I always carry a subsurface drill when I go mining just because I really enjoy the minigame. I will mine any subsurface deposit that has whatever it is I'm looking for just because it's fun, who cares if it's not "maximum efficiency"
Sub-Surface mining, whats the point?
- Thread starter Kenneth McGrew
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- clagnuts poor_game_design
I'd be all for making it a means of extracting high grade raw materials and nothing else.
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Perhaps they should make it so that a cracked core has both surface AND subsurface deposits.
Me too!
The thing is, while I do do subsurface mining and enjoy the process, there is a little voice at the back of my head saying "you're wasting time". FD could silence that voice soooooo easily. They talk a lot about continued commitment to bug fixing but, while I appreciate many bugs are difficult to fix, there are sooooo many tiny little things they could fix/improve - enough to fill a thread with exciting patch notes once a month - but they just don't, they release 2 or 3 patches after a major update with important (but dull) crash fixes and then s i l e n c e - and I don't understand why.
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My impression so far: very little point if you measure by profit, but subsurface provides a nice bonus if you're collecting a specific material for a mission. Rough numbers, a high yield asteroid might give around 10t from lasering the surface. If you're not going for cores you have to prospect lots of bodies anyway, so you might as well pack a pulse scanner and prospect the yellow ones too. Subsurface can yield nearly as much again as the lasers (and is a nice change of pace).
Last time I went mission mining (not counting the current CG) I'll guess using subsurface missiles reduced my time to fill the hold by maybe 30-40%.
EDIT: noticing that my experience seems to have some variance from others posting on the efficiency angle, I would add that I mainly mine in medium size, high-agility ships (typically AspX or Krait). So I don't have the internals to spam collectors as much as the Cutter meta miners do. As such I'm usually firing the drills during what would otherwise be downtime waiting on limpets anyway.
Last time I went mission mining (not counting the current CG) I'll guess using subsurface missiles reduced my time to fill the hold by maybe 30-40%.
EDIT: noticing that my experience seems to have some variance from others posting on the efficiency angle, I would add that I mainly mine in medium size, high-agility ships (typically AspX or Krait). So I don't have the internals to spam collectors as much as the Cutter meta miners do. As such I'm usually firing the drills during what would otherwise be downtime waiting on limpets anyway.
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Why not do away with the whole caboodle and make every asteroid drop void opals.
For what it's worth I was finding gold praseodymium and the like in sub surface deposits along with the laser strip I filled my hold in pretty good time.
I carry all equipment so I can mine any asteroid - I feel that is the "right" thing to do. Why not accept something's in the game and you don't need to use it.
For what it's worth I was finding gold praseodymium and the like in sub surface deposits along with the laser strip I filled my hold in pretty good time.
I carry all equipment so I can mine any asteroid - I feel that is the "right" thing to do. Why not accept something's in the game and you don't need to use it.
Grab a ship with a C2 hardpoint.
There are many.
But yeah, subsurface deposits are kinda pointless. I don't bother carrying them.
Noooo,.subsurface deposits are practically the fastest way to fill your holds! Well, unless you don't care what you fill them with. I'm doing the CG,.too, and finding an asteroid with five subsurface deposits of water is the best thing that can happen. With (from my experience) on average three full chunks of ore each that saves me a lot of time watching purple lasers.
That said, don't put them on an Anaconda... My Krait wields them without any problems though, zooming around the asteroids like a hummingbird.
BTW, does having two fired simultaneously help in any way?
I just made 8 milions with sub-surface mining.
In the shot below 10 tonnes of Low-Temp Diamonds NOT found in a motherlode. I extracted 6 of them from sub-surface and the remaining 4 with the mining laser.
They all come from the same asteroid. I was mining for water and liquid oxygen in a nearby system.
In the shot below 10 tonnes of Low-Temp Diamonds NOT found in a motherlode. I extracted 6 of them from sub-surface and the remaining 4 with the mining laser.
They all come from the same asteroid. I was mining for water and liquid oxygen in a nearby system.
Have you not seen the missions asking for 12,988 tons of water for 4.1 million credits? Obviously you are supposed to mine water until your eyes bleed with the sub surface things.
Like most things in the game, they offer some degree of variety for those that don't mind suboptimal play but ultimately are not viable due to poor balance.
Why would you go subsurface mining when you can do source and return delivery missions that pay like this one for 2070 of something or other ...I think it was Palladium nearest station with Large pad and availability was about 45Ly away using a Cutter/T9 would have taken 3 Trips to solo it outlay ~27MCr so Net 23MCr solo, or ~ 43MCr net if done by equally contributing full wing. Estimated Time 30-40 mins solo or ~10mins in a full wing, that works out at something like 240 MCr/H :O
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Yes, the mechanic is definitely cool, and that is why it is sad that FDev forgot to add value for doing it.
When you build a big game like Elite you cannot expect people to spend a lot of time and effort doing stuff for no return.
Having fun is of course a reward in itself, but in the long run, and generally speaking, it is smarter to make all aspects of a mining activity rewarding.
I think FDev will tweak this eventually, but they should not wait too long. It is a strange oversight on their part.
Given their track record, I would expect it to get fixed in Q3/Q4 2019.
Note that if it was overpaying in any way, it would have been fixed last month or so… XD
Subsurface Misiles have the Sole Purpose of Asterotica 
Digg it Baby!
Digg it Baby!
I have also found the subsurface stuff to be a huge disappointment. Last time I fired the missile was by mistake and I destroyed a void opal fragment. That cost me more profit than I ever earned from it, lol.
It's now disabled cos I can't yet bring myself to remove it entirely.
I agree that it's fixable and I hope it happens because it really is a great shame to waste all that dev work.
It's now disabled cos I can't yet bring myself to remove it entirely.
I agree that it's fixable and I hope it happens because it really is a great shame to waste all that dev work.
I used it when it first came out for mining Osmium, as it was part of a mission I needed to complete. I found a few asteroids with subsurface Osmium deposits. It is a bit touchy, depending on the density of the rock you are drilling through and it really is not efficient. I found it easier and more efficient just to use the mining laser and let me limpets collect fragments.
Have not used the subsurface since and do not even equip my ship with it any longer.
What are the mechanics of sub-surface mining? I thought the idea was to line up the blue band with the highest peaks. But it seems all you need to do is hit a blue band. Does the top part of the display do anything at all?
No - I thought the same as you but it's mostly cosmetic. The mini-game is basically 'release the trigger in a blue zone'. I don't think there's even a bonus for hitting the narrower blue zones.
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D
Indeed, Sub-Surface Mining exists but doesn't fulfill any meaningful role in the mix of Mining mechanics & tools available.
Without all core materials appearing as Sub-Surface deposits (or a Sub-Surface exclusive, i.e. "Gemstones" or something to that tune), there's nearly no point in ever wasting a hardpoint and dragging those along.
The occasional Sub-Surface mining bug (Sub-Surface deposit integrity remaining - but no blue zone appearing anymore at all during drilling) doesn't help either.
Without all core materials appearing as Sub-Surface deposits (or a Sub-Surface exclusive, i.e. "Gemstones" or something to that tune), there's nearly no point in ever wasting a hardpoint and dragging those along.
The occasional Sub-Surface mining bug (Sub-Surface deposit integrity remaining - but no blue zone appearing anymore at all during drilling) doesn't help either.
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i know right, that's just the icing on the cake!