Futuristic Mining Setting ideas

[hoganbball23]

Hi everyone! So for our next scenario in my powerarmored supersoldier campaign my crew will be sent into a mine to retrieve an intelligence officer that has been found out an captured. They will start on the mine surface, and work their way down to grab the asset and extract her.

Relevant info: TL 10. Gravity of planet is earth like. Players have 200 Ablative armor shielding and 65 standard DR overall.

So far I have a bunch of drone controlled mining machinery (wrecking balls, shovels, etc) and some fairly well hidden dudes with dinosaur lasers laced throughout the mine, as well as some explosives.

Thanks all!

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Sooooo, what is your goal with this scenario? Is this supposed to be a straightforward shoot-'em-up, a quiet extraction..?

In the powered armor space marine game that I played in, for example, my PC was the squad's combat technician, whose first priority would be to hack the local security system to gain eyes on the facility, locate the objective and any hidden security assets, etc. If your game has anything like that, you're going to want to come up with the difficulty and results for that sort of maneuver. If they're just going in guns blazing, you're going to want combat stats for the mining drones. Actually, you should come up with those either way, somebody's going to want to do it.

[AlexanderHowl]

Why would a TL10 civilization have mines on a planet? With the ease and (relative) cheapness of asteroid mining, there really is little reason to have surface mines for anything but the most common materials. Now, an abandoned mine from a Pre-Space Era or Dark Age Era would make sense, as would a museum mine.

Alternatively, you could have the mission taking place in an asteroid mine with microgravity and vacuum conditions. You might have habitable shelters throughout the mine for drone managers and the like, which would provide a comfortable environment, and they would likely function as a SM+7 'vehicle' with steel armor and without propulsion. A SM+7 shelter could have three steel armor, an engine room, an external clamp, five hanger bays, five habitats, and five cargo holds.

[The_Ryujin]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Why would a TL10 civilization have mines on a planet? With the ease and (relative) cheapness of asteroid mining, there really is little reason to have surface mines for anything but the most common materials. Now, an abandoned mine from a Pre-Space Era or Dark Age Era would make sense, as would a museum mine.

It could be a small, new colony that just doesn't have the infrastructure up yet to mine asteroids or the system might not have an asteroid belt; we don't know how common those are (we can't assume that just because our solar system has a feature that it must be a standard one, in fact it seems that gas giants being far away from the sun is a quirk of our system as most other ones we've found have them much closer to their sun).

[Varyon]

I'm not certain mining drones would be able to do much directly against DR 65. Sure, they have some ability to drill through hard surfaces, but I doubt anything that's anywhere near as resilient (per inch) as that armor. And even if they do, it's not something that can do anything in the time period of a typical GURPS attack - the target would likely need to stand still for a few seconds to do more than ruin the armor's paint job. Now, if these are heavy mining drones (relative to the characters' armor-boosted ST), they may be able to pin a character (which would let them drill through, if applicable), which could be an interesting route to go - the characters need to take down the drones before they can get close enough to pin someone, and if/when that does happen, need to take it out before it manages to get through the armor to the juicy center (then they have to decide if it's worth the time to dig the character out from under the wrecked machine now instead of waiting until the battle is finished).

Of course, you could also ignore the above, and have the drones equipped with weapons-grade stuff. You've already got a planetside mine at TL10, so some highly-cinematic stuff wouldn't be out of place.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by The_Ryujin

It could be a small, new colony that just doesn't have the infrastructure up yet to mine asteroids or the system might not have an asteroid belt; we don't know how common those are (we can't assume that just because our solar system has a feature that it must be a standard one, in fact it seems that gas giants being far away from the sun is a quirk of our system as most other ones we've found have them much closer to their sun).

We have found plenty of asteroid belts and Kuiper Belts, despite the difficulty of detecting such things. For example, Epsilon Eradini has two asteroid belts and a Kuiper Belt. We have even found asteroid belts with hundreds of times as much mass as our Main Belt.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Why would a TL10 civilization have mines on a planet? With the ease and (relative) cheapness of asteroid mining, there really is little reason to have surface mines for anything but the most common materials. Now, an abandoned mine from a Pre-Space Era or Dark Age Era would make sense, as would a museum mine.

It could be a setting where people live on planets rather than in space habitats. emulating the great bulk of visual science fiction mediums. Its not the current vision of the future, but it is a trope, it is a genre and sometimes you just have to embrace the convention.

It could also be that Mine is harvesting something rare in that solar system that ended up on the planet rather than in the asteroids.



It could be an old system that's exhausted its space resources and is mining out its gravity wells now.


It could be that the planet is stuck down a gravity well without good infrastructure to sell things to space and so it has to do its own mining.



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One threat you may be able to make use of is targeted collapses of the mine by the drones, with the intent of trapping the characters. Either in a section of tunnel or under a large amount of rock.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Why would a TL10 civilization have mines on a planet? With the ease and (relative) cheapness of asteroid mining, there really is little reason to have surface mines for anything but the most common materials. .

When you live on a planet mining there is convenient.

[(E)]

Water cannons and pumps are likely in mines. Knock back attacks.

Loaders and haulers that have fit almost exactly into a mine tunnels' cross section.

Conveyor belts could also be used creatively.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by hoganbball23

So far I have a bunch of drone controlled mining machinery (wrecking balls, shovels, etc) and some fairly well hidden dudes with dinosaur lasers laced throughout the mine, as well as some explosives.

Is this a military or prison mine? I'm curious about the multiple dino lasers. They can't hurt the characters directly 48 max damage vs 65 armor.

I'd have more laser rifles, even if military. They have a higher RoF and are much more portable.

The mining machine could either throw the characters into walls, or crush them between two machines. Or two mechanical arms could grap a character and make like he's a wish bone.

Some of the miners should be skilled with explosives. 'Nuff said.