Reduce ME Ore Node frequency, increase Node size

Burstar shared this feedback 5 years ago
Considered (Not Planned)

Currently ore nodes can be found quite frequently. Many nodes in one claim area for example. This can lead to many 'gopher holes' in MP. Also, with a steel pick and food buff the average node can be cleaned out in one go.


Reducing the number of nodes to say 1 from 5, and increasing their overall size (especially underground) would:

Reduce the need for ore scouting

Reduce the gopher hole count (Engineer broke a leg again. Gonna have to shoot him)

Increase the practicality of building underground mining complexes.

Best Answer
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This is definitely something that has been discussed by the design team. Beginner players and those that prefer to play singleplayer need resources that are easier to find and access. Players with a lot of experience, especially those playing in multiplayer with a large cooperative group, have a much different approach to resources. We decided it was best to not hinder the new player / singleplayer experience by creating such scarcity on our default planet.


Ore placement and deposit size are completely moddable, so we assumed we would see balance changes like this on modded planets. Unfortunately, planet mods don't seem to be popular for Medieval Engineers, with the notable exception of the water planet. We've honestly never understood why that is. A planet is only a few sbc definitions, the terrain maps, and material maps. Yet most modders seem to avoid making or editing planets, which leads us to requests for balance changes.


The conclusion is this: Having only one planet, we don't want to redistribute ore in a way that makes it more difficult for most players. We don't want to include multiple versions of our planet in the base game during development because it is very time-consuming for our QA department and it means that any changes we make need to be made more than once.

We would love to hear from the modding community why we don't see planet mods. Given their popularity for Space Engineers, we're at a loss to explain it.

Replies (3)

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2

I agree that mining as a game mechanic should be improved. Right now it´s digging a 2m deep hole and you are done.

I think mining should be like exploring a part of the world, where you find caves and other stuff. Why did Keen even put deep cave ambient sounds in the game if there is no need to dig that deep?

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On our server, we talk a lot about what we'd like to see in the game, and the number one thing we often come back to is the need to trade.If resources were rare, it would both encourage travel and trade. One issue is that if you have one Iron mine, you're basically done. If some blocks needed Bronze and Gold/Silver, but there were only say 3 large mines of each resource available in the world, it would encourage defence and trade, making the game a bit more dynamic.

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Only for large servers. For small servers (2 players), it would make the game a constant fast travel game if not a walking simulator. None of them sounds any fun to me.

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1

This is definitely something that has been discussed by the design team. Beginner players and those that prefer to play singleplayer need resources that are easier to find and access. Players with a lot of experience, especially those playing in multiplayer with a large cooperative group, have a much different approach to resources. We decided it was best to not hinder the new player / singleplayer experience by creating such scarcity on our default planet.


Ore placement and deposit size are completely moddable, so we assumed we would see balance changes like this on modded planets. Unfortunately, planet mods don't seem to be popular for Medieval Engineers, with the notable exception of the water planet. We've honestly never understood why that is. A planet is only a few sbc definitions, the terrain maps, and material maps. Yet most modders seem to avoid making or editing planets, which leads us to requests for balance changes.


The conclusion is this: Having only one planet, we don't want to redistribute ore in a way that makes it more difficult for most players. We don't want to include multiple versions of our planet in the base game during development because it is very time-consuming for our QA department and it means that any changes we make need to be made more than once.

We would love to hear from the modding community why we don't see planet mods. Given their popularity for Space Engineers, we're at a loss to explain it.

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1

Thanks for the informative response. I can see your point, and in fact have been slowly learning modding the planet for this reason.

It took a while for me to grasp the channel distinctions and what all the colour values represented. While this is nowhere as difficult as what you Devs are doing it is still, as you pointed out, a lot of work to adjust something that is already pretty darn good in vanilla. If I want to play in a harsh landscape (snow/desert), or in a picturesque dense forest, there's plenty of that already in the vanilla world. In the end you have the same thing but with a different distribution. Not really something that would stand out and say 'this was mod was worth it, is also something players should take notice of, and justifies the increase in downloading amount/time for DSs'.

My biggest concern is that a major revision might be implemented in the future that renders all this work defunct.

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2

Major revisions to the way planets work are not likely at this point with two exceptions. The first would be moving something (ores for example) to a new channel. This would be pretty much copy/paste so no big deal. The second would be a resolution increase for the maps, either to get more resolution and allow finer detail on the planet or to keep the same resolution but expand the size of the planet. While these things would be interesting for our design team for a number of reasons, they're not being seriously looked at by the team at this time. So I think your mods are safe, and if they're not, they shouldn't take a lot of work to adjust to any updates.

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