give mining some expedition shotguns

[La Villa Strangiato]

If you say "skill issue" on this post I'm killing you with a hammer, first of all.

Second, simplemobs are busted as fuck. I know it, you know it, we all know it. Reavers and spectral eels, in particular, are very fast and hit lethally hard. It's pretty much a guarantee that if you don't immediately gib one, they are going to give you arterial bleeding.

I've never really had a problem with simplemobs when I play xenoarchaeology. It could be that I never go it alone when I play xenoarch, so I usually have someone who can shoot the simplemobs attacking me for me. But I've noticed that even when I go it alone, I can empty a shotgun into an eel and gib it. In three shots!

"But LVS," I hear you saying. "The miners have kinetic accelerators! Those are pretty good, and you can even run-and-pump with them now." True! However, the problem when you are shooting an eel with a kinetic accelerator is that you can also be caught in your own blast. If you manage to see the reaver/eel before it sees you (unlikely if you're not a Vaurca or Tajara), you can definitely get a few KA blasts in on it. The reason most miners tend to get run down by these mobs, however, is because they surprise you and then get in close.

clever girl

Then, you're forced to run away while shooting, but given how fast these mobs are, they're probably going to be keeping pace with you, which means you have to catch yourself and the mob in the KA blast, which will probably hurt you as much as you hurt the mob. Also, this is if you don't get hit in the foot by A) your KA blast or B) the mob in question. If they get a lucky break on your foot or hand, you can kiss the round goodbye.

Therefore, I think mining would be much more accessible and much less bullshit if miners were given a locker that contains a couple expedition shotguns, the same way the Intrepid does. I think this would be reasonably balanced for a few reasons:

1. You can't fire these shotguns on the ship, they're locked to away sites with their firing pin
2. Miners have a limited carrying capacity, which means they might have to do a bit of an inventory shuffle, which allows them moments of vulnerability while also having a way to defend themselves
3. Expedition shotguns don't have a ton of shots (the ammo counter lies; you have about three shots because they shoot multiple beams)

This is a pretty easy thing to add and I would add it myself but I would like to get player feedback (preferrably from miners) and maybe dev feedback before throwing a PR in the ring.

[Carver]

Personally I'd just hope to see the mobs made less common, it's a bit silly that seemingly every other asteroid in the spur is infested with wacky ass organic life that is hostile to everything else despite seeming to subsist on.. Radiation? Minerals?

My biggest reason for being against the shotguns is them being used on away sites. Miners should be mining, not looting.

[RexTenebrarumSum]

2 hours ago, Carver said:

Personally I'd just hope to see the mobs made less common, it's a bit silly that seemingly every other asteroid in the spur is infested with wacky ass organic life that is hostile to everything else despite seeming to subsist on.. Radiation? Minerals?

My biggest reason for being against the shotguns is them being used on away sites. Miners should be mining, not looting.

I've always thought it was bad RP for shaft miners to go to derelict stations or relays unless requested by a head of staff for an expedition.  Maybe I'm wrong about that, since I don't play a ton of miner, but when I do go mining, I like exo planets or asteroids if I can find one.

 

As for the main topic, I don't have a ton of mining experience.  But I do see a lot of miners dead on the manifest when they go alone.  It's a shame cause I hear a lot of them on common channel scream for help, and then silence.  

[Lmwevil]

Reavers were like, part of the badlands, no? Just remove reavers and eels, problem solved. 

As a miner main from aurora time and no longer due to the combatification of modern mining. I truly believe that if there were only carp there would be nothing of value lost, having your round insta ended because a reaver hit you once after you had to fly to a location is pretty bullshit imo. 

Miners used to be a very relaxed, rp role where you'd mine and chat shit with miners. Now miners have literally more combat experience than security canonically because they fight for their lives on every planet they land on. Making them doomguy is boring 

[GeneralCamo]

Honestly, most of the simplemobs were native to the Romanovich Cloud, according to their description. I question why we are getting them all the way out in Coalition Territory too.

[Jasorn]

i main mining, and have on aurora for over a year now, and i think this would be a nice addition. lore-wise i don't see why they wouldn't be given them alongside science, they both go to the same off-ship locations. my main cause of death is heart failure from pain of a broken foot, so what i think is needed is the ability to splint through voidsuits or adjust the code to make it so you dont get paincrit from walking on a fracture over like 15 tiles

[4000daniel1]

I think the coolest way to do this would be to give them a reskinned version of the sawn off double barrel shotgun, a holster and like a box of buckshot each. Two buckshot PBs is enough to gib an eel, which makes it a one shot at PB range since you can fire both barrels at once by switching fire mode.  But it's lackluster at range which makes the KA still practical at ranges where you're not blasting yourself with it.

Edited November 18, 2023 by 4000daniel1

[wowzewow]

This is powercreep, literally. Textbook definition. We don't need an arms race of continually adding weapons to each and every job.

Miners are already balanced around KAs - having shotguns also inadvertently fucks over Antagonists as well, intentional or not, because KAs are balanced around doing little-to-no damage in atmosphere. Arguably, you could order guns as Operations, but that requires going through the bureaucratic process, which keeps it in check.

Just nerf the speed and damage of the simplemobs. Either that, or as Carver said, reduce the spawn rate.

Voting for dismissal.

Edited November 18, 2023 by wowzewow

[La Villa Strangiato]

 

30 minutes ago, wowzewow said:

having shotguns also inadvertently fucks over Antagonists as well

 

On 16/11/2023 at 19:20, La Villa Strangiato said:

You can't fire these shotguns on the ship, they're locked to away sites with their firing pin

[Lmwevil]

2 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

 

 

i don't particularly have a horse in this race other than wanting mining to be less lethal but uh- with a screwdriver you can pry out the pin in the gun, and very often the warehouse spawns with live firing pins so it's pretty tenable (if powergaming) to swap those out

[La Villa Strangiato]

10 minutes ago, Lmwevil said:

i don't particularly have a horse in this race other than wanting mining to be less lethal but uh- with a screwdriver you can pry out the pin in the gun, and very often the warehouse spawns with live firing pins so it's pretty tenable (if powergaming) to swap those out

I did learn this today! I would say the shotguns are still pretty balanced even if you rip out the firing pin, as you mostly do damage when you're up close and again, you only get three shots. Machetes are also not very strong against carbon mobs anyway. They're about as effective as emergency axes.

Here's the PR, BTW

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/17810

[Jasorn]

5 hours ago, wowzewow said:

This is powercreep, literally. Textbook definition. We don't need an arms race of continually adding weapons to each and every job.

Miners are already balanced around KAs - having shotguns also inadvertently fucks over Antagonists as well, intentional or not, because KAs are balanced around doing little-to-no damage in atmosphere. Arguably, you could order guns as Operations, but that requires going through the bureaucratic process, which keeps it in check.

Just nerf the speed and damage of the simplemobs. Either that, or as Carver said, reduce the spawn rate.

Voting for dismissal.

like i said in my earlier reply i dont see how this is any different than xenoarch having access to the shotguns, as for what was said below about ripping out the firing pin to allow it to shoot on ship, what the hell are you even doing with that anyway, it's a shit gun, use your TC to order something better? if a miner really wants to screwdriver out the pin, and assuming they find a normal one in the warehouse to replace it, let them die, literally, it's a terrible gun

Edited November 18, 2023 by Jasorn

[Carver]

13 minutes ago, Jasorn said:

like i said in my earlier reply i dont see how this is any different than xenoarch having access to the shotguns, as for what was said below about ripping out the firing pin to allow it to shoot on ship, what the hell are you even doing with that anyway, it's a shit gun, use your TC to order something better? if a miner really wants to screwdriver out the pin, and assuming they find a normal one in the warehouse to replace it, let them die, literally, it's a terrible gun

A terrible gun is still a gun and you can fairly easily kill someone with them, not every antagonist has an uplink anyways. Again, miners are miners, not some crack shot salvage team who need weapons. Better to axe the Romanovich-exclusive mobs.

As for xenoarch having them, that’s only a side effect of xenoarch effectively stealing away the Intrepid for themselves by lack of their own shuttle - those shotguns are meant for full expeditions to dangerous sites (the ones filled with dozens of carp, hivebots and other Dungeon-tier threats you’re meant to take on with a crew of 4-5+ people) not casual asteroid visits.

Why is that PR adding machetes as well? Miners already have a strong melee in pickaxes, that reinforce the job they’re supposed to be doing. They have no reason, absolutely whatsoever, to have machetes.

[Noble Row]

I would like to point out that miner is the only role on the ship where most of the ship expects you to die and never come back. It is a common conversation in IC to condemn miners to their deaths because of how common it is for them to die on the job. "Powercreep" here is like making a snail slightly faster.

The expedition shotgun is easily one of the worst weapons the ship has to offer, but it is infinitely better than shooting yourself with the KA. Especially with how nobody on the dev team wants to fix pain to where having a minor injury no longer gives you heart attacks. 

And if antags actually cared about getting the expedition shotgun, it is not hard at all to just waltz in to the Intrepid right now and blow open the arms locker. Which is something you can do without TC, because the bridge crew blow open the bridge arms locker whenever there's no command staff around.

[Fluffy]

I'd rather give them something to survive for longer until they're hauled back, like some strong painkiller for example, than a weapon to fight the xenofauna with; I am not sure they have a place to carry it around anyways, given they also have to bring the PKA and whatever mining equipments with them, and it also gives Medbay something to do when the xenofauna takes a bite out of the miner, what do you guys think?

[MrGodZilla]

I'm in concurrence with Fluffy. Mining should absolutely be given something like coagzolug autoinjectors, I feel like that'd benefit miner survivability more than the expedition shotgun. The shotgun isn't all that much of a practical choice, either. I'm trading whatever I like to store on my belt for a gun that's only really effective at a range where my face is being chewed off.  Unlike the pickaxe, this is essentially a one-time use gun against eels/reavers considering how many shots it has and how inaccurate it can be, and there are a ridiculous amount of eels and reavers that spawn on one given asteroid.

[La Villa Strangiato]

Nah, if you think the expedition shotgun is bad you're straight up wrong, sorry. It's a balanced weapon precisely because it's very powerful in close-to-mid-quarters but has a limited amount of shots (which you can just drag a cell charger into the Spark airlock and charge it anyway).

4 hours ago, MrGodZilla said:

and how inaccurate it can be

Like I said, it's a mid-to-close range gun, which is good precisely because the mobs will get up in your face. It has a large spread, like a shotgun.

11 hours ago, Carver said:

As for xenoarch having them, that’s only a side effect of xenoarch effectively stealing away the Intrepid for themselves by lack of their own shuttle - those shotguns are meant for full expeditions to dangerous sites (the ones filled with dozens of carp, hivebots and other Dungeon-tier threats you’re meant to take on with a crew of 4-5+ people) not casual asteroid visits.

Why is that PR adding machetes as well? Miners already have a strong melee in pickaxes, that reinforce the job they’re supposed to be doing. They have no reason, absolutely whatsoever, to have machetes.

1. The Intrepid is xenoarchaeology/science's purview.

2. I have never been on an away mission as xenoarch without at least one other person. Many other scientists will tell you it is a death sentence to go without another person on an away mission if you're not a miner. Case in point, last night I happened to die on the Hephaestus mining station after (checks) two shots from the marksman energy turret, and this was after basic medical attention.

Also machetes are just there for consistency as I pretend that I am totally capable of coding a guncabinet subtype. Machetes are not a "strong melee weapon". I have mentioned this multiple times.

Anyway I realised after a code dive last night that simplemobs are ridiculously broken in terms of damage output. So I might end up changing the damage values on some of them, which would make this PR somewhat moot (though they would still be very aggro).

[Duthco]

When I first saw the suggestion, I was on board, but as I saw more perspectives, I became less sure that I agree with the idea.

(Obligatory appeal to ethos: I have done some Minering, but would not say I am a miner-main.)

 

I like the idea that there is a variety of different equipment that a miner can choose to take. However, I worry that, like with certain other jobs, rather than choosing what one thinks would be most fun, one would eventually become semi-obligated to choose what is most optimal, and that's not everyone's idea of fun. (There's a really good Folding Ideas video called "Why It's Rude to Suck at Warcraft" that gets at this dichotomy of optimal vs. personal-preference approaches to play.)

Therein lies my agreement with concerns regarding Powercreep. Optimal choices lessen threats. To keep it interesting, threats are changed or intensified, rinse and repeat: arms race death spiral. This is not necessarily the only possible outcome, but it is the Nash Equilibrium.

 

That said, there is a thermal drill available on company credit (read: mining points) that renders most threats irrelevant so, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In terms of round-flow, (given that one would return at some point and upgrade their equipment), it's the first haul that is guaranteed to be the most dangerous, and it's really only dangerous in a germane way on sites where there are xenofauna threats at all, which is not all of them.

 

Why can't dangerous work just be dangerous? Orion and Hephaestus are the primary employers of Miners, and neither has a particularly good track record when it comes to employee health and safety. I don't think it unfathomable that they would send their employees un-strapped out into the ether.

Nevertheless, I do think this suggestion comes from a place with player enjoyment in mind. I don't imagine the average person would like their round to end 45 minutes in because they fell over and died just outside the door of the Spark from hoofing it a quarter mile on a broken foot.  

To that end, I would personally prefer Fluffy's or Mrgodzilla's suggestion of putting a stronger painkiller or maybe an injector of Coagzulug with the Spark's medical equipment that a miner could choose to take with them when they exit the Spark at the site to give them some better survivability while they are out there, since it's not just xenofauna that are breaking their hands and ankles, but also just mistakes with the Kinetic Accelerator even under ideal conditions.

 

As a kind of note: As I suspected, there was an innocent reason for the machetes' inclusion in the PR; however, I am not a fan of the title and content of this feedback thread and the intended PR not matching.

I appreciate the intention of the suggestion, nevertheless. Thank you for your hard work.

[Carver]

1 minute ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

1. The Intrepid is xenoarchaeology/science's purview.

2. I have never been on an away mission as xenoarch without at least one other person. Many other scientists will tell you it is a death sentence to go without another person on an away mission if you're not a miner. Case in point, last night I happened to die on the Hephaestus mining station after (checks) two shots from the marksman energy turret, and this was after basic medical attention.

Also machetes are just there for consistency as I pretend that I am totally capable of coding a guncabinet subtype. Machetes are not a "strong melee weapon". I have mentioned this multiple times.

Anyway I realised after a code dive last night that simplemobs are ridiculously broken in terms of damage output. So I might end up changing the damage values on some of them, which would make this PR somewhat moot (though they would still be very aggro).

1. The Intrepid was originally under Command's jurisdiction, on release of NBT only Command could access the Expedition Locker that was within the cockpit and held those shotguns. They weren't originally intended for xenoarch whatsoever, and I'm rather certain xenoarch wouldn't get them when they get their own shuttle.

2. Xenoarchs shouldn't really be in danger very often either given they're intended to be in similar conditions to miners, as mechanically their goal is near the same - try to find something of note within rocks, typically artifacts or some strange anomaly. To that effect I'd be in support of xenoarchs getting access to KAs if they don't have them already, though ideally a version that functions to crumble rocks without crumbling the 'artifact boulders' within.

Machetes are not needed by miners. They have zero reason to carry them, and it is a waste of inventory space that should be dedicated to actual mining equipment (i.e. pickaxes, drills, bags, emergency medical supplies, etc.).

I do agree simple mobs are overtuned, though! I'd quite support a nerf to those if another PR or suggestion is produced, mining really shouldn't be dangermax given (I'd hope) we're not trying to emulate lavaland or goon mining. I'd hope we also just axe the Romanovich mobs entirely from overmap zones where they're inappropriate, but I understand that's not as simple as adjusting damage values.

[Duthco]

While I don't think anyone is disagreeing that a pickaxe is a better weapon than a machete, in terms of inventory, it seems there is a misconception:

- Machetes generally live in sheaths that attach to your uniform, occupying a holster/webbing space, not a 'general inventory space'.

Edited November 18, 2023 by Duthco

[Carver]

I understand that, but Miners do have webbing, and it's rather important storage for key items like their GPS and medical supplies. They really shouldn't be giving up that space.

[Lmwevil]

If we're committed on keeping Eels/Reavers. 

Perhaps the best idea is simply to put 3 stasis bags on the Spark. A nigh mandatory way to survive expeditions where you get hurt, and Horizon response time may vary. 

Though I still strongly believe we should either nerf or remove eels/reavers because as Duthco said so aptly. It feels more flavourful for mining to be lethal and dangerous because of the bad working conditions, their equipment etc rather than doomguying on every asteroid. 

[Gem]

21 hours ago, Noble Row said:

Especially with how nobody on the dev team wants to fix pain to where having a minor injury no longer gives you heart attacks.

anyone can contribute to the codebase.

[WickedCybs]

The mass deaths weren't really a problem back when simple mobs were a bit more simple and didn't rapidly dodge around. I think changing it back to how it used to be (at least for some mobs) could have some potential before seeing if mining really needs to gun up.

[Carver]

8 hours ago, WickedCybs said:

The mass deaths weren't really a problem back when simple mobs were a bit more simple and didn't rapidly dodge around. I think changing it back to how it used to be (at least for some mobs) could have some potential before seeing if mining really needs to gun up.

I’d hope we could keep the fancy AI for Greimorians and Guard Dogs. The former only exist on ship and away sites, the latter are useless without the AI buff.