Poll: Changes to mining in X4:Foundations Update 4.0

[Bernd]

Hello everybody,

you may have noticed that during the last couple of beta versions of 4.0, we have made a number of balancing changes that all affect all types of mining (especially notable when some changes broke the economy in one beta).

The general goal is to make mining more interesting but not as easy. Profitability will be reduced for simple repetitive mining and it will be necessary to explore more regions and deploy resource probes.

Things that have already been done include:

• The speed of mining operation is now more dependent on skill of a crew and region specifics. Silicon mining in particular may take longer in most cases. As a result, the time taken for actual mining should now be more significant compared to the time selling the resources off to refineries (or delivering to your own)
• Mining ships will only mine in known regions and not go into as yet unexplored systems.
• The mining AI commands were made to work with the newly introduced loop behaviour and multiple bugs were fixed.
• Resource probes are preferred as locations for mining. Starting with the next beta, the area around probes will be compared to the surrounding area, and only preferred if the marked spot is currently above average.
• Depletion of regions goes much faster now and replenishment takes longer so that the combined effect should be noticeable for the first time, requiring large scale mining operations by NPCs as well as the player to be more dynamic.
• There are new threats for mining ships - Kha'ak in particular are attracted to lucrative mining regions, making it more important to protect your mining ships.
• Other layers of the economy were changed to give food products more importance than before and also boosting the effect workforce has on station production.

Today we want to hear your opinion about one further change we consider for the next beta:

We are considering making all regions near the central highway ring a lot less profitable for mining thereby driving mining ships further into the periphery of the X universe. The effect will be longer travel times and higher risks for mining ships.

The reason why this change may be seen as more intrusive than the others listed above, is that it will change, not just absolute profit, but relative profitability of refineries you have built in your existing savegames. If, for example, you have placed your own refineries in Argon Prime, then your mining ships will now have to fly much longer distances to bring Ore or Silicon there. If we go ahead with this change, we believe the resource levels would be more realistic and the effect it has on the mining activities would be a net positive.

So here you have it: we are aware this will be controversial and people will have different opinions about it. Please give us your vote: Are you for or against this change?

Link to poll on this topic: Google docs poll


As always: Thank you very much for supporting our team and the X games. We are very much looking forward to the 4.00 release on March 16th!


-Bernd

[Lord Crc]

Poll answered.

We are considering making all regions near the central highway ring a lot less profitable for mining thereby driving mining ships further into the periphery of the X universe. The effect will be longer travel times and higher risks for mining ships.

Awesome! This is something I've wanted strongly for a long time, so I'm very eager to see this in practice.

It makes a lot of sense from a logical/lore perspective, and in my mind add more to the "think" aspect of the game. It should add a lot more incentive to have sector patrols and such.

The only thing that's a bit scary about this change is that ships assigned to guard other ships did not work very well in pre 4.0 (I haven't had a chance to play the 4.0 beta yet), which could lead to frustration. To not make it very frustrating, this aspect might need some more work.

[Wehrwolf_10]

You made the right decision, now there is a motivation to build up stations in remote areas of space

[BaronVerde]

For my taste too limited to fighting ...

... but it appears I'm rather unique here

[Buzz2005]

I always wanted this, what's the point of this large sectors when there is nothing there, even now roid fields expand a lot further but have 0 resources

[Max Bain]

I think the changes are exactly what x4 needs. More challenge to build up a good running economy and make more dangerous sectors more important.

U just missed to explain players all the details as you did here when releasing 4.0 beta. I think then the flaming would be less.

But I also fear a bit that the npc factions could suffer more from the changes than the player. I hope that will be tested a lot.

[Clownmug]

I don't care how it's changed so long as resource probes aren't mandatory. Such a waste of time game mechanic.

[Y-llian]

For my taste too limited to fighting ...

... but it appears I'm rather unique here

While I enjoy some of the military play I’m also sensitive that others do prefer a less aggressive play style. And I too, do enjoy moments where I can just peacefully build up my corner of the galaxy. On balance then, I opted to vote no for additional mining resource adjustments - let the current beta changes settle down and let’s see how the majority of player base, beyond beta players like me, fare.

[Repli]

I don't care how it's changed so long as resource probes aren't mandatory. Such a waste of time game mechanic.

Hey,
there are many complaints about lacking the explore and think part of the game. So these two aspects become more important. For some people this may be a waste of time, for some others not. And you do not have to deploy the probes yourself. Finding the new ressource areas could be done by your employees, too

I love the Idea that the outer sectors become more important. But my biggest concern is as already mentioned by someone above, that NPC can handle it, too. While xenon-sectors probably stays rich in ressources, it could be hard for NPC factions to keep track with Xenon. Split suffers already from their low local ressources.

[Jeraal]

What I see happening with the mining adjustments is people will feel they need to build more stations and more ships just to earn close to the money they were getting before. Which will lead to a further drain on CPU resources. And that will lead to complaints about game optimization. Personally, I always liked having large mining fleets in the X games without stations. X4 has never been very good at property list management. If the beta has changed this, please let me know.

As for the resource probes, it seems we're going need to put a lot more down. They are a nice idea that in my opinion are not implemented well. I only used them to remind me what resources were in the sector. If miners can mine without them, that's probably what I'll be doing.

[FatalKeks]

I think always keeping existing savagames in mind is of course very noble, but this mindset also hinders necessary rebalancings and larger development steps. In a perfect world the ressource destribution (and many other things) could be configurable via ingame options, but I imagine this to be a balancing nightmare.

So in my opinion: go for the changes which fit your creative vision. But keep a beta branch with the current state for the people, who do not want to adjust their current savegame or start a new game.

[BigBANGtheory]

I like the concept and direction of making mining more interesting so long as it doesn't come at the expense of being frustrating i.e. mining and support ships getting destroyed, high levels of on-going micro-management, idle ships, being unable to provide resources at a good rate for building and PHQ plot etc.

Personally I think mining as of update 4 beta 7 is broken, because:
- resources aren't just depleting faster, in some case they are down to zero in minutes!
- I don't mind having to place more resource probes, I do mind having to continually recover and redeploy resource probes
- the correlation of resource maps and in game aids/tools really isn't working that well atm you have areas marked on the map, long-range scan glow (that decays far too fast imho), local scanning along with resource probes and auto-miners that all seem to give differing results and information. I can drop a resource probe next to an Nvidium asteroid and it shows no resources
- probably need mobile refineries for this idea to work
- assigning ship protection to miners sounds interesting but OOS combat can get a bit sketchy, having set a miner to a task I really don't want to have to micro-mange it
- if asteroid fields and gas clouds deplete do they replenish at some point? that feels like something that would happen of 1000's of years in space
- I have autominers setup in update 4 beta which after their first run at mining and selling haven't then sold anything for hours!

I think the player that spends more time and effort setting up their mining operations should be rewarded for that, but in terms of maintenance and dynamic change I see that being fraught with problems right now.

I think its something X4 could benefit from long-term but it doesn't feel remotely ready or balanced yet.

[Clownmug]

I don't care how it's changed so long as resource probes aren't mandatory. Such a waste of time game mechanic.

Hey,
there are many complaints about lacking the explore and think part of the game. So these two aspects become more important. For some people this may be a waste of time, for some others not. And you do not have to deploy the probes yourself. Finding the new ressource areas could be done by your employees, too

I love the Idea that the outer sectors become more important. But my biggest concern is as already mentioned by someone above, that NPC can handle it, too. While xenon-sectors probably stays rich in ressources, it could be hard for NPC factions to keep track with Xenon. Split suffers already from their low local ressources.

Probes don't address lack of explore or think objectives for me. It's mindless busy work where I fly around aimlessly or use an npc and click around the map randomly.

[Y-llian]

But I also fear a bit that the npc factions could suffer more from the changes than the player. I hope that will be tested a lot.

Yes, I worry about this too. The NPC factions aren’t good at protecting their miners and without raw materials their economies will stagnate. The Xenon, in turn, will gain an even more significant advantage given their less sophisticated economy.

That said, I’m open to seeing how things fall out in a beta phase, if the proposed additional changes do go ahead.

[Shuulo]

What I see happening with the mining adjustments is people will feel they need to build more stations and more ships just to earn close to the money they were getting before. Which will lead to a further drain on CPU resources. And that will lead to complaints about game optimization. Personally, I always liked having large mining fleets in the X games without stations. X4 has never been very good at property list management. If the beta has changed this, please let me know.

As for the resource probes, it seems we're going need to put a lot more down. They are a nice idea that in my opinion are not implemented well. I only used them to remind me what resources were in the sector. If miners can mine without them, that's probably what I'll be doing.

1. Beta has noticeable improvements to performance even on my 5-years old PC.
2. In beta you can assign subordinates to your miner with "mimic" order, creating mining fleets so there is no more issue with properly list

[Shehriazad]

I'd love it if "core" sectors were more barren of resources...it would make a lot of sense as well. Core sectors have been "used" for decades or even hundreds of years...yet the millions to billions of people have not depleted the resources at their front door?

Will it slow down the economy? Maybe.
Will it offer new opportunities? Definitely.
The main "loop" sectors should only be producing the endproducts and not also be super rich in resources other than the sun.

[aurumgallente]

1. Please, make mining activity impossible for ships without mining guns or turrets, it is silly that they can mine OOS.
2. Make OOS mining speed more dependable on installed equipment, there should be significant difference between ship with 2 best mining turrets + mining gun and ship with only 1 cheap mining turret.
3. Please, fix problems with cargo capacity for L and XL mining ships when their home station requires more than 1 type of gas/minerals ship can mine. My L miners use only half of their cargo because another half is filled with dead weight resource and I have to solve it manually.
4. Increase speed of gas/mining drones and allow them to use travel mode. Sometimes L/XL miner can wait for mining drone for 1 hour even when ship is attacked.
5. Well, I give my miners best radars and they still do not run when khaaks/xenons are nearby. There should be an option for miners to run/ignore enemies in radar range and not to wait until they are attacked. Miners in X3 Bonus Pack have more brains than X4 miners.
6. Please, nerf Nividium mining. It breaks the game very fast, Nividium has to be more rare and/or dangerous to mine. Profitability of Nividium mining makes all other types of early game activities meaningless.

[Axeface]

I havent had a chance to really test, so I wont answer the poll. Overall though I like the direction, but I do have concerns about having to constantly search for areas and place beacons. I think if the player finds a very lucrative spot that spot should stay lucrative?
These are randomly generated right? Or if I start a new game will I find the same resource deposits at the same spots? Is it possible to find very high yeild spots in low yield sectors, if you search deep into a sector?

If you go ahead with these changes, could a new behaviour where a crew actively searches for resources and places probes help? Some automation in finding the spots might make it much more bearable for certain players. Give them a 'minimum yield' setting so if they place probes in a bad area they pick them back up and only keep the really good ones (perhaps the yield threshold could be chosen by the player).

I also feel like the return of ore mines could add more depth and options to go along with these changes - ore mines should not be able to to extract as much as mobile miners, but it could be a permanent efficient option rather than 'get rich quick' mobile mining.

- the correlation of resource maps and in game aids/tools really isn't working that well atm you have areas marked on the map, long-range scan glow (that decays far too fast imho), local scanning along with resource probes and auto-miners that all seem to give differing results and information. I can drop a resource probe next to an Nvidium asteroid and it shows no resources

To me this is the biggest problem, afaik there is no correlation between visible asteroids and available resources which makes exploration for resources much more frustrating than it should be. 'Find yield' missions are very frustrating for this reason, and these mining changes basically make these missions a requirement.

- if asteroid fields and gas clouds deplete do they replenish at some point? that feels like something that would happen of 1000's of years in space

I think of it as 'discovered resource nodes' rather than 'replenishment'... in my mind the ships in the area have to scan around to accurately pinpoint the resource nodes that have been discovered by the probe, this takes time to do so the resources seem to 'replenish'

[chew-ie]

We are considering making all regions near the central highway ring a lot less profitable for mining thereby driving mining ships further into the periphery of the X universe. The effect will be longer travel times and higher risks for mining ships.

Awesome! I voted for exactly that & hope for a new challenge. Right now mining is too efficient.

[GCU Grey Area]

Very much approve of the proposed change & voted in favour of it in the poll. Makes a lot of sense that easily accessible core sectors would become depleted.

Do think however it might be necessary to increase the amounts & variety of resources available on the fringes. For example, in my current 4.0B game I'm doing the Scale Plate Green terraforming project. Discovered that there's very little Methane or Ice in that corner of the map. Solution to that problem was to build stations elsewhere (Pious Mists II & Bright Promise specifically) to process Methane & Ice, & send the resulting Graphene & Water to my HQ. Works OK, even with the recent problems with mining in the beta.

However, occurs to me that setup won't work if all the sectors near the ring road are depleted. May be other areas on the fringes where particular resources are in short supply & the only way to get them currently is from busier areas near the centre of the map - exactly the sort of places which will be affected most by this change.