DARM 3000

[digital heron]

Basically, an arm dedicated for mining/drilling on the larger ringroids you see. Capable of extracting a large amount of minerals into your open excavator before breaking the ringroid.

The drill key is assigned to the same key as your excavator, and its recommended to either have drones or mine in a dense area to catch stray debris.

[agile root]

Not sure how it'd work. Drilling without grabbing it would also push it away, meaning you have to go faster and faster, but if you are grabbing it, you're not grabbing ore.

The other issue is that the ore doesn't actually exist until the iceroid breaks, so you might end up extracting iron from a Pd iceroid.

I would like an ice/ore ARM that's a little more capable, but I was thinking in terms of reach and maybe following drone rules for guiding ore in a little more intelligently; and through that capability, take the mining role out of the other ARM.

[hushed pike]

Please don't name it like that. That's literally "intestine" in German 😅

[crisp halo]

I came here to say what it means in German and that it totally is in line with the existing puns if you make the arm flexible

[knotty quest]

How about an ARM variant that can grab and break asteroids on its own (Instead of bringing them to your excavator), but isn't able to grab ore chunks anymore?

Of course then I would want to have a ship with two High-Stress Hardpoint so that I can have one arm breaking ringoids and the other shoveling the ore into the cargo bay.

[agile root]

My original thought was to just call it the Ore Manipulator, making its acronym OM.

[agile root]

Honestly, if I need that, mashing it against the excavator is usually sufficient.

All this will be 1.x though, no ARM work until 1.0.

[knotty quest]

Mhm...
@agile root Maybe a miniature version of those AI mining stations?
Kinda like an ore processor stuck at the end of an ARM-1500 that melt asteroids and directly pump the ore into your processed storage?

[agile root]

We talked about a mining beacon with a printer that could accept minerals and print consumables.

I think it got pushed back to 1.0 though.

You could grab it with a cradle and give it Fe, Pd, and V to make stuff, and load up on ammo/drones from its production, or leave it behind as a beacon to visit next time.

[knotty quest]

So like a mini version of the Rebel Base/That one MPU, Obonto Stations and Claim Beacon all in one?

[agile root]

It would probably just look like the beacon, I think. All it really adds is a printer. You'd need your own arm or cradle to use that feature.

[digital heron]

👀

[knotty quest]

We can name it Rodum instead. Which is 'Bowel (Interior)' in Dwarf Fortress' Dwarven Language.

[near flint]

It's "fitting" lol

[hybrid marsh]

lol

[agile root]

Why are we naming a robot arm after intestines again?

Or is it just to annoy xthza?

[knotty quest]

Exactly.

[digital heron]

Precisely

[chrome smelt]

There are real near future technologies that do stuff like this. The arm could attach magnetically then use mirrors/microwaves/lasers to boil off water and grinders to pulverize the rock/metals, it could then package little bundles of whatever element it's extracting into something similar to ore chunks which it would spit out for you to collect. But they would be much denser than regular ore nuggets so it would be a more space efficient way of doing things. At least that's how I see this as working.

I'll make a horrible sketch of what it might look like

Horrible sketch but it gets the point across

Of course none of the internals would actually need to function because I can tell that would be an atomic pain in the ass in a dev sense

[digital heron]

you know......it DOES kind of look like an intestine

[hybrid marsh]

Magnets would Not Work. The only Magnetic Material you are mining for is Iron

[chrome smelt]

Then why can the manipulator arm grab them?

[digital heron]

Because it can be assumed the manipulator arm is a claw

[chrome smelt]

But it can grab stuff that is larger than the claw itself? It can grab really large ringoids

and also it can slip off

It also pulls stuff towards it

[digital heron]

Fair point

[agile root]

Problem is, it changes mineral balance, profit profiles, progress, etc by changing the prevalence of minerals. Not sure how big a deal it is, but this branches out to touch a lot of things.

[digital heron]

i do plan on touching iceroids with a spicy tentacle

oh you meant coding 💀

[agile root]

Well, partly coding, but partly just figuring out numbers and iterating versions to figure out balance.

The latter can take more time.

[digital heron]

So apparently the answer is “Tethers”

[chrome smelt]

Tethers?

[digital heron]

I’m assuming like small cabling

so tiny cable launchers

that can dig into things

[chrome smelt]

I would ping koder to ask but not sure if I'm allowed to lol

[digital heron]

ping me instead

[slow socket]

so like an external MPU?

[chrome smelt]

Yea I guess?

It's how real concept asteroid mining works anyway

Except the tiny arms I just think those are cool

[shut elk]

If I remember properly Kodev said that they didn’t want to use tethers or rope because it would cause a lot of performance issues

[digital heron]

yeah but koder says they used tethers

#science-behind-delta-v message

[shut elk]

Ah ok then

[knotty quest]

Lore is tethers, in-game is magnets-like

[chrome smelt]

If lore is tethers I suppose my design would have some little tiny tether launchers to latch on then

But I guess they would act like magnets in game

[agile root]

Nothing is cannon. Magnets acting on trace elements and some kind of microtether array have been brought up.

The real answer is, because their actual reach, the area they try to reach, and the area they can affect are not perfect overlaps.