Why we need static mining blocks/drills

Space engineers currently hase loads of things you can do but without any real purpuse.
The steam workshop is loaded with blueprints for mining stations, cargo ships, tradign posts and trading space/ground crafts all both planetary as for in space. Unfortunatly None of these can be properly used in the current space engineers. The only way of getting resources is mining them yourself. tTere are designs of drones that can auto mine resources but most of these are very unpractical and get stuck more often they they return succesfull.

Space engineers can have A LOT more content by adding just 1 simple block:

A stationary mining drill that generates ores without altering voxels!

Why do we need it?
If you implement this you will see people making multiple small bases that act as a drilling station.
People will actually be able to use the ai pilot navigation wich the dev's have worked so hard on and use them in up and going cargo ships. You will be able to create a fuel network to keep these ships operating while they transport our cargo full automatable to your main base. If you look at the succes in games like factorio you cannot deny many people like this concept.

Especially in survival people will discover more player made bases, if a base get's raided a player will lees likly lose everything he got at once. Raiding can also take new forms. maybe you are just interested in the carge. Or when auto piloting ships becomes more popular people can try to secretly follow them to discover players main base.

Trading! Because it will be less likely that one player will make drilling station for all of the 10 available ores they will be more often make trading offers in the global chat.

Mining is great and should always be the fastest way to get resources. But when people have made a base and some ships they come to the point "now what?" and generally stop playing (i am one of them). With this block you will create much more player self set goals they want to accomplish.

Now blocks are easily connected with voxel it should be fairly simple to make such a block and can bring this game much more alive!
Why should you spent time on ai spawned controlled space pirates and random encouters when people should be the ones creating them?
The only thing you must pay attention to is that there cannot be made to much of these blocks close together but rather alterable with modules.
This is also highly custimizable. you could make some ores for example only be drillable if another ore is destroyed in the process (example needing ice to magnesium i am not a chemist so i don't know what would be logical and what not).
Mining is still a big creator of lag, having a station that does not alter voxels will lower lag big time.

I mention in other topics and people come up with some arguments:

"this will replace mining and mining is the game"
-this does not take away mining cuzz you will always be mining for the ores you need or want less of + this is a choice, you would never have to do this if you don't want to.

"mining gives you plenty of resources"
True enough but this is actually not about resource gathering but more about self set-up goals + having plenty of the same resource will encourage people to trade.

"this will create lag because refinery's also create lag"
Agreed, thats why when creating this block there must be a way to make people build only one in a rather large area
(perhaps an area where this block around cannot be build, perhaps just a very big block).

"this will take away the rareness off ores"
This also can be solved by having a minimum area of voxel required before you can build this block making scarse ores less likly to be turned into a drilling station.

"making ores without destroying voxel is unrealistic"
True but a map with non-moving planet's and asteroids is also unrealistic and i hear nobody complaining about that.

I really hope you guys will see that a lot of the current content in this game can be activated just by adding this 1 block.

 

Drilling/mining is not just "in the game", it's a fundamental part of the game. There should be no way to work around that in vanilla.

 

I absolutely agree with some of the points you make, although I respectfully disagree that this block is the solution. To complicate my stance further, I do agree to it creating cool new challenges.

So, I agree with your general idea: What I feel you are getting at is that there is very little need for player interaction, at least between strangers. The additional content as you refer to it such as more trading, shadowing ships, and small raids for resources would be very welcome.

However, I feel it is not going to be achieved by adding this block without an entire rebalance. The problem, as I see it lies in that everybody can achieve everything fairly straightforwardly. Now this makes sense in terms of a sandbox game, and resolves any actual balancing as you would have with e.g. different classes. Those putting in most effort and those most efficient will be strongest. That makes perfect sense.

It also means that, if this is an additional block without any other work, we can all still get everything we want with mining, and have additional resources by setting up an automated drill and carrier. I feel this will not add the need to trade, but it removes it even further. Since the end result is more resources there is less need to cooperate or fight one another.

The way I sort of see it, is that the true balancing of this game is problematic in terms of 'what do people want from a sandbox?' Do we (eventually) want to be able to run a behemoth of a station with a megaton of firepower and mining ships that eat astroids? Or do we want to be more limited and have to make choices? Both military and trading power are currently achieved by the same means, which make both equally viable and largely obtainable in parallel. The solution to needing more cooperation is in creating more dependence. If military, mining and trading were specializations in terms of how to spend (very) limited resources, or how to spend time, or how to spend something akin to points in a research tree, you would have players actually needing one another. The one with the big guns needs iron, the one providing the iron needs protection and a way to quickly transport it, requiring the third person with all the fancy thrusters. (Now I don't necessarily see the game progressing in this way and would not care for it... or maybe would if done properly, but I think it is a more effective solution to the lack of player interaction you mention).

Agreed! It would be a good (temporary?) solution for AI controlled mining routes and fully agree to the part of having new stuff to do. Efficient collection routes, automatic fueling of drones, small but productive bases all over the place... I'm all for that. Also it would add to immersion if you did not need to go to your mining station, mine, put the stuff in a container and wait for the drone, see the autopilot poop itself and watch something akin to my grandmother trying to park an 18-wheeler (Although that is mainly due to me sucking with waypointing)

 

You can balance this by making ore depositis more rare or like on of the suggestions making this block only vailable at large deposits (wich are way more rare).
Never have i seen a world where people where willing to trade anything else but gravel... Now if you would have a nickel mine and you become stuffed with nickel and you ask anyone want some nickel? now there would be something people would respond to.
Resources must indeed be more rare for this to work but when it does it can work out pretty pretty well.

In that case call it space miners, not space engineers, but wait it IS called space engineers.
The only reason why you say this is with the start of survival (wich was initially never itnended by the devs) the nly way to get resources was trough mining and for a reason that completly blinds me that is sacred to many players...

 

@Sagi you have your opinion, I have mine. Whether survival was originally intended or not (I know very well it wasn't) is utterly irrelevant because it is there now - and is where the "game" is. Oh... And creating mining vessels and systems is not engineering enough for you?

 

Not if that would be the only thing you can do with SOOOO MANYYY options the game gives you.
It has potential for a lot lot more.
But we will see, do something simular like this (making permanent strutcures and multiple bases usefull for a good purpose). Or simply die out, what space engineers is kindoff doing right now...

 

In that case we agree

 

You don't need a magic ore generator to find a solution to that. Anyway I've said my piece. Apparently I'm in a bad mood since I'm being more salty than a post like this deserves (sorry about that), so I'm gonna pull out

 

talking about being salty and pulling out... :/

 

Well whenever you have givven some and be in a better mood then what do you suggest happens to make things like this happen since they currently aren't happening at all.

 

I'm not a game designer, I only know what I don't want, that doesn't mean I have an alternative myself, but of course there are some. As for what is and isn't happening, currently their focus is on getting the game to work right. Then I'm sure there will be more gameplay work.

 

To some degree i can dig the idea to "extract" resources from the ground without actually mining as mod but not as vanilla mechanic.

The balance here would be the very low speed as well as the high energy costs.
The explanation could be a very rough and far fetched "fracking" application either with or without the use of components like hydraulic fluids / water etc.

Ingame it would be a method that goes through the surrounding voxels and values their resources over distance to the extraction node. So code-wise you had a dictionary over all possible ores whichs value is a function like oreQuantity [kg] / (distance [m])² and each second it produces a low quantity like maybe 1 / 1 000 0000 of the dictionary value or whatever feels sane with a max range of 50 m, 100 m, 200 m etc.
If the extraction node is about 3x3x8 blocks large, you couldnt spam it too easily. Especially so if the energy requirement is rather high with about 10 MW to 100 MW (refinery/assembler use merely 560 kW).


So yes, the idea itself i kinda like if it is a very slow process that may or may not depletes the ores (in my suggested approach it doesnt for the sake of performance). However as vanilla addition i dont quite like it for the concept alone.

 

Mining without voxel removal would void the need to look for new resources which would suck IMHO.

But you are onto something - may I suggest vastly reduced voxel updating - like a static miner that has to run for 10 minutes then updates several voxels at once (and only then has ore you can take away).

Should help out with the lag-wars methinks.

 

Could also be a possibility, that it drains the voxels turning them slowly into normal stone, not sure if this would reflect on lag tough, big changes it does i guess.
But anyways it should take a long time to deplete a deposit and should in the end generate far more resources then normal mining does but off course much much slower.
+if you need a resource you would never wait for it but then go mine some instead it should be that slow.

There are more games that use this mechanic.
Another option could also be that you have your rare ores wich can only be mined and your drillable ones. This way mining is still always needed and also opens the option for multiple bases+automizing.
Knowing that like any open world mp game it is nice to have progress when being offline, right now the only progress you can have are batteries recharging. would eb nice to set up resource gatherers and the next day you start the game having a lot of resources you can help yourself with (or off course you could be raided during the night).

For the moment there are only 2 things players do in survival:
-make stationary base with a fighter and miner
-make a moving base with a fighter and miner

when they did this they go on about 15 minutes trying to find another player to shoot and after that (usually won't find one) they exit the world never to return, space engineers deserves better.

 

My idea was to NOT have slow draining.

A simple 10 minute timer then POOF, voxels removed (or updated) and ore delivered. Slowly updating = more work per game tick = not good.

 

Sagi, you may want to take a look into Steam's Workshop, like this: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=655922051
There are other mods with different approaches to the mining problem.
Such a block would be a good idea for a modder. May I suggest that only one block per deposit may be placed and that only the ore he is imbedded is gathered? I think if you just switch the material of a voxel, that shouldn't cost much performance, so ore will become stone, just by changing a flag of the voxel.

But for the vanilla game I wish they would streamline the code for better performance.

 

If you have read my original post completly you would have read that it isn't mining that's the problem.
It is that there is almost nothing to achieve with the current mechanics.

As for mods i don't look into them cuz i like joining other people's worlds instead of making one myself.
Vanilla MP survival gameplay simple need goal boosts badly, and i repeat myself now but there is a reason why space engineers is dying out on players...

 

Could you please explain to me what it was you disagreed with in my post? For all intents and purposes we're saying the same - not in vanilla?

 

I don't think this works as a drill block - as others have said, drilling is core to some of the engineering that *is* present in the game. Engineering, after all, is solving problems - and making it too easy to solve the problem, "we require more minerals," removes the impetus for engineering. Even if it's *slower,* it would have to be so slow to not be worth doing in order to allow drills to compete with it, since it eliminates so much of the process involved in drilling, and can be done with no player or even rudimentary AI script or advanced engineering solution guiding it. Furthermore, it's *really* immersion-breaking.

I can visualize something that might accomplish some of these objectives, although the image that's formed in my head is pretty heavy on the -fi of sci-fi. I can picture some kind of black hole - like phenomena in space, that occasionally spit out ores (perhaps one type of ore per instance of the phenomenon), but suck them in again very quickly. This thing would have a very strong natural gravity pull, and would therefore nullify gravity generators - and possibly something passing for a small but dense bubble of atmosphere that might hamper ions, hard. But a hydrogen- or lots-of-ion-driven collector ship, with a lot of horsepower, could theoretically come and scoop up some materials indefinitely. These could perhaps spawn no closer to one another than 250 km (or more? I mostly play on planets so don't have a great concept of interplanetary scale any more.) And perhaps, the ore that it spits out can only be refined on a planet? But that sounds silly.

This becomes something that's impractical enough that the existing drilling segment of the game will remain the go-to for most players. But a player who really chooses to invest in it may, over time, acquire enough goods for effective trading. They're far enough apart that you'll want to get some long-distance travel infrastructure set up, and possibly multiple small mining bases. And if the ore that can be collected from this can only be processed on a planet (natural gravity, or atmosphere, or something), that will introduce a whole host of engineering challenges - and also throw a bone to the people who really want a reason to go onto planets.

...Doesn't sound like something that should be in vanilla either, though. Meh. I tried.

 

Jump drives are even more sci-fi as they actually teleports you (you can even go trough planets) and nobody cares...
While on the other hand mining rigs here on earth exist today, being able to keep working for years and years and years pouring out resources.
I have no problem att all that they would slowly destroy the voxels i just don't reccomend them because they are much more likly to create lag, something this game has lots of trouble with.

It should not be all that slow either it should just be slow enough so you won't wait for it and manual mining should be faster.

But hey many survival based games still have a growing number of players and content keeps updating and changing gameplay often.
Space engineers is dying out just saying...
Multiplayer games seldon have less then 20 mods active, this is a sing there are really thign smissing in the base game and not about the mod part but about the players have no intrest at all to keep playing this game.
SE is gonna have to do something fast or nobody is going to even care if they finally solved their performance issues or not.
in all of the update sof SE in the last half year not one of them had made me go "hmm i should check this game out again".
And you see the dust on these forums growing thicker as well, there is a reason for this guys...

p.s. i do like your idea of having some ores only processable on planets (and visa versa) tough.

 

You've never been on these forums before, have you, if you think that

There is a fundamental difference. The jump drive is a necessity. It's something we must have, there aren't many who would suffer the realtime travel between planets. "Nobody cares" as it were because people are aware of this fact.

And I'm not convinced having a magical resource device is gonna do anything to increase player count. This is not why people aren't player. The only thing this game needs to regain its former strength is a working multiplayer. That's what people are waiting for.

By the way, Space Engineers is still on the top 100 games by player count on Steam so it can't be that bad.
https://store.steampowered.com/stats/

 

I think mining shouldn't be a fundamental part of the game. Finding the different ores, yes. but not the mining of them. Up to now I didn't found a script that automines reliably with the instabilities that SE has. At the moment I relay on a mod to mine. There are more interesting things in SE than mining for an hour just to wait two hours to get the ore refined.

As it was stated before, this is your individual perception, and it is wrong. It's normal for players to switch to other games and leave. But they may come back later. And new ones are joining.
I also tried Empyrion, but even it looks a lot better than SE, I switched back to SE because the game mechanic is much more appealing. OK, I'm a veteran of computer gaming, and I know, there are more important stuff to a good game than nice graphics and funky particles effects. The only thing really annoying is the many way the MP-game is destroying your ships.

 

Ah. I don't agree with you but that is fair enough. Thank you.

I was stating a fact though, not an opinion so you're not disagreeing with me, you're disagreeing with Keen. Just for the record

 

It's a bit too easy i think. What i see here is you're bored from the game (which i will be too when my ships are built for survival usw.)
Problem here is....you'll probably won't get much more out of it...imagine you build your mining bases...you'll either download a script or do it yourself to automate drones...even if you can't plant two next to each other you'll reach the point where you have so much mining bases you can retire...again.
Pirate players could come and steal or hijack the drones, but as far as i experienced every player attacking a base and stealing ressources isn't a pirate for many players, but more a griefer. The one time i was on a public server me and a friend built a attack fighter and a mobile shipyard. After we got enough ressources to build my Erebos Class cruiser we started to raid player bases. They had pretty good ships too but my erebos was superior in most cases we only attacked player which were online and had fair fights but we won all the time so they reported us until we got banned...that pretty much sums up my experience so far with PvP piracy....the server had PvP and some other rules, we never broke one of them...but yeah.
The games with the best endgame in my opinion which i played were those where you either never really reached endgame, when the was always a way to get better, OR where you couldn't be good at everything. For Example WoW you couldn't be healer, tank and DD at the same time (technically you could but not to the full potential of that class)
We have A LOT of Ships and stations which are spawned persitently throughout the SE universe. Which is pretty pointless when you consider that all those are not more tan a gun wielding ressource node for a player.
What i mean with it is simple economy and skill trees. All of you now mourning "we don't need this stuff it's space engineers not space traders!" go back to creative because then "survival" isn't for you we have an nearly infinitly big universe to explore, but what sense has exploring if it's boring because you won't get anything out of it.
Man i should just start to tell you the features i have in mind.
First there should be an economy and a credit system. You can go mining and sell stuff to a trading station or a shipyard or a refinery station. Or you can buy cheap minerals on one station and sell it more expensive to other stations.
Or you can get headhunting quests from "npc's" to destroy a ship or find an artifact.
That would give ALL your ships and stations and all that stuff a pupose. Imagine you build a small outpost near an asteroid and start mining it. Then you can use drones which fly to stations which you found before and sell that ore for credits. For the money you can buy weapon upgrades or components or new prebuilt ships from a ship trader.
Now you're asking: "Why should i do this? It would be easier to process the ores for myself and build the ships myself" The answer is: you can't.
Thats where a skill system would come in handy. Before you can build e.g. a refinery you first need to learn how to do this. Either by buying a blueprint from a trader or by researching it (which is expensive in energy, time and ressources) Or as a possible third method to ask a player who knows the blueprint to place one for you for some credits. Maybe you could add, that some "NPC's" can build it for you maybe. And last but not least if you find an abandoned refinery ship you could cut the refinery out and megr it with your ship. Also different Tiers and sorts of refinerys would be cool. So that you could only refine magnesium with a magnesium sifter or iron with an arc furnace.
So say you specialise on gold mining and refininge. The you'll buy or research blueprints for a gold filtering machine.
This is applicable to all parts so far. Say you want a way to protect your mining base, then you either have to buy an expensive weapon blueprint or have to research it for a lot of ressources, or let another player or "NPC" build it for you. To build ammo you need a machine which produces ammo and the ressources. So say for balancing issues you should make a weapon blueprint so expensive, that it would be cheaper to let another player or "NPC" fit a whole fleet with guns and turrets or buy ammo which lasts long enough to start a small war. Basic equipment like a slow simple refinery would still be relatively cheap but to really get into mining business you had to buy specialized equipment and even then you would be only able to effectively mine ONE ressource. But you could make money to get better Equipment or enough ressources to research them yourself.
Last but not least some really highend blueprints should only findable. Which means you either have to raid heavy defended bases or explore space. Maybe combined with some puzzles. All Blueprints should be findable. Someone who mostly explores can sell blueprints or highend machines he grinded out to NPC's or other players. Because even if he finds maybe the holy grail of silver refining machinery he will lack all sorts of other stuff he needs to get a mining guru BUT it would be possible.
Last but not least to get back to your drill idea...deep core mining could be one of those highend mining machines. You drill down with an conventional drill set. Deep down like 5Km maybe? Down there you set up a deep mining base with your special fracking machinery who sucks lots and lots of electricity. It should be so deep that a pipe to the surface would be too expensive (but possible). Those Blueprints should be either extremly expensive or just findable through exploration and like refineries it should work for only one mineral and it should be relatively slow. Then either your own drone flies out to sell your stuff or get it to your homebase or factory or an NPC drone docks to a specialised connector get materials and leaves credits there for you. Next big let down would be that deep down doesn't mean all ores can be mined. Say in a radius of 10Km there are differnt quantities of an ore. They should be infinite, but say your have 95% Magnesium and 5% Iron it would be stupid to setup an iron fracker. SO you first have to scan the area.
And those are all tools you wouldn't have as an explorer, or headhunter or trader. It would be possible to do ALL of it but it would take its time without being too grindy.
There would be still the engineer part...it would still take up the biggest part.
It's a lot of stuff i ask for but it would be possible and not too crazy to implement (most of the stuff is already there and the stuff needed wouldn't be as hard as the fucked up rotor/piston physics) but it would give SE so much gameplaywise and even for people who are not that good in shipbuilding like most of my friends it could offer so much more. (most of them say and they're not wrong: survival is just creative with grinding)
A lot people say to me the DEV's do what they want and don't listen to us. But thats wrong...we wouldn't have planets or Oxygen if they wouldn't list...so if we scream loud enough maybe just maybe they will consider it.
Like the other thread i wrote which is already dead like it seems...
Yeah thats it....so far

 

Wauw and then they disagree with me for leaving the game core haha.
It sounds a lot like eve online what you discribed there and the blueprints from rust (altough they got rid of it because it was a bad system).

But i do think we are on the same page here, we both want more thigns to happen to make mp mor enjoyable without being bored to quikly, thus also increasing players.

p.s. malware there is absolutly nothing magical with a mining drill. They can also deplete ore veins slowly i only do not suggest this because of the lag it would create. So stop saying this is magical while it is far far far from that.

 

The only way they would not be magical is if it provided no more ore than was removed from the source.

I would much rather have ways to engineer mining mechanisms than a boring plop-down-heres-your-ores thing. I think you'll find that whatever player gain you think there will be due to a block such as this would be countered by at least an equal amount of loss due to "that's too easy", you're underestimating people's patience with mining.

 

Almost as much as you underestimate the people's need to use all of these mechanics in the game WITH a purpose.
Ai ship control: no real purpose atm
Trading: no purpose, you better store then you should have to mine again later
raiding: mining stuff gives you always a lot more in the same time then you ever would with raiding
Cargo ships: workshop is full of them but wait there is no need to transport corgo, not more then your miner does anyway.

But oh well i havent played Se in amost a year now and it looks like i might put it in my hidden folders cuzz if keen is a bit on most guys wavelengts this is gonna die out anyway.
p.s. i just want more available gameplay, this drill is not the only way to achieve that but it's the best thing there would be. But good luck with all youre bored minegames and having absolutly no purpuse with it then built a bigger miner and start again.

 

We played like this for three months with in the end 40 players i think. It was so much fun! I built a central trading station wit lots of modded infinite range laser antennas and that mod which made it possible to send variables over antennas. With this i programmed a banking system so i didn't have to manually edit the amount of money my players had. It was easy to use. And the other thing was a player had to buy a virtual blueprint for a cobalt drill for example. Which meant he could only drill for cobalt. Those were cheap but same goes for refineries, assemblers and stuff. Problem is, everyone has to be completly honest there was no possible system that prevented a player without an ammo blueprint to build rockets and bullets. But it worked for us (we knew all players) in the end i didn't need to do that much anymore. I just sold blueprints for horrible prices, took taxes for ship licensing (every ship needed a registration) just one and only one player started as a weapon trader (you needed a licence to own weapons and another to build some) at first he salvaged dead ships, later he bought a licence just to build NATO Ammo for Rifles after that he got one to buildGatling Guns and so on. We had two priates and he sold weapons to them as well as to the traders. I also gave out missions like destroy a pirate base. So headhunters needed ammo and weapons that way our weapon producer sold ammo and weapons and the refinery guy sold his ingots and last in the row was the miner, and inbetween maybe some traders buying and selling all the stuff. But they also needed a trading licence for some goods. In the end from most stuff i was the end point where alls the money landed, but i it them back into the game by extending the central station or giving out "pointless" but challenging missions.
It was so much fun but a lot of work and even after three months playing like every second evening for 2-3 hours our weapons guy didn't even have the blueprint for the rocketlauncher turret. He did a lot of other stuff when he wasn't repairing weapon systems from some of our headhunters or scavengers and most of all sometimes we just sat in the new built biosphere of the central station which i financed with tax money and built together with the shipbuilder/trader guy., and just roleplayed, talked and had fun.
If it wasn't so extremly time consuming and complicated (and the world didn't go corrupt) we would still be playing.

What do you think of my Version?

 

Oh but I don't underestimate those needs. I am very much aware of those needs, which is exactly why I'm opposed to a mining block like this. Because I just don't see a connection between those needs and removing the mining mechanic, because then you're removing the need to create mining equipment, mobile mining factories etc. Such a thing would be the best thing there would be... for you. It's boring... for you. If the "bored minegames" is nothing for you, well then perhaps you should put it in your hidden folders, because this is not the game for you. Or, get a mod with the block you want, and play it the way you want to while leaving the rest of us to play it the way we want to. This is what modding is for, to get the game behaving differently from its original intent. There's already a beam mining mod, for instance, which you can use to have automated mining drones do the job for you because the beam drill is on a turret.

I repeat: SE is still on the top 100 list. If and when it drops off that list, that's when I will start to worry - a little bit. And once they finally get multiplayer to an acceptable level that player count will skyrocket again. Mining has nothing to do with this. You only need to read the forums around here to see that. The multiplayer is the Big Thing. If they fail to deal with that - that's when this game will die out, and that's what is causing the current player drop. Not the mining.

@DJToxica I'm not gonna comment on your specific feature suggestions, I agree with some and not others - but the general gist, that there needs to be a feeling of progress, and that everything shouldn't just... you know, drop into your lap, I'd like that very much.

 

Well let me explain it to you one more time then...
It is not about not having to mine, it is about having a steady income of one or more particular resource. Like they often say now anyone wants gravel? people will alsoo say things then like anyone want iron or nickel or anything else.
This is when people start to trade. If you now have a reserve of a particular resource you just store it for later so you don't have to go mine for it again.
And removing the need for equipment?! I think that a ai pilot trade line with carge ships + multiple mining bases will create ALOT more need for equipment then a miner does, even if you want to mine like now you still can have plenty mroe resources then others who don't because you will have them faster. When you find other players mines they will probably be defended, so you will create a greater need for weapons and ammo for both the conquerer as the defender.
THIS IS NOT TOE REPLACE MINIGN AS WE KNOW IT TODAY! This is somethign you can ALSO do and manual mining or auto mining will both have their advantages and disadvantages.
Mining the way it is now is fine, i have no problem with it exept that you are now stuck with only one way to get resources. This wil more late game also replace the need for rediculisly large miners that eats entire asteroids wich btw comes alot more closer to magic then a mere mining drill that is simply more productive then mobile mining drill, speaking of that why is the productivity module for the refinery then not magical? suddenly creating more ignots from the same amount of ore...
So please open your eyes and see the connection between the need for lots of equipment if you use manual mining AND mining station later on. Everyone who starts the game anew will be mining for quite some time anyway before he would built a mining station.

I have no problem with your opinion that it should not be in there but i do have a problem you not seeing that this added mechanic will flourisch players interaction with each other in many ways, wich are nihil today unless you play with friends who you know.