Mining - any love?

[Weps]

I'm just waiting for them to implement the stuff mentioned in the DDF: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7196

Most importantly:

- a heat map for each asteroid showing where on the surface the yield is greater. This has two benefits: firstly it makes mining interesting since you have to target and keep your beam(s) on a specific spot, and secondly, mining the highest points on the heat map can lead to very high yields (90% platinum anyone?) which will make mining profitable and on par with other professions.

- drones to gather resources instead of scooping them. I don't have anything against scooping, but doing it in a Type 9 seems awkward. I want to equip a Type 9 as a real asteroid cracker and go on a 6 month mining tour in unexplored space, instead of regularly heading to a station to dump my ore. Scooping is fine for smaller ships, and I would expect the drones and perhaps a "drone controller" piece of equipment to occupy a lot of cargo space (hence the need to use it on a large miner ship).

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

I'm just waiting for them to implement the stuff mentioned in the DDF: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7196

Most importantly:

- a heat map for each asteroid showing where on the surface the yield is greater. This has two benefits: firstly it makes mining interesting since you have to target and keep your beam(s) on a specific spot, and secondly, mining the highest points on the heat map can lead to very high yields (90% platinum anyone?) which will make mining profitable and on par with other professions.

- drones to gather resources instead of scooping them. I don't have anything against scooping, but doing it in a Type 9 seems awkward. I want to equip a Type 9 as a real asteroid cracker and go on a 6 month mining tour in unexplored space, instead of regularly heading to a station to dump my ore. Scooping is fine for smaller ships, and I would expect the drones and perhaps a "drone controller" piece of equipment to occupy a lot of cargo space (hence the need to use it on a large miner ship).

Okay - how about instead of drones - you have a co flyer. You zap the asteroid, smaller ship scoops up and processes, delivers cargo to bigger ship...

Requires - Inter-ship transport of cargo, credit transfer between ships in the same Wings group.

Edit: Oooh. I read in another post that someone scanned a comet or two in a system somewhere!!!

 

[andyraptor]

I'd rather chew my own nobbly bits off than Mine at the moment ..... how this mechanic even got through Beta/Gamma in this sorry state is a reflection on all those that closed a blind eye to it.... looking at you guys that strut about claiming to be Beta testers

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

I'd rather chew my own nobbly bits off than Mine at the moment ..... how this mechanic even got through Beta/Gamma in this sorry state is a reflection on all those that closed a blind eye to it.... looking at you guys that strut about claiming to be Beta testers

Insults? The mods will trounce on you if you're not careful.

Mining, as it has been implemented thus far and acknowledged that it is not where they want it to be, actually works. It works better than the original Elite (you have the refinery module - you didn't have that in the first three) So beta testers actually did a good job. You can't get the MB4 and planetary stuff yet until planetary landings... and I'd rather have something that works, than something that's half-baked.

We may have only one or two cookies on our plate at the moment, but at least they're cooked.

 

[almostpilot]

Mining is the worst part of the game. Really need some improvement and quickly

I´d like to see a automatic drone collector

 

[andyraptor]

Insults? The mods will trounce on you if you're not careful.

Mining, as it has been implemented thus far and acknowledged that it is not where they want it to be, actually works. It works better than the original Elite (you have the refinery module - you didn't have that in the first three) So beta testers actually did a good job. You can't get the MB4 and planetary stuff yet until planetary landings... and I'd rather have something that works, than something that's half-baked.

We may have only one or two cookies on our plate at the moment, but at least they're cooked.

insults are generally a personal attack... pointing out that a whole group of people have failed is a matter of opinion (and please don't use the old BB trick of trying to single out a poster for Mod attention... ty)

the rest of your reply is a reflection of the problem as a whole...

if it's half baked ..............it's not ready

it may be a really tough pill to swallow.... but with a brief look over this thread I would say it's a majority view

 

[Kastor]

Really I just feel some numbers need to be changed, currently mining doesn't scale with ship size. 2 ideas:
1. Yeild of low value minerals should be huge, I mean one fragment should fill up two containers. That way big ships can quickly fill up on and make profit from average metals, not just the rare ones.
2. Bigger mining lasers should cut off bigger chunks as well. Again, helps big ships fill faster and also means the underused adder gets a role it excels at.

 

[Wullail]

I personally would be initially happier with more intelligent hoppers/refiners....at least to start with.

I want to set default metals etc per hopper...

Perhaps a checkbox in a list showing what to keep and process and what not to.

as soon as that metal is processed from the current chunk , the rest gets vented...

having to go to the hopper and manually vent EVERY part of a chunk I don't want EVERY time is a real pita.

 

[Kastor]

I personally would be initially happier with more intelligent hoppers/refiners....at least to start with.

I want to set default metals etc per hopper...

Perhaps a checkbox in a list showing what to keep and process and what not to.

as soon as that metal is processed from the current chunk , the rest gets vented...

having to go to the hopper and manually vent EVERY part of a chunk I don't want EVERY time is a real pita.

+1 I would love this when combined with my suggestion, mass mining go!

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

insults are generally a personal attack... pointing out that a whole group of people have failed is a matter of opinion (and please don't use the old BB trick of trying to single out a poster for Mod attention... ty)

the rest of your reply is a reflection of the problem as a whole...

if it's half baked ..............it's not ready

it may be a really tough pill to swallow.... but with a brief look over this thread I would say it's a majority view

If I really wanted to point you out to the mods, I would have used the "Report this post" button. Rhetoric (Insulting the other side to win the argument) is old. Very old, and uninteresting, and lacking in a number of ways. I'm just calling it out is all.

I have a different opinion. I have cookies. I didn't say those cookies were perfect, I just said I had them, and the ones I have are tasty enough. You're calling them half baked because you 'personally' don't like them. That's no argument. Basic mining works and there are no bugs at present.

Both you, me, and FDev have already admitted that there's work to do.

So.... what pill is there to swallow? None. We both have an opinion, so do FDev, and they are roughly the same. So why the insults (against a group of people, me being one of them?)

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I personally would be initially happier with more intelligent hoppers/refiners....at least to start with.

I want to set default metals etc per hopper...

Perhaps a checkbox in a list showing what to keep and process and what not to.

as soon as that metal is processed from the current chunk , the rest gets vented...

having to go to the hopper and manually vent EVERY part of a chunk I don't want EVERY time is a real pita.

I keep enough hoppers free so that when I start a new asteroid, I process both contents. Then when I pick up a chunk, I don't go back to the cargo screen. Once the Lepodidite is full, I dump it. It saves time.

 

[Nutter]

Two small changes would get me mining now and then.

1) If I have 8 bins free and go to the trouble of scooping a chunk of rock, clearly I want it processed, yet for EVERY ton is asks me if I want it! Of COURSE I want it, otherwise why scoop it your STUPID mining computer!
2) Better way to collect chunks in Large Ships - A Type 9 picks up one chunk and sends 4 chunks flying due to the size of the hull - Either extend the scoop for clearance or increase the size of the scoop - something needs to change.

My 2 cents anyway

 

[Ben_BigBen]

I personally would be initially happier with more intelligent hoppers/refiners....at least to start with.

I want to set default metals etc per hopper...

Perhaps a checkbox in a list showing what to keep and process and what not to.

as soon as that metal is processed from the current chunk , the rest gets vented...

having to go to the hopper and manually vent EVERY part of a chunk I don't want EVERY time is a real pita.

...or at least each hopper to auto-allocate if it's not being used, or to remember what it was being used for after each full tonne is collected so you don't need to allocate each time (and accidentally vent a nearly full hopper by clicking on it accidentally)

 

[EddyRockSteady]

I made a million or so in no time yesterday. Platinum chunks of 64% and the like flying about made it worth the while most definitely. That said, it is pretty arcady/80's at present and easy to see why people either hate it or love it. It is definitely an acquired taste.

As will all things Elite, definitely needs a helluva lot more work to drag it into the 21st century. Currently feels like the 80's version that someone took a couple of cans of spray-paint to to dolly it up some. Pretty from afar but from near you cannot hide the cursory and superficial remake.

 

[Scimiter]

I like mining, I have never made much money at it but enjoy it anway. I found getting really close to the asteroid is the quickest way to pick up the minerals you laser off. The main problem I find is pirates, especially if your mining gold, I know an asteroid belt full of it, but as soon as you get a couple of tons they are onto you like a pack ravenous wolves, then its run or die lol

 

[Steve50]

Mining is fine, sure I'd like a mineral scanner and a way to mark/tag mined out asteroids but apart from that it's fine.

You can make a decent profit from it IF you do your research. Please stop asking for it to be simplified just because you don't have the patience/skill.

 

[almostpilot]

I'm just waiting for them to implement the stuff mentioned in the DDF: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7196

Most importantly:

- a heat map for each asteroid showing where on the surface the yield is greater. This has two benefits: firstly it makes mining interesting since you have to target and keep your beam(s) on a specific spot, and secondly, mining the highest points on the heat map can lead to very high yields (90% platinum anyone?) which will make mining profitable and on par with other professions.

- drones to gather resources instead of scooping them. I don't have anything against scooping, but doing it in a Type 9 seems awkward. I want to equip a Type 9 as a real asteroid cracker and go on a 6 month mining tour in unexplored space, instead of regularly heading to a station to dump my ore. Scooping is fine for smaller ships, and I would expect the drones and perhaps a "drone controller" piece of equipment to occupy a lot of cargo space (hence the need to use it on a large miner ship).

Oh, they mention a drone in DDF. Glad to know.

I really hope they follow that path.

 

[Heracles]

Long term dream for mining is to buy a mining machine, go out into the dark and get down to the surface of metal rich planets and leave them there for a week or so.

I'm combining mining with Exploring. I can jump nearly 20ly. Instead of just scanning each planet and running, I jump in to each resource point and ring and run a couple of samples. (So glad they fixed that RES wanted spawning problem.) If I pick up something nice (like 5 tonnes of silver from a pristine source pulling 40-60% chunks.) Then when I drop back to my prefered drop off point for carto, I make an extra 40k on top of 40k for returning exploration data. Draws out exploration.

I call myself a prospector rather than an explorer as once I've done one system I head off exploring again till I find another vein to sample.


Cmdr Sheehy in his trusty Cobra "Mah-Ze"

Prospecting! This is a great idea and another job alternative, really like that idea.

I would also like the odd alien artefact "find" every now and then, just to add that extra element of discovery

If Planetary Landings don't bring back the MB4 mining machines with them, I will drive to Cambridge and personally stand outside the Frontier offices with a Placard and quiet protest until they add them. Or invite me in for a coffee at least.

I have a bunch of planets that will be getting a machine dumped on their surface once it's in

Inspirational, like this one also! The planetary landings with us being able to leave mining machines. Then returning to harvest the ore. Unless some pirate has got there first and nicked your load! That's another "job" we may add to the "to do" list for Elite Dangerous. Also another career for the pirate "criminals", so everyone is happy!

Hmm, I hope FD implement this, when/ if the landings come about. Then no need to march up and down with a placard

 

[Claw]

I mine for a living, yeah. I make over 100,000 credits a trip in my cobra. To keep things interesting I drift between the roids FA off, it's a fairly low risk way of getting good at flying unassisted. Thanks to that I can dock and land unassisted now, and I can get out of fights no problem.

Platinum is worth nearly 20 grand a ton, if you can find it it's very lucrative. Palladium is more common and worth around 13k. You'll generally find these metals in the belt clusters around fairly hot or young stars. It's worth doing some exploring to find a good spot.

I have two big fat class 2 mining lasers that suck out little bunches of three fragments each blast before the power drains. It takes about 30 seconds to extract three of these groups, and then an age to scoop them all up.

I enjoy the random encounters that happen at the belt clusters, sometimes there's a guy who wants to kill me and steal my gear so I flee like a pansy. Sometimes there's a copper who'll pop in and out and watch my back. Sometimes there are crowds of other miners who clutter up my scanner with the trash they extract. Often I'll get interdicted when I'm laden with jewels, I've had a few missiles thrown my way but the point defence usually sorts them out.

I do have some problems with it, though.

What bugs me the most is that it's not the manoeuvring that makes scooping slow, it's the scoop itself. I'm pretty handy at using lateral thrust to strafe around and grab the little blighters, but you have to target each fragment before scooping it and the ship tends to bash nearby untargeted fragments around in the process. I really wish the scoop could gobble up anything in its path, regardless of whether it's targeted, and would show multiple fragments on the HUD element.

The refinery is somewhat cumbersome to use as well. Bins forget which resource is allocated to them each time a ton is refined, so you have to keep reallocating the bins. If you explicitly don't want a resource (like flipping indite) you have to eject it after scooping each fragment, which is a tedious and error-prone process because of how resources become unallocated once refined. It also blocks your view of the scoop HUD during ejection, which is annoying.

I get that there's a minigame going on here, it's all about resource management and deciding what to keep and what to dump, but once you've made that decision sticking to it is a chore. I wish I could just permanently allocate resources to bins and have unallocated resources auto-eject when new unallocated resources come in.

Oh and I forgot: I want a paintball cannon so I can mark asteroids I've been to. It's very easy to get lost and visit the same roids twice, and I always have the lingering suspicion that I missed one.

 

[JvM]

I'm combining mining with Exploring. I can jump nearly 20ly. Instead of just scanning each planet and running, I jump in to each resource point and ring and run a couple of samples. (So glad they fixed that RES wanted spawning problem.)

Don't you see from the system map which are pristine metallic reserves without jumping and checking? Or am I missing something.

 

[EddyRockSteady]

Don't you see from the system map which are pristine metallic reserves without jumping and checking? Or am I missing something.

Correct you do indeed.