This record contains guidelines for designing mining equipment, including mining weapons, mining pods, and mining charges.
Mining Method and Damage Type
The Mining Mechanics spec describes the interaction between mining method and asteroid type. In general, each mining method is optimized for a set of asteroid types (and less effective against others).
Mining method should not correlate with level. That is, there should be no correlation between a mining weapon's level and mining method.
In contrast, a weapon's damage type affects the level of ore that can be mined. Higher level damage types are required to extract higher level ores. Therefore, higher level mining weapons should have higher level damage types.
Mining Damage Level
The mining damage level affects the number of shots required to explore and extract ore. Lower mining damage implies lower efficiency: the player must waste more fuel/ammo before ore can be extracted (or before the asteroid is discovered to be empty).
In general, all mining equipment should have a mining level of at least 3 (on a scale of 1-7). You may use mining level as a trade-off.
Buying Mining Equipment
Human Space
In Human Space, the player can buy mining equipment at a mining colony or at an IMU station (Interstellar Miners Union).
Most other Commonwealth or Corporate stations do not usually carry mining equipment. Mining colonies generally have basic mining equipment while IMU stations have more advanced equipment.
Use the following guidelines:
- All mining equipment should have the
miningEquipmentattribute. - Equipment that should only appear at mining stations should have the
specialtyattribute (which will prevent it from showing up at generic shops). - Equipment that should only appear at IMUs (and other advanced stations) should also have the
advancedattribute. In general, such advanced items will have all three attributes:miningEquipment, specialty, advanced. - Equipment that should always appear should also have the
essentialMiningEquipmentattribute.