# Wave defense mining pitch Okay so mining players like fighting stuff but dislike.. mining and thats cause chipping away at rocks is boring. At the same time the size of lavaland takes miners out of the round too much. The planetary gameplay is great but the size of it should be constrained. The solution is HIGH OCTANE DRILL DEFENSE GAMEPLAY! ## Low down ![](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/HyYRPWKF3.png) Alright 3x3 gantry drill mines using a big laser firing into a pit, and lavaland aint having none of that. Mining is now a wave defense war of attrition as the longer the miners can go without turning off the drill(or without letting it get smashed) the more ores and better ores are mined. Theres a perimeter from beyond which monsters can swoop down/burrow up from and the miner's job is cut out for them. The drill being turned off should be a big setback for mining's mineral output. Risk/reward for pushing ahead by just one more wave. The drill getting smashed should be a big setback both for mining's mineral output and for the future ability of mining to resume mineral extraction. ### Pros * Mining becomes a team defense excercise. Currently mining is singleplayer despite attempts to make them stick together, probably because megafauna AI is unpredictable with more than 1 target. * Easy fine tuning of mineral output. Apparently the more valuable materials are northward on lavaland, but do miners have reason to go so far north? Idk it just seems that scaling wave rewards by pop is more feasible than however it is now * As mentioned it concentrates miners in one spot to prevent wheres waldo levels of searching for miners who have lost their gps ### Cons * Not entirely sure how to stop johnny antag from toolboxing the expensive laserdrill while nobodys looking. Now if johnny antag merks the miners guarding the drill and lets the winged eyeballs have at it thats kosher * Not sure what to do for gulag, maybe just have it stay as is. * Apparently the lavaland environment provides a degree of procedural gameplay what with all the work poured into cave generation over the years. This would lessen that. ## In Depth ### Mining department stationside Stays the same. Remove any vestigal equipment ### Mining department planetside Gulag can stay the same, but the mining station gets a big tram platform which slowly(to bottleneck reinforcements) moves to an island which houses the drill(and only the drill). The rest of lavaland can stay the same although it would help the area of activity issue if it was downsized since miners will be using this drill. ### The drill The drill is stationary. While active, the drill spits out ore to its side with each wave's start. The drill should clearly show how damaged it is and should loudly BLEEP, BWOOP or in extreme circumstances BWEEP to notify miners that its being damaged. The drill should be able to withstand enough damage that the cause of failure is a loss of control over the situation. Drill integrity could be restored in a few ways. The integrity could be restored only when the drill is deactivated and wave count reset, restored on wave completion, or require some seperate process. The drill should also give out mining points in proportion to the highest wave reached. That is if those are still used after this rework. ### Failure In the event that miners are unable to repel the fauna and the drill's integrity is depleted, the drill will break, precluding further mineral harvesting and slapping miners with a "I suck at my job" moodlet ala engineers when the sm delams. The drill should be repairable, but at a cost of time or money so further extraction is a choice to be considered by the crew. ### Waves IF waves increment on completion: Higher waves mean more fauna & more difficult fauna IF waves increment on time elapsed: Higher waves mean more difficult fauna Minimum wave limits for more annoying stuff like bileworms and overall wave limits for stuff like goliaths which become unmanageable once theres more than a few. ### Things I havent thought about yet Ash storms Ash Walkers Ash storm pods Megafauna Semimegafauna Ruins in general Icebox Miner borgs(cant just give them a combat loadout) todo finish this