Standard vs Industrial Mining Device (And speed vs efficiency)

[ForceUser]

I ran a quick test and some variations of late game Stingrey MK2 mining builds and in every situation the standard Mining device wins out. The only advantage that Industrial *seems* to have was that you don't need 2-3 of them but even then I think the standards are better for ore per energy/minute/etc.

I even thought they might have an advantage for mining Serizonite but it doesn't look like it there either. So what is the point of the industrial mining device?

On a similar note, I also tested capacitor boosters vs coolant boosters and capacitor boosters in my tests allow for 50% quicker mining of an asteroid.

I don't have any skills in mining speed and only 4 levels in efficiency. Is there a tipping point? Is speed better than efficiency or how does speed work exactly? Do the drill use a fixed amount of energy per cycle or do they use a fixed amount of energy per second?

Thanks

[loudent]

If I remember correctly the industrial allows you to scan asteroids even if you don't have the skill

[ForceUser]

Good to know though with all the useful skills gated behind that skill and the prospector starting with it it's somewhat limited in usefulness 
Actually no, the industrial miner requires the "see contents of asteroid" skill to be used

If there is no tangible advantage to using the industrial that I'm missing I might post some suggestions on it in the suggestion forum.

[loudent]

Actually no, the industrial miner requires the "see contents of asteroid" skill to be used

Did I read it wrong? I coulda swore it said that and never looked again. Sorry!

[Lurler]

No, it doesn't allow you to see the asteroid contents. It requires astrogeology as stated by ForceUser.

As for benefits of them - they allow you to mine high level ores. So if you are mining brown asteroids - there is not much point really, but if you are mining blue or red asteroids then it becomes _very_ useful.

[Pinkeh]

The red ores mine a lot slower on the industrial 2's, and you can't at all on the standard drills.

My first mod was a mining laser that zaps all the ores in one cycle. 

[ForceUser]

The red ores mine a lot slower on the industrial 2's, and you can't at all on the standard drills.

My first mod was a mining laser that zaps all the ores in one cycle. 

Actually no the standard laser can mine red ores.

OK, so I went back and got some actual numbers for you so you can see what the problem is with a) the Industrial Miner b) the Mining Coolant Booster and c) The Red/Serizonite ore (highest end ore right?)

My current skills for reference:

Mining Proficiency 5/5
Ore Processing 4/10
Advanced mining operations 0/10

First off the industrial miner vs the standard miner. Now apart from the longer cycle time and higher energy usage it has a much too small bonus over the standard laser. Effectively the standard mining laser can mine the same amount of ore 30% faster than the industrial and use less energy. This actually includes The red and blue ores. Using the Blue ores as an example, with my skills I mine 9 instead of 7 units of Seralucite using the industrial but again, at a far worse energy and time efficiency than using the standard. To mine all the Seralucite out of a blue ore (the one with 200 units) it takes me 1 minute using 3 standard with 4 capacitor boosters while it takes me 1:30 with industrial miners with the same setup.

Now the Red ore vs the blue ore. With a standard laser it takes 3 seconds to mine 7 units of Seralucite (5 seconds for 9 units with an industrial miner). It takes 21 seconds to mine a SINGLE unit of Serizonite with standard lasers (35 seconds for 2 units with an industrial but that's with 4 cooling boosters). The problem here is that Serizonite is worth only 150% more than Seralucite but takes 3500%+ more time to mine.

So far in every way I could swing it the standard mining laser is better than the industrial, the capacitor booster is better than the cooling booster and the blue ore is better (and safer mind you) to mine than red ore.

Is it supposed to be this way? Am I missing something?

[Lurler]

I guess you are right, after all. Thank you for the detailed explanation!
I will adjust the mining devices accordingly.

[ForceUser]

Well I'm glad I wasn't just chasing my tail there

However, the industrial laser doesn't necessarily have to be better than a standard laser in every way. I think there is a lot of room for both to be useful. For example if you take the idea of the Industrial mining laser being better at high end ores (Red) while the standard is better at low end ores (Browns) and they kind of meet in the middle (blue ores)

An idea could be to have the standard mining laser mine fast when mining Brown ores but mine slow when mining Red ores (Like it is now). However, switch the Industrial miner to mine red ores fast but mine brown ores slow. Then of course have them mine Blue ores at around the same speed OR introduce a 3rd mining laser that is good at mining blue ores.

Another option for a 3rd special mining laser would be one that can mine both brown and red ores fast but blue ores slow. This 'experimental' mining laser you can only get from the science guys by spending science points. Or have boosters that you get from the science guys that improve the speed of mining brown, blue or red ores.

Basically the idea is that more items in the game are useful. Give the player more meaningful choices like you already have with all the different weapon systems that are similar but act different. This way the skill that increases your inventory slots actually becomes more important as you'd want to have a set of each mining laser.

Something else I noticed that I touched on but didn't really state clearly was that it looks like energy capacity and speed of mining is much, much better than efficiency. This is because you have limited cargo space and because asteroids have limited ore. High energy capacity allows you to mine all the ore  while efficiency/low energy capacity does not. If you have high energy capacity you will spend more time flying from one asteroid to another or back to station because you can quickly mine all the ore by using 2 or 3 mining lasers at once and quickly fill up your cargo hold and then regen energy as you fly around.

Anyways, I really think the mining in this game is very rewarding. It feels like a very viable alternative -without being too strong- to shooting things like in every other game so great job on that! There might be some odd elements in the mining system here and there that can be sorted out to make it more engaging by giving the player more choices so I hope this helps 

[Lurler]

We just finished a new update that addresses this issue. I rebalanced most of the mining devices and also mining boosters. Oh, and the lava asteroid as well. Everything should be more balanced and reasonable now.
Can you try it and let me know if you think the current system is ok?

[ForceUser]

Awesome! I'll test this out first thing soon as I get in front of my PC. Thanks for the quick turn around. You guys have a great base game here and there's a TON of potential here!

[ForceUser]

Hmm after a quick test these are some pretty good changes. The numbers are a lot closer and I can definitely see, depending on the character skill levels where the new cooling module would be useful and even where a mix of them would be useful depending on how much efficiency you'd need to get that one extra Serizonite for example.

That said it looks like there is still about a 30% raw value advantage mining blue ore over red ore. This is still much MUCH better than previously where it was over 7 times that.

If you want to make the two even, a small change like having red ore mine more Cyactite per cycle (say around 10 times as much since it's very low as it is) should even it out somewhat but as it is at least a player wont be shooting himself completely in the foot by going to mine Red ore anymore.

Now as to the standard vs Industrial I'm seeing interesting numbers. The industrial is now a lot closer to the standard but still just that tiny bit behind. If you're limited to device slots, like for example on a freighter I can actually see industrial winning over standard. I can also see why someone would want to mine in a freighter in the first place, a LOT more cargo, almost double that of a Stinger MK2 and with the cargo bonus that equates to a LOT of extra ore. Basically it looks like when mining in a freighter you'd want to use industrial but mining in a stinger Mk2 you're better off with Standards.

Not sure if that's a good enough differentiator but it's at least an interesting one 

Still in my opinion I think this is now in a good place where you can perhaps see if something more interesting is possible. An easy thing that might make for an interesting change is to give the industrial 30% base bonus ore mined on red ores. The standard can then be left as is. The end result should be that if you try to mine red ores (normally in dangerous non station systems) in a stingray with standards you'll make 30% less than what you'd make mining blue ores but if you mine with a freighter using industrials you should be making more than what a Stingray Mk2 would make mining blue ores in a slightly safer area in a stronger ship; Risk vs Reward. On the upside, because the freighter has more cargo space, it can stay in a non station system longer and bring back more ore so it'd be more efficient than a stingray.

But yea I'll do a much more thorough analysis of the numbers and do a proper spreadsheet with different skill levels etc. over the week.

[Lurler]

Again, thank you for taking time to write this. It makes a lot of sense.
We can't really add different mining speed depending on the asteroid, at least not without more coding/scripting.
So I found a way to address this by increasing value of serizonite, which can only be mined from the red asteroids, as well as increasing yield of seralucite as you suggested but only slightly.
So, it should make mining red asteroids more rewarding.
I also slightly changed balance of the industrial mining devices again.