# Improvements to Arcmining (Arcmining Part 2)
Howdy, this is an additional design document and addendum to the original arcmining document. It should be a place to list potential improvements, and to workshop which ideas work within the original goals and anti-goals to arcmining, which will be linked below again for reference.

Original Arcmining Doc:
https://hackmd.io/YLOc2MfqROish7lnSGd1Dg

### Table of contents
[toc]

### Goals
1. Mining should still take place in an alien environment, like lavaland or icebox.
2. Mining should feature unique mobs with different behaviors that need to be fought to safely return to the station.
3. Mining should have various ruins and other challenges that can produce resources or mobs to fight, without trivializing the difficulty.
4. Mining should still have access to their unique loot and gameplay features.
5. **NEW**: Mining should still have at least a more passive or less combat-oriented gameplay loop alongside the more combat heavy gameplay loop.

### Non-Goals
6. Mining should not be able to collect minerals without having to have some forethought into what ores they're collecting.
7. Mining should not just be monster hunting.
8. Mining cannot avoid interacting with the station, and the outputs of their job should be improved through inter-departmental cooperation.
9. Mining should not also be an island that discourages cooperation with their fellow miners. Teamwork should make their job more engaging, while still building on standard SS13 paranoia.
10. Mining should not produce quantities of minerals that can never be used by the crew, ***BUT*** they should not produce so few minerals that they need to cannibalize the station to meet basic needs.

## Chemical Booster System
*Author: ArcaneMusic Original (Cut from original PR)*

* Machine takes liquid chemical inputs to upgrade refinery efficiency.
* Input Chemicals boost mineral output, then consume boosting chemical.
* Outputs a new chem, Industrial Waste when active, until full. Then no more boost.
* Melts factory bottles and pills containing it, and acts as a medium strength toxin/acid. Slowly melts floors if left on the ground, until it eventually breaches to space.
* Can be stored in chemical storage barrels from plumbing.
* If left full for too long, storage may rupture and spray industrial waste into the foundry.

I still like the idea of this system. It just needs a bit of delicate chemical processing. Potentially look at the bubbling-over reaction as a kind of reaction that can only take place within a special boulder-processing boulder? It's kinda hacky, sure, but it'd save some effort to implement.

## More ore vent maps!
*Author: ArcaneMusic Original (Cut from original PR)*

We could use more small ruin maps with unique surfaces and terrain that makes fighting mobs in vents more interesting!
This includes:
Vents that may have more unique sets of mobs or gimmicks
Riskier surroundings like traps that could affect you OR mining mobs.
Flavorful themes that make fighting in diverse environments interesting.

## NODE Supply lines
*Author: Chowder McArthor by this point*

Chowder did an excellent job of making a solid proof of concept of how MULEbots could be used as part of a convoy of mobs who act to retrieve the boulders, and return them to the boulder refinery. One issue raised however would be the processing cost required to have them actually path back and forth throughout the round to bring those boulders home, even when nobody's actually on lavaland anymore.

One thing that could make an idea like this more feasible for actually implementing is "faking" the hauling process.

If you will, imagine the BRM doesn't exist (Or at least doesn't exist by default), and that there's one or more tapped ore vents across lavaland.
So, as in chowder's example, you move boulder processing over to lavaland for simplicity (This way we also fix the issue of space largets making BRM teleporters and stealing lavaland mats from charliestation but I digress). There's a single home base machine (We'll call it the BRAIN to match with NODE drones) that assigns NODE drones to tapped ore vents, as well as keeping track of how many vents are producing ore.

NODEs determine their time to retrieve a boulder through JPS, but exclusively to determine what the distance is without needing to actually walk that path. It however would only work on that Z level (or through connected Zs like on icebox)

*literal 5 minute MSpaint drawing*

From there, they fly off from the mining base (same animate proc we already call when finishing an ore vent), land near the ore vent when a boulder is available, pick it up, and then deposit it onto locally determined retrieval tiles near the BRAIN for processing. There would only be a set number of NODE drones available at roundstart, with the roboticist needing to build additional NODE drone simplebots and sending them to lavaland via the launchpad they already have for mechs, where they'll then seek out a BRAIN if one is available.

Optionally, this could make it so that calling down a node drone to tap the vent could call down a specialized or upgraded NODE drone with additional resistance, or perhaps even a different AI blackboard that's better about unbuckling and avoiding attacks.

Benefits include that with a tangible operator to the tapped vents, ashlizards now have a real way to intercept and interfere with the station's mining output. It also places a greater emphasis on needing to protect the area around ore vents if additional mobs or threats were to spawn on occasion at the different vents.

Plus, this opens up avenues for cool science/mining upgrades! Using a fireproof potion on a NODE drone to make it path through lava? Better node drones with basic self defense weaponry? There's a *cool* expansion point here IMO.

## Mining mob selection and AI
I need to expand on this later likely, but as has been discussed, mining AI is not smart enough to make