Mining Permanent node's? or strip mining?

I would like to suggest that instead of the usual mine it and it’s gone you can instead mine it and then either the next day (or 3 days ) you can continue gaining a small amount of that resource. Certain areas can then either be sparsely populated or richer and give you more incentive to build small outposts where there are more resources. But there are a lot of factors such as how often you need those materials how much of it you can get in a single area and how easy it is to find and so on. So either way just thought id give my 2 cents.

It has always been a great disappointment in Mine craft that i settle down make a base and start crafting lots of wonderful stuff only to run out of precious ores and such in my general area and get very stuck without moving completely. which is what brought the suggestion around.

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Run out of ores…? I don’t think I’ve ever run out of ores in minecraft. My fiance has developed a highly organized mining system that allows us to mine pretty unlimited resources, since the mine is at bedrock, without impacting any of our cool crafting/building topside.

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Well idk what mod your using then cuz i know for a fact the resources that spawn in any given chunk is finite. i would have some awesome system constructed and then id start working on other stuff only to run out ( mostly red stone ) of precious materials.

Not literally, @BanditDragoon

well either way .its my personal experience with MC is what brought the suggestion to mind, i mean what would you prefer? strip mining or nodes that you can harvest a small amount of the recourse at certain intervals of time?

Both styles have their perks and their downsides–Minecraft/Terraria’s finite resources is an encouragement to explore more of the world as you develop your base, and subsequently enjoy more the game has to offer in each playthrough. The issue is Stonehearth’s current direction in developing and utilizing areas closer to your initial starting point, rather than jumping from location to location and settling as resources are needed. I know that routine from Minecraft too well…

I first saw the resource node concept in Castle Story, and for that game, it seemed to work alright. I guess the big downside to it is that it becomes a bit mundane after a bit if it is the only way to acquire most of your resources. I could see myself getting complacent if I happened to round up a few, instead of looking ahead for supplies for my villagers. (I would love to see it for the sake of a caravan route or mine cart track, though.)

Perhaps there could be a combination of both? If resources came from both nodes and in finite veins, it would give a more diverse gaming experience in resource collecting. It’s similar to the farm “minigame” discussion, where a player could simply go and plant crops or really delve in to get the best results. Perhaps the rarer minerals are less likely to come from nodes and encourage deeper exploration, unlike something common like copper or iron which is fairly crucial.

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Interesting and yes i do agree that a combination might be best. My original idea was that only certain resource nodes are available in any one area thus requiring you to explore and or trading with others for other resources you may need or if you need more if the nodes do not produce enough frequently enough.

The other is you set a miner to maintain the nodes so you don’t have to constantly maintain it yourself.

perhaps another idea is that the nodes are quite rare and maybe eventually you’d have enough to maintain your expanding empire :smiley: . But thank you very much for you post ^.-.^

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I would like it to be like Castle Story. (Sorry, I can’t find any screen shots)

i have castle story so don’t worry although i have not played it in a long time and as far as i could remember the resources were finite there as well but i guess they changed it O.o? at any rate i like machines and automation systems and all that so I’m pushing for a more node like system. But its much better to put this out as a question and see what people think would work best and discuss what might be best for everyone.

They’re still finite. I just like the system for mining.

I remember seeing YouTube videos of the early mining system for Castle Story–you had to mine out entire islands just to make your stone structures. The more recent renditions with the mine tunnels seemed to be a lot more “terrain-friendly” (especially considering the limited land you are given).

As long as Stonehearth’s system is somewhere between Minecraft’s “strip mine the whole world” and Cube World’s “collect resources, but you can’t actually change the environment” system, I think I’ll be happy.

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Indeed. I’m a fan of the idea that if you wanted some Ores from a mountain but say its rather far away and the only way of getting the ore is to go mine it instead of making your settlers trek a long way you can make a small outpost and then you have to setup the supply of that outpost ( food and other construction materials ).

Or you may have another reason for constructing an outpost such as trading or security, maybe even as a fishing outpost ( should there ever be large lakes or even oceans ).

If we keep in mind that dwarves are also announced, along with underground structures, we can somewhat guess that there will be some sort of… underground stuff going on. Whether this can be used to mine for things, like in Dwarf Fortress (which is, to my knowledge, an inspirational source) or is merely there for space is another question.

I don’t think huge surface/strip mining would fit the game - at least not really its era. To have something like that running even remotely efficiently at later stages, you would need a lot of workers, which would be a lot of AI stuff doing extremely simple, boring tasks. It’s not very resource friendly - all those AI could be used to do something… better.

Maybe we could combine Alien Nation’s mining system (pre-defined places where a mine of a certain type may be built, which has a finite amount of said resource) with something that SimCity 2013 does, to meet somewhere in Settlers (3): You can place a mine at a certain location and it will slowly “draw” resources from the ground (a virtual map with numbers). That means you can place multiple mines next to each other, which will empty a region of its resources much quicker, or have them spread out to cover more area. It would fit nicely into the idea of “the more micromanaging and planning you do, the more efficient you can get”.

We can fit in more Alien Nations stuff: If a mine has been depleted, you could build a deeper mine (by extending the current one, or building a different building). It would be (much) less efficient than a normal mine, but could get access to a vastly bigger resource pool. With a few of these over a map, you could end up with more resources than you would ever need.

However, I highly expect that there will be (several) mods popping up regarding that topic that will tweak mining. Some might be very sophisticated and complicated, some might be really easy.

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@RepeatPan loving your suggestion. I would also agree that massive strip mining efforts, the sort of thing you find in Dwarf Fortress, Gnomoria, and Timber and Stone I believe? are in all honesty, straight up ugly.

Don’t get me wrong, the ability to excavate and build tunnels would be highly appreciated and would almost seem necessary with the Dwarves? But I would have to agree with @RepeatPan that I’m not sure whether gathering resources via excavation/ mining, like you do in the aforementioned games, would fit the style they’re going for here.

Placing a “building” or some object/ structure to act as a mining building sounds perfect to me, something similar to the games you’ve already mentioned @RepeatPan, and for the sake of providing more examples, something like in Tropico. As you can see in the picture those spots denote the areas and quantity of ore, the text is in german, but those radio buttons on the right of the UI determine what is harvested, each ore has it’s own locations around the island:

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It’s very similar to what SimCity does. If we take its idea to those things (called “data layers”), we could end up with something like this:

(I like the style of it, using different colors for different ores and different shades instead of generic yellow/orange/red. Of course the curves would probably not fit very well into SH’s design, but even with voxelized borders it could look cute)

The concentration of ore is displayed in different shades of… auburn. Each mine is drawing from this layer, within a radius, slowly but steadily, therefore slowly decreasing the concentration.

If we utilised something like these data layers for Stonehearth, we could have many (I suggest two to begin with) layers: The first would be the normal ore, any other would be the level n-th layer, which requires a level-n-deep mine. Every level would have access to more ores, i.e. ores_at_level(n) = ores_at_level(n-1) + some_amount, where some_amount is potentially increasing the deeper we go.

Speaking of data maps, I think something like that could be really cool in this game, although it might not fit entirely (Stonehearth is, so far, no game where an omnipotent player exists). You could have the visible maps blank at first and have geologist search for ores by surveying the area, again similar to Settlers 3. The result could be viewed and switched-through as you please.

If we ever settle for such a one-point-of-entry type of mine, we could define multiple mines that have advantages: For example, you could start a mine on a cliff wall (that is sufficiently deep). This would yield you a cave mine, which would be most efficient and very quickly built. On the plains, an elevator mine would be built, with slightly reduced efficiency and longer building time (as we’ve got to get through all that dirt first). Just two examples of how mining could be diversified again, to have a little knack for those who want to go the extra mile.

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The mining zones is certainly a popular thing in similar games Anno 1404 and 2070 also use a similar idea where mines are placed on very specific locations and the island has a finite amount of resources but running out of those would prove to be difficult as there is usually a lot of them.

I guess as long as i can build a small outpost that can supply my main settlement with the ores i need and then in turn supplying the outpost with food and construction materials for the mining outpost id be very happy with that. Maybe even a small mine cart train at late game.

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I would like there to be “slag” from the ore production that can be used for gravelroads.

we cant just have coal/wood and ore go in and only have the metal ingot come out.

it can allso be used for building big walls as most walls hade gravel and rocks inside of them not just solid stone.

I do not like the resource node concept at all. I want to be able to mine out a mountain for my dwarves (once dwarves are added)

The game is for multiple playstyles… You CAN and will be encouraged to play as a hunter gatherer or wanderer group if you so choose.
http://stonehearth.net/stonehearth/

A living world that responds to your playstyle, be it staying in ONE location or moving around, or being a barbarian or building into mountains.

The point is not to simply make a city, in fact it states here that you dont have to and the game will respond accordingly.

Do realize the game is in alpha and many features have yet to be added, completely changing the concept for mining is…well… not something to do at this point.

also, this game is LESS LIKe anno/simcity, and more like minecraft or dwarf fortress or timber and stone,or gnomoria this is ridiculously obvious.

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This thred is like it says on the top in the green field “sugestions”, we are only saying how we would like it to be or sugesting how to make it more fun for us, if it turns out that most of us want something more like anno or simcity i think that is how its going to end up.

The idea of nodes isn’t taking away your ability to excavate and dig out mountains, discussion is being had on what alternatives there are to strip mining, which, as far as I’m concerned, can leave you with just massive areas of mined out tunnels. I know this is true for the other games of this genre.

That doesn’t mean that Radiant can’t bring in their own interpretation of systems both inside and outside the genre.

Well we don’t really know what Radiant are planning for mining/ resource collection in this regard. I would personally want to see and hear their thoughts on the matter before any decision is made. We are more of a vocal minority here and it’d be a bit unfair if Radiant said “Right, 5 guys on the forum want mining to be like this, so, let’s just do it”. Ya know? :stuck_out_tongue: