[v1.3] The Gold Standard - Minable Gold and Unobtainium for profit!

[Dewar]

54 minutes ago, DStaal said:

Which doesn't seem to be the point of this mod; the stated goal is to get you past the 'contract spam' for funding, not necessarily encourage exploration.  (In fact encouraging exploration could be tedious - in that a player could be trying fund an end-game system colonization effort instead, or something - or contrary (require you to contract spam to get the funds to launch to another planet) to that goal.)

Exactly my point. As the mod sits currently. Extracting gold from minmus or mun would be similar in profit to a vanilla base building contract or two. And thats presuming you launch a craft capable of a return mission with 40 tons of gold in tow (something intended to be a difficult task). 

I also think that starting with gold, and moving onto diamonds later allows the player to familiarize themselves with the mod mechanics before venturing outside the gravity well of kerbin. 

Daimonds on the other hand will be much lighter than gold. So I'm thinking that even having them on often transited planets (like Duna) or any planet's low-gravity moons (like ike) won't be an option. In fact, the only place I intend Diamonds to be found 100% of the time is Eve. 

Thoughts?

[Senior Slaphead]

1 hour ago, DStaal said:

Which doesn't seem to be the point of this mod; the stated goal is to get you past the 'contract spam' for funding, not necessarily encourage exploration.  (In fact encouraging exploration could be tedious - in that a player could be trying fund an end-game system colonization effort instead, or something - or contrary (require you to contract spam to get the funds to launch to another planet) to that goal.)

To fulfill the stated aim it does indeed need resources in the Kerbin sphere of influence.  I've not used stock resource gathering at all having previously used Kethane (a couple of years ago) but I imagine the ideal would be to have nothing on Kerbin and a low frequency of high density sites on the Mun and Minmus... enough to get you through the early funding issues, but then it should run out so you have to look elsewhere.  

Incidentally... since no-one has mentioned it yet... does this need a script to remove gold ore on new ships spawned at the launchpad?  Otherwise I'd assume it's exploitable.  Why anyone would do that when they can just use alt+f12 if they really want to cheat is beyond me, but...

Edited October 4, 2016 by Senior Slaphead

[DStaal]

1 minute ago, Senior Slaphead said:

To fulfill the stated aim it does indeed need resources in the Kerbin sphere of influence.  I've not used stock resource gathering at all having previously used Kethane (a couple of years ago) but I imagine the ideal would be to have nothing on Kerbin and a low frequency of high density sites on the Mun and Minmus... enough to get you through the early funding issues, but then it should run out so you have to look elsewhere.  

Incidentally... since no-one has mentioned it yet... does this need a script to remove gold ore on new ships spawned at the launchpad?  Otherwise I'd assume it's exploitable.  Why anyone would do that when they can just use the console if they really want to cheat is beyond me, but...

Stock doesn't deplete, that I know of.  (It's possible that there might be an option for it someplace, but I don't know of it.)

I'm not sure if it's been done, but that exploit could be removed by setting prices right: You'd have to spend money to spawn a ship with gold ore, and with the right prices you'd only get that much money back, even if you refined it.

[Senior Slaphead]

10 minutes ago, DStaal said:

Stock doesn't deplete, that I know of.  (It's possible that there might be an option for it someplace, but I don't know of it.)

I'm not sure if it's been done, but that exploit could be removed by setting prices right: You'd have to spend money to spawn a ship with gold ore, and with the right prices you'd only get that much money back, even if you refined it.

If I understand you right you COULD give ore the same or greater value than gold but that doesn't really make sense to me... surely simpler just to remove it as it is spawned in a new vessel, assuming there is an event that can check for this.

And the stock resources not depleting bit makes me a sad panda.  Kethane definitely got this right.

Edited October 4, 2016 by Senior Slaphead

[DStaal]

Gold ore would be lesser value per unit - as when it's refined you get less gold than you had ore.  So you save shipping mass and volume by shipping gold vs. ore, but if you set the pricing right you don't gain value by spawning ore and converting to gold.  It's still worth it to refine it off-planet because you'll save fuel and other costs.  (In fact, with the proper balancing you could have it cost money (in that fuel is more expensive) to return ore even from Minmus, while making money to return gold, and yet you don't have the exploit.)

[Senior Slaphead]

5 minutes ago, DStaal said:

Gold ore would be lesser value per unit - as when it's refined you get less gold than you had ore.  So you save shipping mass and volume by shipping gold vs. ore, but if you set the pricing right you don't gain value by spawning ore and converting to gold.  It's still worth it to refine it off-planet because you'll save fuel and other costs.  (In fact, with the proper balancing you could have it cost money (in that fuel is more expensive) to return ore even from Minmus, while making money to return gold, and yet you don't have the exploit.)

Makes sense. I'll leave it to Dewar to explain whether he has considered this stuff.

Is gold minable off asteroids? Given that the return fuel costs off a captured asteroid is presumably negligible (another thing I have not done since getting back) it wouldn't really matter whether it was ore or refined gold.

[Dewar]

1 hour ago, Senior Slaphead said:

To fulfill the stated aim it does indeed need resources in the Kerbin sphere of influence.  I've not used stock resource gathering at all having previously used Kethane (a couple of years ago) but I imagine the ideal would be to have nothing on Kerbin and a low frequency of high density sites on the Mun and Minmus... enough to get you through the early funding issues, but then it should run out so you have to look elsewhere.  

Incidentally... since no-one has mentioned it yet... does this need a script to remove gold ore on new ships spawned at the launchpad?  Otherwise I'd assume it's exploitable.  Why anyone would do that when they can just use alt+f12 if they really want to cheat is beyond me, but...

The way I priced things, it shouldn't be possible to recover from launchpad without losing money. Best case you could make money from the secondary ore output, I may not have calculated that. But even then, it would be negligible.

[Dewar]

Update 1.2

- Updated some part descriptions

- Slightly reduced concentrations of gold on Minmus

- Made orbital scanner unlock earlier (The satellite targeting gui is disabled until survey scan)

- Adjusted Smeltery Output to prevent a very minor exploit

 

[Senior Slaphead]

While you are busy nerfing the gold I've spent 700k of my remaining 800k on one mission... and due to some docking port losses the bits are in the wrong order... to paraphrase Admiral Tarkin 'I'm taking an awful risk Dewar, this had better work!'

The nuclear carryall used to have a docking port attached to a winch but that got destroyed. Then I forgot to put an antenna on the Pure Gold Return Section, so I'm going to have to *deep breath* use KAS to move an antenna, decouple the PGRS and mining rig, move the docking port from the bottom of the rig to the bottom of the underslung Power Plant, dock the rig there, then dock the return section back on the top. What could possibly go wrong...

Well nothing, apparently...

 

Edited October 5, 2016 by Senior Slaphead

[Dewar]

4 hours ago, Senior Slaphead said:

While you are busy nerfing the gold I've spent 700k of my remaining 800k on one mission... and due to some docking port losses the bits are in the wrong order... to paraphrase Admiral Tarkin 'I'm taking an awful risk Dewar, this had better work!'

The nuclear carryall used to have a docking port attached to a winch but that got destroyed. Then I forgot to put an antenna on the Pure Gold Return Section, so I'm going to have to *deep breath* use KAS to move an antenna, decouple the PGRS and mining rig, move the docking port from the bottom of the rig to the bottom of the underslung Power Plant, dock the rig there, then dock the return section back on the top. What could possibly go wrong...

Well nothing, apparently...

 

Very nice. Let me know how the landing and mining effort goes! 

So your total planned return haul is 4 small tanks of pure gold, correct?

Edited October 5, 2016 by Dewar

[Senior Slaphead]

Medium tanks I guess if the radial ones are small... I don't have the tech for the large ones.  Due to Kerbalism I have to rotate the crew regularly anyway so the Carryall will always bring a loot container.  I didn't know that stock resources are limitless and I'm not a fan of this.  Maybe you could look at how Kethane did it.

 

[DStaal]

21 minutes ago, Senior Slaphead said:

Medium tanks I guess if the radial ones are small... I don't have the tech for the large ones.  Due to Kerbalism I have to rotate the crew regularly anyway so the Carryall will always bring a loot container.  I didn't know that stock resources are limitless and I'm not a fan of this.  Maybe you could look at how Kethane did it.

Kethane wrote their own full plugin, back before mining was in stock.  I'm not sure that's the level of work Dewar wants to get into for this.

I can understand the idea that you shouldn't be able to mine an area forever - but realistically, if you can mine out a location inside 30 years (KSP's max time delta, IIRC) using equipment shipped up from another planet, there wasn't enough there to start mining in the first place.

[Senior Slaphead]

 

17 minutes ago, DStaal said:

Kethane wrote their own full plugin, back before mining was in stock.  I'm not sure that's the level of work Dewar wants to get into for this.

I can understand the idea that you shouldn't be able to mine an area forever - but realistically, if you can mine out a location inside 30 years (KSP's max time delta, IIRC) using equipment shipped up from another planet, there wasn't enough there to start mining in the first place.

Totally agree that it's not worth Dewar fiddling with if it requires a complete rework.

I can however see how it will be very easy to escalate mining once you are established.  Then funds basically become a non-issue in the mid to late game.  Ideally you should always be struggling with Funds, Rep and Science at every stage of the game... but balance is a bast-ard, right?  I think the original intention here - correct me if I'm wrong - was to offer a different kind of busy-work than doing contracts.  It shouldn't be more or less difficult, or more or less time consuming... just a different option.

[DStaal]

One comment on the idea for diamonds as a higher-tier resource:

It's a bit immersion-breaking, for me at least.

The problem is that I see diamonds as actually being dirt-cheap in space, eventually.  The issue is that the most likely CO2 scrubbing path ends with CH4 as a waste product, typically listed as 'dumped to space'.  But dumping anything means you're going to need resupply, and should be avoided if at all possible.  So I did a quick check of processes that use CH4 as an input and split into stuff that's more likely to be useful - and immediately came upon CVD diamond manufacturing, which adds H2 and energy to make diamonds, thereby outputting pure carbon and pure hydrogen.  So it's quite likely that diamonds will be a direct product of the life support system.  (Likely tuned to be low quality - but could be adjustable.)

Now, I'm sure there's all kinds of scale and energy consumption things to think about - which may mean this doesn't work at all.  But going to say Platinum or some other rare-earth element instead might be a bit more realistic.

[Dewar]

2 hours ago, DStaal said:

One comment on the idea for diamonds as a higher-tier resource:

It's a bit immersion-breaking, for me at least.

The problem is that I see diamonds as actually being dirt-cheap in space, eventually.  The issue is that the most likely CO2 scrubbing path ends with CH4 as a waste product, typically listed as 'dumped to space'.  But dumping anything means you're going to need resupply, and should be avoided if at all possible.  So I did a quick check of processes that use CH4 as an input and split into stuff that's more likely to be useful - and immediately came upon CVD diamond manufacturing, which adds H2 and energy to make diamonds, thereby outputting pure carbon and pure hydrogen.  So it's quite likely that diamonds will be a direct product of the life support system.  (Likely tuned to be low quality - but could be adjustable.)

Now, I'm sure there's all kinds of scale and energy consumption things to think about - which may mean this doesn't work at all.  But going to say Platinum or some other rare-earth element instead might be a bit more realistic.

@DStaal I hear you, I may do just that. I've always been one of those players that loved the "Kerbal" side of the game. I just jumped to diamonds originally because of the instant recognition factor. So, if I was to go for a lesser-known earth-based metal like Rhodium or Platinum, I might kerbalize it into something like Khodium or Klatinum. Basically, anything that will give it a bit more of a Vanilla feel. Though I too am a little tired of the "adding K to every word" bit.

The more voices that weigh in on the matter the better so keep the opinions coming.

 

[Dewar]

5 hours ago, Senior Slaphead said:

 

Totally agree that it's not worth Dewar fiddling with if it requires a complete rework.

I can however see how it will be very easy to escalate mining once you are established.  Then funds basically become a non-issue in the mid to late game.  Ideally you should always be struggling with Funds, Rep and Science at every stage of the game... but balance is a bast-ard, right?  I think the original intention here - correct me if I'm wrong - was to offer a different kind of busy-work than doing contracts.  It shouldn't be more or less difficult, or more or less time consuming... just a different option.

First I want to say awesome videos btw, I really like the complexity of your ship design.

Here's my spiel:

Currently, your 700k base will now give you a 600k return on each mission after setup, minus launch fees. Lets call it an even 550.

With current stock contracts you can make very similar money per mission.  

Tell me this, did you find designing that monstrosity of yours easy? What about finding your landing area? Your return to Kerbin with the 4 medium tanks? Would you just mindlessly spam missions to the same area when there are more valuable resources farther out?

I'll look into having a finite resource store on planets, but I think that Dstaal's comments are quite spot on. It seems unlikely that the 50-100 tons that anyone would take from a planet in 30 years, would completely deplete it.

 

Edited October 6, 2016 by Dewar

[Senior Slaphead]

18 hours ago, Dewar said:

First I want to say awesome videos btw, I really like the complexity of your ship design.

Here's my spiel:

Currently, your 700k base will now give you a 600k return on each mission after setup, minus launch fees. Lets call it an even 550.

With current stock contracts you can make very similar money per mission.  

Tell me this, did you find designing that monstrosity of yours easy? What about finding your landing area? Your return to Kerbin with the 4 medium tanks? Would you just mindlessly spam missions to the same area when there are more valuable resources farther out?

I'll look into having a finite resource store on planets, but I think that Dstaal's comments are quite spot on. It seems unlikely that the 50-100 tons that anyone would take from a planet in 30 years, would completely deplete it.

 

In career mode ships end up being a mix of new and redundant tech... the Nuclear Carryall has already done half a dozen other missions, I've just plugged different stuff into it for this mining operation.

However... an upgrade is on the way...

 

Edited October 6, 2016 by Senior Slaphead

[Dewar]

Update 1.3

• Updated to for KSP 1.2
• Fixed a potential problem with unlimited output for both gold smeltery and stock miniISRU

[noob]

Where could I find the link for the 1.1.3 compatible version? Thanks.

Edit-Found it. My username was chosen appropriately.

Edited October 7, 2016 by noob

[Dewar]

 

1 hour ago, noob said:

Where could I find the link for the 1.1.3 compatible version? Thanks.

Click on spacedock then versions. You can find the download there.

have fun

[noob]

Just now, Dewar said:

 

Click on spacedock then versions. You can find the download there.

have fun

I just did that and found it as you posted your reply. I am a noob indeed. Thanks for your work!

[Senior Slaphead]

So it turns out that 50+ tons of gold is not very buoyant.  High five to the recovery team for scraping Bill, Bob and the loots off the sea floor.  Word to the wise... if you are doing a heavy return like this you are going to need drogue chutes (I had to bring some up and do KAS attachment).

 

[maculator]

I think I'll give this one a try. Only one question: Drills seem to broken in the current pre-release, so I guess I'll have to wait for them to be fixed first?

And for gods sake PLEASE don't go down the multiple resources road! Having a valuable resource to mine and bring back home is a really nice idea. But with platinum and iron and stuff whats next? getting a pickaxe and drill down dres for diamonds until jeb hits bedrock?

Edit:

Okay I read the whole thread, so diamonds are a thing^^

I, personally, would've gone for only one resource and I would've called it something `stupid` like "snackonite".

Edited October 7, 2016 by maculator

[Dewar]

2 hours ago, maculator said:

I think I'll give this one a try. Only one question: Drills seem to broken in the current pre-release, so I guess I'll have to wait for them to be fixed first?

And for gods sake PLEASE don't go down the multiple resources road! Having a valuable resource to mine and bring back home is a really nice idea. But with platinum and iron and stuff whats next? getting a pickaxe and drill down dres for diamonds until jeb hits bedrock?

Edit:

Okay I read the whole thread, so diamonds are a thing^^

I, personally, would've gone for only one resource and I would've called it something `stupid` like "snackonite".

Haha, I'm still unsure of what the next resource will be, but one thing for sure is it will be aimed at end game missions.

As for the drills, I'll look into them tonight. 1.2 has caused a few strange bugs for me already.

Are you sure you had a high enough concentration of said resource to actually mine it? Check the part info for both drills and let me know if you're just a noob. (No insult intended)

Edit: Oh and As for snackonite, I may name the new resource kerbinium. This is a californium/francium inspired name as I may make it require power/radiators to contain.

Edited October 7, 2016 by Dewar

[maculator]

Well I guess it's not just me and it's not your mod:

http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/12844

And thanks to your mod I recogniced that module manager is up to date, so I could "update" my mod too, thanks alot