So, about the new mining gold-rush...

[Jukelo]

This may be the intent. Money doesn't really matter and lots of publicity is gained. It's entertainment and for some a growing credit balance is the objective of their entertainment.

FD is not in the business of building an accurate BGS or flight model in ED.

No video game is meant for anything other than entertainment. And a growing credit balance will happen whether you earn 100 or 1 mil an hour. Those are non-arguments.

As for what FD is in the business of: some of us thought they were in the business of making the game they sold us in the early days. And at no point did they describe gold rushes as 'a semi-permanent device by which every player in the game, regardless of whether they put in the effort to discover a juicy spot or merely opened up EDDB, would earn enough in the span of a few hours to buy every ship in the game, in this game where an Anaconda is supposed to be the achievement of a lifetime for an indepenent pilot"

 

[C64Fan]

T-10: I guess it depends if you fly FA-OFF and use thrusters. Usually have around 40 seconds left on the detonation timer, takes me under a minute to strip an asteroid after the blast.

These bigger ships handle much better without assist, you just apply small inputs and basically remain in a constant drift as you move around. I was monitoring my velocity as I was drifting around the asteroid chuncks with the abrasion blaster, between 40-60 m/s, kinda crazy when you think about it, that is 216km/h

Thank you. I have problems flying with FA off - but I am on PS4 with a DS4 and I think I need to rework most of my bindings to really make proper use of it.

 

[CMDR Cknarf]

I’ve been around long enough not to care about how people make money anymore. There is no player-driven economy, so it’s not like credits can actually be worth anything to anyone but yourself.

I’ve learned that it’s best to get it while it’s good, and grab piles of cash before things are nerfed. ”Sorry Guys, not enough money for PvP right now.” Is something I’ll never have to worry about again.

My only complaint is that they took so long to make mining worth my time lol. All of those hours I spent out in the rings, shooting dust for a handful of change. I’d be a trillionaire at this point.

 

[Kaocraft]

The BGS is simply not reactive or granular enough to do gold rushes that woulld properly reward early birds while drying up fast enough to forbid all the players mindlessly using cookie cutter 'knowledge pooling' websites to make crazy profit off of them.

But I suspect Frontier have long stopped properly caring about balancing credit earnings. Once they failed to punish players exploiting Seeking Luxury USS, removed running costs and slashed the Vulture's price down to 5m they showed the community was in charge of balancing.

Unfortunately David, who I quote in my signature, doesn't seem to be game director anymore so there's that.

This is accurate. I think this would be a problem no matter how dynamic or sophisticated the BGS is, though. It’s a problem inherent to having a shared world. Wouldn’t be a problem in a single-player game!

 

[C64Fan]

I have now tried deep core mining in my T10 - and I have to say that I am surprised how easy it was to spin around the asteroids and place the explosives in time. No problem at all. I didn’t know that my trusty T10 could do that lol (top G5 engineered 7A dirty thrusters).

My first run:

.... and on top of that 21 mill. for Alexandrite and 28 mill. for Low Temperature Diamonds - so a bit more than 333 mill. in one run in total [smile]. I could have made more doing cargo runs - but I had a lot FUN doing this [up] .

 

[lefty1117]

I thought I read somewhere that the hotspots will deplete depending on player activity. I'm sure I read something from FD stating that. Also I think I agree with the sentiment that credits are less important now with engineering, guardian and xeno gear being the real end-game. Also if you are a heavy powerplayer you'll know that forting can cost quite a bit. We could probably do with a few more credit sinks like that, but what are we after? Are we trying to ensure a certain commitment of time from people to maintain or achieve a status? Are we trying to get credits out of the economy?

Finally I suspect mining isn't anywhere near its end-state. I suspect with the fleet carriers and possibly other things next year there will be a need for more common ores to feed the machine. I would love to see other player structures besides fleet carriers - maybe player ownered or operated stations, that would need an influx of raw materials to operate, repair, etc.

 

[C64Fan]

I thought I read somewhere that the hotspots will deplete depending on player activity. I'm sure I read something from FD stating that.

Spoiler

Also I think I agree with the sentiment that credits are less important now with engineering, guardian and xeno gear being the real end-game. Also if you are a heavy powerplayer you'll know that forting can cost quite a bit. We could probably do with a few more credit sinks like that, but what are we after? Are we trying to ensure a certain commitment of time from people to maintain or achieve a status? Are we trying to get credits out of the economy?

Finally I suspect mining isn't anywhere near its end-state. I suspect with the fleet carriers and possibly other things next year there will be a need for more common ores to feed the machine. I would love to see other player structures besides fleet carriers - maybe player ownered or operated stations, that would need an influx of raw materials to operate, repair, etc.

Yes - they will....? I have found myself a couple of good, undiscovered systems with pristine ice rings just outside the Bubble and scanned and mapped them. That’s where I do my deep core mining.

You probably read this post from Will Flanagan: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...e-new-mining?p=7278008&viewfull=1#post7278008

 

[Jukelo]

I thought I read somewhere that the hotspots will deplete depending on player activity.

Will claimed as such, and to an extent it's true... in that exploded roid will stay exploded for a while for everyone regardless of mode.
But hotsposts are thousands of km wide for the smallest (and of course you can deep core mine outside of hotspots as well), every ring will have trillions of explodeable asteroid. And there's a hundred thousand systems in the bubble, a good number of them with one or more planets with ice rings in them.

 

[Yure]

Civil Liberty + Investment + Pirate Attack I think.



And that's cool. If my 60 Million prismatic reactive Cutter rebuy is not two hours of tedious grind but half an hour of fun gameplay, I'm not against it

Do you know if this also works for low temp diamonds? Though I think I've seen booms with LTDs ...

 

[Bigmaec]

Do you know if this also works for low temp diamonds? Though I think I've seen booms with LTDs ...

As far as I've seen low temp diamonds sell for a million highest, which you can find in galmap by selecting commodities and then LTD.
The brighter the "diamond" shows on the galmap, the higher the price.
I always found 1 million credit sale spots for LTDs within 40 LY range of the galmap tool.

 

[C64Fan]

As far as I've seen low temp diamonds sell for a million highest, which you can find in galmap by selecting commodities and then LTD.
The brighter the "diamond" shows on the galmap, the higher the price.
I always found 1 million credit sale spots for LTDs within 40 LY range of the galmap tool.

Currently:

 

[Bigmaec]

Currently: *snip*

Interesting, I'm 8k LY out so couldn't see that obviously. I really wonder how the outlier prices are generated.

edit: not that 800k isn't enough

 

[C64Fan]

And currently for the gold rush Void Opals:

But it changes all the time - so always check just before you head for a port.

 

[Screemonster]

You know, one thing I like about this rush, as opposed to passenger missions and even regular missions? I don't have to grind rep in a system to lay the prepwork.

Now, I don't mean this from a "it's even easier, I don't need to grind rep!" perspective. What I mean is that with passenger missions and the like, you're kinda tied down to your few home bases and regular ports. If you're not a regular at a station, you can't just check the board to see if there are any good passenger missions that are worth fetching your passenger ship for, because you already know there won't be.

Mining actually gets me out there visiting different places instead of just clustering around a home base and whatever happens to be in mission-range.

 

[TopCat160]

I really hope they don't get the nerf bat out any time soon - I've only just found time to start playing 3.3 in the last couple of days, and I'm way behind the curve.

I haven't tried mining since my Hauler days, and that was before I even knew limpets existed, so I was picking the fragments up with the cargo scoop!!!

 

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

The whole thing is imho symptomatic of a range of issues Elite hasn't yet got an answer for.

1. Proper recognition of risk vs. reward
2. Proper recognition of skill vs. reward
3. What to do once wealthy
4. There are many interesting things to do, but repeating them gets dull quite fast
5. BGS is no substitute for persistence and effect
6. Little value in progression as it unlocks different ways to do the same things
7. No survival elements

What I find is the first few hours of doing anything in Elite is interesting and a good experience but then as I work towards any goal or objective I find myself repeating everything (and having to stop) until I hit some glass wall of progression.

I've done some deep core mining and I enjoyed it, sold about 350t of void opals and I'm done with it now.... Why?
- because it doesn't scale I can't do anything more in say a T9/10 or Cutter than an Asp to get better
- I don't need the money, there is nothing for me to spend it on
- If I was a newish player then you've just given me no reason to engage with missions, Trading or combat anymore for wealth creation. I'll just go from Cobra to Anaconda thanks...

What would I do to improve this?
- I'd make deep core mining More profitable But harder to find requiring some research and exploration skills taking you a good 500LY outside the bubble
- Whilst this isn't going to sit well with some folks I'd say for risk factor this should only be available in Open mode server sessions, so that we get real Piracy risk
- I'd like to invest some of my wealth in profit making options to reduce what has frankly become 'the annoyance of credits', something like a solar farm or surface mining operation. Maybe not own it outright but a share of it that makes say 2M cr / hr so I don't have to.
- I'd like rare minerals to be worth more than just credits

 

[C64Fan]

Spoiler

The whole thing is imho symptomatic of a range of issues Elite hasn't yet got an answer for.

1. Proper recognition of risk vs. reward
2. Proper recognition of skill vs. reward
3. What to do once wealthy
4. There are many interesting things to do, but repeating them gets dull quite fast
5. BGS is no substitute for persistence and effect
6. Little value in progression as it unlocks different ways to do the same things
7. No survival elements

What I find is the first few hours of doing anything in Elite is interesting and a good experience but then as I work towards any goal or objective I find myself repeating everything (and having to stop) until I hit some glass wall of progression.

I've done some deep core mining and I enjoyed it, sold about 350t of void opals and I'm done with it now.... Why?
- because it doesn't scale I can't do anything more in say a T9/10 or Cutter than an Asp to get better
- I don't need the money, there is nothing for me to spend it on
- If I was a newish player then you've just given me no reason to engage with missions, Trading or combat anymore for wealth creation. I'll just go from Cobra to Anaconda thanks...

What would I do to improve this?
- I'd make deep core mining More profitable But harder to find requiring some research and exploration skills taking you a good 500LY outside the bubble

- Whilst this isn't going to sit well with some folks I'd say for risk factor this should only be available in Open mode server sessions, so that we get real Piracy risk

Spoiler

- I'd like to invest some of my wealth in profit making options to reduce what has frankly become 'the annoyance of credits', something like a solar farm or surface mining operation. Maybe not own it outright but a share of it that makes say 2M cr / hr so I don't have to.
- I'd like rare minerals to be worth more than just credits

You are damn right it doesn’t sit well with some folks! I don’t understand this obsession some people have with limiting some of the best gameplay to open mode only. I am not trying to ruin other peoples games so why are they trying to ruin mine I ask? That IS what you are trying to do - whether you realize it or not. I have had my share of pvp in GTA5, and I am not doing that again. If you want exitement you are free to do your mining in open mode already - so go do that! Don’t try to ruin a game that I love.

 

[Stealthie]

What would I do to improve this?
- I'd make deep core mining More profitable But harder to find requiring some research and exploration skills taking you a good 500LY outside the bubble
- Whilst this isn't going to sit well with some folks I'd say for risk factor this should only be available in Open mode server sessions, so that we get real Piracy risk
- I'd like to invest some of my wealth in profit making options to reduce what has frankly become 'the annoyance of credits', something like a solar farm or surface mining operation. Maybe not own it outright but a share of it that makes say 2M cr / hr so I don't have to.
- I'd like rare minerals to be worth more than just credits

Personally, I'd just set it up so that carrying void opals (or anything similar) has the same effect as carrying, erm, anything at a CNB/RES - constant attacks.
I'd actually make it so dangerous that it'd be borderline-impossible to do alone in any ship.

 

[thistle]

Quick! Someone call the fun police!

 

[Iron Golem]

Haven't played Elite in 6 months know nothing about the beta / 3.3 patch. Made 200 Million in two hours with a Python mining void opals. Before I burnt myself out again and uninstalled I was making 10 mil in 2 hour combat zones doing 80 ship massacres.

They really tweaked mining to a activity that makes you constantly think and doesn't become mindless I like it. I'm going to give the exploration a shot to see if it is as enjoyable.