Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I just had to re-open this topic after coming across it:
Comet mining

My take on the concept is a bit different than the the current vision of breaking through a fast moving icy egg to get to the gooey innards.

First, I imagine the structure of a spawned comet to be, like has been mentioned before, a combination of asteroid minerals, ice, gas and moon minerals. In my image, the central object will contain several mine-able and attack-able ice or rocky nodes. The perimeter of the comet should have various asteroids which I would like to see moving in an orbit around the comet, but may just be free floating. Gas clouds will be near the surface and perhaps as a tail, away from the sun. Some gas clouds will likely be harmful.

As the ice nodes are mined or attacked, the comet will periodically 'crack', break and shift, causing a period of great risk to ships as it expels matter and gas outwards, but will also release more accessible and valuable resources to mine at the same time, eventually getting to new and rare rocky ice ores that contain some moon goo when refined. Griefers can accelerate these cracks by attacking instead of harvesting these nodes.

As for Comet movement, I do not think it should be moving on grid. Speed is relative, and if you're next to the comet, you are already traveling at it's speed, the same goes for bookmarks, if you found it once you can calculate where it'll be next. That said there definitely should be interaction. I suggest implementing a slow rotational movement which causes the ice nodes to drift out of range(this being a 50-200km object), so you will either need to chase the node, or target a new one. Irregular shaped comets could also be a collision risk, as it could throw you far away as it hits you in it's rotation, or brings you closer to dangerous surface gases. This rotation may even change as the comet breaks apart. Additional interaction will be moderate difficulty NPC pirates, drifters or drones that show up (almost always) once mining or player presence has occurred making it so that Larger Fleets will need to tackle the harvesting almost like an incursion in order to get the maximum value out of it, however solo players will be able to ninja some resources from it without much difficulty, especially before it's first crack.

The comets should be rare, but spawnable anywhere, in random locations, in random systems, much like wormholes. They will need to be scanned down and will despawn naturally after a week or so, however after they 'crack' the first time, a despawn timer starts leading to a countdown for when the Comet collapses in on itself, leading to dissipation, and likely death for anyone nearby at the time. This being the case, Comet interaction will be a race to get maximum value out of them as fast as possible and get out before it blows (or implodes, whatever the case may be).

Whether additional resources are left behind for a time after the collapse, I don't know, but likely.

proper course of action is to petition it be re-opened not to make a redundant post

Hardly a redundant post. Referring to an old idea and discussion for a comet concept, while proposing a new idea and discussion for a comet concept.

Besides, waiting to hammer out an idea means forgetting the idea.