Topic: Mining etiquette

Figured id at least post something about how to mine on alpha among strangers, and how to properly mine a field when you wont be able to 100% kill it to respawn a fresh field.

When mining liquid ores such as HDT/Liquizit/Epriton:

Liquid ore flows to the source of mining.  This means that if you see someone else mining liquid, its best to hit the same tile they are mining.  This will cause the entire field to flow to that tile, meaning you wont ever have to move until the field is dead.  For liquid ores it is acceptable and expected that you hit the same single tile as everyone else.  Spacebar mine for liquids. Don't bother hitting multiple tiles here.

When Mining solid ores such as Titan ect:

This is a bit more difficult vs liquid ore.  You will want to first and foremost kill every tile you mine.  leaving behind a few cycles will mess up the field respawn until someone else comes along and finds that lone tile.  If you are mining into a field can and plan on mining longer than a missions worth, youll want to put one laser on each tile, as many as you can mine, in a straight line.

You will often see rivalers mining 5 tiles across working down a line.  Pay attention to this and try not to park your argano right behind him and hit two random tiles.  The rivaler will most likely mine right through you which could cause a new player to assume hes getting grief mined.  This is not the case.

if you are in a small bot, and don't plan on extended mining, hit some tiles on the edge of the ore field, don't park your bot in the center and hit a few tiles, creating holes in the field.

If you find yourself in the situation where there is only a row of 5 tiles and a rivaler working down it, just start on the opposite side and work towards them rather than starting the line behind them.



overall when mining your goal is to 100% kill the field to get the fresh respawn.  Once a field is 100% mined out a new one spawns. Most "professional" miners will try to pay as little attention to mining as possible (they are either pvping, farming mobs, watching tv, ect while mining)  Don't take offense if a big miner bot runs right through where you are mining, chances are you didn't notice the line down the field they are working.

Since ore is infinite, and respawns immediately after killing a field, there is never a need for getting upset at others mining your ore.  The only thing that is typically upsetting is scanning down a field seeing it broken into many tiny sections with a lot of tiles with only a few cycles left.  This causes people a lot of babysitting of that field in order to kill it, so a fresh field respawns.

You always want to leave a field in a condition where its simple to kill it, keeping to ore in a solid patch vs many broken sections with as few low density tiles left as possible.  This will ensure someone else can quickly kill that field to spawn a new one. 

Remember if you don't kill that field, someone else will have to, so leave it in a condition you would want to see.

Stranger Danger / Capital Punishment / Cyberdown
Pillar of the Community
Ruler of Recruit Chat
CIR Ministry of Truth

2 (edited by Ludlow Bursar 2014-06-03 12:51:37)

Re: Mining etiquette

Stranger Danger wrote:

... when you wont be able to 100% kill it to respawn a fresh field... your goal is to 100% kill the field to get the fresh respawn.  Once a field is 100% mined out a new one spawns ...

Can we please get away from this erroneous notion that you have to 100% kill a "field" for a new one to re-spawn and that when a "field" is mined out a new one will spawn.

It is quite simply not true. The system is based on thresholds for an island not "fields". As far as the server/code is concerned there is no such thing as a field.

If there was things could be different ... and better imo.

Having said that, listen to OP. Little *** bits of raw material all over the place and randomly mined blobs are a PITA

Re: Mining etiquette

Why it can't be with thresholds and with fields? EVEN if it doesn't respawn immediately, this is good etiquette to mine the field to 100% so a poor newbie without 100% geoscanning is not forced to geoscann 10 times before he finds the last tile/ doesnt have to run arround the whole island to get near the other field that is not yet depleted.

AFAIR with the current system, it will check if the field is near depletion and clean it up automagically, but not before 10 people get frustrated with the 90%-empty field.

<GargajCNS> we maim to please

Re: Mining etiquette

Norrdec wrote:

Why it can't be with thresholds and with fields?

Why indeed. That gives more flexibility to balance mining.

Norrdec wrote:

AFAIR with the current system, it will check if the field is near depletion and clean it up automagically.

Not quite, it will check for individual tiles which have a very small amount left and clean those up. Because there is no such thing as a field it can't check to see if the "field" is, say, 95% depleted and clean that up.

Hence, Stranger, I whole heartedly endorse mining etiquette.

Re: Mining etiquette

Then what do you understand that as a field? I am not bashing, just curious. There is x amount of resources that should be on an island and they are hidden in random number of fields (example 3-5 fields)

<GargajCNS> we maim to please

6 (edited by Ludlow Bursar 2014-06-03 14:42:39)

Re: Mining etiquette

Zoom on dynamic mineral "field" spawns.

1: http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/post/81710/#p81710

Dev Zoom wrote:

Ok, so the current mineral respawn system works like this: we have a minimum and a maximum amount threshold for every type of mineral per island. The system tries to keep the mineral amounts available between those two values. If the amount drops below the minimum threshold, a new field is spawned at a random location on the island.

2: http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/post/67907/#p67907

Dev Zoom wrote:

"Fields" do not exist from the viewpoint of the server, only tiles. The server periodically checks the overall amount of minerals contained in tiles on an island, and when it finds that the current amount is lower than a certain threshold, it will generate a new field at a random location.

Now, obviously when the server detects that the lower threshold is breached it generates new resources and, as we all know from playing the game, it groups quantities together on contiguous tiles. To answer your question, that is what I call a field. As far as the server goes though, it's 250 odd individual unlinked tiles. They might as well be scattered randomly across the whole island as far as regeneration triggers are concerned.

I once tested this (just to prove to the doubters that it works this way) on a virtually deserted Gamma by scanning down every liquizit "field" on the island (there were 5) and then sent a separate Riveler MK2 to three of them, mined out about 60% of each and then scanned again. Low and behold, 6 "fields" and not one mined out.

Finding the new "field" was tricky, however, since I had to find a place on the island where my directional scan was pointing somewhere new. When you mine a whole "field" out this is less of an issue since the one "field" you detected previously (the one you've just depleted) is no longer there and your scanner must point somewhere else.

                                                                                                                                 
TL;DR The point I'm trying to emphasise is that a new "field" can spawn after you've mined one tile, or all of them in a field or, might not spawn at all. You simply can't tell, especially on a busy island.

7 (edited by Norrdec 2014-06-03 14:46:20)

Re: Mining etiquette

Nice to know. Still, don't you think it's a good idea to eat all of the ore in a place, so that other people don't get frustrated? Because you went into detail (which is nice, as I learned something), but the details are not really necessary for etiquette. In layman's terms it still is to say enough what Stranger wrote - kill this field, don't make people cry and you are sure to get a new/bigger field.

To provide consensus either Stranger could edit his post, or imho better, you should edit your first post after his initial post with "BTW, this is the full theory behind ore fields, enjoy".

And DEVS - make it a sticky!

<GargajCNS> we maim to please

Re: Mining etiquette

Norrdec wrote:

Still, don't you think it's a good idea to eat all of the ore in a place, so that other people don't get frustrated?

Yes, absolutely I do. And the liquid mining etiquette is a really good practice too.  Just hope the detail didn't detract from the message.

Re: Mining etiquette

Stranger please add (official thread) in the topic.

Steam achievement Unlocked:  Being a Badass
http://www.perp-kill.net/kill/239407
Dev Zoom: I think its time to confess, Ville is my alt
Dev Zoom: Ville can be sometimes so sane it's scary.

Re: Mining etiquette

Really STC trolling a guide?

Make your own how to mine guide if you don't like mine please.

zoom could you clean up this thread please? including this post.

Stranger Danger / Capital Punishment / Cyberdown
Pillar of the Community
Ruler of Recruit Chat
CIR Ministry of Truth

Re: Mining etiquette

I guess I'm confused about how the whole field re-spawn works. Last time I was doing any mining was in January. I cleared a few epi fields on Beta and each time i cleared the last bit a new spawn would appear. Also on Tellisis I personally went around and cleaned the last few tiles on 5-6 fields. Each time I cleared those last tiles a new spawn showed up.

Maybe I was hallucinating or seeing results occur in manner I did not 'see'

Sparking to other games

Re: Mining etiquette

Rex Amelius wrote:

I guess I'm confused about how the whole field re-spawn works. Last time I was doing any mining was in January. I cleared a few epi fields on Beta and each time i cleared the last bit a new spawn would appear. Also on Tellisis I personally went around and cleaned the last few tiles on 5-6 fields. Each time I cleared those last tiles a new spawn showed up.

Maybe I was hallucinating or seeing results occur in manner I did not 'see'


Yeah that's how it works, clearing up the last bits should spawn a new field.

Problem is, and especially on alpha with solid ores, having to clean up those last bits on a field that has 30 tiles left spread out all over the place.

Simple mining etiquette will leave the remainder of your field in an easy to mine block, for the next guy who scans that field.

Stranger Danger / Capital Punishment / Cyberdown
Pillar of the Community
Ruler of Recruit Chat
CIR Ministry of Truth

Re: Mining etiquette

Stranger Danger wrote:

Yeah that's how it works, clearing up the last bits should spawn a new field.

your experience just shows that the islands threshold for spawning a new field is so high that it kicks in everytime you clean up one deposit. (considering that other deposits are partially mined already, thats very likely to happen

half-mined tiles will be killed by the clean-up mechanic.

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

Re: Mining etiquette

But NOT BEFORE 123 people go and find the half-mined ones. THIS WHOLE POST IS ABOUT QOL THAT ONLY OTHER PLAYERS CAN DO. While half mined  tiles be go poof, it will take time!

<GargajCNS> we maim to please

Re: Mining etiquette

The *** bad guys CIR wants to make noob life easier. This is another example how people just want to bomb it and nitpick, because CIR.

<GargajCNS> we maim to please

16 (edited by Annihilator 2014-06-14 08:49:05)

Re: Mining etiquette

i have already made my suggestion how to make the mining system better server side so this whole "field fragmentation" just doesnt happen like a 2 years ago.

the way it works atm, the server can only clean up single tiles if they below a threshold - there is no such thing as a "field" foir the server, so i cannot clean up fragmented ones..

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

17 (edited by Rex Amelius 2014-06-15 20:07:40)

Re: Mining etiquette

So mining does work the way I thought, field by field. One post in this thread threw me

Annihilator wrote:

i have already made my suggestion how to make the mining system better server side so this whole "field fragmentation" just doesnt happen like a 2 years ago.

the way it works atm, the server can only clean up single tiles if they below a threshold - there is no such thing as a "field" foir the server, so i cannot clean up fragmented ones..

Back to OP this thread is NOT about modifying game mechanics, its a request for players to modify their own BEHAVIOR given existing mechanics.

Not asking a lot here!

Also, there are "fields" in the form of mining tiles in close proximity from the player's perspective. And yeah, we can all see the damn fragments despite what the program code 'looks like' to the server. Jeez Anni, why you gotta make everything so damn difficult? Please don't answer ...just go dress up in Goth or something.

Sparking to other games

Re: Mining etiquette

Annihilator wrote:

i have already made my suggestion how to make the mining system better server side so this whole "field fragmentation" just doesnt happen like a 2 years ago.

the way it works atm, the server can only clean up single tiles if they below a threshold - there is no such thing as a "field" foir the server, so i cannot clean up fragmented ones..

Yeah man this isn't about some suggestion you made that was ignored.  This is about player etiquette.

Players can make it so that when they leave a field its in a condition that makes it easier for other players to finish the job, it takes little effort on the players part.

The reason I made this thread is some simple solutions were just not known.  New players I was interacting with on fields thought it was grief mining to hit the same tile as me on liquid fields, when that's the ideal way to approach mining liquid. 

Also saw new players that didn't know mining a hole in the center of that titan field made it a pain to mine for others later on.

I appreciate the political motivated disagreement, and anni being himself (your suggestion on another thread holds no bearing here)  and I appreciate the negative posts and arguments bumping the thread.

Hopefully some new players will use this guide as a simple way to be a polite miner, and I use it as a thread I can copy and paste to other people so I don't have to type it out over and over (though I have to tell them to ignore the trolls on the thread which is unfortunate)

I would actually appreciate it if zoom cleaned this thread up to make it more of a guide less of a corporation dialogue argument and anni pretending hes a junior developer.

Stranger Danger / Capital Punishment / Cyberdown
Pillar of the Community
Ruler of Recruit Chat
CIR Ministry of Truth