Harvest Drones and (Super)haulers

RocketCat

So after going out on a quest to haul rocks in both a hauler and a superhauler after the recent changes, here's some feedback!

First, harvest drones:

1) These seem like they would be quite effective, however a bug seems to prevent them from harvesting full clouds at the moment.

2) I see no reason to limit these to superhaulers. I recommend they be made available out of the gate, so that VI players can scoop.

3) There is no shelf life on harvest drones. No industrial megacorp worth its salt would release such a product without planned obsolescence. Consider larger batch sizes for the high-complexity recipe, but also give them a chance to go blap after a harvest.

(Super)haulers:

1) I went out and hauled some rocks with the lightest-weight hauler (2s turn rate) and I think it's a viable step up from mining in an interceptor. Tethering multiple rocks worked well and yeah... yay!

2) I also went out and hauled some rocks in the 6.5s turn rate superhauler. At this level the turn rate is aneurysm-inducing when trying to tether rocks. Could be a bit better if I buy the 5s turn rate superhauler. But honestly, haulers are probably preferable to superhaulers.

3) To make this better, consider tractor beams as a way to let haulers and superhaulers pull asteroids towards them (currently they don't work on asteroids). Note, however, that the module slots should be able to accommodate them.

4) Both haulers and superhaulers need more capacitor options. Currently you can't complete a full distance overload with top-end capacitors of these models.

I think that's all for now. I appreciate that space mining is getting some love early in the year!

Steve

I agree. The only thing I would add to the conversation is that I am curious to know how the Mining Spec interacts with all the tethers. I don't have a freighter or hauler or the funds to get one right now, or I'd go test it.

Valincora

I agree with all of this. I thought tractor beams interacted with asteroids already, though? I figured all freighters have one medium weapon slot for that express reason.

Also wish there were more mods generally. My freighter has three open module slots because nothing currently extant is worth buying.

RocketCat

Valincora said:

I agree with all of this. I thought tractor beams interacted with asteroids already, though? I figured all freighters have one medium weapon slot for that express reason.

Also wish there were more mods generally. My freighter has three open module slots because nothing currently extant is worth buying.

Right, now I remember what's up with tractor beams. 'The ship shoots a tractor beam at an asteroid, immobilizing it briefly.' ... Tractor beams don't actually move things towards you, they stop them. And alas, no superfreighters have the medium weapon slot.

Poet

It would make up for some of the poor flight performance of a superhauler if it could a) mount a tractor beam (or more than one) and b) use it to haul in asteroids to tether.  If you could mount 2 and haul in 2 rocks at once, that'd be really cool. Assuming you could ever find a place where there were 2 in range.

RocketCat

Oh another bit of feedback about harvestdrones. The recipe is an exact copy of astromech in every way. This makes it kind of uninteresting to manufacture.

Ilyos

Thanks for all the feedback. I'll be working on implementing the thoughts here soon as I'm done with classleads (or in the meanwhile, depends on how it goes. There's Captaincy classleads in here as well so these might happen then)

I had planned for harvestdrones to have a chance to go boom, but it was more important to see if they work/ how they work before slapping you all with the chance to lose them.

Also, giving them to everyone isn't a bad idea and I can just give superhaulers a speed buff to how fast the drones work

Poet

Wasn't sure where to put this, so I'm just going to drop it here:

Current cargo hold expansions are much too small for their cost. I spent almost half the cost of a superhauler on 2 expansions for my freighter and expanded the size of the hold by 2.33% 

At the current costs the small ones should offer at least 25% increase each and the large ones 40%.  By my calculation if I installed 3 of each (and could power them) that would bring the freighter hold up to almost the size of a hauler (50k tons) and cost 375k marks- nearly the cost of the hauler.