Hi All, I posted some ideas on here probably about a week or so ago.
but while doing my day to day things i had an idea as a possible change to the waste mechanic.
the idea here is to keep the concept but to change the approach behind it and how its implemented
in essence it would be rock purity.
the idea being that instead of all veldspar (using veldspar as an exmaple here) rocks are the same and the mining that X amount = refining yield Y
that there are now slightly different variations in the mineral composition and amounts and instead of waste being produced from an aspect of mining there is simply a needless waste element which instead is produced during the refinement process (compressing in rorqual’s & orca’s will minimise waste production as the waste elements are removed as part of the compression)
this way you still implement the waste factor, but it is no longer a biproduct of mining and thus none of this silly you get more waste for using better equipment and removed the problem needing to be factored into mining ships or clone states entirely and instead allows mining to continue as normal [although some tweeks would be nice, mining with t2 lasers & t2 crystals should get you a higher yield for example] but the factor of waste is then down to purity or richness of the minerals, similar things have occoured in the real world, there are different grades of materials for example used in the manufacturing process of various things around the world.
in fact the oil industry is prime with this kind of example, how an area could be prospected for oil, but it not of sufficenct grade or amount.
what you could do is simply produce a new module for miners perhaps something called a “Soil beam” or something, which literally soils the minerals within the rocks of enemy territories this way you still factor in the new proposed type of game play, this also means miners don’t have to destroy whole asteroid belts, just the most mineral rich ones, surveying rocks and scouting for mineral rich / dense rocks then becomes a must for players and required fleets working together.
the down side to this would mean tweeking the spawn mechanics for rocks in all regions of space, each belt would spawn X amount of rocks and each rock would have a different variable amount of minerals within them.
proposed waste product: carbon
because why not.
–EDIT–
additional a thought on the refining process as it currently stands, there is usually a percentage yield given in game at the moment, this represents how much you’ll get out of the amount presented, however no waste is given, I think implementing something like this would mean that carbon would be created in correct proportion to the reprocessing values given.
the richer the mineral density the higher the yield and lower the waste.
rocks which have less mineral density will ultimately have more impurities.