Mining needs more minerals

[Camryn]

I need more flavor and variety in my backbreaking, rocksmashing labor.

Where are the magentic ores?

Where are the fossils?

Where are the fancy types of stone that do nothing but look neat?

Where's the weird-ass liquid metal?

Where is the volcanic glass?

Where's the microcline?

[BatElite]

You know I like the sound of this but I feel while we're at it we gotta address how opaque figuring out what minerals are good for what. I've gotten a bunch of this bullshit down through rote memorisation now and I still don't remember what things count as energy sources and whatnot.

Not a slight or anything it's just, a problem we shouldn't worsen

I do wanna drink the liquid metals though

hey this might be a terrible idea but what if we did a little algorithmic material generation roundstart, so while there's a range of good/bad/middling traits to go around a dozen ish mats it's different every time. Maybe you get lucky one round and one mineral type has 3 super high properties. Probably not, right

[eagletanker]

I feel like those would need a niche and recipes before they become materials. Minecraft style things of "use *insert ore* and you get armor thats a different/'has some effect". Currently the mining loop is just getting indy and then concussive gloves or the power hammer and then ?????, and cause Borhum, The Red One, and Uquill are the only materials that are really needed for that, those consquently are the only materials that really see use in a round.

[ReginaldHJ]

I think we'll need to decide what the purpose would be for new materials and ores out there and how to use them. And the more we can broaden the utility of *all* the different tools mining gets, the better.

Refactoring the nanocrucible to make specific ores out of specific materials instead of a fully modular system could be a way to make that better. Nanocrucible runs on plasma and oxygen sure... but uses char as a material for coking and refining. Or say the industrial armor takes bohrum + that coppery stuff ore. Also: where ore quality doesn't change the quality of the resulting ore, just the amount of purified little cubes you can pull out of it when you stick it in the reclaimer doodad. Better quality sells for more, or it gives you more material out of it.

That can make the lower end stuff still relevant to the construction of fancy shit. Especially if QM is directly involved- you send the right stuff back and ideally if they're on top of things, they'll make the stuff while you're out. Keep them happy and they might just make some good tools and charges and send them right to you. Kind of an engineering support staff, since miners are the major part of what gives them stuff to sell- so they want to keep each other happy, without it being strictly necessary.

I've gotten a bunch of this bullshit down through rote memorisation now and I still don't remember what things count as energy sources and whatnot.

So this is one of those changes where I think goon wanted to make it easier and more flexible but instead they kinda made it worse because of ambiguity.

Used to be you had specific resources to make specific things. You'd know that a heavy suit would take 15 bohrum and 10 claretine or whatever. And also like, you click it when you have 8 of the 10 needed stuff- but what did it take the other 2 from? It's not always clear.