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Original post by Eric Seiler If you want to make the game seem exciting however, trying to mine a rock in the middle of a war zone that is being sucked into a black hole sounds kind of cool to me :)

Great scenario & breakdown. Realistic or not it's interesting. And not just with black holes. Recent astrophysical observations show the possibility of planets reforming after a supernova, so you could have highly exotic mining opportunities deep in highly radioactive gravity wells.

Another scenario I wanted to go for is a kind of limited mining opportunity. Supernovas are cliche, but maybe you've got a rock that's about to be lost in a planetary impact, or spiraling closer to a gas giant (rising radiation again). Or maybe you've got a comet about to be captured by a star.

These would definitely be hazard pay opportunities!

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Original post by OrangyTang You might want to read Ben Bova's 'Rock Rats' series, which covers exactly this kind of thing, for inspiration.

Hmmm... saw Aftermath awhile ago at the use book store and almost got it until I realized it was part of a series. Will definitely have to look for it all now.

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Corporate espionage. Infiltrate agents into your competition's ships so you can keep tabs on where they are and what discoveries they're making. And keep an eye out for enemy corporations doing the same thing to you. Good intel might mean you can skip thousands of 'dud' rocks already scanned by your competitors.

Fertile territory here and works at any rank, even if you're a rookie. I'm thinking the three major themes could be noticing someone being off and choosing to investigate further, blackmail or ignore; becoming a spy yourself and deciding how far you go morally to keep your cover; and any event-based gameplay around trade-offs that let you get information, smuggle it or stop those trying to do the same.

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Rescue missions. In the middle of the asteroid belt, there's no one but your competitors to come and help you if something goes disastrously wrong. Asteroid miner ethics might say you have to help anyone broadcasting a distress signal. Help and gain unwanted crew members (greater drain on air/water/food) but potentially gain salvage and intel. Refusal to help might have no bad consequences if no-one finds out, or massive loss of respect amongst your miners (leading to decreased ship moral, loss of trading parters, higher costs when resupplying).

Couple of thoughts from this: As a miner without authority (just a worker) maybe you get to vote or persuade your coworkers, trading something to sway their opinions. As a leader you could either do the same or just deal with workers who are ticked. (This needs some sort of voting gameplay).

A specific event might be that you hear a radio transmission and your boss tells you to fake that you never heard it, giving the moral dilemma of complying or not.

There could also be a risk/reward thing depending on where the rescue has to take place. Maybe you spend valuable resources and they give you nothing in return. Plus there's the issue of leaving your claim.

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Military test zone.

EXCELLENT! There could be varieties of these, too. Maybe there's some secret bioweapons division, or abandoned corporate base.

This one is really fertile as well.

A good gameplay device here would be resource specialization. Mining uranium requires lead holds. Something like diamonds are valued based on size, so you get better value mining by hand then blowing the rock up. A radioactive resource is detected differently than ice. Then the player has to decide if they want to specialize their ship/fleet for a single resource (and risk finding a different vein) or being a generalist and not extract any one resource particularly well.

A well explored field can be approached with the proper ships, but that field will have been picked over. Something deep out is richer, but now you don't know what to send (and getting a new ship out there once you learn is slow).

You could have some fun with this too, as the miners are all presumably watching what's being sent to a field so they can jump right in with the right equipment. You could send a big dispatch of the wrong ship, then send it elsewhere, and watch as hundreds of claim jumpers appear with crystal mining ships at the giant uranium field you found.

TechnoGoth's suggestion of haulage firms reminded me of the Star Trek Voyager episode with the toxic waste haulers, so one possible hazard could be unscrupulous garbage companies dumping toxic waste into your mining claim. The risk might be that radiation levels will grow so large that you can't continue to mine the claim if you don't stop them in time.

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Original post by Polama A good gameplay device here would be resource specialization.

This sounds like a great way to create strategic trade-offs, which to me is always a good thing. It would probably work best to make broad categories like "radioactives" or "organics."

It would suck to have to go all the way back to get the right container, but not so much if you could construct them out of what you find in the asteroid field.

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A well explored field can be approached with the proper ships, but that field will have been picked over. Something deep out is richer, but now you don't know what to send (and getting a new ship out there once you learn is slow).

Good although you don't want this entirely to be a COMPLETE gamble or there's little real point in making any strategic gear choice. Maybe the volume of what you know is far less for a new / distant area than what you do know.

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You could have some fun with this too, as the miners are all presumably watching what's being sent to a field so they can jump right in with the right equipment. You could send a big dispatch of the wrong ship, then send it elsewhere, and watch as hundreds of claim jumpers appear with crystal mining ships at the giant uranium field you found.

Hah, that's cool.

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Original post by LessBread TechnoGoth's suggestion of haulage firms reminded me of the Star Trek Voyager episode with the toxic waste haulers, so one possible hazard could be unscrupulous garbage companies dumping toxic waste into your mining claim. The risk might be that radiation levels will grow so large that you can't continue to mine the claim if you don't stop them in time.

That's a great event! It could be something that starts as an accident every once in awhile, but maybe this "chance" could rise if you tick off a certain unscrupulous mining firm.

Extending this, maybe there's a choice to side with syndicate-aligned powers or not, the downside being that if you don't more stuff like this "accidentally" happens near you.

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Original post by LessBread TechnoGoth's suggestion of haulage firms reminded me of the Star Trek Voyager episode with the toxic waste haulers, so one possible hazard could be unscrupulous garbage companies dumping toxic waste into your mining claim. The risk might be that radiation levels will grow so large that you can't continue to mine the claim if you don't stop them in time.

The problem that I have with things like 'needing to dump toxic waste' in science fiction is that space, is big. Really big. And I mean really really really big. And elements like that try to cram it down into some overly small, 'everything is right down the street' small, neat little world for people who have never lived somewhere that required walking more than a few miles.

We already have huge things bathing solar systems in all kinds of different radiations,... These things are where solar systems get their names, the stars themselves. So if we can safely hang around Earth without getting killed by the massive waves of radiation that have been blowing off the sun for millions of years, then what harm is even a jack load of artificially produced toxic waste going to do if you leave it floating somewhere between two stars? Even if it breaches the containment and starts to drift, it is going to be Millions of years before it gets close to anyone again.

Sure, it might be kind of a dick move to extremely distant generations, but chances are they're going to find other ways of killing themselves off before it gets there anyway.

Talroth, I don't disagree with your comment but I think your big picture response looses sight of the trees for the forest, so to speak. First, the endeavor is entirely speculative and fictional, so it need not correspond closely with reality or a realistic approximation of some future reality. Second, the premise is that these toxic waste haulers are unscrupulous. They're looking to cut corners to save money and increase profits. One way they do that is by reducing the distance their garbage ships travel. The asteroid belt could be nearer the source of the garbage than deep space or the nearest star. A hole in an asteroid would be a tempting place for them to dump their garbage. Also, they might need special equipment to get close enough to a star to dump the garbage there safely, so they dump it in in the asteroid belt instead and avoid the cost of that special equipment.

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Original post by Talroth The problem that I have with things like 'needing to dump toxic waste' in science fiction is that space, is big. Really big. And I mean really really really big. And elements like that try to cram it down into some overly small, 'everything is right down the street' small, neat little world for people who have never lived somewhere that required walking more than a few miles.

You touch on a point that's actually got me hating the design I'm working on at the moment. The goal I've had is to try to come up with what it's like to live in the future, with asteroid mining being one of the careers you can engage in.

The problem is that I have to make up that future on the fly, and binding myself to the stark realities of real life in space would be freaking BORING. In reality it takes forever to get anywhere, starships themselves are horrifically complex beasts, machines probably do everything better than people, and the cost of doing anything is (pardon the pun) astronomical.

Now add to this the fact that I'm trying to mix a space adventure game with a life sim and the fact that jobs in these life sim games are typically EXTREMELY boring (click, increase stat, ad nauseum) and you have a real design PITA. I can only do so many "you encounter extremely dense rock, do you take the time to dig harder or do you blast it" events.

At least the toxic dumping interjects some drama amongst the mundane events. And in its defense, who's to say that firms aren't required to dispose of their waste by shipping it sunward? Since everything is moving in space and (counter-intuitively) it takes energy to shed velocity just so you can get close to the sun this might be a good incentive to just dump it someplace closer.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Talroth The problem that I have with things like 'needing to dump toxic waste' in science fiction is that space, is big. Really big. And I mean really really really big. And elements like that try to cram it down into some overly small, 'everything is right down the street' small, neat little world for people who have never lived somewhere that required walking more than a few miles. You touch on a point that's actually got me hating the design I'm working on at the moment. The goal I've had is to try to come up with what it's like to live in the future, with asteroid mining being one of the careers you can engage in. The problem is that I have to make up that future on the fly, and binding myself to the stark realities of real life in space would be freaking BORING. In reality it takes forever to get anywhere, starships themselves are horrifically complex beasts, machines probably do everything better than people, and the cost of doing anything is (pardon the pun) astronomical. Now add to this the fact that I'm trying to mix a space adventure game with a life sim and the fact that jobs in these life sim games are typically EXTREMELY boring (click, increase stat, ad nauseum) and you have a real design PITA. I can only do so many "you encounter extremely dense rock, do you take the time to dig harder or do you blast it" events. At least the toxic dumping interjects some drama amongst the mundane events. And in its defense, who's to say that firms aren't required to dispose of their waste by shipping it sunward? Since everything is moving in space and (counter-intuitively) it takes energy to shed velocity just so you can get close to the sun this might be a good incentive to just dump it someplace closer.

This is true, just don't make it like they did in Star Trek Voyager: "We ship this stuff between stars to find somewhere to dump it!"

I agree, the "We could safely dump this somewhere, but it is cheaper just to toss it out the window." line is perfectly acceptable.