Stone not yielding any resources was the CORRECT game development decision
I love the decision to make stone a voxel material that does not yield any resources. That was the correct game development decision. I think it was a mistake in SE1 to make stone yield basic resources. Changing this in SE2 was good.
Here is my reasoning:
- Stone is abundantly available everywhere. If it gave any resources, even the basic ones, you can easily scale up your stone mining to ridiculous levels, and completely satisfy your need for those resources. This makes the actual deposits of those ores completely redundant. This is what already happened in SE1. In SE1 I have no need to search or mine any iron, nickel, or silicon deposits. They are rendered completely redundant.
- The game should encourage exploration, and not giving any resources from stone, forces the player to search for ore deposits. This is good.
- As the player consumes the nearby deposits, he is forced to search an ever expanding area. This also makes him think, plan, and build the logistics of how to exploit the far-away ore deposits. This is also good.
--> Do NOT make stone yield any resource. Even the basic ones.
"But what about people who want to build big, static drilling rigs? The ore deposits in SE2 are so tiny it makes these builds not worth it."
That is true. The *current* ore deposits are tiny in size, but there is actually a very good solution for this: Layered ore deposits.
At the surface, have tiny ore deposits, liberally scattered here and there. Just like now. These ore deposits are ideal for hand drilling and the early game. This is how you get started.
Then, at a deeper level that is just out of reach of your hand drill's ore detector, have fewer but larger ore deposits. To find these, you need to build a vehicle with an ore detector, and then go prospecting. With an extended detecting range you start seeing these deeper level deposits. These would then be worth a larger mining ship or a mining rig.
To top it off, add an even deeper layer of even fewer but enormous ore deposits. Now you need to build something bigger to find these deposits, but once found, you can then build that monster mining rig to exploit it.
The layered ore system gives a natural progression to the game, and gives you access to larger amounts of resources as you continue to build bigger. This is rewarding.
Now, if you really-really want to have stone mining, and I don't think you should, but if you really-really insist, and the game developers cave in to the pressure, which they shouldn't, then here's a compromise that might work:
Do NOT make stone yield any of the current resources. Instead, make it yield some new resource type. For example, the "gravel" from SE1. Or something different, but it needs to be its own resource type so that you can't use it as a substitute for the other resources. Then add something to the game that can use that resource. Some example uses for "gravel" could be: concrete building blocks for planetary bases, filling holes and leveling terrain, marking dirt roads on terrain, etc.
If you insist that stone should yield something. I think it's unnecessary, but if you really want it, then concrete and similar "extra stuff" is fine. As long as it does NOT yield iron, nickel, silicon, or any other resource. Leave those to be found in their own deposits.
I like this feedback
Well, I fully disagree. You didnt play SE1 Survival much, did you ?
First of all you get only small amount of ressources from the stone, so for bigger projects you have to search for ore deposits anyway. But on the other side if you need small amount of the basic ressources for repairs, small construction or just in emergency case, it is what you need.
In survival games, Stone and Survival Kit are the only things, which saves you in the most ermergency situations, other way you are stranded for good or dead, losing your ship or your game progress.
But, maybe it should be an option, which can be disabled for players, who like to play in the hardcore mode.
Just my 5 cent.
Regards, Arth
Well, I fully disagree. You didnt play SE1 Survival much, did you ?
First of all you get only small amount of ressources from the stone, so for bigger projects you have to search for ore deposits anyway. But on the other side if you need small amount of the basic ressources for repairs, small construction or just in emergency case, it is what you need.
In survival games, Stone and Survival Kit are the only things, which saves you in the most ermergency situations, other way you are stranded for good or dead, losing your ship or your game progress.
But, maybe it should be an option, which can be disabled for players, who like to play in the hardcore mode.
Just my 5 cent.
Regards, Arth
There is always the option of splitting stone into ground and stone. So stone occurs in deposits just like ore and yields stuff, but ground around the deposits yields nothing.
This gives us concrete and whatnot, while keeping resources scarce.
There is always the option of splitting stone into ground and stone. So stone occurs in deposits just like ore and yields stuff, but ground around the deposits yields nothing.
This gives us concrete and whatnot, while keeping resources scarce.
TLDR: Disagree with OP, Stone should come back, but wait till there is more to do in SE2.
For now, it is fine for stone not to be a thing, ONLY because of how little there is to do in SE2. As more blocks, more mechanics, and more tasks in general get added, it would be a good idea for Stone to come back with Iron, Nickel, and Silicon.
Stone was NEVER that good in SE1 without mods. It was always WAY faster to get high amounts of Iron, Nickel, and Silicon by mining a nearby deposits. I hate to break it to you, but you probably wasted a lot of time building your drill rigs when it was faster to just use a small miner to do a couple of trips. When I built large, I could only do so quickly by finding deposits, especially if you are using heavy armor or blast doors. Nickel was always running out early game, and now with apex survival, Silicon can't come fast enough. Vanilla SE1 did stone right, especially recently.
And yes, please concrete.
Stone giving resources should absolutely be an option, but on by defrault.
TLDR: Disagree with OP, Stone should come back, but wait till there is more to do in SE2.
For now, it is fine for stone not to be a thing, ONLY because of how little there is to do in SE2. As more blocks, more mechanics, and more tasks in general get added, it would be a good idea for Stone to come back with Iron, Nickel, and Silicon.
Stone was NEVER that good in SE1 without mods. It was always WAY faster to get high amounts of Iron, Nickel, and Silicon by mining a nearby deposits. I hate to break it to you, but you probably wasted a lot of time building your drill rigs when it was faster to just use a small miner to do a couple of trips. When I built large, I could only do so quickly by finding deposits, especially if you are using heavy armor or blast doors. Nickel was always running out early game, and now with apex survival, Silicon can't come fast enough. Vanilla SE1 did stone right, especially recently.
And yes, please concrete.
Stone giving resources should absolutely be an option, but on by defrault.
Getting silicon from a sand-like voxel material is actually not a bad idea at all. For iron and other metals though, I’d still prefer some real challenge — something that pushes players to search for rich, valuable ore deposits instead of everything being everywhere.
I think most people are against the idea of stone mainly because of how annoying it was in SE1. Mining usually meant digging through stone just to reach the “pure” ore, and even then you’d still end up with stone clogging your inventory. To deal with that, many of us built stone ejection systems and stopped caring about careful mining altogether — just mine everything and throw the stone away.
Some players saw this as “clever engineering,” others hated it — and honestly, for good reason. It meant extra PCU usage, more floating items, and performance issues. Because of that, many servers and players ended up using no-stone mods or heavily reducing floating items just to keep the game running smoothly.
In SE1, ores were also handled in a very simplified way. You had things like:
100% pure iron ore, with a bit of “1% iron in stone” around it
Resources like gold were meant to be low concentration ore, but you get no waste after refining it.
So we kind of had a basic form of waste management, but it was rough and unfinished. The refining side wasn’t very realistic, and the stone clutter side was mostly just annoying.
That said, I do think there is a way to have proper waste management mechanics that aren’t frustrating, but instead turn into interesting gameplay. I’ve already touched on this in my broader feedback about mining and production — and I’ll be posting a dedicated idea topic about it soon 🙂
Getting silicon from a sand-like voxel material is actually not a bad idea at all. For iron and other metals though, I’d still prefer some real challenge — something that pushes players to search for rich, valuable ore deposits instead of everything being everywhere.
I think most people are against the idea of stone mainly because of how annoying it was in SE1. Mining usually meant digging through stone just to reach the “pure” ore, and even then you’d still end up with stone clogging your inventory. To deal with that, many of us built stone ejection systems and stopped caring about careful mining altogether — just mine everything and throw the stone away.
Some players saw this as “clever engineering,” others hated it — and honestly, for good reason. It meant extra PCU usage, more floating items, and performance issues. Because of that, many servers and players ended up using no-stone mods or heavily reducing floating items just to keep the game running smoothly.
In SE1, ores were also handled in a very simplified way. You had things like:
100% pure iron ore, with a bit of “1% iron in stone” around it
Resources like gold were meant to be low concentration ore, but you get no waste after refining it.
So we kind of had a basic form of waste management, but it was rough and unfinished. The refining side wasn’t very realistic, and the stone clutter side was mostly just annoying.
That said, I do think there is a way to have proper waste management mechanics that aren’t frustrating, but instead turn into interesting gameplay. I’ve already touched on this in my broader feedback about mining and production — and I’ll be posting a dedicated idea topic about it soon 🙂
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