Artisan Archive
Thread: Question of the Day 7-31-03 Miner Profession
Here's an idea. You don't want artisans spending all their time working harvestors, I agree.
So why not stick the harvestor certification in the scout tree?
OK, maybe not quite that far, but maybe as you got better you'd get a bit more per sample and be able to pull from slightly lower percentage areas.
I would love to be a miner.
Im allready in the mining bussiness - As an artisan, why not go all the way and create a miner proffesion.
Some of the things I would like to see is:
World wide survey, or at least a large chunk of the world - To be able to set the mining equipment at thecorrect spot.
Harvester/mining optimization - A set of skills where you can optimize and better your Mines, to be faster getting resources, lower cost rate, lower power consumption.
I read somewhere in the thread about experimenting with resources. (melting two kinds of steel together to get a new (and better kind)). Great idea!
IndustryLand - To be able to buy up a piece of land (For agiven amount of time), and the resources thats there allready will stay there to the "land contract" runs out. You wouldnt be able to re-new the contract, but when its bought you can extend the inital time by throwing in more credits (should be pretty expensive and would be a good money sink also, and the miners wouldnt have to worry about moving the **edit** mines every 4 day).
Got some more ideas, but its 2 am and I really need to sleep 
Get a bunch of greedy miners and economy goes boom.
Great thread. I whole-heartedly agree a miner elite profession should exist. What the elite miner could do:
1). Smelting I-IV: A branch of skills that allows the miner to increase the attributes of resources through refining and smelting.
2). Off-world Surveying. Allow a miner to have devices to survey other planets remotely. This would be limited to what existed on the planet, and not percentages (like opening up a survey tool). These remote survey stations could cost one lot to place.
3). Remote functioning of certain harvester tasks. Switch resource and Turn off/on would be the only two for which I'd allow remote control.
4). Maintenance droids able to repair harvesters more efficiently.
5). A master miner would be able to know the depletion times of resources--or perhaps the spawn dates.
6). Reduced recovery expenditures. This could be a small reduction in recovery costs of harvesters--like 10% or something.
7). Terrain alteration. This would allow the advanced miner to place medium and heavy harvesters on terrain that normally wouldn't allow it (ie hilly or uneven terrain).
8). Build zone survey. This ability would allow the advanced miner to survey for city limits and lair limits on building without having a hotkeyed deed.
9). Extended survey range.
10). Miner efficiency. Allow adnvacned miners to increase the efficiency of their harvesters.
11). Pushing the bit. Allow advanced miners to tweak their harvesters to increase the extraction rates of the harvesters at the risk of it breaking (like slicing)
12). CAuse resources to actually weigh something (so you havea reason to buy a binary load lifter) Okay, not a feature perse, but with an advanced miner, there needs to be more challenge.
13). Access to schematics (though we can't use them). This is so we know what to mine, and what attributes of resources are required for the various crafting items.
That's all for now.
As it stands now, pretty much anyone can be a miner. Anyone that has Survey skills, most have IV, can be a miner. All it takes is a fair cash warchest and time to manage harvesters. Wealthy people with lots of time to manage can run the biggest harvesters on their lots and produce lots of resources. While large harvesters produce more resources, the cost per resource is actually much more expensive because of the huge capital costs to buy a large harvester with the same maintence costs.
The big compaint I see from artisans is they don't want to mine, they want to craft. There are very few people who actually mine full time right now. They exist, but they are fairly rare. The cost of resources on the bazaar is overall fairly high, though if you are careful you can get good deals. Overall the quality of resources is low. People put up copper with less than 500 stats in most catagories for 10cr/resourse or more! It's also very hard to get a full range of resources.
Because of this, most artisans choose to mine their own ore, getting exactly the quality and resources that they need and can't buy. How does limiting the amount of people who can mine create more resources for people to buy. What if very few people want to be miners and now you have to spend more skill credits to get resources or pay even more for resources because of the large demand and low supply.
As the system stands now, there is a huge demand for resources, especially from the elite professions and most just mine their own. If lots of people really loved to mine, and its open to pretty much everyone now, where are all the resources that people want to buy right now.
Kisedd, I think your premise that a mining profession would limit miners is flawed.
A mining profession, as I see it, would not alter any pre-existing systems. But an Elite miner would simply be more efficient at what everyone else can already do. This would then eliviate the problems of resources scarcity by allowing a master miner to do the job of 10 'surveyors'.
An actual skill branch will attract miners because you get the 'titles'. Right now I have to be a "businessman" even though I'm truly a miner.
AS it stands now, I'm hard pressed to find anymore skills in which to spend my skill points. I have about 140 points that are just laying around because I don't need them. I'm slowly working up the merchant branch of Efficiency to reach Structure Efficiency IV. But after that, don't really need anything else.
So those who are excited about mining may have a similar issue as me. I've mixed and matched skills here and there to make a patchwork miner. I suppose I could be a Creature handler / Miner, but I don't want to .
I think my suggestiosn for an Elite Mining profession addresses a lot of your issues.
Oh, and another reason to have a mining profession:
Clear path.
Many people talk about how they Mastered this profession, or that profession. The path to master is clear, which introduces an ease of playability not present with miner. As a miner, you have to forge your own path, decide which skills will help you and which do not. Because the path is not clear, and offers no bragging rights (other than your bank account), it is a profession that attracts the bold, unconstrained type of player. As it is now, if you like a clear path to success and reward, Miner is not for you.
So if a mining profession were coded, it would offer a clearer path, making it accessible to more people, and thus more resources appearing on the market.
Oh, and another thing..
This supposed estimate of mining costs being .6 cr/unit is a fallacy. Often perpetuated by non-miners.
This .6 cost does not take into account power. It does not take into consideration the cost of re-deeding. It also does not take into account 'over-playing' a mine which we've all experienced when you put in a couple days worth of power and MP only to have the resource dry up. The .6 cost is a very naive number derived most simply from dividing the MP cost of operation by the extraction rate.
The real cost varies depending on power supply costs, but is closer to 1 or 1.2 cr/unit, or more if you catch the resource near the end of it's cycle.
You are wrong. Sorry. I have a spreadsheet, which includes resource shifts, redeeding, power, everything. After a resource shift it jumped to 1.2. After 5 days its backdown to .6. Only thing not included is price of harvesters, which goes to zero eventually. As I get more data I have a feeling it will stay very close to .6.
I only put one days maint in at a time though, so I never lose more than one day if there is a shift.