but never goes away completely.
- As skill increases you have a higher *chance* to pass the rolls required to find a vein, but that does not mean you should be always finding material with every swing of the pickaxe. Even at higher levels.

- I've tested and played mining extensively, more so than Rias, or any other player or GM. This includes testing in for hours with a skilled character, and characters with under little to no mining skill, and I have tested each mine. This isn't meant to be a boast, but more to demonstrate that I care about the profession and its balance, and enjoy it greatly. It was one of the first reasons I came to CLOK, and is one of my favorite aspects of the game.

I'm happy to say I'm satisfied with the balance mining is at right now. It is difficult, but it is also the most rewarding professional skill.

Mining in reality is difficult, and takes patience and perseverance. (I am a big Gold Rush fan.) Mining in CLOK is meant to follow that vein(pun intended.) It is fun because of the diversity, the challenge and ultimately the reward. But it certainly may not be a favorite for every player.

I'll throw in a couple of thoughts on mining, even though I'm not the mining guru. Keep in mind these are just my opinions and I haven't discussed them with Landion or anything. I've also spent very little time mining.

Mining skill should go toward preventing cave-ins, avoiding gas leaks, and maybe a slight increase in the chance of finding veins. Which resources you get from mining is greatly dependent on luck, hoping you strike something good in the mountain. There's little one can do to detect what's going to be behind the stone. The big benefit of mining skill should be the quality of resources found, rather than the frequency. Obviously there could be some tricks to the trade, but you're not going to get to the point where you're constantly finding ore and gems. Being more skilled is not going to cause more ore and gems to spontaneously appear in the mountain. However, it will make the experience safer, and you'll be better at acquiring the resources without damaging them, resulting in higher quality (and selling for more money), and perhaps a slightly higher number of yields per vein.

I see mining as the gamble of the profession skills. You go into a dark cave and start hitting the rock, hoping to find something valuable behind the stone you chip away. Sometimes you'll find quartz or copper. With luck you'll find some shiny gemstones once in a while. On the other side of the spectrum is logging, which is completely consistent. You see an oak tree, cut it down and process it. Consistent income, but no chances of finding particularly pricey valuables such as gemstones, so the money potential is lower. Foraging is fairly consistent and low-income, but the real benefit will be the use of the herbs in alchemy. Farming is somewhere in-between, requiring a fair amount of effort and inconvenience, but the time spent can all be "front-loaded", and you can go and do other things while your crops grow, then come back, harvest, and sell when they're ready.

If I mine and it is luck that I am finding ore and gems then what use is the skill in mining? If I have to swing my pickeaxe several times to be interrupted by a shade, kill it then swing my axe several more times to have a cave-in, move then come back, and swing my axe a few more times to finally find something you have reduced my chances of finding something base on those two random events not just my roll.

Mining is difficult. That is why precious ores and gems should be very expensive.

[quote=Rias]
Mining skill should go toward preventing cave-ins, avoiding gas leaks, and maybe a slight increase in the chance of finding veins. ... The big benefit of mining skill should be the quality of resources found, rather than the frequency. ... it will make the experience safer, and you'll be better at acquiring the resources without damaging them, resulting in higher quality (and selling for more money), and perhaps a slightly higher number of yields per vein.[/quote]

This is how things currently are. In Rias' opinion, it should be even more luck based, but I' m satisfied since it requires a combination of skill and luck. As it should.

1 - Of all the materials available to be mined in an area, one type is selected at random.

(So if there are 10 resource types in an area, the lower chance you'll get the one type you are looking for, vs. an area with 4 types of resources.)

2 - The rarity of a vein is based on a simple 1-100 roll. The rarer the vein, the higher you have to roll.

3 - Your challenge rating is based on a 1 - (100+ your skill level) roll. If you roll higher than the challenge setting, you pass this check.

Passing both the rarity and challenge rolls together yields a vein. These rolls occur with each swing of the pickaxe.

Circumstances that effect rolls:
- Trader Guild Skills
- Quality of your pickaxe
- Actively channeling Geomancy

Luck is required to:
- Hit the material type you want.
- Pass the rarity check.
- Roll high enough on the challenge rating check.

Skill helps with:
- Higher chance to pass the challenge rating check.
- Higher quality of ore and gems.
- Lower chance of cave ins and gas.

This is fine but your math of the roles are even more muted do to three random events of critters walking in and attacking me (since I cant mine while being attacked), cave-ins (I could die of a crit hit to the head), and gas pockets. I am talking about the statistic of "Higher chance to pass the challenge rating check" is decreased to other events than me just swinging the axe.

If it affects lower chance of cave-ins, and one has a great amount of skill and is mining in the Shadgard mine, is rolling the chance to have 10 cave-ins in 10 minutes acceptable?

Perhaps as my skill in mining increases my RT decreases like with Lapidary?