Mining

[HugoQwerty]

I've never been a fan of the auger in Hydrocraft, and I've got an idea how they could be removed - but I suspect this change wouldn't be popular.

Foraging in forest & deep forest can spawn a mineral deposit - but the clever part is I can make the game only spawn one deposit per cell (or possibly a smaller area, e.g. 100x100).

I can also make the game decide which type of mineral to spawn, even if the player does not yet have the skill to find that mineral. For example, the first time you forage in an area, you pick up a mineral nugget, the server then rolls the dice on which mineral should spawn in that area. If the player has the required skill to find the chosen mineral a deposit is dropped on the floor and no more deposits can spawn in that area, if the player does not have the skill the server remembers which mineral won the dice roll, e.g. it will remember that a coal deposit (& only a coal deposit) can be spawned in this area as and when a player with the necessary skills forages a nugget the area.

The dropped deposit would just be a heavy object (so could be moved in debug mode if someone didn't like this system), the mineral can then be mined using a pickaxe at the cost of calories & pick durability. I'd also make the mining action make a noise, so it would attract zombies in the area (maybe a sandbox option for sound radius?). So rather than setting up multiple mines at your base (which is annoying if you want to move), you have to go looking, and when you find one you can set up a camp so you can come back again and again.

Could have the amount of ore per mining action be linked to a mining skill (more ore with higher skill), or just use strength, so doing zero to hero (which I always do) is more of a struggle than doing 9/9.

Having lots of deposit types might get annoying, as you'd sometimes can bad luck on the dice rolls and not find the one type you want. Maybe limit to: Copper, Iron, Coal, & Generic (for a mixture of all the other minerals)?

Thoughts?

[HugoQwerty]

Also, the initial deposit could be drainable item that requires you to dig a mine shaft (pick + shovel + ladder), so you need to dig down (which could attract zombies) before you can start mining the actual ore.

[FenrirZeroZero]

"Full Mining skill" could be strength + mining skill. So you can "sprint" to lvl 10 mining but you still get better through strength. Maybe even Mining + strength and fitness considering how hard it is to manually mine. (More Fitness = less resting = more mats in the same time)

Regarding the deposits: It sounds good. I was thinking of going the route of removing the coal and iron mine combined with no recycling. This would make iron far more rare and would generate incentive to use copper and tin in places.

For the seperation: Cobble Deposit: Copper and Tin, Slate Deposit: Iron and Aluminium. Silt Deposit: Coal & "Generic" This way all three are important but not "critical" (Names can be different but stone "types" seems less gamie" The quarry i would keep. Maybe shrink the "size". Digging for Clay and Stone can be done (nearly) everywhere so far i know ^^

[HugoQwerty]

Update: I was going to add some mining code to my own mod (& then provide it for Hydrocraft), but I decided not to because reasons.

(Long story short: I like 'hard' settings, I'm currently nearly 2 years into a run with no impaled weapons, and nerfed stone axes (lower damage & chipped stones are harder to find), and nerfed spears (lower damage, require a tree branch & spears made with a stone knife have less HP). Anything that adds weapon crafting feels like it makes the game too easy for me, so I chose to not add any weapon crafting)

Anyway, I've written 90% of some code for spawning deposits, will tweak and upload soon. As written, ores can spawn anywhere in forest & deep forest, doing so for the 1st time randomly assigns an ore type for that cell, so when you do find an ore of that type (locked behind foraging skill level, but could be locked behind a 'mining' skill) the game will drop a deposit (& and never drop another deposit in that cell).

As it stands, the deposit is just a heavy item to be mined (no recipes yet), but could easily be changed to Drainable with some sort of 'dig mine shaft' recipe (pick, shovel, ladder, etc) before you can actually start mining the ore.

Will upload soon (probably, currently drunk, may or may not be tomorrow :D)