Sorakin wrote:Sorry if this has been suggested before, but if the real issue is players leaving 3-4 weeks in without able to progress without a second hauler account, why not add purchasable hauler side-kicks for high amounts of NIC or make them buildable, basically a storage unit on wheels. Of course there's balance and the use of the actual hauler to be considered, but if its THAT much of an issue, it seems like a good stop-gap until the population is better.
This could be addressed with Indy 2.0.
Issue: Mining/harvesting isn't self-contained, it requires multiple accounts.
Solution: Make mining/harvesting self-contained.
To acheive this, you could make cargo holds larger or special in some way, but it creates issues with hauler bots. It's simpler to change the volume of gathered material; in conjunction with smaller ore fields (plants are already spaced to the point where can harvesting is ineffcient anyway) that roam.
AFK mining would be an issue of course, if the ore didn't roam, if mining bots could hold 10M ores. But since it will roam, simply setting up a miner and walking away will result in your miner sitting on barren ground as the ore moves away. Mining will be more like harvesting, where you have to actively pursue the tiles.
Another issue this solves, is the escalating problem of moving large amounts of material to/from the refineries.
So, for starting miners in an argano, it should be scaled so they can mine for roughly 60 minutes before filling up; this is based on having a starter % mined and miner cycle times. This should scale too, so that when you get to Riveler MK II, you can still mine for roughly 60 minutes before your cargo is full.
The 60 minutes (just throwing that number out, maybe longer/shorter whatever) doesn't include moving time. So, while it may take 60 minutes to fill the cargo, it's probably going to take 2 or 3 hours of actual game time to do it. However, by changing the volume, that 60 minutes of mining should roughly equal the same a static miner could get in 3 hours of mining.
Or, reduce the amount of materials needed for manufactoring, and make the fields much smaller, so that 10U of ore is equivalent to 100U now; but this is more involved.