Certainly. We need to make use of all these planets 😉

Yay! That's number one on my wishlist!

Oh yes that's an important feature. A nice slow burn way to make money, but call it something more imaginative than MB4, say something like Autonomous Mining Droid (AMD) or something like that. Would be nice too if there was some skill involved in finding rare minerals instead of blind luck. Perhaps the Mining Droids themselves could be upgraded in some way to make them more efficient at drilling, but at a price, maybe even have them move about on their own looking for minerals once they are deployed?

Well how excellent, will they be destroyable by other players/ have automated defences to protect them or even manual placing of defence structures? my mouth is watering at the prospect already 🙂

Patience young padawan.

Everything you have said is possible, it just takes time for these things to come together.

If I knew enough, this along with being able to leave your ship would be what I would be working on.

I know leaving the ship is a trivial thing but its something I really like the idea of.

You could land, drive about in your lander-craft and set up some mining posts 🙂

Aha! This got me thinking....was playing Mass Effect 2 the other day. I have the Cerberus add-on that gives you a little hovercraft (The Hammerhead) to run around on while planetside. Thinking about it, all it really is, is just a small ship with weak thrusters, but an infinitely powerful reaction thruster on the underside which prevents crashing into the ground. Such a small "ship" would be ideal for planetside activities like mining for even..........city assaults 8-).

When I was doing the Ladybird and discovered that it couldn't lift off from Earth, I was thinking that it could take off if it could use a runway. There were runways at some bases in FE2, and the Ladybird is depicted with wheels. The point I'm trying to make is that it would be cool if a vehicle could roll across the ground. A hovercraft would be cool as well, but in Flight Simulator the ability to taxi has allowed people to make many and varied ground vehicles. I even have a man on horseback!

Well believe it or not, but you can slide ships on the ground 🙂 I have tested this out with the Hammerhead heavy freighter, if you land with landing gear up you can slide around on the ground. But if you fly too fast you damage the ship.

So you could probably build a ground vehicle without any hover thrust, just lateral thrusters. And providing it didnt go too fast, it would probably work.

Its just finding a way of transferring from your ship to the lander without losing your ship.

Maybe i could direct your attention to the following thread: 😀

pioneer-f35/planetary-exploration-model-t1463.html

My attention has been succesfully diverted 😉

are mining contracts doable?

something like "go to planet x,our scans show it has a high concentration of x minerals.mine us some y quantity."

after some time "yarr,we are pirates,you need to fight us too"

mining from your spaceship would be even better for these kinds of deals

Aaarrrr , it might be do-able 😉

Assassin contracts search for a planet in a system nearby, but they also include a starport in the search, or perhaps its a search for inhabited worlds.

So using that you might be able to make a mission which searches for a planet or asteroid nearby and tells you to go and mine it, once you have some resources you can return for payment.

Might even be able to have other miners 'competing' 😉

It is early days for the Lua mission bindings. Basically anything not completely trivial will require support in the main C++ code. There isn't any mining yet, but we'll have to add it at some point (1.0 is meant to be frontier-complete after all 😉

Right now I'm bogged down in planet atmosphere chemistry and stuff, but when that is done how about I prioritise doing planet mining? It makes sense, since the new system generation code I'm working on will involve a more detailed description of planet crust composition.

Ah I was assuming that the mining laser kind of worked, but I havent tested that I only read about it in the code.

*begins to salivate*

YES PLEASE 😆

Mining with some kind of depth and or realism added to it would be brilliant and it sounds like your well on the way by factoring in planetary crust composition.

I love the idea of mining as a sideline - or for some - a full on industry...

ROCK RIGS (land) - Landing a bug-shaped mining rig upon rugged terrain, getting it online and operating will be an task ordeal for any player. Hiding in deep canyons minimises chance of theft and other unwanted attention.

WET RIGS (ocean) Rigs might be set up upon alien seas (like some gigantic pond ornament) extracting riches and minerals from alien oceans.

ATMO RIGS (sky) - Low orbital gas mining, these floating 'jellyfish' mining stations would be buffeted by high velocity winds but hidden deep in the foggy clouds of great Gas Giants.

PIRATES and other PROBLEMS - You may have to stay around the neighbourhood to keep an eye on your 'chickens'. Rigs doing well and show increasing activity nearby may risk freebooters stealing the produce when you're away or even steal the whole station! Those ships you kept noticing following you around the system, some might have been watching - but don't get too paranoid! Heh.

MISSIONS

i.PROSPECT and locate the best seams of minerals - may require a bit of surface scouting.

ii. DELIVER a rig to the field location it has been bought for.

iii. CONVEY the goodies from rig to refinery/marketplace.

iv. GUARD a rig farm on some planet, moon or asteroid.

v. RELOCATE a lost rig. Finding a rig should be like finding a needle in the proverbial haystack without its location coordinates and hidden beacon frequencies. Without such you'll have to fly real close to detect a rig.

vi. STEAL Find it - fleece it!

vii. DESTROY Locate and destroy for cash. No questions asked.

viii. GRAND THEFT MINO - i.e. steal the lot. Find, remove and deliver to another location.

I'll stop before this gets silly...

Are you serious? Are you asking our permission to do so? Well, let me think now.... hell yeah!! 😀

LOL, it's not silly at all. It's awesome, hahaaa!! But lots and lots of work I'm afraid. Poor Tomm, all these wishes. I'm afraid he won't even sleep at night.

missions to drop colony plexes they then spring up grow decline give missions etc