SE2-worthy mining system | Better mining with skill but still beginner friendly
Mining in Space Engineers 1 and 2 is currently functional but lacks variety, immersion, and engineering depth (In a game called Space Engineers). I propose a modular, skill-friendly, and environment aware mining system that respects the game's ide
ntity as a true engineering sandbox.
This isn’t a complete redesign, it’s just an evolution. It keeps mining accessible for beginners, while offering meaningful decisions and satisfying mastery for those who want to go deeper.
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1. Environment Drill System
Just like thrusters, drills should come in types, for space, planet and under water:
The Default Drill is Perfect for almost any situation (like hydrogen thrusters)
The Mining Laser is Perfect for space and moons (like ion thrusters)
1.5 The Mining Laser
The Mining Laser is an advanced, no contact mining tool designed for use in space environments, especially on asteroids or airless moons. Unlike traditional drills, it uses focused energy to gradually heat and extract voxels without physical impact.
How It Works:
1. Activation: When aimed at a surface containing ore or stone, the laser emits a focused energy beam.
2. Heating Phase: The targeted voxel begins to glow, indicating rising temperature and material instability. (You can see a rising heat bar in the cockpit gui | one for the voxels and one for the drill)
Extraction Phase: Once a threshold is reached, the heated material is pulled in via a visible particle and suction effect, simulating vaporization and collection. (Visual)
Continuous Mining: After the initial charge-up, mining becomes smooth and uninterrupted, making it ideal for long-term asteroid operations.
Ineffective in atmosphere, perfect for asteroid ops, dangerous in caves
(The Mining Laser isn’t for early-game mining.)
2. Modular Drill System
- 3-part Design: Drill Base – Mount type, power input, environmental compatibility Drill Head – Shape, behavior, yield efficiency, speed Modification Slot(s) – Add speed, cooling, etc.
This allows every miner to custom-tailor their tools to the situation.
3. Environment-Aware Mining
Mining should feel different based on where you are:
Location: Planet Surface -> Dense rock, stable atmosphere -> Mechanical Drill
Location: Caves -> Confined space -> drill on a rover or handheld
Location: Underwater -> Fluid, buoyancy... -> Mining Rig like a Oil Rig
Location: Asteroids -> Vacuum, risk of overheating -> Mining Laser
4. Drill Heads & Extraction Modules
Each head defines how the drill performs
Example for The Laser Heads:
Head Type: Fast Mining Head: High Speed = Low Efficiency (~50%) -> Used for: Bulk mining (e.g. Iron)
Head Type: Precision Extractor: Low Speed = 100% Efficiency -> Used for: Rare ore veins (e.g. Uranium)
Head Type: Balanced Cutter: Medium Speed = 85% Efficiency = A bit more Electricity Consum -> General purpose mining / noob Drill
Modules can:
Each ore type has an Instability Bar shown in the HUD:
- Some materials are volatile (e.g. Uranium, Platinum)
- If overdrilled or overheated, they may explode, outgas, or contaminate
- Space vacuum increases volatility = careful heat management required
- Surface drills are more stable but can overheat themselves during sustained use
This turns mining into a cautious, skill-based process – not just digging.Each ore type has an Instability Bar shown in the HUD:
- Some materials are volatile (e.g. Uranium, Platinum)
- If overdrilled or overheated, they may explode, outgas, or contaminate
- Space vacuum increases volatility – careful heat management required
- Surface drills are more stable but can overheat themselves during sustained use
This turns mining into a cautious, skill-based process, not just digging.
6. Skill-Based Depth, Not Frustration
"This system isn’t about difficulty – it’s about mastery."
Safety
Speed
Specific environments
(Or to stay Undetected by enemies maby?)
Benefits Summary:
Let miners be engineers :)
This system could be a core pillar of SE2’s identity!
If you support this vision, upvote this suggestion pls
Here are some Visuals:
I like this feedback
OMG,
another one who has no even idea about reality and just ... write...
The drilling equipment does not select the drilled material. It only prepares the drilled material into a form suitable for subsequent transport. The selection and sorting of the material is done by the refinery or by sorters on conveyors.
In the real world, it is not possible to generalize the ore separation process.
There are products for which it is advantageous to first process the entire volume of mined rock and first select rare products (e.g., gold, platinum) and then select common products (iron, aluminum, etc.). For other ores and products, on the other hand, it is advantageous to first separate the “main ore” and produce the “main product” and then work with the ‘waste’ that contains the “minority products.”
In the game world, we (so far) have only one universal device for processing ore - a refinery.
In its basic form, a refinery should produce “basic products” with a certain degree of efficiency. It therefore produces the required material from part of the input raw material, and the rest is labeled as ‘waste’ or “tailings.”
At the same time, any natural rock material contains many components that can be used. Rock material, referred to as “ore,” is characterized by the fact that it contains some components in increased amounts. At the same time, it is typical that a particular ore containing a main component also contains typical “accompanying components”.
Additional refinery blocks could/should make it possible to extract these “accompanying components”.
To understand this, we can look at the composition of "ordinary stone," which in our solar system—and probably throughout the universe—is rock called granite and basalt. There may be hundreds of types, but they are all very similar—simply "ordinary stone."
A worldwide average of the chemical composition of granite, by mass percent, based on 2485 analyses (by wiki):
SiO2 - - - 72.04% (silica)
Al2O3 - - 14.42% (alumina)
K2O - - - 4.12%
Na2O - - 3.69%
CaO - - - 1.82%
FeO - - - 1.68%
Fe2O3 - - 1.22%
MgO - - - 0.71%
TiO2 - - - 0.30%
P2O5 - - - 0.12%
MnO - - - 0.05%
Basalts:
SiO2 - - - Ranges from 45-52% (Silicon Dioxide, silica)
Al2O3 - - Ranges from 14-18% (Aluminum Oxide, alumina)
FeO, Fe2O3 - Ranges from 5-14% (Iron Oxides)
CaO - - - Around 10% (Calcium Oxide)
MgO - - - Ranges from 5-12% (Magnesium Oxide)
Other oxides: Includes Na2O, K2O, TiO2, MnO, P2O5...
However, these components are not separated in rocks; in fact, they form more complex compounds - feldspars NaAlSi3O8, KAlSi3O8, CaAl2Si2O8, silicates Me2SiO4, where Me can be Fe, Mg, Ni, Mn... or even biotite - K(Mg,Fe)3AlSi3O10(F,OH)2 and other, even more complex compounds.
But what do we see? Silicon, aluminum, oxygen, iron, and magnesium are actually all around us... What's more, SiO2 is quartz, thus glass, and glass fibers, while Al2O3 is corundum, the hardest natural material after diamond...
OMG,
another one who has no even idea about reality and just ... write...
The drilling equipment does not select the drilled material. It only prepares the drilled material into a form suitable for subsequent transport. The selection and sorting of the material is done by the refinery or by sorters on conveyors.
In the real world, it is not possible to generalize the ore separation process.
There are products for which it is advantageous to first process the entire volume of mined rock and first select rare products (e.g., gold, platinum) and then select common products (iron, aluminum, etc.). For other ores and products, on the other hand, it is advantageous to first separate the “main ore” and produce the “main product” and then work with the ‘waste’ that contains the “minority products.”
In the game world, we (so far) have only one universal device for processing ore - a refinery.
In its basic form, a refinery should produce “basic products” with a certain degree of efficiency. It therefore produces the required material from part of the input raw material, and the rest is labeled as ‘waste’ or “tailings.”
At the same time, any natural rock material contains many components that can be used. Rock material, referred to as “ore,” is characterized by the fact that it contains some components in increased amounts. At the same time, it is typical that a particular ore containing a main component also contains typical “accompanying components”.
Additional refinery blocks could/should make it possible to extract these “accompanying components”.
To understand this, we can look at the composition of "ordinary stone," which in our solar system—and probably throughout the universe—is rock called granite and basalt. There may be hundreds of types, but they are all very similar—simply "ordinary stone."
A worldwide average of the chemical composition of granite, by mass percent, based on 2485 analyses (by wiki):
SiO2 - - - 72.04% (silica)
Al2O3 - - 14.42% (alumina)
K2O - - - 4.12%
Na2O - - 3.69%
CaO - - - 1.82%
FeO - - - 1.68%
Fe2O3 - - 1.22%
MgO - - - 0.71%
TiO2 - - - 0.30%
P2O5 - - - 0.12%
MnO - - - 0.05%
Basalts:
SiO2 - - - Ranges from 45-52% (Silicon Dioxide, silica)
Al2O3 - - Ranges from 14-18% (Aluminum Oxide, alumina)
FeO, Fe2O3 - Ranges from 5-14% (Iron Oxides)
CaO - - - Around 10% (Calcium Oxide)
MgO - - - Ranges from 5-12% (Magnesium Oxide)
Other oxides: Includes Na2O, K2O, TiO2, MnO, P2O5...
However, these components are not separated in rocks; in fact, they form more complex compounds - feldspars NaAlSi3O8, KAlSi3O8, CaAl2Si2O8, silicates Me2SiO4, where Me can be Fe, Mg, Ni, Mn... or even biotite - K(Mg,Fe)3AlSi3O10(F,OH)2 and other, even more complex compounds.
But what do we see? Silicon, aluminum, oxygen, iron, and magnesium are actually all around us... What's more, SiO2 is quartz, thus glass, and glass fibers, while Al2O3 is corundum, the hardest natural material after diamond...
Random mining thoughts.
We have a lot of chalks and limestone shales near me, and where would clay be in this?
I know that clay can clog up mechanisms and would require a lot of water to extract.
How does underwater mining work?
Cinnabar would be a good resource ore.
Coal could be hazardous to mine.
Should some mining suffer the danger of collapse? (2d games do this, Minecraft has mine collapse)
You could have progression in mining technologies that gradually opens up the extractable resource sources as your mining functionality improves. Resource sources could vary in difficulty and yield without limiting access to resource types.
Random mining thoughts.
We have a lot of chalks and limestone shales near me, and where would clay be in this?
I know that clay can clog up mechanisms and would require a lot of water to extract.
How does underwater mining work?
Cinnabar would be a good resource ore.
Coal could be hazardous to mine.
Should some mining suffer the danger of collapse? (2d games do this, Minecraft has mine collapse)
You could have progression in mining technologies that gradually opens up the extractable resource sources as your mining functionality improves. Resource sources could vary in difficulty and yield without limiting access to resource types.
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