The New Resource drill

[KerrMü]

Nice Work. Both, the drill and the map-overlay, look very nice.

But resources seem to be everywhere. I was hoping they´d be a bit more rare. So you would carefully have to choose your landing site.

Or is mining only going to be fertile in the high density regions?

Sorry if this is a bit off topic. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[basic.syntax]

I second the resource-everywhere comment. It looks really easy to find a decent spot.

Then again, if depletion is on the menu, perhaps the "good spot" is very short-lived?

[Scoundrel]

IIRC, resources won't deplete, it's just the "concentration" of resources in that spot, which I presume means the amount of time to generate protofuel (it's what I'm calling it until the dev's reveal what the resource is actually named).

[Nitrous Oxide]

Wow, I'm going to miss playing KSP where Delta V actually mattered and not being able to just slap a tiny drill onto my craft and infinitely refuel...

[basic.syntax]

We'll need more than a drill. This is just the first part to be revealed.

[Damien_The_Unbeliever]

Maybe the resources are too rich - but then again, all we're looking at here is Kerbin. Given that there's already one source of infinite fuel on that planet already, I'm not sure we should judge it just yet.

[tater]

I'm curious what (for stock) is supposed to be mined with such a small drill. Mining actual regolith is a more… industrial… activity if the goal is meaningful amounts of propellant.

[zekes]

Oh boy this will be fantastic - a way to refuel my military ships in orbit

[Yukon0009]

Yay, finally a reason to have stock bases.

[CG_Kerbin]

That looks really good!

[AbacusWizard]

Wow, I'm going to miss playing KSP where Delta V actually mattered and not being able to just slap a tiny drill onto my craft and infinitely refuel...

Well, you could always not put the drill onto your craft.

Seriously though I would expect that refueling will require more effort than "land, drill, refill all fuel tanks, and take off." Based on existing mods like Karbonite and Kethane I'm guessing you'll need a drill to extract protofuel, a big tank to store protofuel, and a big heavy converter (and lots of electrical power?) to convert protofuel into fuel. I doubt that putting all this on your main craft (let alone landing it to refuel!) would be practical; a better approach would be to set up dedicated fuel production infrastructure: permanent surface outpost extracts protofuel and transfers it into tanker; full tanker takes off, flies into orbit, and docks with permanent orbital refinery; orbital refinery takes protofuel from tanker and processes it into fuel; empty lander returns to surface outpost; your interplanetary ship periodically stops at orbital refinery to refuel.

To me this sounds like loads of fun: ∆v is still a concern, but with plenty of planning and infrastructure, long-term missions will be much more viable.

[magnemoe]

Wow, I'm going to miss playing KSP where Delta V actually mattered and not being able to just slap a tiny drill onto my craft and infinitely refuel...

If we use kethane or karbonite as excample an minimum setup is 2-3 ton, drill and converter and power, this is to refuel an small ship. An serious system for production is 15 ton or more

[r4pt0r]

Wow, I'm going to miss playing KSP where Delta V actually mattered and not being able to just slap a tiny drill onto my craft and infinitely refuel...

100% Agreed.

[KN_Namida]

But dots are not good for people who suffer from Trypophobia

Wow, you really thought of everything.

Though, I didn't know that even regular square-grid patterns of dots would frighten a trypophobic person... I thought it was just irregular patterns. That's interesting.

[magnemoe]

100% Agreed.

I have use kethane since 0.18 and switched to karbonite in 0.9.

ISRU or mining for fuel has two benefits, launches get cheaper as you can launch interplanetary ship and stuff like Mun bases so they arrive empty in orbit and refuel with an tanker from Minmus. This can be done with large tanker spaceplanes too. Far easier to build than general cargo planes. This has the benefit of not having the Minmus production plant and the tankers who uses 7 days each way.

The main benefit is that you can refill at target. This is not important on an short or light mission But make multiple landings easy and is very useful for exploring the Jool system or do Eve return missions as you will need plenty of fuel once in the system.

It don't help on a mission to Moho at all unless you want to do multiple landings, the minimal mining infrastructure is many times heavier than an small lander.

To compensate I never send kerbals on interplanetary trips in small pods, one hitchhiker for every second kerbal is pretty standard.

For small probe missions its has no impact at all.

[Frozen_Heart]

Awesome! Wish all part were updated to such level.

Its difficult to keep all the parts looking similar when different artists come and go over time. I still think of Nova's style as the stock KSP look but its quite clearly changed to match Porkjet and B9s style in later development.

[Hcube]

Its difficult to keep all the parts looking similar when different artists come and go over time. I still think of Nova's style as the stock KSP look but its quite clearly changed to match Porkjet and B9s style in later development.

Wich is not a bad thing if you ask me ! I expect different parts to look different and to feel like they were made by different people with different styles ! After all, ingame they are made by different manufacturers I wouldn't like to have all the parts having the LV-T's and 1.25m tanks style, I like having the Kerbodyne parts that are very different-looking from all the others, the rockomax look unique too, etc

[klgraham1013]

Maybe the resources are too rich - but then again, all we're looking at here is Kerbin. Given that there's already one source of infinite fuel on that planet already, I'm not sure we should judge it just yet.

We've seen Eve, and it seemed to have infinite fuel as well. I love the idea of resource mining, but this is kind of ridiculous.

- - - Updated - - -

Yay, finally a reason to have stock bases.

In my opinion, the reason to have stock bases should be science.

[Landge]

Looks nice but my concern is an overabundance of resources, on every planet or moon, where you can pretty much just land anywhere and drill. Even while playing with the Kethane mod I wished there was a slider or control variables where you could vary the size and quantity of the resource fields. Then the challenge for precision landings comes into play. Mobile drilling rovers could make up for that though. It would be great if there was an offshore drill that you can actually see extend to the sea floor, not just stopping a few feet underwater. Speaking of, how about hoses that could be dragged or dropped while in EVA into a liquid medium for collecting and processing?

[magnemoe]

Looks nice but my concern is an overabundance of resources, on every planet or moon, where you can pretty much just land anywhere and drill. Even while playing with the Kethane mod I wished there was a slider or control variables where you could vary the size and quantity of the resource fields. Then the challenge for precision landings comes into play. Mobile drilling rovers could make up for that though. It would be great if there was an offshore drill that you can actually see extend to the sea floor, not just stopping a few feet underwater. Speaking of, how about hoses that could be dragged or dropped while in EVA into a liquid medium for collecting and processing?

About resources everywhere I agree, most areas would have nothing, some areas would have some and you would have some hotspot, they are rarely where you want them, Earth's moon have water at the poles. It looks like Duna have too.

However you will hardly run out of resources unless you started to operate in insane large scale. Mines and oilfields are used for years and produces millions of ton.

Astroids would need to have limited resources as they are of limited size compared to moons, you can also move them even use as ship.

One option would be that the local node run dry in the areas who has some resources, this require you to move some kilometers.

[FishInferno]

are asteroids still in for resources? If so, how will resource scanning for asteroids work? And will we be able to "land" on an asteroid and drill into it, or will there be a new claw that can extract resources?

Also, what will this resource be called? And will we be able to store the raw resource in tanks without converting it to fuel?

[Nemrav]

I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that its just a small drill.... Could be a huge drill for all we know...

Also how do we know that we aren't getting other drills ?

How do we know that it doesn't weigh 50t ?

How do you know how many resources there are ?

How do you know if converting will be easy ?

How do you know how dense things will be ?

list goes on, how do we know anything about the difficulty of mining things to even have a concern in the 1st place...

[klgraham1013]

We're making assumptions based off past use of Kethane and Karbonite (made by the person making resources in stock). Also on statements by Max during Squadcast and on Reddit, and on statements made in Dev Notes.

[RoverDude]

Good thing it will be incredibly moddable That way if the stock experience is not what you like (I for one think it's pretty awesome), then you or your favorite modders can take the lego bricks and rearrange them to something better for your own playstyle.

[regex]

Good thing it will be incredibly moddable That way if the stock experience is not what you like (I for one think it's pretty awesome), then you or your favorite modders can take the lego bricks and rearrange them to something better for your own playstyle.

I'm hoping the code and options look like Regolith. That'll make the transition from mod to stock framework much easier.