Mines Running Out Solution

[Devour]

Right, I'm sure, other than just the Bottleneckers, there're a few others who have seen their mines start to wall off invisibly and their ore run out, leaving their settlement ( before founded on ore ) start to become slightly useless.

Now, my suggestion is not to make mines completely unlimited but to instead slowly increase the size of mines over time. The idea is that, as time passes, new veins of ore in the mine become uncovered, allowing us to build a new shaft in the mine and expand it, getting that ore before the shaft becomes useless. The time between uncovering of shafts should probably be ( where T = time taken for the shaft to be cleared out ) T+1/4(T), to make it still viable to stay in the town, but without having an unlimited amount of ore. You would also still have the initial "rush" of ore when you enter a new mine, but it would prevent people from having the same amount of ore constantly.

Also, there should probably be dangers introduced in this system, such as uncovering temples devoted to dark gods ( C'THULHU ), waking demons, cave ins, giant cave spiders ( the worst out of all of these, in my opinion ) etc. These things should also take up the normal "shaft" slot, as a way of not allowing players to CONSTANTLY have their own way, with an element of randomness introduced. Rewards could, of course, also be given from these dangerous events, but are not completely needed.

[Orgondor]

Cave ins, probably the biggest hazard with mining in RL. I'm unsure how this would be implemented to be fun and interesting. Cave ins like this: http://www.spfpension.se/spf/uploads/L5164/Falugruvan.jpg would be super cool to have in the game, probably really hard to implement though . It might look like an opencast mine at first glance but is in fact the result of a giant cave in (it happened over 300 years ago ).

[fenrirfenix]

Old mines took 500 blocks of lumber to build. I always thought this was because there needed to be wooden supports to hold the mine up.

Solution: mine expansions at increasingly expensive lumber costs. The bigger the mine, the more dangerous, the more need for internal support. Chop down some trees, dig the mine out some more, and keep the cavern from crushing you to death by building big wooden beams along the walls. The more open area, the more wood needed. Places without enough supports face a chance of crushing you to death.

Hard mode: supports decay and require constant upkeep so the middle of your mine doesn't land on your worker's heads.

Nightmare mode: each support decays in about two days.

Your mine is fucked mode: Supports are easily destroyed by hearthlings.

Each beam costs 10 blocks and supports a five tile diameter. Suddenly, the metal industry needs a whole lot of trees.

[loftar]

I just removed an old, obsolete mining limit, so you who have run out of mineaeble tiles (though it still sounds incredible to me) should be able to go on for quite a while longer now.

As for (collapsable) wooden supports in the mines, we do, indeed, want to add such things.

[fenrirfenix]

How about natural gas pockets? I'd love to see miners dragging chickens down into the mine to make sure they're not going to randomly asphyxiate.

[ArPharazon]

I would be opposed to infinite mines unless:

1. Ore appears in veins, so that most of the mined area gives you a boulder (like cellars) instead of ore.
2. Mines interconnect, and possibly link up to caves.
3. There are more metal sinks.
4. Mine carts on rails, which you can send rolling down a track without anyone pulling it.
5. Supports, cave-ins (partially unavoidable and luck based) and increasing costs are a given.

As it is, we already have semi-abundant metal. Give it a few weeks and Bottleneck/Cakeport/Others will saturate the market and even wrought will be near worthless like in the old map.

Also, if we can expand mines indefinitely by spending wood, is that really any different from the old map?

Lastly, regarding Hidden Fun Stuff: Z levels. Otherwise it will be irritatingly lame.

Guys, I know it sucks that iron is pricey, but please be patient. There *is* enough iron for all of us, the miners just need time to process it.

[HoldYourFire]

Maybe metal ore could also spawn on the floor at a very slow rate in mines, even tapped-out ones? That would prevent the supply ever dropping to zero, at least.