Painite better money than void opals?

Mr Saddo

M
I know the short answer most people will give.... NO!

But i have spent several hours mining void opals and several more mining painite and I am pretty sure that painite pays better.

How? Quite simply, if you go to a void opal hotspot you spend most of your time boosting about firing pulse waves, ignoring 99% of the rocks you see. I have seen the claims that void opals can pay up to 100M per hour, but I have never earned more than about 60M (still good money) and have earned as little as 30M per hour. Quite simpy, earning 100M per hour involves huge levels of luck in locating cores quickly.

However go to a painite hotspot and you will find it everywhere! As well as cores, painite exists as surface deposits, subsurface deposits and surface fragments that can be mined the old fashioned way. In a painite hotspot, all of these occurrences seem really common. For example the surface traces seem to be present in about a third of all rocks.

I have had three visits to a painite hotspot. I sold all the painite for around 797,000.

Trip 1: 177 tonnes in 90 minutes (four cores found) = 94M per hour
Trip 2: 78 tonnes in 60 minutes (zero cores found) = 62M per hour
Trip 3: 156 tonnes in 90 minutes (three cores found) = 82M per hour

I did this in a python with 2 mining lasers plus one each of the new tools, I had 6 active collectors.

My technique is to set everything except painite to the ignore list. I send a prospector off to investigate anything that looks remotely glowing. While it travels to the rock, I multitask and use my mining lasers to chip sample off as many rocks as possible (the ones that are not glowing and are not too uneven and spinny), usually taking off a single chunk as I fly past. If my collectors react, I know that there is painite in the rock, so I launch a prospector. At least 50% of my profit comes from this. Finding a core is a great bonus but not essential. I actually found a rock that had 50% painite surface fragments, 2 painite subsurface deposits and a painite core. It netted me 25 tonnes.

The gameplay is a lot more varied that hunting cores too. It involves quite a bit of multi tasking such as chipping off as many rocks as possible whilst you prospectors scuttle off to do their thing, or deploying a subsurface drill and mining surface fragments at the same time. The more you can multi task the more you can make.

Painite all the way for me :D
 

Judz

J
The 100mill per hour is a load of crap, there are a few Cmdr.'s on Steam that say 2 VO cores drop 60 mill (again, another mahoosive load of crap). I have visited a ring System with 4 VO hotspots, 4 LTD hotspots, 3 Grandidierite hotspots and a few Bromellite hotspots, and not one in the VO hotspots dropped more than 88 mill and that was after about two and a half hours, it may have been longer, after 2 hours in another one of the hotspots I had 4 ton. Its also the most tedious thing in the game, you pulse, a rock glows, you get all warm and fuzzy and yet there is not any core in the thing, its just surface deposits, kind of makes you wonder why it was implemented in the first place.

But on a side note, there are Cmdr.'s that mine all the time and they fully state that because Painite is more readily available you get more money from that, like stated by the OP its on the surface so its minable and it can also be found in cores.
 
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Stealthie

Stealthie
Welcome to my world. [up]

Looking for VO's means going to icy rings, where there's very little other lucrative stuff and where most of the lucrative stuff can only be obtained using the new tools.
Painite, by contrast, is found in Metallic rings, which is also where a heap of other valuable stuff may be found, and can be extracted via regular laser-mining, as well as using the new tools - thus meaning it's far more commonly available.

Find a Painite hotspot in a Pristine metalic ring and you have, basically, a guaranteed Cr1m/min source of income with no stress, frustration or likelihood of failure.
 
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Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Mr Saddo said:
I know the short answer most people will give.... NO!

But i have spent several hours mining void opals and several more mining painite and I am pretty sure that painite pays better.
Click to expand...
Yes, it does. It's half the price per tonne but you can laser-mine it considerably more than twice as fast in the right places.

There was a thread a week or so back from someone who'd found two Painite hotspots overlapping, which gave even higher payments than you're getting. (Or if you find a Painite hotspot with a HazRES inside it, then that would probably be similarly good)

(Optimised Painite mining has always been one of the most consistently profitable activities in the game even before the mining rework - but it's now a lot easier to get very close to optimal, whereas before 3.3 it took a lot of skill and preparation)
 

Ceekay

Ceekay
I've mined quite a bit since the last update and the best drop from a VO core was 17 units around 27 mil at best sell but I reckon the average is 12-15 at best so 60 mil from 2 cores is kinda stretching it TBH.

Interesting approach on the Painite though I must give it a try as finding decent VO cores is time consuming.
 

Jakester13

Jakester13
I spent a night in a painite hotspot with the multi-mining approach (lasers, surface and cores) but admittedly I forgot to equip enough collectors, so only had 2 limpets collecting :D

I didn't do very well, but it was quite varied gameplay.

If I had had more collector limpets, and had set them to ignore everything except painite as per the OP's tip - cheers for that! - I might have done OK - a full hold for me just tips 100m Cr.

The next night (Saturday) I found a gorgeous, pristine, really dense ice ring, and in 2 round trips totalling, maybe, 3 hours in a medium-sized VO hotspot, sold 200m cr of my mining goodies.

I collected VOs, LTDs, and anything else selling north of 400K, so most cores get blown.

I estimate that I fly around 500-800 kms per trip which is 8-10 cores per outing.

I really enjoy boosting through the dense field dodging asteroids, and have learned more or less to identify the real cores without wasting prospectors.

It's also good training on how your ship flies, because in space-space, it's hard to know when the drifting stops!

o7
 
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Stealthie

Stealthie
voidwalker said:
It might not be as valuable per unit, but it's certainly more reliable.
Click to expand...

That's the thing.

My MO for mining (in a Painite hotspot) is just to cruise from one bright yellow 'roid to the next, zapping any other rocks that get in my way with my laser, and if any of them drop fragments of Painite I'll deplete 'em with my lasers and, if I can see abnormalities, I'll bung a prospector at 'em too.

It's obviously not as profitable per-unit, as you say, but it's just a more chilled-out way of mining which still provides you with heaps of credits big enough to swim in.
 

Garand1987

G
It depends on where you are I think. There is a really big VO hotspot on planet 3 of the Hera system on the edge of the outer ring. The ring is therefore easy to navigate (not as densely filled with asteroid as others) and it also makes it easier to see further out. It does fluctuate a bit but yesterday I found 4 VO asteroids in pretty quick fashion and got all of em popped in the blue zone. Total of 65 VO from them and sold them to a port paying a bit over 1.6 million a ton. Total profit on those was about 112million and it took me a hair over an hour. Doesn’t always work out that way tho, but I’d say never under 60million an hour VO mining for me.
 

Vedmo

Vedmo
The abrasion blaster bug had 100 million/hour on the bottom end. Without it, 100 million/hour is still pretty reliable. At 10-15 VO's a core it is 4 to 6 cores to get ~60 tons and 100 million credits. One core every 10 to 15 minutes has been reliable for me. If I'm not seeing a VO core every 10-15 minutes I'll be moving to a new location.

I'm not knocking Painite mining, I just haven't had the experience of 60 VO's an hour being a lofty amount. I'd put that as average or perhaps even a little below average for my yields.
 

evanevery

evanevery
I'm making 240 Mil every 2 hours mining Void Opals in a T10 with 128 T of cargo (and an SLF). (This includes 10 full bins in the refinery). I'm working out of high-pay stations (1.6M/ton), deep core mining in pristine ice rings with Void Opal hotspots, and not taking anything but Void Opals. Unfortunately, I never had the benefit of the old abrasion blaster bug. So this is straight up Deep Core Mining...

So that's 120 Mil per hour and its VERY reliable.

There is no trick to this other than learning what good core asteroids actually look like when they are pulsed.

I'm banking the profits as I wait for FDev to nerf the VO payouts...
 
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Stigbob

Stigbob
Judz said:
The 100mill per hour is a load of crap, there are a few Cmdr.'s on Steam that say 2 VO cores drop 60 mill (again, another mahoosive load of crap). I have visited a ring System with 4 VO hotspots, 4 LTD hotspots, 3 Grandidierite hotspots and a few Bromellite hotspots, and not one in the VO hotspots dropped more than 88 mill and that was after about two and a half hours, it may have been longer, after 2 hours in another one of the hotspots I had 4 ton. Its also the most tedious thing in the game, you pulse, a rock glows, you get all warm and fuzzy and yet there is not any core in the thing, its just surface deposits, kind of makes you wonder why it was implemented in the first place.

But on a side note, there are Cmdr.'s that mine all the time and they fully state that because Painite is more readily available you get more money from that, like stated by the OP its on the surface so its minable and it can also be found in cores.
Click to expand...

100 mil per trip is working for me, cargo bay 64 tons. Even with one core of low temp diamonds plus two of void opals in there its about 80 million.

I've even found a station that buys both void opals and low temp diamonds at maximum price so no jumping about.

Each trip is 3 cores(ish) maybe 15 minutes to find and mine each one. The round trip back to the station is easily within the hour as its only two jumps. That's manual scooping as well, I don't bother with collectors.
 

Mr Saddo

M
Well I think it's a good thing that opinion is split... Means FDev have struck a good balance between VOs and painite. Personally I prefer the variety of play when mining painite, but o7 to all the guys who manage to make 100million from VOs.
 

Stigbob

Stigbob
Mr Saddo said:
Well I think it's a good thing that opinion is split... Means FDev have struck a good balance between VOs and painite. Personally I prefer the variety of play when mining painite, but o7 to all the guys who manage to make 100million from VOs.
Click to expand...

I did four trips, paid for two new A rated ships and boosted my rebuy buffer back to a very comfortable level. I'm back to space pootling again now and won't need to consider money for the foreseeable future. Although I may take mining contracts as I like it.

Quit while its fun though. Grind is the little death.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Stigbob said:
I did four trips, paid for two new A rated ships and boosted my rebuy buffer back to a very comfortable level. I'm back to space pootling again now and won't need to consider money for the foreseeable future. Although I may take mining contracts as I like it.

Quit while its fun though. Grind is the little death.
Click to expand...

That's my attitude too, unless I'm mining to earn credits for something specific.

I'm fairly busy with my alt-account and I just dive into a session of mining once every few days to boost the bank-balance.
Even so, I get a slight feeling of "Ugh! Here we go again" whenever I go mining and that's enough to prevent me from flogging it to death.

Kind of bemused by all the comments where people are saying they're frantically mining in case FDev choose to nerf it.
To me, it's not worth inflicting something unpleasant on yourself now for the sake of something which might happen at a later date.
If it gets nerfed, I'll survive on whatever earnings are still available.
That's all part of the fun.
 
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