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Stroam

Realistic Mining is difficult

17 posts in this topic

 

 

Mining is very difficult. For the longest time, it was limited to surface veins in relatively soft rock or relied on water erosion. The ancient Egyptians knew of fire setting where you heat the stone up really high and then douse it with water to cool it off rapidly causing it to fracture and break. Large scale mining didn't happen till the Romans had developed a vast network of aqueducts. These they used in a method called hushing where they would create a reservoir and then break a seal causing it to rush down with much force, washing away the topsoil and exposing the vein beneath. At which point they used fire setting to break up the rock. They used similar methods underground and mining with a pickaxe or other handtools wasn't that common until iron tools were developed.

 

In vanilla gameplay, you make pickaxes out of different materials. The material determines how much damage the pickaxe does to the block, and determines if the block drops any resources. The differences between a wood pickaxe and a diamond pickaxe are how long it lasts, the time it takes to break a block and does mining it return any resources. The experience, however, doesn't change. Mining a stone block with a wooden pickaxe is the same as any ore mined with a diamond pickaxe. The mining hazards in Vanilla Minecraft include water and lava pockets, drops, and mobs. They spice up mining by adding mine shafts, caves, and gravel pockets. I'd like to say different ores and stone types but they are so similar in hardness that it doesn't really feel different and are more for decoration than to change the mining experience.

 

Mods have changed things up with adding different tiers such as flint, bronze, and cobalt. Doesn't change the experience, just adds more steps. The mod tinkers construct has changed the experience by changing the way the pickaxe works, All of a sudden you can customize it to mine a larger area, autosmelt, give experience orbs, different repair mechanics, works just as good as under water, and other abilities. If the number of modpacks it is used in is any indication of how much players enjoy it, It'd say it's well liked and all it did was change the tool for the activity. Mods that have changed the experience have done things such as adding gas pockets, chances of an explosion, creatures that spawn upon breaking a block or in the dark, and pools of poison.

 

Mining in TFC1 shakes this up with various collapse mechanics requiring supports or blocks above may fall down and turn into rubble. Similar mechanics are implemented in TFC2. Some additions that would make it more challenging and fun include different stone types should have varying hardnesses, different ways to mine it, air quality, and large snaking veins.

 

Let's start by going over various mining mechanics. The first is that buckets work like vanilla glass bottles. They can be filled but can not pick up source blocks. This is due to no matter how many buckets you take out of a swamp, ocean, lake, or river by hand, you'll never empty one like that. Make air blocks also fill in if surround by at least 5 out of 8 water blocks and water source blocks obey gravity. Gameplay wise this makes water features obstacles to be filled in and not emptied. It also means aqueducts would need to be made if the player wanted to transport it. Which brings me to a mechanical change of dirt. If dirt is exposed to flowing water for more than a few seconds it erodes away, aka destroyed. This will allow people to hush like the Romans did to find ore veins under the topsoil. It also means that players need to be careful when altering sources of water so they don't end up washing out more than they wanted to like their fields.

 

One thing I loved about TFC1 was raw stone and how you obtain it. By making a specific way of obtaining it, raw stone and products made from it became purposeful. You were building with something that was purposely collected for the purposes of building instead of what was left over from mining. This gave extra meaning to the builds and in the same way, could give extra meaning to ore processing. To do this you’d have different levels of crushed stone and ore. In order from large to small, it’d be raw, rubble, gravel, sand, powder. By breaking up the ore blocks you can extract more of the ore from the material with diminishing gains. The player would mine raw stone and it would have a chance of spawning rubble and gravel upon being mined. You’d be able to crush rubble into gravel with a hammer. Gravel, rubble, or raw stone containing ore can then be processed to extract the ore with the finer grains yielding more. This would make mines last longer and allow the player to extract more from a mine than simply the amount of blocks contained within it. By extending the life of the mine, any infrastructure built becomes more useful.

 

Picks may be great for soft stone but what if there was a wider variation in different stone hardness? It makes some stone more desirable to mine through than others. For harder stone there can be the mechanic of fire-setting. The process is simple. Make a fire on the stone and give it enough time to heat up. Then release water that upon contact with the fire will put it out and fracture the stone beneath it turning it into rubble and makes it easier to mine. This adds strategy to mining.

  

By varying the hardness of stone, it'll make some stone less desirable to dig through encouraging different techniques and different locations. This variation also increases gameplay This will make some stone more favorable to mine in than others.

 

With all this rubble spawning and fire being lit underground, air quality may be an issue. Rubble spawning generates dust, fires generate smoke, and some ores when mined or turned to rubble generate explosive gasses. These pollutants can make it quite hard to breathe. Some techniques to help out is letting the dust settle, building mine shafts, and later on maybe dust masks and oxygen masks. Ventilation shafts let smoke escape and the dust settles over time. While in dust or smoke the player's oxygen bar would go down as if they were underwater. These add additional obstacles with different ways of solving them.

 

If a player dives into alchemy they can develop gunpowder and various explosives devices to help them in their mining. The first being a rather crude powder barrel that you set next to a wall and light the fuse. When it explodes it takes out some of the stone around it generating more rubble and gravel that would be generated by mining by hand. This is useful for getting more ore out of the mine. It also has a chance of collapsing more than what was intended. A more refined version may be placed, plugged, and then when the fuse is lit and it explodes it checks for empty spaces and tends to explode more in that direction, collapsing more and in a directed manner. These explosions, however, generate a little smoke and a lot of dust. This adds just another mining tool useful for excavating larger sections resulting in less time spent mining for the player. Also useful for getting through harder stone.

 

Last but not least is large snake like veins. Large to increase the life of a mine, again to make infrastructure more useful, and snake like so the miner has to pay attention to where the vein is going and decrease the effectiveness of quarries. They are a horrible solution to the problem of small, uniformly mixed veins, and boring mining mechanics.

 

These changes would add a little bit more variation to holding down two buttons routine. It adds a little more danger, some different tools for different problems, and requires more active thought to effectively mine. For truly devilish fun, rocks that explode and surround you in a shell of silverfish eggs, filled with water.

 

1024px-WaterwheelsSp.jpg

 

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Definitely would love to see more detail and progression in mining. 

I like the idea of fire mining.  But I think for that to be useful, there will have to be no drops from using your fist to break a block (unlike in current TFC1, iirc).  But the stone age options could still be varied:  1) collecting ore nuggest from the surface 2) sluicing 3) panning 4) fire mining.  That's a lot of options really, but I like that they each address a specific need.  nuggets is the easy mode but limited, panning is tedious but unlimited (except by sand/gravel availability), sluicing is automated a unlimited (again by material), and fire mining get you more ore, but for more time invested, and is also limited.  fire mining is also very opportunistic - you have to have a deposit in just the right spot - at the surface.  I presume we would have a 'clay bucket' or something, to hold the water, unless buckets would not be metal age tech in TFC2. 

I'm not so sure on the dirt erosion thing.  It would limit player ability to make picturesque flowing streams, and may be problematic with the TFC2 terrain generation, even assuming gravel (which TFC2 seems to line most creeks with) is *not* washed away.

I do think the pickaxe as the main tool in extracting ore is a bit problematic, in that you can only extend the time so long before the player just won't do it anymore.   I think this limits the time spread you can have from the lowest to highest pickaxe.  I like water source blocks obeying gravity, I'm not so sure what you mean by '5 of 8 fills in the air'?  There's only 6 sides to any given block.  If you're counting diagonal blocks, and only the horizontal  plane, that seems a bit much.  I think the way it is now where any two horizontal sides causes it to fill in is fine.  Is there a specific issue the 5/8 ratio addresses?  Aquaducts are a fun idea, I'd love to see them necessary.  But I'm not sure erosion is the best thing.  I feel like water powered machinery might be a better use.  I feel like removing dirt by shovel would need to be more difficult before going to all the water hassle would be attractive.

I do like the notion of several grades of prodcut, leading to better and better extraction.   I'm assuming there would in this scheme be, for instance, 'granite gravel', and then 'gold-bearing granite gravel'?  You'd need to have both so normal gravel can spawn in streams and stuff without being easy-mode ore.  So rubble yields maybe just 20%, gravel 40%, sand 80%, and powder 100% of the ore potential?  That seems like a decent and compelling progression.  So the player is in a hurry, they can process the rubble and gravel.  If they want to get more efficiency they break up the rubble into gravel.  The player can make animal powered grinders to automate the process perhaps.  That's your stone age maybe.   Once they're into the metals, they can make water powered stamp mills to automate it better (powered by either aquaduct, or water wheel).  They can also build some form of rolling crusher mill to very slowly turn gravel to sand, but that's the best they can do in the stone age.    When the player gets engines, they can make a plate crusher that will turn rubble directly to sand.  And have a separate grinder to turn sand to dust, again, slowly.  And then maybe some further tech that can go straight from rubble to dust.  I like that this sort of chain allow you so make the player put it together in several ways.  They can make a chain of relatively inexpensive and slow single-purpose machines, or they can make a huge investment and make the power hungry all-in-one machine.  I think players love that kind of tech progression.   It may extend the life of a mine, by causing players to only mine what they need at the time, leaving the rest for when they have better tech/automation.  But, they still might choose to just mine what they can immediately, and store the rubble till later, especially in a multiplayer setting where someone else may find the stuff.  Although, if rubble is very hard to transport, maybe not.  Also if rubble does not fit in most containers, it would make the storage of said rubble a possible issue.

The yield gradient could be extended if the refining methods also teched up a lot, and affected the yield.  So pit kilning applies a 70% yield modifier, with with further techs being 80, 90, and finally 100%.  Or the smelting tech could be differentiated in other ways too, if the desire is to keep it simple.  Rich copper at 35 units x 40% for gravel x 70% for kilning, is asking the player to do a lot of maths (and equals 9.8 units).  But it would provide a lot of tech tree options.

I'm not sure wide variations in hardness of general stone types is a good idea, considering the current scheme of entire island being one stone type.  It makes for a rather disappointing moment when you reach you next island and find it's all granite and very difficult to mine.    I think it would make much more sense if certain desireable minerals were present only in extra-hard stone.  This might require some rearrangement of the stone types though.  So your general island stone is pick mineable, but you run across a vein of emeralds or rubies, and they're in obsidian, which is extra-hard.  I like this especially in the context of making explosives more useful.   I guess a lot depends on how faithful TFC2 intends to be to reality.  Or if it's feasible to have the islands be generally of sedimentary or metamorphic nature, but having igneous extrusions or small regions, which can contain more valuable ores.

One of the problems I always had with powder barrel mining in TFC1 was that to do it best you had to find the bottom of the vein and work up. Otherwise you were wasting ore via all the cobblestone that was generated falling and squashing ore blocks beneath.  It was also disappointing that powder kegs didn't work exactly as stated.  Near as I could tell, you got more radius if you mined out the immediate area around the powder barrel.  Even centering a barrel in a 5x5 area though, I think I never got more than a 16 or 20 block diameter chamber.  Certainly never anywhere near the 40 blocks claimed by the wiki.  And I tried it in all 3 stone types, with the exact same results.  I think if powder barrels are to be more attractive, it would be useful to change ore crushing mechanics - for instance only cobblestone/rubble blocks will crush ore blocks.  Gravel and sand will not.  And then powder kegs could be made to yield only gravel, thereby avoiding ore crushing.

The snakelike veins, I think we've already got.  I'm hoping this makes minecarts more useful.  But that will depend on how easy it is to carry ore/rubble/etc on one's person, vs in conveyances.

Edited by Darmo
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In this scenario, I imagine clay buckets. I actually got so used to clay buckets in various modpacks that for awhile I thought it was a vanilla feature. As the hardening stone till no one wants to mine it anymore. That's a little bit of the point. You may want to soften up the stone using other techniques so that it can be mined easier. Rubble and smaller would be easier to mine than raw stone.

Gravel would not wash away and the water must be flowing to wash away dirt. If it's a source block next to dirt it wouldn't wash away the dirt. I think this limitation would prevent the creation of "picturesque flowing streams ". Air being filled by water I am including the diagonals on the same Y level. That may be overkill now that I'm thinking about it. 

There would have to be gold bearing blocks as you've stated. You've also got the idea for the extraction right but I was thinking less linear more like 20% raw, 40% rubble, 70% gravel, 90% powder, with the last 10% needing specialized processing such as mercury for gold or magnets for iron. Don't want to get too much into the processing but I'd like to see specialized processing for each ore. I dislike how in nearly all ore processing in mods is treated the same. Starting off with a mallet and quern, then moving to an animal, water, wind-powered grinders would be great. Could also be used for making flour and other products as well. I imagine if crushing decreased weight and size you'd want to at least do that at the mine.

I get that getting to the next island and discovering it's a hard stone could be disappointing but it's those disappointments that makes TFC what it is. Most would be bored if there weren't disappointments. I wouldn't want the game too easy, plus I'd take a large vein in a hard rock over a small vein in any rock any day.

I also didn't like the powder barrels as they seemed too difficult to make for how useful they were. I'm thinking more like immersive engineering explosives that mine the blocks, but instead of turning them into items drops like immersive engineering does, places the blocks back down as gravel and rubble with a high chance of filling in the air spaces with bonus rubble and gravel from random blocks that were mined. Basically softening up the surrounding stone to make it easier to mine and generating extra ore in the process. You'd still need a pick and shovel to collect the debris. I'm imagining some stone types you wouldn't really want to mine through with just a pickaxe. The harder stone would also make good walls.

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11 hours ago, Stroam said:

I get that getting to the next island and discovering it's a hard stone could be disappointing but it's those disappointments that makes TFC what it is. Most would be bored if there weren't disappointments. I wouldn't want the game too easy, plus I'd take a large vein in a hard rock over a small vein in any rock any day.

I mean, there's the disappointment of having an ingot melt (momentary, part of the game rules, and the player's fault really), or accidentally ruining a crucible of blue steel (flaw in game mechanic, wastes a lot of time and material, but avoidable).   But then there's the disappointment of having to spend many, many hours more of tedious work that you wouldn't have had to spend if RNG had just flipped different.  It's similar to the frustration of having no flux nearby I think (which hopefully won't be a thing in TFC2), but longer and more definite, and unavoidable.  It's not really the best kind of game mechanic.   There's a balance that could be struck perhaps.  But I think it's a fine balance. 

I honestly think it'd be better to have harder stones at lower Y levels, so the player Doesn't hit entire island-sized slow-downs.  But they know that if they go down, they will hit harder stone.  Maybe with better veins.  I think TFC1 used to have a relation between Y level and size/quality of veins.  I'm not entirely sure why they got rid of it, but on paper it seems like a good idea to me.  Risk vs reward.  Let the player choose to tackle the harder situation when they're ready, rather than making it a surprise kick to the groin.

That is an interesting option, for powder kegs to turn blocks to rubble and gravel, vs disintegrating them.  And could avoid some or all of the ore crushing problems.  You could have a disintegration radius near the blast, where the ore is turned directly to drops, and then a further zone where it is turned to blocks of rubble and gravel.  Since rubble and gravel would presumably not be crushable, that would still allow the blocks above the disintegration radius to fall, while also preventing it from crushing ore below.  And since the player would still have to do the work of mining out the remaining rubble and gravel blocks, the effective radius could perhaps be larger and still be balanced.  I like it. 

Edit: and regards streams and soil, that's well and good if source blocks dont' move soil.  But what if the player *wants* actually flowing water, for the sound and look?  And they want it in a soil setting, without gravel.  I think it unnecessarily limits that, and probably isn't really much better than just using a shovel.  Especially when veins are now long and snaking, and not circular.  There will of course be rare situations where you would have natural water perfectly made to just remove a bit of dirt and do the erosion over the deposit, but otherwise I'm having a hard time imagining it being worth going through all the aquaduct hassle, vs just shoveling away the soil.

Edited by Darmo
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Since all the islands slope up from the sea to the center you may find hushing to be more effective than it is with other types of worldgen. I don't think the hard stone will be that big of an issue either since you can always go back to the previous island and try a different portal. I guess the stone and hushing would need to be tested. Hushing probably depends on how much time and effort it takes to make aqueducts and how useful it is vs how easy it is to dig.

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I think the hushing would only be efficient on large slopes if the vein actually follows the slope, and is at or very near the surface.  If it does not follow the slope you'll expose only a small portion of the vein, and if it's very deep at all, it'll be more attractive to just tunnel mine it.  Honestly the hushing thing seems like a historical precedent in search of a use, rather than a problem in search of a solution.  I just don't feel like there are any problems that it's a good attractive solution for, and I can't really think of a good problem to create to justify it either.  You'd have to drastically extend the dirt shoveling time, and I don't think that would fly.

As far as a different portal, when trying to make progress, only the east-west portals will be considered progress.  North and south portals are just the same tier, so you're not making any progress.  So even if the north/south islands are softer stone than the east or west you tried, you're still wasting a lot time on that island having to conquer it and activate it's portals, vs if you had just been able to progress east or west.  And the east/west option only works once, going from tier 0 to 1.  After you're on either of the tier 1 islands, you're committed, and now going back the other way just gets you to the same tier you were on, if you were on tier 1 and are back tracking through 0 to get to the other tier 1 side, or you're going backward if you're on tier 2.    You've either got the grind of tackling the entire island of hardened stone, or you're got the grind of having to conquer entire tier(s) of island you've already been at to get to the equivalent tier in the other direction.

I do like the idea of different stone hardnesses, including some that are extremely tedious to do with pickaxe, as obsidian is in vanilla, because I do think it provides opportunity for techs other than pickaxe.  But I just think those kind of super-hard stones should be in areas that are optional for the player, not forced upon them.  I think you can make fire mining a good option by not allowing the player to affect raw stone at all with their hands, and perhaps having very small deposits of poor copper in exposed cliff/hillside areas, providing the player a tempting opportunity to utilize fire mining, vs running around nugget hunting or doing the pan/sluice thing. 

 

Edited by Darmo
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Since there are 9 islands running north to south what if harder stone never showed up in the center, but had a higher chance the further north or south you went? That way if you wanted to avoid them you could. That along with the temperature extremes will also have a natural effect of funneling people closer to the middle islands creating a higher chance they will bump into each other. Players could then choose how hardcore they want to be by moving further north or south knowing that they may encounter these harder stone types. 

I also like your idea of encasing ore's in veins of harder stone because it lets you mine through the softer stuff quicker so you can get to the ore faster while also being another indicator that you are getting close to the good stuff. Since the veins of ore snake around the harder stone also let you know the edges of the vein.

If you also increase the hardness the further down you dig it would slow the progression of the mine which would extend its life allowing mining techniques to change with depth. It'd also make modifying dungeons more difficult to modify after an island has been conquered. 

You may be right about the hushing, but players have wanted aqueducts for quite some time. Even if it's not an optimal solution, it still gives players another choice. 

I just played the age of progression modpack some time ago and it hurt you instead of being harvested when you tried punching through wood with your hands. I think the same thing applied to stone would be amusing and fitting. 

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14 hours ago, Stroam said:

You may be right about the hushing, but players have wanted aqueducts for quite some time. Even if it's not an optimal solution, it still gives players another choice.

Well aquaducts are still a fun idea.  I definitely support them.  I just think maybe they'd be better geared toward powering machinery via water wheels.  Maybe not necessarily stone age tech - this era might be animal powered if anything - but certainly in the metal era, powering mill stones and stamp mills would be attractive options I think.  Kind of depends on how exactly they'd be powered, as to whether an actual aquaduct would be necessary, or just a canal.  For instance a water mill that just sits in a river might give X power while a wheel that has water falling on it from a height might provide power proportional to the height the water falls?  Or at least you get more power for water entering on top of the wheel, vs on the bottom?  That would make aquaducts attractive vs just putting the wheel in a stream or river.  Power could affect speed of operation, at the simplest.  If power is an actual quantity that transfers through machines, then it could determine how many machines and at what speed they would operate.

Also, on a prestige level, if some kind of fountain mechanic could be created, that might be an attractive reason to create aquaducts with cisterns perhaps.  There would be pipes from the cistern drain to the fountain, and the pipes would store the data of how high the original cistern is, and then you could place the fountain nozzle, and depending on how high the nozzle is vs the height of the cistern, you would get more or less of a tall spray of water?  I think people would enjoy that.

Edited by Darmo
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Kind of a tangent on the subject of mining, but I think it would increase the gameplay with some interesting effects.

What if any amount of ore would cause an over-encumbered effect. That means slow movement and no jumping or climbing, not even going up stairs.

The idea is that the player would have a barrel close by and would fill it with ore as he/she mines.

Once mining is done is time to take that ore to the surface.

A barrel on your back also makes you over-encumbered no matter what is in it.

You need a lift, so put your barrel on the lift and go back to the surface to whip your mule so it pulls the lift up.

Once there you can transfer the barrel to the wagon to be pulled by a horse, mule, donkey or bull. 

It is also possible to carry a barrel on your back, but again slowly and no jumping or climbing.

A wheel barrel gives the player normal speed and can go up half slabs but not stairs or jumping.

If the player gets hit by any mob it automatically drops the barrel or the wheel barrel so he/she can effectively fight.

As far as stones harder to mine, I kind of like, but not sure about just making it harder because it is below certain Y level.

I think maybe just to follow the natural mineral order, I mean some stones are harder than others.

I really love the idea of using fire to mine especially if it involves building an aqueduct to divert some water to the mine site.

I really dislike the idea of having only one type of rock for the entire Island top to bottom, It feels unnatural.

Some things to consider are that now the player needs to decide to either build a smelter close to the mine site or build a road to carry the ores back to base.

All of this only makes sense if the player is able to survive, build a base, domesticate animals and build while still in the stone age using simple tools.

 

 

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Thank you, Tony. It's really nice to hear another opinion. I like the idea of different hardness of stone as well. I could see the over-encumbered effect working, even if I dislike the idea of ever moving slower in Minecraft. Players would definitely need to plan out their mining better. It does involve a mining mechanic, a container, a lift, and a cart pulled by an animal. As far as the lift goes, that's no easy feat. It'd have to have the same sort of functional support that boats have. A cart Bioxx is already working on so that'll probably be a thing. I do like your idea of when damaged it instantly drops what ever is on your back. Doesn't require the player to think and has a nice element that can be played around with. You are right that in order for infrastructure to be at a mine there must first be infrastructure so that the miners can spend time mining instead of working toward food, water, shelter, and materials. If that is needed then either multiple people need to be involved or need NPCs to trade with.  

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Yeah. Moving blocks in Minecraft has always been difficult. I believe that the number of blocks to move and how fast they move makes a difference. So that a lift should be somewhat less buggy than a boat.

Don't really know much about rocks IRL, but I believe sedimentary is easier to break than igneous. With that in mind, we could devise a hierarchy of stones. That, of course, means going back to having 3 layer stone types.

I already imagine the player building a rudimentary water pump and wood aqueduct to get water to the mine site. 

One aspect that I think needs to be changed is that once the player is done with all this work he/she should have enough of that mineral for anything he/she needs. My point is that I really enjoy working hard to get a resource, but once done if I have to keep repeating it is just grind. We need to increase the ore output per block so all this work is justified.

A mine should be a permanent construction, that should last for generations.

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I totally agree that a mine should last almost the entirety of a play. Many mines IRL have lasted multiple generations. 

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On 9/21/2017 at 9:38 PM, Stroam said:

I totally agree that a mine should last almost the entirety of a play. Many mines IRL have lasted multiple generations. 

I feel like this is going to fight the island-hopping nature of TFC2.   It may also require mechanics a bit too grindy and restrictive for some.  I'd actually say the game benefits more from making the player use their skill to find multiple veins of some heavily used resources, such as copper and iron in TFC1. 

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It's a dream Darmo. I know it will not happen.

For me grinding is having to do the same thing over and over.

Imagine this scenario.

First thing is to find the ore.

Second to dig till the ore is exposed.

third to build an aqueduct to bring water.

Forth collect enough wood to make a bonfire.

Fifth, burning the wood and chocking with water would crack the ore

Sixth, then the player needs to lift the ore to the surface.

transport the ore to the base or build refining facilities on site.

Now all that is only worth if we completely switch the weight and quantities per block.

Minecraft is based on meters, each block corresponding to 1m3, now 1 cubic meter or iron ore weights around 2800 Kg or around 6167 lb.

that would be enough iron for a whole village for some time.

Looks like a lot of work? For sure, but it would not be boring for as long as I don't ever need to repeat this process.

That's my point. One iron mine would be enough for the whole server.

It would be so much work to get the ore, but once would be enough.

It's a completely different approach to gameplay, more realistic, but I think more rewarding. 

 

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This Is Really Interesting, Ive Always Liked Such Ideas

 

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Realistic mining is something I thought would be very good in the world of minecraft... To a sertain extent, and tfc1 seemed to do the job for a while, I suggest that the basic way of tfc mining is increased to make it a little bit more realistic and harder to do.

Firstly I suggest that supports should become weaker, the lower below blocks the weaker it gets and is more vulnerable to break and collapse.

Secondly when removing supports rather than it straight up just collapsing from too much weight that it should make the supports closest to the heavy part weaker and vulnerable (breaking any would result in a collapse), in order to properly clear supports you would need to create temporary supports (crafted from sawing 2 logs and a rope) and placing the temporary supports for while you remove the regular ones, the temporary supports can be tied together by right clicking on with a rope and again to the one you want to tie it to, once you have cleared the area you can then either hook the ropes to a trip wire (to allow redstone setup) or could place the last onto the floor and right click the rope a few times, this would play a pulling sound and the rope would break free allowing a safe collapse, the shorter and more supported mine the harder it is to pull and may even require a turning wheel to pull the ropes down (mechanical ones can be produced for redstone pulleys later).

In order to mine ore many things could be done ore nuggets like copper found on the surface would only be worth say 10% of their original amount, in order to gather ore in the beginning without hunting for alot of nuggets would be to find some surface copper and to try to heat it, using tools such as logs connected to ropes on a wood frame for ramming into the ore and later weaker pickaxes you could break away some of the surrounding rock and light a fire below (this would work with fire pits, regular fires, burning logs and more) and then throwing wooden buckets of fresh or salt water at the ore, the ore would show a cracking texture and would eventually collapse dropping rich ore nuggets.

Minecart tracks could also be built to bring items back to the surface, by shift clicking a minecart it would open a 6x3 gui that would allow you to store items you brought or mined and would either show items in the cart or preferably them covered in a brownish tarp, this would also make that minecart heavier to move and not be possible to sit in, with the exception of small amounts of crops, a tool or 2 and paper/books, minecarts with furnaces would be extremely useful as if you were to craft one you could push the heavier loads of items with them. You would need to create a minecart with a metal sheet on top and in order to fuel it you would need 4 logs 2 thatch and a coal or charcoal piece (peat is also an option) you would then need to use a fire starter, a torch or a flint and steel

These are just a few suggestions and I do have a few more!

                                                                                                                                   -UnlimatedStone9

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I Would Also Like To Say That After Mining Far Into The Ground The More Ore You Have You Would Require A Barrel To Carry, And Having Multiple Could Be Awkward As Only One Could Be Carried At A Time, Making A 2x2 Or 3x3 Shaft You Could Create A Wooden Elevator Shaft By Either (For 2x2) Building Supports In Opposite Corners With A Platform With Ropes Traveling Upwards (On Trip Wires) And A Wheel At The Top To Pull It Or (For 3x3) You Could Build Supports In All 4 Corners With Ropes On Hooks And A Wheel On Top To Pull The Platform Upwards, The 2x2 Could Hold 2 Barrels As The 3x3 Could Hold 5, The Player Would Have To Travel Up To Pull Or Have Another Player Do So As They Go Up With The Barrels,

Different Redstone Mechanics Like Wheels And More And Water Pumps Could Be Used To Mover These Platforms By The Pull Of A Rope Lever :)

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