Poll: Changes to mining in X4:Foundations Update 4.0

[atavistuk]

If it can't be automated with a loss of efficiency, and the AI Factions can't make use of it, it's a terrible idea.

So this change is basically a bad idea.

All this change does is give the Xenon all the resources, and starves the Player and the AI Factions of them. And the Xenon already have too many advantages.

After thinking about things edit: Is there any way to automate Resource Probes? Mods or the like? As it is, Prospecting Missions have always been impossible to complete considering it's impossible to know where resources are at the moment, chasing after them in the future is just going to be horrible.

[BigGreenThugs]

And here is the kick in the teeth. In addition to making mining "different" they have increased the amount of raw materials needed by a large margin. I will re-post what I put in the beta forum.

The point is that they (the devs) reduced the output of production modules without reducing the cost of production. This means that at every level in between raw materials and finished product adds a multiplier to the raw materials cost. The scale is not linear. The only end product where this is not the case is Energy Cells because they have no raw material and are not transformed to another product. You simply have 9 Solar panels where before you had 8 and you're producing the same amount.

If the devs had correspondingly lowered the cost of of producing in the ratio that they had reduced the production, then the scale would be linear and you could just simply add extra production modules and problem solved. I'm going to use refined metals as an example. Before, it took 5760 Ore to produce 2400 Refined Metal per hour. Now it takes 6545 Ore to produce 2400 Refined metals per hour. (well it takes 5760 Ore to make 2112 refined metals) If they wanted he raw materials cost at the same ratio but the factories to just produce fewer, then 2112 Refined Metals/hour should cost 5069 Ore. If that's the case then you just need to add more Refined Metals modules to your factory to make up the difference. But in reality in 4.0 you have to add modules AND mine more Ore.

Here is another example: Weapon components.
If we want to produce 400/hour (one module) in 3.3 it cost 40 hull parts and 60 plasma conductors. Now we need 48 hull parts and 72 plasma conductors per hour. Because every level of production now multiplies the raw materials cost, for 400 weapon parts you go from 82 Ore 348 Methane 487 Helium to 123 Ore 541 Methane 771 Helium.

This example does not use actual numbers from the game but it's close.
I need 1000 Claytronics This is made of Quantum Tubes, Microchips and Antimatter cells. At each level of production multiply the cost by 1.2
So I need (1.2*1.2*1.2 Methane) and (1.2*1.2*1.2 Helium) and (1.2*1.2 Hydrogen) and (1.2*1.2*1.2 Silicon) That's 1.73*Methane + 1.73*Helium + 1.44*Hydrogen + 1.73*Helium for the same 1000 Claytronics.
So here is the Question devs: Did you intend for the end products to cost more raw materials the further down the production chain you go? Or did you want to cost to scale linearly so that we as players would just have to build more production modules to compensate?

[Tanvaras]

As it stands in my current Beta 4 play through, my whole galaxy wide issue of Claytronics has caused the game to stall. Not a single faction can build a station at this time due to only 2 claytronic stations in the whole map regions and they are struggling to produce them due to lack of resources. Ore, Silicon, Methane, Helium, and hydrogen are all virtually dead, probes everywhere and all at "Zero".

So if your going to go ahead with the changes (which I do feel are good) you need to look at better respawn rates or people games are going to stagnate very quickly. I am at that position I need to quit and restart, but this game I currently playing is a whole 20 hours old and already struggling for resources.

on top of the above, quote from the list if things from OP "The speed of mining operation is now more dependent on skill of a crew " Best get some changes to learning rates too, I like playing Vanilla, but at this time I use a mod tailored to my liking for learning speed (which is very low, but far superior to your vanilla of 1 in a billion chance of a skill point). I play X4 for fun, not a job. I dont want a miner to be taking 30 hours+ to gain a second star, and dont get me started on a trade ship, cause sheesh, A trade ship you be able to do its job, but not until its 3 star pilot... so another mirco management needed once again for many hours to pray to RNG Jesus for a star or 3.

So good things in this idea for mining, but it needs to be thoroughly thought out and implemented correctly. Cause all in all is a game, not a job!

[Trajan von Olb]

After thinking about things edit: Is there any way to automate Resource Probes? Mods or the like? As it is, Prospecting Missions have always been impossible to complete considering it's impossible to know where resources are at the moment, chasing after them in the future is just going to be horrible.

That's a good point! Because the real problem with this is that you can't really find good resources in a targeted way - it's a game of chance with trial and error! It's fun 3 times, then it's just annoying. Or you lay a whole net, which becomes confusing. As a player you want control. Work yes, but not an unplannable game of chance.
So maybe you should think of a mechanism to "feel your way" to the good spots. For example, a resource probe not only describes the location, but also indicates the direction in which there are more resources. At best, we also get a device for the ship's equipment that can be used to do this - so the search for resources becomes like a scavenger hunt - and that's fun. If you can then (rarely) have EXTREME finds in such a search (like in a treasure hunt), then a new game mechanic is found that can captivate.

Then it would be important to not only know something about the "density" of the resource probes, but also about the "sustainability" - so that you can not only bet on fast mining, but also on the longevity of the mining site - both together would then be a main prize, and something like that makes the game exciting!

In addition - and I agree with the previous speakers - there is really a problem with the pilots' leveling. And because it's so difficult, it leads to a consequential problem: because it's actually a drama to lose a miner, because you can simply have them reproduced with effort. But if there are personnel on it that have been built up over a long period of time, then I would reload at all costs instead of replacing the miner. This eliminates the real "sink" caused by enemy contact. You simply don't do it any more but reload - and only because of the team, although you could otherwise accept the loss.
I don't know yet how the new "escape mechanics" for pilots will work and whether this will then also be possible for personnel - but then a lot of micromanagement would be necessary again to reload the miner. Better, but not optimal...

Schmollo

[rubahax4]

Of course I'm in favor.
In 4bet7, having flown into a new sector, you can already see a list of possible resources on the map. All that remains is to place the probes.
One fully equipped aircraft carrier is enough to guard the miners.
If you need more resources - forward into the unknown. Discover new corners of the universe, strive to go where you have never been. Isn't it exciting?
For those who like to sit in one place, enjoying the realization of their empire, you can choose the difficulty level in the form of the rate of depletion of resources.

[Gavrushka]

So, after to reading through this thread, I really think it was a dreadful time to ask the question. - Mining is in the biggest state of flux its ever been in, throughout X4's life, and there are issues regarding levelling, OOS combat, Khaak threats and resource levels.

To be clear, I really love the idea, but it's difficult to see the impact at present. I think we're a few beta game changes away from being able to talk with any authority on how we feel about further mining changes... Maybe 4.5 can look at it, including some hard-as-nails mining porcupines who can ignore attacks from smaller fighters... - Ohh, maybe I can instruct my miners to 'hold fire' and maybe they will carry on mining and ignore khaak, but will that then stop mining lasers from doing their thing?

I think a fair few of the 'hell no' people are pretty angry because an element of their game has already dropped into quicksand due to the volatile and dramatic nature of the changes, and now the suggestion is to make finding resources even harder, so right now the question is a bit of a poison chalice to many.

In Eighteen Billion, where I have more miners than the North East of England in its heyday, I've had to send a fleet of military ships simply to mop up endless Khaak. - And I've had to send my boarding fleet of Frigates too, and micromanage their protect position locations, and further issue individual attack orders because around 80% of the vast mining fleet had engaged in perpetual battles with the enemy. - I only noticed when my resources had disappeared, checked the miners, and saw the swathe of red targets...

So perhaps it *might* have been better to ask the question after the current issues had been resolved, as some game changes have had unexpected side effects on mining behaviour.

And, yeah, levelling miners...

[Gavrushka]

Just a further thought, but obviously for beyond 4.0. - Why not have a secondary 'factory designer' but for mobile mining factories, complete with their own mining drones, ridiculously large engines, storage modules and tailored defences. - If you're moving resources far from the centre of the map, it could become another great later-game element, although I do appreciate just how large a task it would be to take on. - Thing is, the whole simulation is built on resource gathering, and so it would be nice to see that element of the game develop as all others do. - You can buy L class miners not many hours after starting play, and that's the pinnacle of the resource gathering gameplay. - Give it another step. Hell, old dudes like me would even pay for such things as another DLC...

[chew-ie]

Just a further thought, but obviously for beyond 4.0. - Why not have a secondary 'factory designer' but for mobile mining factories, complete with their own mining drones, ridiculously large engines, storage modules and tailored defences. - If you're moving resources far from the centre of the map, it could become another great later-game element, although I do appreciate just how large a task it would be to take on. - Thing is, the whole simulation is built on resource gathering, and so it would be nice to see that element of the game develop as all others do. - You can buy L class miners not many hours after starting play, and that's the pinnacle of the resource gathering gameplay. - Give it another step. Hell, old dudes like me would even pay for such things as another DLC...

How about building a temporary "mining" station on that big asteroid in the center of a resource region? Not to mine for resources mind you but for - well having an asteroid base (:D) - and a stylish way to offer a central deposit point for all the little miners.

Besides that, I'm all for a carrier-like XL mobile mining ship. Having those vulnerable giants flying around gives fleets a new purpose and underlines the exploring'n nomad playstyle as well as enabling us to have huge remote mining operations.

I like

[Artean]

I voted 'yes'. I really like risk vs reward and a bigger difference between civilized sectors and rural/outer. Perhaps this can be tied in with the terraforming system too, as an option to convert outer sectors to less dangerous and less prone to attacks from Xenon, pirates and Kha'ak?

[easternsun]

Of course I'm in favor.
In 4bet7, having flown into a new sector, you can already see a list of possible resources on the map. All that remains is to place the probes.
One fully equipped aircraft carrier is enough to guard the miners.
If you need more resources - forward into the unknown. Discover new corners of the universe, strive to go where you have never been. Isn't it exciting?
For those who like to sit in one place, enjoying the realization of their empire, you can choose the difficulty level in the form of the rate of depletion of resources.

If you only have 1 mining ship it works out great. Some of us has recreated the ottoman empire and this change has broken our economies. Give us another enemy not make the economy the enemy. I've litrally mined every sector that has methane out. There is no where else to go. Even Matrix 9 I've started methane mining and it's still not enough.

I used to be able to keep 200 Graphene modules going with GE and PM sectors. Now I've expanded to Eighteen Billion and Matrix 9 and they still stall after a few hours of gameplay. I used to be able to feed the wars with HOP and Keep the xenon locked in a corner of the galaxy as they all lost their original sectors. Now, the Xenon are winning as my shipyards run out of resources.

[Raevyan]

The recent mining change as it currently stands in beta 7 quite heavily limits raw resources and therefor the max economy one could build. I really don’t like limiting that.

On another node: Factions and players now need way more miners to fulfill demand. More miner = more ai entities = bad for game performance.

[Gavrushka]

If you only have 1 mining ship it works out great. Some of us has recreated the ottoman empire and this change has broken our economies. Give us another enemy not make the economy the enemy. I've litrally mined every sector that has methane out. There is no where else to go. Even Matrix 9 I've started methane mining and it's still not enough.

I used to be able to keep 200 Graphene modules going with GE and PM sectors. Now I've expanded to Eighteen Billion and Matrix 9 and they still stall after a few hours of gameplay. I used to be able to feed the wars with HOP and Keep the xenon locked in a corner of the galaxy as they all lost their original sectors. Now, the Xenon are winning as my shipyards run out of resources.

I feel for you, easternsun, and I imagine changes will be made in the next beta, but those subscribing to the beta test should always anticipate short-term 'difficult' consequences of playtesting prior to public release. - I don't think you'll have to wait long to see the situation improved, but I also feel there will be extreme cases where specific players, due to their play style, will see some changes as having a far more detrimental effect on their game than others. - And I see now why the idea of larger resource fields, distant and hostile, would be a necessary addition rather than just something for the wishlist.

And one other thing I said elsewhere, is I'd love to see ventures enabled to allow a player to send their surplus raw materials to other players who are requesting it on the multiverse noticeboard. It wouldn't make much of a difference to larger empires, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.

And perhaps there should be an alchemical guild whereby raw materials can be converted from one thing to another. X4, after all, is way off in the future...

... And how about unmanned fuel scoops zoom off to the sun and scoop materials from there, taking a game day or two to return, and with a cargo capacity to make it worthwhile.

It's crazy to have a universe, filled with planets, suns and asteroid belts, and not have enough materials to support a few shipyards...

But, as I said, changes will be coming, I am sure.

[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.

Everything works correctly for me ...
I almost terraformed the biosphere of the second planet and believe me, the amount of resources needed has NOTHING to do with a shipyard.
Not even one that produces 4 Raptors at the same time would be enough...
Realize that only ONE terraforming step requires all the necessary resources to complete the X3 HUB storyline.
I had to enlarge my HQ 5x to support terraforming and I fixed any kind of mining / gas shortage in my supplies.

I bet that is not from a new start though from v4beta7....

In v4beta7 I barely got my PHQ up and running and researched before one faction literally tore apart the home sector of another, as a player I wasn't in a position to do anything.

I don't mind slowing the overall pace of progression down if it applies to all factions. I really mind investing time and effort into pointless or dead-end activities and at no point did the game warn me about depletion rates nor did it give me the tools, the means, the good gameplay experience to go fix it. Instead I have to work with resource maps that are basically wrong, scanning tools which lie and resource probes that I have to manually place like 'pinning the tail on the donkey'. If Egosoft can fix all that then yeah great I'm all in, but as of right now its not good its so bad in fact that for I think the first time ever I opted back out of the beta, and I love some the 4.0 updates I absolutely want to be running on v4.

Overall I think the proposal and direction is a good one from Egosoft it just needs to come as a complete package, a suite of changes to make it work well from a gameplay perspective. Having to for example baby sit Sector Autominers because the AI whilst it might functionally work but in reality does a pretty poor job is not my idea of fun. Having an L Miner with a refinery attached like Red Dwarf might be a cool solution but we haven't got that right now, we have AI and NPC pilots that like to sit idle and get themselves killed

[GCU Grey Area]

I used to be able to keep 200 Graphene modules going with GE and PM sectors...

Think this may be exactly the sort of thing the changes are intended for. That's a staggeringly huge amount of production (around 300,000 Graphene per hour?) being supplied by a ridiculously tiny area of the map. If you really want to recreate something on the scale of the Ottoman empire in space it should be drawing in resources from all over the map, not just a couple of sectors. Bear in mind that one of the 4.0 changes is to allow mining ships to trade gases & minerals between stations, so setting up remote mining stations & transporting those resources to a central processing station is now viable.

[dtpsprt]

I feel for you, easternsun, and I imagine changes will be made in the next beta, but those subscribing to the beta test should always anticipate short-term 'difficult' consequences of playtesting prior to public release. - I don't think you'll have to wait long to see the situation improved, but I also feel there will be extreme cases where specific players, due to their play style, will see some changes as having a far more detrimental effect on their game than others. - And I see now why the idea of larger resource fields, distant and hostile, would be a necessary addition rather than just something for the wishlist.

There is way more than changes to be made. Egosoft has succumbed to the greatest error and that is playing with more than one variable at a time for the same subject. One might accept this from a new developer, a kid out of uni last year with no more than 2-3 projects under it's belt. Egosoft might be a small firm but not an inexperienced one.
Then there is the precedent on Egosoft's behaviour of not rolling back when a mistake is made but trying to "fix" and "tweak" going on with what is, admitedly, wrong.
Biggest example is the pilot levelling system. It turns out that pilot experience is not only relevant for taking on tasks such as Autotrader and Expert Automining. It is also used for picking up appropriate runs from the pool the Station Manager is putting in regards to the vessel, this leads to L Traders picking up 15 Energy Cells runs, Miners filling their cargo with unwanted resources and thus limiting the amount of wanted resources they mine if any... Now pilot skill is needed also for using the probes for successful mining!!!

[dtpsprt]

I used to be able to keep 200 Graphene modules going with GE and PM sectors...

Think this may be exactly the sort of thing the changes are intended for. That's a staggeringly huge amount of production (around 300,000 Graphene per hour?) being supplied by a ridiculously tiny area of the map. If you really want to recreate something on the scale of the Ottoman empire in space it should be drawing in resources from all over the map, not just a couple of sectors. Bear in mind that one of the 4.0 changes is to allow mining ships to trade gases & minerals between stations, so setting up remote mining stations & transporting those resources to a central processing station is now viable.

Indeed it is but it is also "halfbaked" at least (trying not to use offensive language here), since Egosoft's answer to any and all requests of gameplay is "more resources needed" and "more money needed" just crunching time this way instead of creating interesting and intriguing content to bring X4 to the life expectancy of X2 and X3.

[Stumbling]

I used to be able to keep 200 Graphene modules going with GE and PM sectors...

Bear in mind that one of the 4.0 changes is to allow mining ships to trade gases & minerals between stations, so setting up remote mining stations & transporting those resources to a central processing station is now viable.

You are correct that Its viable, but as patrol AI scripts are lacking its really difficult/impossible to protect all of these miners working remotely. Khaak are teleporting 3-4 ships (sometimes to 3 locations in the same area) at a constant rate in the systems they are in right next to the miners, and if thats in our mining station system you cant protect without a huge amount of micro management and combat ships (which early game players cant afford).

I like the thought of mining stations and miners working more realistically, but they need to drastically improve the patrol and miners reaction AI first or new playthroughs will be painful (they are already slower with the current beta changes). We really need to thoroughly test the next beta patch to see how all of the cumulative changes will work when the resource related bugs have been removed and then build a roadmap of what needs to be improved before they make a change of this size.

[Y-llian]

We really need to thoroughly test the next beta patch to see how all of the cumulative changes will work when the resource related bugs have been removed and then build a roadmap of what needs to be improved before they make a change of this size.

Agreed re testing... And I’m a little concerned that there’ll be enough time before the COH release. No doubt we’ll find issues that will need retesting which makes the deadline quite tight now.

[Waltz99]

khaak pose no thread to mining ships.
Laser weapons are so weak that they barely do damage. They will only delay the mining ship doing its job. and its anoying like hell.
I had one miner killing 8 khaak ships without being damagaed OOS.

The mineral mining was already a pain to get because for every station I nearly need double miners to keep the station going.
With the new changes this gets even worse. Gas mining on the other hand I never experienced problems with.

I personally don't like the resource probes. I never used them in the past and now forced to use them or my miners barely do anything.
And now we have to spend very much time deploying the probes. because if you make another ship deploy a probe there is no guarentee it will be deployed within the asteroid field.

Seriously, Mining is a great income for starting a game and now you are making it very hard to even start the game experience.
I ended up with looking for dataleakes and hacking missions because that seems the only thing worth doing right now.

[GCU Grey Area]

Khaak are teleporting 3-4 ships (sometimes to 3 locations in the same area) at a constant rate in the systems they are in right next to the miners

See that sometimes, indeed there's quite a lot of them in Turquoise Sea right now. This the sort of thing you're talking about? https://www.dropbox.com/s/qhxrwbgxgpbcl ... 1.jpg?dl=0

However, although there are quite a lot of Khaak present, they don't seem to be interfering much with my mining operations in the sector. Occasionally my ships' shield indicators will briefly flash (presumably in response to incoming weapons fire), but that doesn't seem to be preventing them from mining. Monitored the quantity of Ore in one of them while it was under attack & that quantity was definitely increasing. They are also apparently returning fire at Khaak ships that approach close enough, but aside from that seem to be mostly ignoring them (pretty much exactly what I want them to do). However there is very little those Khaak can do in practice against my ships, Khaak weapons simply lack the punch to do anything meaningful against L class shields, at least not in the numbers I'm currently seeing. Guess it might be different though if I was using S or M class miners.