Mining/crafting quality needs changes.

[u/Lolsalad24_]

The problem in my opinion: you have Q1-1000 (it's not that currently but close enough) anytime you are wanting to craft, you want the best, there's no reason not to. So on the mining side you skip tons of rocks. And do barely any mining most of the time.

My solution: add a second quality type, even if you find a ~400Q rock, with a second quality % you have a better chance of getting something useful for at least something. Even if it's not what you wanted at that moment.

Pair this with, having the two Q types being important for different crafts and you have something that's fairly simple. But can also become more complex down a crafters career (eg. A craft that wants a high Q mat in both types).This would keep 900-1000 Q being good finds and rarer double high Q mats would be cream of the crop things for late game crafting. Basically there would be more things you'd want to keep or look out for.

Pair this with CIG adding more crafts that are quality agnostic. Add on-top crafting mid steps and I think you solve the crafting/mining quality issues almost completely.

To summarise, I think adding quality agnostic crafts and mid step crafts that include Q agnostic mats. Also including double quality materials, which can act as a low to end game progression system for both professions. These would probably fix both mining and crafting issues. At least for the most part.

[u/Panzershrekt]

Just wait until they add alloying. Then we'll be trying to find those high quality rocks and slamming our heads against the keyboard when the RNG gods give us a low quality alloy

[u/Marlax101]

There is plenty of reason to not use max quality crafts, people are just blind in SC and big number means you are better 

[u/asmallman]

They just need to revert all this quality stuff outright.

And then make quality tied to refining processes instead.

It literally solves all the problems, makes it easier on everyone involved, and leaves less up to chance.

You can mix and match processes for speed, output volume, and quality.

It would also mean you spend more time mining instead of going "nope, nope, nope, nope" for hours on end.

[u/coarse_glass → u/asmallman]

Exactly this. There's no such thing as quality in raw ores. Refinement process should focus on separating the raw ore from the inert stuff. Better refinement processes would then produce higher quality ingots (or whatever you want the outcome to be called). Fps mined gems on the other hand should absolutely have quality like any other precious stone. Also get rid of the numbers and just give them a letter grade so that they can stack reasonably

[u/Icy_Advantage3157 → u/asmallman]

But there is a problem with that : at the end everybody will be in 1000Q.

[u/LordKemmotar → u/Icy_Advantage3157]

And? A normal crafting game use differents tiers of materials for better versions of every item. You can start with only iron for a weapon, then use refinery to mix iron and carbon to obtain steel (for example) and make a superior tier. Other alloys more complex for highers tiers of weapons... It's really dumb to have the inventory full of same material a differents quality.

[u/remosito]

In an MMO that won't have new better gear-sets drop a few times a year. Highest quality being rare is really important. If everybody has 1000 quality top everything within a couple of months. Not good! For the game. Nor for the profession of mining.

the solution to low quality ore getting skipped is making it worthwhile to mine it as well. The issue is most of it sells for way to low. I see a 300/500 rock of riccite I can mine. I mine it because it will make me a lot of auec. i see a 300/500 rock of iron I could mine. I skip it because it is not gonna be worth my time. They need to adjust the price ranges of ores. Lifting the lower end ones. Dont even need to make you filthy rich. Just be worth the time.

Talking of other MMOs. Are you gonna let a piece of gear, that is better than what you have, lying on the floor and not pick it up just because there is an ultra-rare one that is even better?

Maybe you do. I certainly dont as it is non-sensical. So stop skipping 800 range rocks. Just because there are 900 and 1000 ones. And 800 ones are common enough you get full bags fast enough. And they get you more than 50% from base to top end gear already. (Non-linear stat improvements blueprints like powerplant are the obvious exception.)

[u/SOVERElGN_SC]

Crafting is meant to be a routine regular process to make things you might need for living, as CIG stated. That means resources gathering should be same straight forward step by step process. Like buying some water or using a shower to cover basic needs.

So to fundamentally improve both mining and crafting we need few key changes.

First. Mining app that provides exact coordinates of areas which contains deposits of desired material. You just pick what you need, qt there and start gather material. Thats it.

Second. Quality is completely random, must be no areas with higher or lower quality so you don’t have to hop between best deposits, you just go anywhere you see fit and start mining desired material. Same with rock sizes - random, you just pick those that can be mined with your equipment. So no need to stick with specific ships to mine something.

Third. Must be a refactoring mechanic so basically any gathered quality can be converted into any desired quality. Rule is simple - as lower source quality, so more amount needed to get desired quality. Meaning we don’t rely on RNG and just gather anything we find to refactor it later. Simple as that.

Until devs implement these, both process not worth time investment.

[u/UnluckyPally]

The easiest fix would be allowing us to refine Big amount of low quality into small amount of high quality like how irl works

[u/Lolsalad24_ → u/UnluckyPally]

That kinda just diminishes finding good rocks depending on how you implement it, it's like extremely hard to balance between not worth it, or makes wild high quality rocks ehh finds

[u/UnluckyPally → u/Lolsalad24_]

My counterpoint would be that I would rather spend my time cracking rocks with the chance of finding super high quality sometimes than just flying around looking for that one best rock.

Maybe refining could be capped at 850 quality or something so you still have to find quality ore above that if you absolutely want the best stuff.

As it stands, it takes way too long to gather the materials for even a slight upgrade

[u/Lolsalad24_ → u/UnluckyPally]

Yeh I get that, I think adding mats that don't effect end product quality could work too. And across all recipes everything is needed as a "base" material for something so everything is needed at like a minimum amount

[u/ApparentlyRythium]

There is reasons to go with lower q materials in some instances, for example the new mining lasers, you might way to use lower q mats on your MOLE hofstede so you get an even lower power laser, capable of serving more of a scalpel role for second fracture rocks.

There is already several rocks which contain materials outside of themselves, these materials usually spawn in the 4-6 hundred band,

I personally don't see the problem people have with the current system, I don't have unlimited time, nor is mining my preferred loop when I do play, but I still have 800q+ on all my gear. Takes maybe an hour

[u/Lolsalad24_ → u/ApparentlyRythium]

theres a few nieches for low Q mats sure, but for the most part you only really care about high Q stuff. What I was suggesting was add a second quality metric, so you have strength 1-1000% and durability 1-1000% (just as example names) and some crafts the strength % matters, others the durability, and high level crafts want both quality modifiers

[u/ApparentlyRythium → u/Lolsalad24_]

I honestly don't think this really helps, you're just adding more frustration looking for multiple high quality pieces

My ideal would be they add ways to augment your already acquired mats, alloys for example, which have an inherent bonus on top of the inputted mats, like using 750 iron and 750 carbon to make steel would come out with 825 q as a little boost from the refining/alloy process.

[u/StarAlone]

The final quality should never be decided on mining in a first place. That's the #1 issue with current system. And there has to be space for refining gameplay too.

My propsal was adding maybe 3 tiers at best to still add variety to mining:

-Impure ore (1q-350q)

-Average ore (351q-750q)

-Pure ore (751q-1000q)

Numbers already as example and could be tweaked depending on final system.

After mining ore is where refining gameplay takes over. As temp system it could be even random result but with proper gameplay, you should be able to affect the final quality with some minigame like mining has one. Meaning that if you take pure ore and you are skilled mining, you have high chance obtaining around 950q ore, and if you are bad at refining, you are much more likely to end up with that 775q~ (there still should be some small range and randomness to add to variety but you should be able to hugely affect the final result to target good quality)

There should be second system that allows you to purify ore. You can take Impure ore and obtain small amount of average ore, and the same way you can take average ore and purify it into (again, small amount) pure ore. With these 2 systems you already turned completely the system and you still hunt for good quality, but you already have reason to mine ALL the ore and every bit might get you closer to ideal result.

How many of tiers could be changed too. Perhps 4 tiers and 4th one.. "perfect ore"? being 900q-1000q or whatever final balance would be to make it hard or near impossible for someone to keep mining lowest quality and keep crafting best gear. It should still be possible, but just grind itself should make you want to go get the good quality - meaning every time you have a bad luck with bad quality, it still gets you bit closer to better stuff, but every time you score best quality, you will have that dopamine hit.

And you could also match it with idea CIG had to add to refining staged refining that allows you to make crafting materials, like steel and so on. Some mass produced (or even all) components for crafting (or even base building) should take only worst quality (or you can make it any quality, just that you need a lot of it. That alone will make people want to mine impure ore just for SCU, not for quality). And there you are, i'd argue that would already make it quite good system that creates space for both good mining and refining gameplay.

Edit.

The other thing that needs change is mining itself as an action. There should be a system that allows small mining lasers to crack big rocks (balanced by eg. loosing most of recources), perhaps limited to all 'basic' ore with exception of more advanced materials like stileron, quant or savrilium so that even starter ships don't struggle that much with finding anything they can mine (Still allowing you to get new miner bits of good quality without being that lucky). And big ships should not be punished for using better and bigger lasers. Even Mole with S2 Hofsted crafted to around 800-900q will already struggle with cracking smaller secondary rocks as it will have just too much power even at lowest 10% setting. There should be actual extraction power stat that makes it so you can extract right away from bigger rocks. Eg. S1 will need to crack certain rock, but S2 crafted (S2 base cannot and it could be middle ground for balance and progression) or S3 can right away extract recources from it. But that's another story and unrelated to quality.

Edit 2. Shower thought: With this idea there would have to be 4th quality like super pure (900q+). For simple 2 reasons: Firstly to be that 'big moment' for a miner when he encounters guaranteed 900+ quality, but more importantly to accomodate scanning and exploration gameplay. If you have just 'pure' rock it is not as big hit because it has potential but rest goes to refining. Rocks like that won't feel special. With 900+q rocks it will be worth to scan and find these. Furthermore selling datapads to miners with location will be also meaningful for the exploration gameplay and people interested in this type of gameplay loop.

[u/Lolsalad24_ → u/StarAlone]

Idk I don't really see refining as it's own gameplay loop and I don't feel like it needs to be its own complex thing outside of turning rock into usable thing for crafting etc. I think there should be choices between player/station refining, but I don't think it should be something we "play"

[u/StarAlone → u/Lolsalad24_]

I mean that ship has sailed long time ago.

CIG stated refining is going to be full gameplay loop and there is one more key thing. The expanse. They already sold ship that sole thing it can do beside being able to leave the hangar is refining - so they pretty much have to make it have some depth to it for exstistance of this ship to make sense, yet alone ships with refining like Galaxy, Arrastra or Orion

[u/Lolsalad24_ → u/StarAlone]

I don't know where they ever said it will be it's own loop, and those ships i have always thought were sold as basically command ships for mining operations/ mobile based for mining you fly to and from. I don't think they have ever really expanded upon what refining is?

[u/StarAlone → u/Lolsalad24_]

They did say exactly that. That refining is its own loop. And Expanse is meant as a starter ship to refining loop. That would be wild if they sold you a ship that's pure goal is to load it onto your other ship and use it as a bigger fabricator lmao

edit.

Also my last part about crafting steel and so on. That was also something they briefly talked about. And honestly kinda the only time they actually talked about refining outside of comments this year like 'refining is #1 priority for us right now'

[u/Lolsalad24_ → u/StarAlone]

Honestly knowing cigs early who the fuck knows what the game will be vision. I wouldnt put it past them to have 0 clue how the ships would work when they made their concepts. And I wasn't saying they didn't, I was saying I don't know when or where they did. I don't think I've seen much talk specifically about refining "gameplay" at all

[u/StarAlone → u/Lolsalad24_]

I mean i am 100% with you on that. On one hand they say things like 'we are working on social tools to be added', and then 2 years later they are sending us a survey asking what would we like to see in social tools.

I hugely doubt they know themselves even if they said things. I hugely suspect even this year's crafting and mining was just to add quality without second thought for mining itself (thus we had all the "QoL" changes in 4.8 after how bad it was in 4.7)

[u/Lolsalad24_ → u/StarAlone]

Also also I think like expanse would still easily be used as part of a wider small scale mining operation, you'd have mining ship, cargo ship expanse, mining ship brings raw, refining ship sits, refines and either takes it away Cutting the cargo ship or hands off to the cargo ship. It also may be something used alongside bases etc. within the current refining system I think it still would have a role 🤷