What will core mining be like oncem depletion kicks into the background sim?

[DeathFish]

I hope Fdev have thought about this!

(oncem is a new word, not sure what it means yet, see title)

As I understand it, the present core mining bonanza will dry up as the pristine rings within the bubble are mined out, and miners will then have to travel further, ultimately outside the bubble, to get the same level of reward as they do today.

This means that newcomers to the game say a year from now will hear about the gold rush, but it will be in the past and they will have to work much harder to make the same returns. Mining will possibly drop back to being a minority pursuit again. Fair enough.

My question is - will be BGS start to mark rings which currently are shown as pristine reserves as depleted? Also, will hotspots start beginning to fail to spawn when the cores fall below a certain level? If it doesn’t, then mining really will become guesswork, because the only good measure of how pristine a ring is likely to be will be its distance from the bubble.

Even if Fdev have adjusted the BGS to mark mined out cores as depleted and to prevent hotspots spawning when the cores are gone, they risk accidentally building in a mechanic which will work against newbies in the future. Since all games have player turnover, this might not be the best move!

 

[Bertrand Du Guesclin]

I think it will take a LOT of time before players manage to deplete a Pristine ring, so the game will probably die before that becomes a problem.
Maybe famous mining spots will deplete, but then you only have to jump a few systems to find a new spot, not that big of a deal.

The only change of ring status I noticed was a metalic ring that was "Major reserves" when ED launched, and is now marked as "Common reserves", 4 years later.
I don't know if many players mined there, or if mining NPCs are also taken into account for ressource depletion.

In any case, I suspect in the future new players will have to jump just a tiny little bit further to find new "Pristine" rings, so not much of an impact.

Edit : I didn't touch on core hotspots. Maybe those will dry up quicker than the entire ring, but I don't think it will be an issue.

Deep space mining is also a thing :
- take a Type 9 fitted for mining, loaded with limpets
- jump 150ly outside of the bubble
- find an uninhabited system with pristine rings
- fill your cargo racks with ore
- jump back with your full load

 

[777Driver]

Ask in a few thousand years once the hot spots have been depleted.

 

[CmdrZaratan]

I don't think the customer service guys appreciated how damn big individual rings are when they inferred that they'd deplete.

You'd need serious NPC mining in the background sim for this to be a thing.

 

[stereoBear]

Hot spots are even replenishing over time.

Given that and that there's around 19,000 inhabited plus some more uninhabited systems inside the bubble™ alone, which means a lot of icy rings, I don't see any depletion happening.

 

[rhiz]

I’ve read conflicting things on this subject – initially I thought that they would deplete fairly quickly, but it seems that they replenish more quickly than they could be exhausted. As 777Driver and stereoBear say, given the scale of each individual hotspot and their frequency across the bubble, I don’t think it’s ever going to be an issue.

Part of me feels that this is a bit of a shame – I quite liked the idea of cmdrs having to stray further afield over time. It would be particularly interesting if these “exoduses” were accompanied by newly populated systems and the construction of new stations.

I dropped into a couple of hotspots on my way to the Soul Nebula and no pirates spawned as far as I could see, so that's the only incentive to stray very far from the Bubble for mining (if you want to mine the same spot across sessions in a non-combat build)

 

[rhiz]

I think it will take a LOT of time before players manage to deplete a Pristine ring, so the game will probably die before that becomes a problem.
Maybe famous mining spots will deplete, but then you only have to jump a few systems to find a new spot, not that big of a deal.

The only change of ring status I noticed was a metalic ring that was "Major reserves" when ED launched, and is now marked as "Common reserves", 4 years later.
I don't know if many players mined there, or if mining NPCs are also taken into account for ressource depletion.

In any case, I suspect in the future new players will have to jump just a tiny little bit further to find new "Pristine" rings, so not much of an impact.

Edit : I didn't touch on core hotspots. Maybe those will dry up quicker than the entire ring, but I don't think it will be an issue.

Deep space mining is also a thing :
- take a Type 9 fitted for mining, loaded with limpets
- jump 150ly outside of the bubble
- find an uninhabited system with pristine rings
- fill your cargo racks with ore
- jump back with your full load

It would be nice if very distant stations offered a premium price (more than the highest price in the bubble) to give miners an incentive to get out there. Many larger Nebula have at least one populated system and it's usually extraction. I've been poking around the Soul and Heart Nebula, but the prices don't make the trek out there worth while.

 

[777Driver]

It would be nice if very distant stations offered a premium price (more than the highest price in the bubble) to give miners an incentive to get out there. Many larger Nebula have at least one populated system and it's usually extraction. I've been poking around the Soul and Heart Nebula, but the prices don't make the trek out there worth while.

A few weeks back both Soul & Heart asteroid bases offered 1.6mill for Void Opals. I guess the system states have changed.

Am out in Omega, the Asteroid base here is surrounded by dust clouds from detonated roids, as far as I am aware the respawn time is 24 hours.

My incentive to mine outside the bubble, no NPC's, beautiful scenery. Running a T-10 exploration/mining build, only 256 tonnes capacity but has enough room for every toy you can think off, plus still does 40LY laden with 256 tonnes (with the Booster)

Am armed to the teeth, hate bubble mining tho, even just restarting the game will spawn an NPC, a right pain in the rear..

 

[DeathFish]

Ta for all the replies

I don't think the customer service guys appreciated how damn big individual rings are when they inferred that they'd deplete.

You'd need serious NPC mining in the background sim for this to be a thing.

Glad to hear that everyone thinks that the rings aren’t going to deplete on any near timescale. If they did do so, then Elite would have to get even more complicated, with extra mechanics to handle resource levels in rings - and more opportunities for bugs to creep in.