The Hand Drill - Tunnel Bore Mode

This is a proposal for a Hand Drill feature that I think would redefine early game experience:

Model as seen in Pioneer Edition Art Book

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"TBM" - Tunnel Bore Mode

This is a proposed function on the hand drill that replaces the current iteration of Right-Click and replaces it with a more useful system for hand mining in early game.

What is this mode?

When a player right clicks with the hand drill, the 4 beam nodes on the drill will fold out and the entire drill would begin to spin (creating a circle). See very rough Mock-Up image below.

This has a small range - say 5-10m in front of the player.

This mode would make drilling into Voxels much more efficient as you no longer need to be touching them. Like before, this mode only removes Voxels. No resource collection.

Higher level drills can expand the Circle size or the range.

Why consider this?

There is and always has been a tedium to mine clean and straight-forward tunnels to the ore we want below ground. We currently have to essentially "hug" the ground to get anywhere - and often times the path created isn't easily traversable.

This would help in mitigating the frustration of getting to Ore by having the tool literally Bore Tunnels for you! Then players can feel that they can potentially divert more time into making that mine look nice + lit up!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I do actually love early survival gameplay of SE - but the tedium of actually getting to the ore has always been a major issue for me.

The feeling of building a mining ship after mining in the tunnels makes the engineering/ creation element so much more satisfying as well! The early gameplay should be fun throughout the entire experience, and I think this may help contribute to that.

I think overall, SE2 will thrive if the slower elements of the game are looked at more - some being:

-Overall On-foot / Rover gameplay + polishing what makes them different and unique.

-Movement Adjustments (I think the player speed should be set to the slow walking speed by default!)

-Flight Speed Adjustments in Atmosphere ~ See my speed limiters forum post

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Inspiration:

Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM), or "mole" Machine. Made for tunneling underground.

Additional Notes:

This feature would be for the Hand Drill. The Grid-Based Drill would remain as is.

However, potential beam drills for ships now open up (Imagine a rover with a Drilling Beam Turret!)

I am working on this proposal separately and I would like to refine my idea before sharing officially!

But to discuss the key feature:

-Small voxel deformation radius + Limited resource returns.

-How it works: Uses a gravity component to draw the ore to the central collector.

-Visual Reference: See Star Citizen Mining!

A reminder too that regardless of this Beam Drill Idea - the traditional Drill remains the most efficient for resource gathering. The Beam Drill stands apart for the ability to Mine at Range (useful in Asteroid clusters)