Mining drills for miners

[Lady_of_Ravens]

Though I don't play one myself, I've noticed something horrifying in this game: miners start out with pickaxes. Pickaxes! In space! Like space dwarfs! It defies all reason.

So I suggest replace the miners starting pickaxes with mining drills. There are still plenty of better upgrades for science to make, after all.

[Carver]

Starting them out with drills would give them less incentive for upgrades, considering it's already a fairly decent upgrade over the standard pickaxes. Unless the drills were nerfed to current pickaxe levels of usefulness, this really wouldn't be too fair.

 

Like space dwarfs!

 

That /was/ the inspiration, if you pay attention to the Asteroid's background music.

[CoolfoolFTW]

On bay I seen that they have stationdary drills, maybe we can give those to miners.

[LetzShake]

Starting them out with drills would give them less incentive for upgrades, considering it's already a fairly decent upgrade over the standard pickaxes. Unless the drills were nerfed to current pickaxe levels of usefulness, this really wouldn't be too fair.

 

Like space dwarfs!

 

That /was/ the inspiration, if you pay attention to the Asteroid's background music.

 

The problem is miners don't care about upgrades half the time anyway. They do one or two loads and chill in the bar the whole shift because if Science can set you up with decent equipment they probably don't need you to mine anyway

[SgtSammac]

Starting them out with drills would give them less incentive for upgrades, considering it's already a fairly decent upgrade over the standard pickaxes. Unless the drills were nerfed to current pickaxe levels of usefulness, this really wouldn't be too fair.

 

Like space dwarfs!

 

That /was/ the inspiration, if you pay attention to the Asteroid's background music.

 

The problem is miners don't care about upgrades half the time anyway. They do one or two loads and chill in the bar the whole shift because if Science can set you up with decent equipment they probably don't need you to mine anyway

 

Miners aren't just mining for science, their MAIN IC JOB DESCRIPTION is the gathering and processing of Plasma. They then able to send it back to NT via the cargo shuttle.

In addition chemistry needs some small amounts of material, engineering can always do with metal/plasteel/glass/Rglass ready for emergencies, etc.

[Lady_of_Ravens]

Okay, so what I'm seeing here is that pickaxes are there to make miners want to upgrade. Which makes sense if there's an active science department. Scientists and roboticists have a vested interest in miners doing well and usually are quite good about making ripleys and such. Yay.

The only time miners don't get upgrades is when the science staff are absent or otherwise nonfunctional, not an altogether uncommon state of affairs. And that's when the drills come in handy.

[Guest]

Miners aren't just mining for science, their MAIN IC JOB DESCRIPTION is the gathering and processing of Plasma. They then able to send it back to NT via the cargo shuttle.

In addition chemistry needs some small amounts of material, engineering can always do with metal/plasteel/glass/Rglass ready for emergencies, etc.

 

I forgot you could send plasma back via the shuttle.

Dammit.

[LetzShake]

Miners aren't just mining for science, their MAIN IC JOB DESCRIPTION is the gathering and processing of Plasma. They then able to send it back to NT via the cargo shuttle.

In addition chemistry needs some small amounts of material, engineering can always do with metal/plasteel/glass/Rglass ready for emergencies, etc.

 

Yes, this is true, but it almost never works out that way. Usually the first two loads have tons of plasma and there's really nothing to do with all of it. You can send it back to NT on the cargo shuttle but the problem is, as 1138 pointed out, most people forget about it because the reward for doing so is nearly nonexistent. Even from an IC standpoint, cargo points are not really particularly valuable. A cash bonus would probably be more appropriate.