Lock the resources in the mining laser

The asteroid resource you mine should stay locked in your mining laser until you click on another resource.
This way careless players would not click on unwanted resources.
Say I want to mine Hikarite, then lock that resource in my laser until I change my mind and click on another resource.

Agreed, clicking it again to mine it seems unnecessarily redundant

The mining system was designed this way for a reason…

When you click an asteroid, all available (i.e. installed, and not in use) lasers will lock onto it. You then click any of those locked lasers to mine the asteroid.

When you advance, and get 2, 3 or 4 lasers, you can mine different asteroids with each laser. Click a rock, click a laser to mine. click another rock, click another laser and so on.

It may not make a lot of sense right now, but once you have multiple lasers, I think all should become clear.

There are of course numerous checks in place each time you click an asteroid, which also requires you to click an asteroid between each cycle. The asteroid fields are currently very large (50k+ on each roid). Once out of alpha, this will change, and asteroids will start disappearing and new ones generating.

I hope this clarifies everything.

I will have to wait to see how it goes with multiple lasers but it is a lot of moving around for very short period at class 1 roids. Be nice if you could click the gun, then roid then hit the button, or have a queue or something.Scanner to lock the roid, etc. It is a lot of click rock, move pointer to gun, move pointer to rock and wait, repeat. That might change as I move up but my first view on it is as others have said, just makes it seem like something isn’t working.

But just my experience so far on it.

Now that I look at it I don’t see an easy way to add an option to queue a laser or to lock it so understand this is probably not a choice but still an lot of work/clicking/moving around… to mine at this time/stage of the game.

I second the original poster suggestion, having to re-target every single time before re-activating the mining laser is already getting tedious after a couple of hours.
This will easily make many people write this game off.

In the grand scheme of things the mining system was designed to be the way it is so that once you move into ships with more than one Slot it becomes possible to mine two, three, four types of rock at the same time.

I know its been said in this thread already, but mining really becomes different once you add more mining lasers. Especially once you start mining Ice & standard rock.

At low levels prior to two lasers your learning the methods. It doesn’t take too long to get into a ship with two or more slots and makes the effort feel ‘justified’.

Coops

Hm. Ok, it should be possible to mine different rocks with different lasers.
Whatever rocks player wants to mine and specific equipped laser allow, right?
Then I still don’t understand the origin of the restriction - the necessity of selecting a rock each time.

Ideas:

  • save selected rock for each laser (e.g. in data-rock attribute of “.mine1-4”, as attributes starting with “data-” are reserved for custom data)
  • if a rock is clicked, only set it as target of laser both able to mine it and not aiming at anything yet (no data-rock attribute, laser type can also be stored in “data-type” attribute)

Obvious issue: it should be possible to set and reset target of a single laser at a time (e.g. 1st mines kel, 2nd hik). Solution:

  • click on targeted rock icon near laser unsets aim (drops data-rock attribute) and/or

  • small “aim” icon in the right-bottom corner of laser box (for each laser, below rock icon, there is enough room). Click it (on one or more lasers), then rock, all selected lasers target that rock (click on “aim” e.g. adds “data-aim=1” to “.mineX”, click on rock checks existence of such attribute on all lasers and modifies “data-rock”)

  • alternatively: always select laser targets one-by-one with consecutive clicks on rocks (even if it’s the same rock), of course checking if rock type is allowed for current laser (again, all the info can be stored in same attributes as above)

If however the effort / clicking enough times is a matter of balance (not letting mining become too easy), then it’s fine.

@DeepOne : They have rejected every and all rational suggestion on this issue, with the single pretext that ‘you will figure out soon’.
So far I am not, and I do not know of ANY miner happy withe the current system.
Given some answers received to different topics, I reached the personal conclusion that they only want to make it as complicated as possible for the players, and are not opened to any discussion on this.

As an Mining Expert (Proud member of The miners Union Guild in CE) :wink: I have to agree - There is something wrong with mining. Yes, I have one laser, Maybe later on…
Clicking is boring, but as CE Veteran, it don’t scare me ;). But, for me, The Biggest issue is waiting time (cycle time). 6-15 sec is such wrong time, too long for doing nothing, too short for reading book. I have two ideas how to change things.

First - instead of 6-15 sec waiting time Laser temperature would increase by 6-15 K (or other degrees, Kelwins are the best, because there is cold in Space :slight_smile: ). Laser would have certain maximum temperature, and cannot fire when it is too hot. One cannot unequip hot Stuff, too. And weapond cools over time (1 K/s, for example)
Pro

  • you could introduce Special (paid or not) which increase Cooling, or Paid Lasers with Better Cooling/Max Temp.
  • Idea Could be used in Combat, to limit combats per hour, or to add more Complexity (Battletech heat management, or, do you remeber Elite II: Frontier? There was Laser Cooling Too :slight_smile: ).

Cons
-A lot of clicking remains…

Second - Semi Automated mining. Player can mine like now, or choose “Autopilot”. Say 20 Shots, which take 60 more time than regular wait time - so 6-15 minuts. Way slower than regular mining, much less annoying. You may limit it to only one Laser (even if Vessel can Equip many)

Pro

  • less clicking
  • Player has choice

Cons

  • Balance - All player will end day on Asteroid field…

And, I think, Waiting time issue won’t wane with more lasers. I’m quite fast clicker, with fast connection, and, I think, more than 1 seconds for available mining laser will be annoyng.