How mining will work?

[Spatzimaus]

We have:

Kerbol

Actually, we don't. "Kerbol" doesn't appear in-game; the star is listed as "Sun". Kerbol is a name given to it here on the forums. Beyond that, meh; "Kerbal" is to "Kerbin" like "Earthling" is to "Earth". Yes, we're more properly called humans, but it's not out of the realm of plausibility. As for the Kerman last name, well, we all know that all kerbonauts are actually clones of Jeb, so that one makes sense as well.

As to the resources depleting, I've said from the start that this is a bad idea. I'm not asking for infinite resources, but regenerating deposits would be great. You'd still be forced to move around a bit, instead of parking your miners on a single deposit, but there'd no longer be a penalty for bad decisions. The problem with finite resources boil down to three things:

1> It's completely unrealistic. A mining operation on Earth might take decades to exhaust a single deposit of a resource, and the miners we'll be using in KSP are far smaller. It's just completely ridiculous that we might exhaust any deposits on some other planet with the tiny amount we'll be using.

2> Long-running savegames will eventually run out. People who start their games over, losing all of the stations and satellites they've sent, will have a far easier time than those folks who keep playing a single savegame. This doesn't mean exhausting an entire planet's supply, but if all the easy-to-reach deposits (those on flat equatorial land) are gone and you're forced to always try landing in tougher locations, it's a big deal.

3> It discourages experimentation, since any resource expended by or left aboard a flawed vessel is lost. Right now, KSP encourages you to try stupid things, because there's no downside to failure; half of the fun of the game is coming up with strange designs that might never work in real life, but if resources are finite then you won't want to waste any of it on flawed designs. (A similar concern applies to the upcoming career mode.)

So I'd prefer a regenerating setup, where a mined location will eventually restore its original amounts over time. The rate at which it'd return would be far below the rate we can mine at, so you'll be forced to move periodically, but there'd be no long-term depletion issues. Actually, what would be even better would be if mining in one location slowly created a new deposit in some other place, such that the planet's total resource count stayed constant; that way, you wouldn't be able to just cycle between a few nearby locations to wait for replenishment, but would actually have to move all over to prevent the resources from eventually clustering far from your location. But regardless, a setup with finite resources just won't work well.

[Octobomb]

^ This. I love the idea of resource mining, but long-running saves will be horribly penalised - I do like the shuffle-resources-around method but there are two key issues. 1. sooner or later it just will, by chance, end up in the mountains. 2. One particular place (guess) is close to Kerbin, MASSES of flat land and fairly easy hills, nice small diameter so never too far to go, nice low gravity for easy relocation. I would festoon said area with a half dozen mining bases (on wheels with scouting rovers of course) and proceed to drain it constantly. Not to mention it happens to be a good starting point to go interplanetary anyway. Just my thoughts though and it only applies to one area.

Great idea.