Player Features and Ideas Discussion

If you round down, you'll cause many people to have to calculate how many units to put in the stack they want to refine to avoid losing material.

I would like to suggest simplification of a system in order to streamline out some complexity which has no function. Right now, when we mine ore, every ore has a different volume per unit. Additionally, different ores require different numbers of units of ore in order to refine them, however, our mining lasers and drones mine ore based solely on volume and our ships carry ore solely based on volume.

There's built in confusion here that serves no purpose. I suspect that the complexity of the ore system is related to some sort of planned feature that never actually got implemented.

What I would suggest is that the entire ore measurement system get drastically simplified:

1) Instead of each single unit of ore being (x) cubic meters, make the standard measure of every ore 1m3.
2) Instead of each ore having a different volume requirement for refining, make the minimum refining volume 100m3 for all ores.
3) Keep the refining numbers per m3 of ore the same as they give per m3 now.

For example:

Veldspar is normally 0.1m3 per unit. It would instead be 1m3 per unit.
Veldspar normally requires 333 units to refine. It would instead require 100 unit. 100m3.
A refining unit of Veldspar is currently 333 units at 0.1m3 each, so 33.3m3. The output from 100m3 of refined Veldspar would be 3x of the output from an old 333 unit chunk of Veldspar.

You might ask: "Why make this change" The simple answer is that it's simply a pruning of unnecessary complexity. I have been around, off and on, for a long time. I cannot count the number of times I've heard miners grumbling about all the math we have to juggle in our head when we are trying to estimate the values of our mixed yield mining. I cannot even begin to count the number of times I've had to explain to new players how the ore volume / refining process works.

Don't change ANY of the functional output from miners. Simply change the way it's presented to the players. An Iteron V full of 33,000 m3 of Veldspar with current units should yield exactly the same as an Iteron V full of 33,000 m3 of Veldspar with proposed 1m3 units.

The difference, is elegance, efficiency, and clarity.

I edited this to change the minimum refining value to 100m3 because is does make sense to have some sort of rational limit on the volume of ore that a refiner would want to process.

Experienced miners don't even worry about lookup charts. We figure out the ratio of minerals we need, and that's what we mine based by. We ignore the wierd little freakish volume units and the completely unnecessary lookup charts. We base our calculations on yield per m3. because that's what we mine by - m3.

You understand that the wastage due to the freak units of volume of ore is already nonlinear? Giving up a oddball loss ratio due to freakish meaningless units of volume in exchange for some wastage due to clear and easily understood, documented, waste levels on lasers should be pure win for any individual concerned with such things.

Of course, as soon as you get in your first ship with strip miners, the entire old system of waste is meaningless to you. It's only an impediment to the noob miners, which is why it needs to go in the first place because the only effect is has is negative, and the only people it affects in anything resembling a meaningful manner is noobs. Negatively.

So, what I want is simple. When I survey scan I either want m3 to show instead of units, or I want m3 to show as well as units.

This does the opposite and makes bulk refining less efficient.

That isn't a bad idea at all. In fact it sounds like a great idea for Team Papercuts. And adding a column to the survey scanner results table is a much more elegant solution to your issue than changing the whole refining system.

You have enough Ore to refine to a whole number of minerals +1m3. Currently you get that 1m3 of Ore back. OP's suggestion is that that 1m3 of Ore is lost by rounding down the resultant minerals.

So rather than remove meaningless units from the system, you would prefer to add more complexity by adding a secondary unit to a scanning screen.

Just remove the stupidunits and do every single ore calculation in m3.

If you want to preserve the oddball wasteage method which only effects noob miners, then do so with clearly documented wastage numbers on the lasers themselves.

So let me get this straight:

One of your objections to changing the system as I described is that changing it would reduce inherent waste in the system.

Another of your objections to this system as I described it is that changing it would increase inherent waste in the system.

Why don't we just add -reason and +reason together and get rid of these two arguments entirely because they cancel each other out.

Personally, I'm beginning to believe that your only real objection to this system I have put forth is that it's different from what you have learned. You have no concern for the new players that look at it and get a headache because it's so mind-bogglingly absurd. You don't care that it has no redeeming qualities and has no meaningful effect on any player that's not a noob. You will argue both the efficiency and inefficiency side at the same time because you simply don't want change.