What method of mining/gathering do we want to see? There are really two options: Beams or Tools?
The Beam approach is to have a kind of Oortian Essence beam that we can fire to farm/breakdown materials for collection. Higher tiered materials would require a higher-tiered Essence Beam to be mined efficiently/effectively.
The Tool approach is to have an assortment of tools for each kind of farming tasks: Picks for stone and ores, sickles for farming, shovels for softer terrain, etc. Similarly, higher-tiered materials require better tools to be mined successfully/efficiently.
Any thoughts on this? I know we have ‘tools’ in game currently, but a single series of beam items would require far less Dev work than an assortment of tools for every tier.
Beams was used in Trove if i remember correctly. it has the advantage of having longer range and being able to remove everything and as you said they would need to make less tools, but the the utility of it also kinda removes something, like when you only need 1 beam to collect everything rather than having an assortment of tools.
I have been contemplating on a very advanced system lately about larger scale excavation. I’ll post it in suggestions when I am done, but it is a combination of beams and another ideas I had called “Shifters” from my magic and technology thread.
Haha mildly complicated, eh? Well, when you post it I’ll try and see if I can help you streamline it. (Not just talking out of my behind here, I teach physics so streamlining complex things is kind of my job.)
Beams and tools have been done before though… Let’s shoot for something entirely outside of the box…
Couple of things I’m brainstorming here (just for the sake of discussion)
Explosives only mining-
Everything is just reusable bombs of different sizes and effects
-this could work by essentially “tagging” a block, and then a short countdown later the block (and surrounding blocks depending on the size and timer) are destroyed, dropping materials and stuff.
The benefits here are that mining can go a little more quickly in open areas because you can just place the bomb and move on, but this could potentially be very op.
Autonomous mining-
Basically having a robot that will do it’s best to clear an area of resources.
-This would make mining for large scale materials really easy and painless (which might be a bad thing too), but it would be a hassle to remove just a single block (like in the context of misplaced blocks when building)
Anyways those are just a couple of dinky ideas I thought of.
I like the idea to have both, like aready mentioned. Tools are on all tiers or only low, while beams are at higher tiers only. I also would like if both systems have their own pro’s and con’s, for example …
Tools: Have a range of only 5 blocks, but don’t cost energy and are cheap
Beams: Have a range of 10+ blocks, but cost energy/stamina to fuel
So you can chose: hard work or laisure labor with some costs
The beam idea sounds really cool and less inventory space if it is our toon’s “ability” or just one staff/wand…in MC the tools take up a fair amount of space in the inv. unless its pretty sizeable. Also if the staff is customizable (different skins) would be neat. One beam tool would be less work for the Devs, right? than all the other traditional tools?
