TBH I'd like to see a bit more variation, both lower lows and higher highs in core minerals. I'm not a big miner, but it's a bit frustrating that platinum laser mining is so far and away the best profit giver all the time. It would be nice to see occasional rushes in demand in something or another so I don't always go to the exact same spot, I even have a dedicated Annie sitting in a station near the triple plat spot. It would also give incentive to keep a stock of a few minerals and sell them when the time is right.
Please buff LTD demand and price a tad. (33% price, 3x demand)
- Thread starter DemiserofD
- Start date
I don't think it is. It's just that it is more popular because, compared to core mining, it is easy mode. An experienced core miner can make the same, if not much more profit than with laser mining, it's just much more involved and, dare I say, skill dependent. Which is not what most CMDRs after that juicy credits per hour figure are after. They want to watch Netflix while mining. Which you shouldn't do core mining as it tanks your attention and thus the efficiency.
That's a little harsh, optimal laser mining is by no means an AFK activity though I do admit it's less involved, I too enjoyed my core whispering days back when void opals were all the rage, but being more involved and requiring more experience and skill to be successful at should make it reward higher, not that this skill and determination be a prerequisite. Like I say, I don't even want core minerals buffed, I'd settle for some market unpredictability that could hopefully satisfy everyone.
Been a while since there was a gold rush in Elite, hasn't it?
My memory is flaky. I think it might have been the Golconda Tritium three years ago?
Just to fill it with some numbers: I fill my 112t Mandalay in about 60 minutes. The average yield is about 13 tons of mineral per core, which means I crack about eight to nine cores per hour, or one every seven minutes. That includes blowing it up and collecting the materials. Unless you are doing mapped mining (which I find incredibly lame), I doubt you have much less downtime finding high yield laser rocks.
The "cores are hard to find" claim is a myth.
The thing is, when it comes to laser mining, the Rarity of the mineral means you actually tend to laser mine it more slowly than if you core mine it. The only really optimal way to laser mine it is to do a sort of combined version, where you are probing large numbers of rocks but primarily looking for core rocks. Personally, I find it quite interesting to be the only mineral you can really practically mine in every way.
Just so I am not just pulling numbers out of my ass, I went through the journal of my last mining session. Below are the relevant entries. As you can see, my above guesstimates were on the conservative side. I spent 44 minutes between dropping into the ring and leaving again. I cracked seven asteroids in that time, yielding me 108 tons of cargo. That's an average of 6.3 minutes between rocks, with the notion that I spent the longest time of 13 minutes between cores two and three - I don't remember if I couldn't find core 3 faster, or if there was a distraction. For the rest I spent between four and five minutes from crack to crack.
Just to show that, if I may call myself that, an experienced core miner can be pretty efficient with next to no downtime.
Code:
"timestamp":"2025-07-20T19:26:31Z", "event":"SupercruiseExit"
"timestamp":"2025-07-20T19:30:42Z", "event":"AsteroidCracked"
"timestamp":"2025-07-20T19:34:51Z", "event":"AsteroidCracked"
"timestamp":"2025-07-20T19:47:45Z", "event":"AsteroidCracked"
"timestamp":"2025-07-20T19:52:18Z", "event":"AsteroidCracked"
"timestamp":"2025-07-20T19:59:25Z", "event":"AsteroidCracked"
"timestamp":"2025-07-20T20:04:00Z", "event":"AsteroidCracked"
"timestamp":"2025-07-20T20:08:53Z", "event":"AsteroidCracked"
"timestamp":"2025-07-20T20:10:39Z", "event":"Cargo", "Vessel":"Ship", "Count":108
"timestamp":"2025-07-20T20:11:41Z", "event":"SupercruiseEntry"
"timestamp":"2025-07-20T20:19:15Z", "event":"MarketSell"There's time between the rocks but with laser it's constant small work. Prospect move a little prospect. With core it's pulse fly sometimes a considerable distance then prospect and repeat. Laser is more hamster wheel it's not really more yield. I dislike core because of that loop of long gaps of just flying to a glowing rock.
four minutes between cracks, including cracking and collecting. Just saying.
It also varies from ring to ring. Some rings have very few cores, others have many. Yours looks pretty typical to me, but I've also seen some where I find half that many and a rare few where I can get like 4 cores close enough to detonate all at once.
Laser yields and subsurface yields also vary similarly, which is another part of why I think LTDs would be really nice as a fallback plan when demand is exhausted for other options. Basically, you'd always prefer to mine something else, but then when that falls off you could always turn to LTDs as a replacement.
Or, to put it another way, right now the order goes something like, Ideal State Core Mining -> Plat Mining -> Depleted demand core mining -> LTD mining.
I'd like to shift it to be more like: Ideal State Core Mining -> Plat Mining -> LTD Mining ->Depleted demand core mining.
To me, this makes things more interesting, because right now you basically just core mine until depleted and then platinum mine if it's available, or you JUST core mine. But with this change, you'd core mine, plat mine, AND LTD mine, depending on the circumstances, only turning to depleted core mining if every other alternative is exhausted.
well the above is about my average experience. Of course there are days where maybe your drop is just bad, RNG isn't on your side, or the ring is just crap. But most times, I never spend more than a handful of minutes between two cracks - again, including hoovering up. You of course know that, but after a while you just get an eye for which glowing rocks to inspect, and learning to spot the fissures by eye saves a lot of time and prospectors too.