When a player has built a space station around a planet I was thinking of cool things that could be done. With all the threads about putting laser canons and shields for no reason on the space station it got me thinking about orbital ion canons.
What if instead of an Ion Canon we had an Oribital Miner? I think the green laser that the Arcane Bore from Thaumcraft looks pretty awesome. I would imagine something LIKE that, but bigger and coming down from space would be even cooler!
It would probably need to be somewhat expensive to build, and need lots of power. More power hungry than a buildcraft quarry anyways and it would probably need to be slightly slower too.
I imagine it needing two parts to operate.
First, The orbital miner/canon that's built and then placed on a space station.
Second, A targeting beacon, which would need to be linked to the canon and then brought down to the planet and placed somewhere. The beacon should also be somewhat expensive to build, but less expensive than the miner itself. The beacon would also be destroyed in the process of mining.
When back on the station the Miner/canon would find the beacon, lock on, and fire a beam down to the planet and start mining. Placing items into an adjacent chest.
The beam would be similar to the Arcane bore as it would also create roundish holes, but on the scale of a Buildcraft quarry. For extra coolness the beam would cover the entire mining area (as in not move around like the Bore or Quarry do), but blocks would be picked up at random like when you shoot a portal gun at the moon.
More examples of awesomeness:
What if instead of an Ion Canon we had an Oribital Miner? I think the green laser that the Arcane Bore from Thaumcraft looks pretty awesome. I would imagine something LIKE that, but bigger and coming down from space would be even cooler!
It would probably need to be somewhat expensive to build, and need lots of power. More power hungry than a buildcraft quarry anyways and it would probably need to be slightly slower too.
I imagine it needing two parts to operate.
First, The orbital miner/canon that's built and then placed on a space station.
Second, A targeting beacon, which would need to be linked to the canon and then brought down to the planet and placed somewhere. The beacon should also be somewhat expensive to build, but less expensive than the miner itself. The beacon would also be destroyed in the process of mining.
When back on the station the Miner/canon would find the beacon, lock on, and fire a beam down to the planet and start mining. Placing items into an adjacent chest.
The beam would be similar to the Arcane bore as it would also create roundish holes, but on the scale of a Buildcraft quarry. For extra coolness the beam would cover the entire mining area (as in not move around like the Bore or Quarry do), but blocks would be picked up at random like when you shoot a portal gun at the moon.
More examples of awesomeness:
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