Feature Spotlight: Tool Loaning

This article is part of a series of articles highlighting several different features of Mission Control in more details. This article is about how Tool Loaning works on Mission Control.

Quick summary: Mission Control, supported by gHubs, provides the possibility for Tool Loaning. Players with excess tools (e.g. because they sleep) can grant others access to their tools by staking them to Mission Control. They can claim them back at any time and passively get TLM every single time their tools were used. Miners, on the other hand, can use the big tools when they are available, without the necessity to buy them. With built-in security for both sides that the tools are paid for and returned.

Already since 2021 Tool Loaning was heavily demanded by the Alien Worlds community. So far, loaning tools had quite some inherent risk: you could get flagged, not get paid, or there was no guarantee that the tools are given back — which is bad for both sides. Now, over three years later, and thanks to the support of gHubs and Naron, Mission Control was finally able to implement a solution where players can safely rent out tools to other players and passively earn from other players mining with their tools.

The basic principle: people with excess tools (e.g. because they sleep) stake them to Mission Control. This way Mission Control can provide them to requesting miners for single mining attempts. The tool is transferred to the miner, the “Mine” takes places, the tool is transferred back to Mission Control and the tool fee is paid. All within a single “all or nothing” transaction. So outside of these transactions, the tools always remain with Mission Control, thus can be claimed back by the tool owner at any time.

Miner

Within Mission Control, miners have the ability to loan a tool and do a single “Mine” with it. You will always use a single tool, on Geothermal Springs, as part of the Tool Loaning process. (The only exception are Certified Kol Digger, which are always three of a kind on Sandy Coastline for ranking up.)

And as the mining transaction for Tool Loaning is a lot more complex than usual mining, the transaction also costs a lot more CPU than regular mining. Mission Control will pay the CPU for the miner to offset this.

You can only use tools for loaning that:

• Mission Control can only provide tools for Tool Loaning that are staked to Mission Control. Not all (kind of) tools will be available at all times.
• Loaning tools is always first come, first serve. If another player was faster in loaning a tool, then it will be on cooldown and is no longer available until off cooldown.
• Match your personal cooldown since you last mined. If you mined five minutes ago, then all long cooldown tools are quite logical not available until sufficient time has passed.

There is also the possibility to use Tool Loaning as the mining button in Mission Control. In the Mining Config the miner can select which tools he would accept for his mining button to use for loaning. This might be due to his personal preferences, like only TLM-heavy tools or only the balanced tools, etc. Whenever you use the Tool Loaning mining button, Mission Control will select the best currently available TLM tool from your list of preferences and loan/mine with it.

Due to how the mining transaction by Alien Worlds works, it will always be the miner who is credited with the full mining rewards from the mining transaction (TLM and Shards). So to ensure the miner can pay for the tool loaning process, before mining, the miner needs to deposit some Trilium. Which can be done in the “Deposit” screen of Tool Loaning. Then, when renting a tool, the player receives the full amount from the mining action. And the fees are deducted from the deposit. The amount of the fees is a percentage (depending on tool rarity) of how much TLM the miner earned with the attempt, both to pay the tool owner for their tool and Mission Control for facilitation.

Tool Owner

As a tool owner, you can make use of your unused tools by staking them, e.g. when you go to bed, work or on vacation. Or just have excess tools sitting around. This enables you to passively gain TLM from other players using your tools, while you wouldn’t use them anyway. You can stake them in the “Stake” screen and likewise unstake them at any time in the “Unstake” screen. Mind you, unstaked tools might still be on cooldown, though. Whenever someone uses one of your staked tools, you will be credited with the renting fee. You can claim your accumulated fees in the “Deposit” screen.

For now, Mission Control has enabled the following tools with Tool Loaning, together with all of the possible Shine levels:

MYTHICAL
AI Excavator
Waxtural Processor

LEGENDARY
Ether Converter
Exlian Staff
Lucky Drill
Particle Beam Collider
Quantum Drill

EPIC
Dacalizer
Localised Attractor
Quark Separator
RD9000 Excavator

RARE
Artunian Shovel
Barrel Digger
Draxos Hammer
Large Capacitor
Large Explosive

Tool loaning has been a long-requested feature, and we hope it will meet everyone’s expectations.

It should be able to both increase the use for Alien Worlds tools as well as increase the potential mining yields for players who so far were not able to afford mining with advanced tools.

Happy mining!

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