the logic of "higher tier" mining would/should be.

Number of hits to produce an item.

It takes only 1 hit on level to produce an ore (stone or actual ore)

Up 1 level would take say.... 12 hits? Nah, we'll go with a flat 10

That way - every single stone/ore would take the same amount of time as mining an entire vein - which would be a serious time sink if you got a vein that was /all stone/ - I've got plenty of veins that I lucked out on and got nothing but stone, as it is now.

Additionally. You could really balance the "risk/reward" by making it a 25-50% chance to produce an item after the 10th strike.

Meaning for 9 hits  - it'll remain 100% (or it'll drop 1% each time) and when it finally reaches "90%" like it normally would've on tier in 1 strike

It rolls to see if an item drops.

meaning you could go through 100strikes - and only produce 2 stone and 1 ore - or something like that.

And it'd take practically the entire mining trip. Certainly wouldn't be making much money.

Additionally, in the next update - Tax is planned (you already see the notice on your board in the bed-room)

Which will also discourage random wasteful mining ops that turn over little reward. (like spending a week trying to mine tin right from the start)

Introducing this though, will also make Alloys more versatile. (tier up mining/additional hits and missing, etc)

I mean, there isn't going to be a bronze that you mine.

But Bronze, and other alloys, will likely appear - If Bronze can't straight up mine the next metal level up - then this is the perfect alternative

and it will simply double the chance, or halve the number of strikes. (or both) - Bronze would likely end up being between Iron and Copper/tin - so it'd be 5-10 strikes per ore at 50-100% (or maybe 99.9%) chance. (on Iron)

where as Tin (if it even still remained as a tool-series) would be 10 strikes per ore at 25-50% chance (on Iron)

and /MAYBE/ we could say x quality, would also reduce the miss-rate or decrease the number of strikes required (probably would say miss rate, and every... 30-100 control (30 is pretty high I think, 100 would be unthinkable early on) (control is one of the various quality stats) the chance increases by 1-10% (I dunno a real fair number here -and maybe say 30 gives ... I dunno, 3 % (so it'd really be "10 gives 1%, but you need 30 to start getting it) and then 33 (getting 30quality after the first quality check raises stats by 3 or so) 3.3% chance increase (to make every quality increase count)

so on. so forth.