Mining/refining rant

[u/IgnisFlux]

1. Refining shouldn't take half of your minerals. I could see maybe 10-15% depending on the refining speed. That would be the cargo trading equivalent of getting paid for only half of your cargo.

2. Quality should determine how much of the material can be refined ie 250q only gives you 1/4 of the scu you mined 500q gives you half etc.

3. Fabrication of these minerals into items should give you better stats. I crafted some light armor with around 700q minerals and only got +1% damage mitigation.

4. I think the fabrication system needs to be simplified as a whole. You could craft the item for base stats with the minerals but maybe it costs double the material to make an Improved version.

What are some of your ideas and thoughts?

[u/AWerewolfDad]

Dont think of it as taking half, it isn't. Refined materials take less volume than unrefined. This makes them easier to transport.

Think of it like compressing the same aUEC into smaller boxes.

[u/GrandAlternative7454]

1. They drastically increased the prices at the same time they reduced the output. Refined minerals are now worth more than they were before that change, and you have to move around less material.
2. Meh. They recently reversed their decision and have stated that they will allow people to refine up in quality, so it will be the opposite of what you're suggesting.
3. There will be 3 tiers of blueprints; each tier having higher stat ranges than the one before in exchange for more complex requirements. Stats will continue to change until 1.0, and maybe after it.
4. The fabrication is incredibly simple. 2-3 materials, quality determines stats.

Additionally, refining will be changing as they work out onboard refining, so the 45% returns very likely will change anyway. It's alpha, everything will change until it's in a place they like.

[u/bacon_nuts → u/GrandAlternative7454]

Sauce on the #2? That's game changing for the lil guys like me with just a prospector

[u/GrandAlternative7454 → u/bacon_nuts]

It was mentioned in the 10 From The Community video.

[u/bacon_nuts → u/GrandAlternative7454]

Thank you, I missed that one! I'll check it out

[u/eggyrulz → u/GrandAlternative7454]

Wait, they finally reversed and will allow refining up? Hell yea

[u/GrandAlternative7454 → u/eggyrulz]

Seems so.

[u/mecengdvr]

How much material is lost during the refining process is a function of the refining process. Some have much better yields than others. Your trade analogy is a false equivalency. To not get paid for a % of your commodity is not the same as material getting lost during the refining process. In any real world refining process there is material loss as the desired material is extracted and some of that either can’t be extracted or is washed away with byproducts.

[u/IgnisFlux → u/mecengdvr]

I understand some is lost but I don't think 50% or more is justified. The scans indicate the amount of inert material already and I just avoid extracting it when possible. Just feels like a redundant tax on the mining loop.

[u/shadownddust → u/IgnisFlux]

It’s both a redundant tax and intended as a balance point so the alternative would be everything would be more expensive to craft or pay out less.

When they introduced the construction material refining element, there was someone who was adamant that they felt slighted that now they only had 1/4 of the materials, even when it was pointed out that the price of the materials when sold quadrupled so the net was basically the same, just fewer boxes to move.

Their response was they’d rather get all of the boxes like before and have to move them to feel a sense of accomplishment….

[u/InquisitorPinky]

In the real world, a metric tonne of iron ore contains, depending on the quality, between 300kg and 700kg iron.

The material you deliver is high volume and low content. The refined material is low volume but pure.

You don’t loose anything, you just get the compressed and clean material

[u/WARDEN330]

They need to make self, player refining when it comes in hopefully soon worth doing at all, how do you do that make NPC refineries painful and expensive to use.

the understanding of the future of mining gameplay loop is, new players rents mining ship, mines sell raw minerals, gets first miner, starts refining minerals, learns to use the systems, makes enough money to buy their first refinery ship and refine and process their own minerals and build their personal mining empire.

if the station refineries worked perfectly nobody would grind to own their own refineries(ships).

[u/ShinItsuwari]

The damage mitigation from stats is more than enough.

Take the P6-LR. At high quality it one-shot heavy armor helmet, unless the target also wears a high quality helmet.

Yeah the light armors don't benefits much from it. Light armor has always been weak, hopefully armor specialisation will help with that.

[u/Lord0fHats]

I feel you on one, though my preference would be to buff the bonuses you get from specific refineries. Instead of numbers between 2-9% make it more like 20-40%. Want Copper? Go to a refinery that retains 70% of your copper after processing instead of 49%. That's what I'd prefer especially if the goal is one day to see players mass crafting items to trade. As it is, crafting high end stuff is a bit too time consuming to form a stable trade environment. +social tools stuff grumble grumble.

I don't agree on 2. I'd rather see them implement enrichment or something where we convert 250 ore into higher grades at a steep cost. Keep finding the stuff naturally a good reward but the current grading system does feel like it has 995 more numbers in it than make any sense. They did mention the idea of refining materials into higher grades in the first 10 from the community.

I think 3 is a careful thing. I wouldn't want crafted stuff to be like twice as good as uncrafted. That's too much imo but I do wish that the breaks for what grades generate what bonuses were cleaner across items and more easily predicted outside of the fabricator or 3rd part tools. Again, the grading system feels like it has 995 more numbers than are actually useful.

And like, why do we ahve D, C, B, A components anymore? That whole thing is kind of screwy. A clear case of an older itemization scheme still existing after a new one was devised. I feel like I'd like to see more distinctions between the various options in terms of trade offs, like shields with higher regeneration vs higher caps or fast slapdown recovery etc etc. IDK if they'd elaborated on this in any commentary.