Better ore distribution in Asteroid clusters
Under Consideration
Currently, asteroid clusters in a standard game have a narrow distribution of ore types, with at most two types of ore per cluster (e.g. Nickel and Magnesium) even if there are several asteroids present in the cluster. Combined with the average distance between asteroid clusters and the limited ore detector ranges, it is very difficult to find all the ores you need. A better way would be to have a more varied distribution of ores per asteroid cluster.
In the public test I ran out of ice to power my hydrogen tank before I found a single asteroid with ice in it. That could just be bad luck but I checked at least 10 clusters, Ice should definitely be more common too.
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same Experience , Asteroid clusters tend to always have the same ore on it, found that very frustrating. And i Ran out of ice as well not finding it in time checking multiple asteroids :P
same Experience , Asteroid clusters tend to always have the same ore on it, found that very frustrating. And i Ran out of ice as well not finding it in time checking multiple asteroids :P
I also had a game where I couldn't find ice in time. Even if the goal is to make gathering ores more challenging (I assume that's why they did it), Ice is too essential to leave up to chance.
I also had a game where I couldn't find ice in time. Even if the goal is to make gathering ores more challenging (I assume that's why they did it), Ice is too essential to leave up to chance.
On an earth-like start, I got myself to space to find platinum and uranium, have not found either yet. I have a total of 19 asteroids marked in space, in which 1 had ice; 14 had Co, Ni, Fe, Ag; 4 blanks and zero had U or Pt.
I'm down an hour and a half with this expedition and had one refuel from the Ice asteroid, allowing me to last an another hour at least, but this is getting ridiculous. The amount of ice I have found is not enough to sustain operations in space as of now, solar would be an option if I can manage to build 11 of them to run a single set of assembler and a refinery.
On an earth-like start, I got myself to space to find platinum and uranium, have not found either yet. I have a total of 19 asteroids marked in space, in which 1 had ice; 14 had Co, Ni, Fe, Ag; 4 blanks and zero had U or Pt.
I'm down an hour and a half with this expedition and had one refuel from the Ice asteroid, allowing me to last an another hour at least, but this is getting ridiculous. The amount of ice I have found is not enough to sustain operations in space as of now, solar would be an option if I can manage to build 11 of them to run a single set of assembler and a refinery.
Recently you've started making it so that stone can be turned into 3 materials, why not do that with all the ores?
That is, you could have all the ores be mixed, and they each break down into 2-3 elements so that each 1 ore you find in an asteroid is actually like finding 2-3 ores. There have been mods out that having been doing that for years and one of them is pretty popular:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=406244471
This mod author has no problem with you using the materials as reference for doing anything you want with them.
Recently you've started making it so that stone can be turned into 3 materials, why not do that with all the ores?
That is, you could have all the ores be mixed, and they each break down into 2-3 elements so that each 1 ore you find in an asteroid is actually like finding 2-3 ores. There have been mods out that having been doing that for years and one of them is pretty popular:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=406244471
This mod author has no problem with you using the materials as reference for doing anything you want with them.
Hmm... I do feel your pain but I will disagree with you still. Personally, I feel ore in space is STILL too readily available and in too much quantity for the scope of the current game. When I can mine all the ore I would need for a very very long time simply by making a large miner and mining all day, all it encourages me to do is be wasteful and dream of huge builds that choke the game. Currently, if I start a game, I can initially dedicate all my PCU and time into mining and processing. As a result, I can have huge anmounts of materials, enough to sustain and rebuild me several times over. I just pack a few stealth supply depots as insurance. Mining, refining, and mass assembly is stopped and the pcus used for ships and bases. (sure I can still process, etc, but it is not longer a such a large number of refineries and assemblers. Once again, all of this done within a short as compared to time spent actually playing. The progression tree barely slows that down. Currently, the only two major factors that slow you down at all are that Iron lode deposits are more scarce and you cannot find all ores in one place.
I could see Keen being generous and coming up with a asteroid spawn algorhytim that includes a rare, but not unheard of, ice roid. However, I am ok with ice in space being mainly spawned to support O2 needs in space and nothing more. IE: Minimal amounts. With this lack of ice in space. it brings a very valid and important purpose for planets which are essentially only optional to a space start.. and another challenge. Otherweise, for me, space is like cheating. I can be MUCH, MUCH further ahead in a short time compared to an Earth Start. Up til now, earth had no pull.
Point being that finding and extracting resources should be a constant effort, not just a step once you find the mother lode. Nor be in close proximity to each other. RIght now, I love the fact trhat some roids just are stone.. thats it!
Here's the deal. The old yellow starter ship had a fuel issue. Not enough uranium to start. Solution? Make it a priority to find some. Meanwhile, coast to conserve fuel til you do. OR. Just park and jet pack to locate ores. Once you find uranium, its easy to stock up for the long haul. Surely, it will not take forever to finally find all you are looking for and to be well on your way to ingot independence!
Hmm... I do feel your pain but I will disagree with you still. Personally, I feel ore in space is STILL too readily available and in too much quantity for the scope of the current game. When I can mine all the ore I would need for a very very long time simply by making a large miner and mining all day, all it encourages me to do is be wasteful and dream of huge builds that choke the game. Currently, if I start a game, I can initially dedicate all my PCU and time into mining and processing. As a result, I can have huge anmounts of materials, enough to sustain and rebuild me several times over. I just pack a few stealth supply depots as insurance. Mining, refining, and mass assembly is stopped and the pcus used for ships and bases. (sure I can still process, etc, but it is not longer a such a large number of refineries and assemblers. Once again, all of this done within a short as compared to time spent actually playing. The progression tree barely slows that down. Currently, the only two major factors that slow you down at all are that Iron lode deposits are more scarce and you cannot find all ores in one place.
I could see Keen being generous and coming up with a asteroid spawn algorhytim that includes a rare, but not unheard of, ice roid. However, I am ok with ice in space being mainly spawned to support O2 needs in space and nothing more. IE: Minimal amounts. With this lack of ice in space. it brings a very valid and important purpose for planets which are essentially only optional to a space start.. and another challenge. Otherweise, for me, space is like cheating. I can be MUCH, MUCH further ahead in a short time compared to an Earth Start. Up til now, earth had no pull.
Point being that finding and extracting resources should be a constant effort, not just a step once you find the mother lode. Nor be in close proximity to each other. RIght now, I love the fact trhat some roids just are stone.. thats it!
Here's the deal. The old yellow starter ship had a fuel issue. Not enough uranium to start. Solution? Make it a priority to find some. Meanwhile, coast to conserve fuel til you do. OR. Just park and jet pack to locate ores. Once you find uranium, its easy to stock up for the long haul. Surely, it will not take forever to finally find all you are looking for and to be well on your way to ingot independence!
This needs to be adjusted ASAP.
I got lucky in a new survival world space start, found ice and uranium in the first 10 minutes after traveling about 6km to the nearest asteroid cluster. Also found some silver there. But not everybody is this lucky. People complain on youtube and reddit about ore distribution on asteroids.
Why this needs to change:
From IRL science we know that Water [Ice form] and Iron are some of the most common materials found on asteroids, in space, in planet belts etc. Before the overhaul, asteroids used to be massive chunks of iron with a little rock on top of that. That was unrealistic and weird, currently we now have a little Iron patch with tons of rock around it. This is also not a good option to have. In my opinion Iron is a bottleneck that is very hard to pass. Let's say you find an Iron ore patch, you are happy, you gonna mine it. In a few mining trips, that iron is going to be gone. Doing a rough estimate we can maybe get 500 k iron ore from a small Iron Ore Patch. This would probably yield around 180-200 K Iron [rough estimate, no math involved, did not find Ore to Ingot ratio]. 200 K Iron Ingots can generate [7 ingot / plate] around 28571 Steel Plates which can be used to build 1142 Light Armor Blocks. This isn't really enough to get anything started. Sure you can mine rock. The yield from ~ 2mil Stone would get you around 150 k Iron Ingots, from memory.
Idea for change:
Make the most required elements for blocks and for survival more common, Ice Fe Ni Co, and make their Ore Patches slightly larger than they are currently. Asteroid clusters [asteroid formations of 5-7 large asteroids] should not have only 2-3 elements in them. I mean yeah that would kinda make sense, but it's infuriating for gameplay. As an idea: An asteroid cluster can be divided in 2 ore categories, half of the asteroids can contain for example Ice Fe Ni Co and the other half can have Si and Mg / Another Asteroid cluster can have 50% Pt and U and the other 50% can have Ag and Au. And we can get anything we need by visiting 3-4 asteroid clusters. Would be very unlucky of us to survey 4 asteroid clusters and only find Ice Fe Ni Co with Si Mg. This is just my 2 cents.
This needs to be adjusted ASAP.
I got lucky in a new survival world space start, found ice and uranium in the first 10 minutes after traveling about 6km to the nearest asteroid cluster. Also found some silver there. But not everybody is this lucky. People complain on youtube and reddit about ore distribution on asteroids.
Why this needs to change:
From IRL science we know that Water [Ice form] and Iron are some of the most common materials found on asteroids, in space, in planet belts etc. Before the overhaul, asteroids used to be massive chunks of iron with a little rock on top of that. That was unrealistic and weird, currently we now have a little Iron patch with tons of rock around it. This is also not a good option to have. In my opinion Iron is a bottleneck that is very hard to pass. Let's say you find an Iron ore patch, you are happy, you gonna mine it. In a few mining trips, that iron is going to be gone. Doing a rough estimate we can maybe get 500 k iron ore from a small Iron Ore Patch. This would probably yield around 180-200 K Iron [rough estimate, no math involved, did not find Ore to Ingot ratio]. 200 K Iron Ingots can generate [7 ingot / plate] around 28571 Steel Plates which can be used to build 1142 Light Armor Blocks. This isn't really enough to get anything started. Sure you can mine rock. The yield from ~ 2mil Stone would get you around 150 k Iron Ingots, from memory.
Idea for change:
Make the most required elements for blocks and for survival more common, Ice Fe Ni Co, and make their Ore Patches slightly larger than they are currently. Asteroid clusters [asteroid formations of 5-7 large asteroids] should not have only 2-3 elements in them. I mean yeah that would kinda make sense, but it's infuriating for gameplay. As an idea: An asteroid cluster can be divided in 2 ore categories, half of the asteroids can contain for example Ice Fe Ni Co and the other half can have Si and Mg / Another Asteroid cluster can have 50% Pt and U and the other 50% can have Ag and Au. And we can get anything we need by visiting 3-4 asteroid clusters. Would be very unlucky of us to survey 4 asteroid clusters and only find Ice Fe Ni Co with Si Mg. This is just my 2 cents.
As an alternative Idea,
After Playing Single-Player Survival for a while and being continuously unable to find Platinum, (Somehow seems to be even more rare than Uranium), yet I need thousands of Kg worth to finish all my thrusters, I'm proposing a slightly different method of locating rare ores rather than using the horrendously small ranged ore detector.
I think a perfect compromise would be to spawn the random encounters on asteroids with rare / precious ores.
Random Encounters already have a pretty neat mechanic of flashing a beacon once every few minutes, which makes finding them actually possible.
Why not make them useful too by indicating larger ore deposits of Rare ores.
This would make logical sense because bases would usually be made near necessary resources, and ships would be more likely to be mining rare minerals as well.
As an alternative Idea,
After Playing Single-Player Survival for a while and being continuously unable to find Platinum, (Somehow seems to be even more rare than Uranium), yet I need thousands of Kg worth to finish all my thrusters, I'm proposing a slightly different method of locating rare ores rather than using the horrendously small ranged ore detector.
I think a perfect compromise would be to spawn the random encounters on asteroids with rare / precious ores.
Random Encounters already have a pretty neat mechanic of flashing a beacon once every few minutes, which makes finding them actually possible.
Why not make them useful too by indicating larger ore deposits of Rare ores.
This would make logical sense because bases would usually be made near necessary resources, and ships would be more likely to be mining rare minerals as well.
Early space does not work well. Distribution, detection, or aquisition of ore needs to be adjusted - progress shouldn't require chance or hours of non-gameplay.
Maybe the NPC stations are the way this will be addressed, though that would add a hard requirement in an otherwise open ended game. (vs. encounters, enemies, drones which are optional)
Early space does not work well. Distribution, detection, or aquisition of ore needs to be adjusted - progress shouldn't require chance or hours of non-gameplay.
Maybe the NPC stations are the way this will be addressed, though that would add a hard requirement in an otherwise open ended game. (vs. encounters, enemies, drones which are optional)
I'll tell you what is outright insane and infuriating: going over 40km away from my main asteroid to find the one resource I'm still missing even after checking thoroughly more than thirty asteroids. It's even more infuriating when that one ore is gold, which amusingly is a key material to build the thruster components for the ion thrusters. In other words, that one ore I need to be able to travel without consuming ice.
I'm completely stuck farming pirate drones, mining carriages and attack ships, with quite a big of risk. It's even more ridiculous when it comes to grind down the thrusters of the said ships only to be able to deconstruct the thruster components, and then build the superconductors needed to build yield modules. Yield modules that are an absolute necessity to compensate mildly the insane scarcity of the ore patches.
And in a general way, I don't think it's normal to resort to an array of basic refineries, all powered with a huge array of solar panels, to mass process stone and get the basic elements.
I'll tell you what is outright insane and infuriating: going over 40km away from my main asteroid to find the one resource I'm still missing even after checking thoroughly more than thirty asteroids. It's even more infuriating when that one ore is gold, which amusingly is a key material to build the thruster components for the ion thrusters. In other words, that one ore I need to be able to travel without consuming ice.
I'm completely stuck farming pirate drones, mining carriages and attack ships, with quite a big of risk. It's even more ridiculous when it comes to grind down the thrusters of the said ships only to be able to deconstruct the thruster components, and then build the superconductors needed to build yield modules. Yield modules that are an absolute necessity to compensate mildly the insane scarcity of the ore patches.
And in a general way, I don't think it's normal to resort to an array of basic refineries, all powered with a huge array of solar panels, to mass process stone and get the basic elements.
Edited out.
Edited out.
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