One option could also be to have different tiers of veins. In this situation ores would not be uniformly strewn around the world, but would instead be focused in certain locations. Anything that gets you out into the world. I'm not sure what the best process for this may be, maybe climbing to a high vantage point and putting down some sort of scanner, or just stumbling on them yourself. With the suggestion that we nerf jetpacks, the rover suddenly becomes relevant again as a means of transportation, and using this I think we can expand into a more complicated mining (or resource harvesting) gameplay loop, that looks something like this: It offers some life support, and some extra storage, but all that is pretty much trivialized with the jetpack. The rover is basically just a curiosity (a pretty one) since driving it is so much slower than zipping around in the jetpack. So much of the Stationeers in game "concept art" has the stationeers out and about carrying crates, driving the rover etc, but none of this gameplay exists in the game right now. My suggesting is to drastically nerf the jetpack to where you float somewhere around a slow walking speed, since you probably want to keep some flying in the game just for building purposes, and replace the mining system with an enhanced one. Or if you played world of warcraft when they released flying mounts you may recognize what it did towards feeling engaged with the world. If you played modded minecraft you may recognize that it tends to try to (modded is always a bit of a wild west) lock creative flight behind very high tech. Allows you to not engage with any of the terrain below, which removes a lot of interesting design space.Move ridiculously fast, so that no ground based method of transportation can compete (and causes problems with chunk loading).I think the main problem with the current gameplay loop is just that the *jetpack is way too overpowered.* The problem with the jetpack is that it: I like the approach taken in #2 the most, since AIMEe just feels a bit too magic for me, but I think it can be improved a lot besides just adding tiers. This feels like an approach that's fairly in tune with "the spirit" of stationeers (building infrastructure), though the current version can't really compete with the basic approach yet since ores are sparse and the current miner has a very small footprint. Set up some infrastructure with strip miners.This feels like a reasonable approach to mining, though it's a bit shallow. Which mostly means doing IC programming, configuring, debugging and then just swapping out batteries as needed. Mine out the ore, go to 2 if your inventory has space or the sun is settingĪnd now as of the latest few patches there's a few alternate approaches.Fly around quickly on a jetpack until you find an ore you need.(optional) Place a beacon or tall item in your base.I think the reason for this is that the core gameplay loop of mining is too repetitive, and unlike all other aspects of stationeers.Ĭurrently I would describe the core gameplay loop of stationeers currently to be: Alternatively, you can smelt from anywhere if you have a Thermal Anvil.I love Stationeers, but I, like most people, agree that currently mining is not very fun. Ask a guard in capital cities for directions to these trainers, and you'll find your way to a forge. The easiest way to find a forge is to find a blacksmithing or mining trainer - they are almost always by a forge and an anvil. Locating a ForgeĪll racial capitals have a forge, as do many smaller settlements.
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Clicking "Create All" will begin smelting all copper ore in your inventory or bank until you cancel the spell by pressing "Esc" or moving, or you run out of ore. Clicking "Create" will create a single bar, or multiple bars if you enter a number in the field next to it.
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Once you have copper ore and are next to a forge, open the professions menu using the "K" key, select "Smelting" and select "Smelt Copper" from the list. Unlike many later metals, copper has a one-to-one ore-to-bar ratio, so a single bar only requires a single ore.
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You gain the ability to smelt copper ore into copper bars as soon as you pick up the mining skill from a trainer.