I was going to avoid mining because everyone else is doing it..

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Just gave it a quick go and, wow. The hit rate is insane.

With a happy fun rp approach i scored about 100 diamonds an hour which im happy with (does that actually beat robigo passengers?). Rushing it to do win the race would easily make it unenjoyable. Also i really doubt all the screenshots you see are from one hour, those 800 million trades have to be from 4-6 hours of non stop mining.

Anyways, that was better than expected. You can turn off system chat too which is nice, there's just people talking about how many rocks they have, over and over.

I left the corvette parked there for another session.. so ~200 million from 2 sessions is very acceptable. You get to choose which asteroid to fly to next, and what way you want the lighting to look from the direction you fly which is something better than passengers i guess. Good to have choice.

Yeah definitely removing the core mining kit next time and lose the scoop for few more limpets.

 

[Vasco Sapien]

F/A off... Beer and some fitting music. That hour flies by.
(I recommend some Grateful Dead)

 

[Watcher]

As a small ship miner (preferably Cobra Mk4) I have always wondered how core mining works in a large ship. Especially when it comes to using the abrasion blaster, do you skip this part or do you actually dance around the asteroid debris with your Vette?
It's not a trick question, I honestly never tried that (and it's hard to imagine how it would even work). But of course this gives me some ideas now what an FC could do for me. Maybe FCs are not so terribly useless after all (looks like I'm corrupting myself right now)...

Also be interest to know. I've done core mining in a medium ship and I'm not sure I'd want to use anything larger. That said, if we ever get a mining fighter, that could be awesome.

Anyway, the thing here isn't to core mine - standard laser mining in the appropriate location will net you LTDs faster than you can core mine them. At least that is my understanding.

What I don't get is where anyone is selling them - if you find the right port you can get more than 1m a ton but I've not seen anything near that for a while and certainly not since the recent rush. Possible I'm just dreadful at using the internal and external tools but I'd count it good to get half that at the moment. Still not exactly a bad profit as such but beyond a certain point standard mission running or some other sort of mining might be more profitable.

 

[BDelacroix]

As a small ship miner (preferably Cobra Mk4) I have always wondered how core mining works in a large ship. Especially when it comes to using the abrasion blaster, do you skip this part or do you actually dance around the asteroid debris with your Vette?
It's not a trick question, I honestly never tried that (and it's hard to imagine how it would even work). But of course this gives me some ideas now what an FC could do for me. Maybe FCs are not so terribly useless after all (looks like I'm corrupting myself right now)...

I usually use the Krait 2, but I've been using my altered cutter for volume. Yes, you dance around the rocks. The pieces don't spin around out of control. They stay relatively oriented, just spread apart over time. I'm pretty good at handling the cutter, though, through much practice.

That being said, there aren't a lot of cores in the popular mining destination. I found 1 yesterday. The real trick is in laser mining.

 

[photomankc]

I usually use the Krait 2, but I've been using my altered cutter for volume. Yes, you dance around the rocks. The pieces don't spin around out of control. They stay relatively oriented, just spread apart over time. I'm pretty good at handling the cutter, though, through much practice.

That being said, there aren't a lot of cores in the popular mining destination. I found 1 yesterday. The real trick is in laser mining.

Yep, a cutter has no problem doing core mining. Have shields, and engineer the thrusters and give 'em the pips while you are swinging around.

 

[BDelacroix]

True, engineered thrusters make all the difference. Mine is an interceptor killer with the weapons traded out for mining tools until I'm done. So I have all the engineered things.

 

[Vandaahl]

As a small ship miner (preferably Cobra Mk4) I have always wondered how core mining works in a large ship. Especially when it comes to using the abrasion blaster, do you skip this part or do you actually dance around the asteroid debris with your Vette?

Yeah, Vettes can do that. Also, the Vettes nose is perfect for prying stuck fragments out of corners. I've core mined a lot in a Vette, I wouldn't do it in a Cutter though.

 

[Krash]

Just gave it a quick go and, wow. The hit rate is insane.

With a happy fun rp approach i scored about 100 diamonds an hour which im happy with (does that actually beat robigo passengers?). Rushing it to do win the race would easily make it unenjoyable. Also i really doubt all the screenshots you see are from one hour, those 800 million trades have to be from 4-6 hours of non stop mining.

Anyways, that was better than expected. You can turn off system chat too which is nice, there's just people talking about how many rocks they have, over and over.

I left the corvette parked there for another session.. so ~200 million from 2 sessions is very acceptable. You get to choose which asteroid to fly to next, and what way you want the lighting to look from the direction you fly which is something better than passengers i guess. Good to have choice.

Yeah definitely removing the core mining kit next time and lose the scoop for few more limpets.

I felt the same way. I tried core mining last year and really hated it. Once LTDs became a thing and laser mining works just as well, I gave into the "gold rush panic" and tried it for myself last night. I enjoy the T10 for this activity. 256t seems more than enough for 1 session. I added 175 limpets but still ran out after filling my hold with 170 LTDs. There's some kind of trick to keep the limpets alive. Sometimes I mined several asteroids with 1 set (9 limpets) and sometimes they died like flies. I still have a lot to learn, but I appreciate the new gamplay added to my list of fun things to do.

My big question is: How to find the best selling system?

 

[Wendake]

For me medium ship is the best / funnier. I use a Krait MKII and full it to 128T of VOs. Longer than that I wouldn't enjoy it.

It takes me around 75 minutes usually to get 128T and I'm mixing surface mining with core mining (that I enjoy way more than simply surface mining) so I'm not in a maximum t/h rate...anyway...clearing between 150M - 220M / run is already a lot of credits so I don't care if I'm not as efficient as others and the Krait is quite fun to work with.

 

[Snowymonk]

Cutter mining is great. I can't fill a full hold in one sitting but get a decent chunk.

I prefer Panite mining because you get a better hit rate but the profit isn't quite as high as LTDs.
I was finding the apparent scarcity of LTD a bit soul destroying. (profts aside)

 

[Darth Ender]

most of the places for LTD diamond selling where they were getting 1.1million per ton are now half that ....and have been for over a day now. It seems the rush has begun.

 

[Watcher]

I'd guess most miners use third party tools like Inara or miner's tool (if they function again in the meantime). Personally I don't and thus refrain from maximising my profit. My approach is to start with looking for a decent selling place at first, and then I look for a mining spot nearby. As a small ship miner I depend on short transport routes to stay halfway profitable and finding core mining hotspots is trivial an adds a little exploration to the mining business.

By the way, one of the reasons why I stay away from third party tools is that this shouldn't work for too long due to the latest update, because prices should dramatically drop if many miners sell at the same station. I suspect that something is either broken or deliberately controlled by the devs so that they can create some kind of artificial CG - something I don't like at all and why I don't do that (but pirates do for sure! ). Fortunately I know envy only from theory and don't mind if others are better. And then I'm not really keen on owning an FC either. I always prefer the way with the highest fun factor when in doubt, profit is secondary...

I've tried using both the internal and external tools.

The internal tools seem to be pretty much completely unreliable - I'm sure there is some logic there to the information you are seeing but I'm not clear what that is. Even price when last visited doesn't seem to have much to do with it.

I don't really like using external tools but at least I get to see when the data was updated and can take a stab at likely reliability - it tends to be way more accurate than anything the internal tools supply.

I could try flying around finding a good sales spot, and I've done some of that, but frankly I'd like more useful internal tools - I mean doing stellar body detection via parallax was fun in the beginning but I'm not sure I want to go back to it and not all the time. I've also got little enough time to play as it is, station hoping to find a good price just gets annoying after a while - for me anyway.

 

[Old Duck]

I wasn't avoiding mining, but I was avoiding using 3rd party tools (which includes this forum) to find triple hotspots. That was before fleet carriers... Today I broke down and headed off to [REDACTED] to join the tens of thousands of other CMDRs "exploiting" this LTD-rich system. Thankfully I actually enjoy laser mining, especially in VR.

 

[Watcher]

I've made quite the opposite experience, especially after the latest update that led to extremely volatile prices depending on some temporary system states (like e.g. pirate attack or public holidays). All external tools depend on player reports and that enough players are connected to eddb. The only downsides of the ingame tools are the limited range (50 Ly radius) and that you need to have docked yourself in a system that you want to include in the scan. But otherwise it's pretty reliable, just requires a little more "work". And I admit, finding the top selling spots with 1.7 Million per unit is way more difficult with the limited range of the ingame tools.

But as I said, some very few systems seem to be kept in a sort of artifical price stasis right now so no one would have a reason to moan about the nerf of LTD mining. And that's just too fishy for me. This sort of game mastery feels to me like the devs would cheat the system and that stinks.

Interesting, I dunno, I went on a station hoping spree to unlock plenty of local data since I've been operating in a limited area - querying that seems to get me totally useless information, traveling to the station invariable leads me to seeing significant different in prices and, insultingly, it'll give me information I know is completely wrong for stations I've just left. So, just me?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

By the way, one of the reasons why I stay away from third party tools is that this shouldn't work for too long due to the latest update, because prices should dramatically drop if many miners sell at the same station. I suspect that something is either broken

I suspect broken. Demand regeneration rate for LTDs seems to be infinite, rather than the ~1-2%/day that most core gems have. I'm fairly sure that's not intentional, but who knows...

So that means that the only thing which affects prices for LTDs is the BGS state, which for reasonably good prices (~1 million) can be stable for 7 days. The really good prices (>=1.6 million) need an extra state which lasts only 2 days and then can't recur for another 20-25ish (and more usually will be rarer than that) - and for that state to overlap with the 7 day state. So those top prices are much more volatile. But with the demand bug 1 million is common enough to look stable if you move on every few days.

 

[Old Duck]

Well that was fun for about 40 minutes... I now consider it a GOOD thing that I'm disappointed in Fleet Carriers, because I really don't have the stamina to grind for one.

 

[Krash]

Well that was fun for about 40 minutes... I now consider it a GOOD thing that I'm disappointed in Fleet Carriers, because I really don't have the stamina to grind for one.

We're in the same boat. As a first time miner grinding for the credits, I just turned my haul in for 207m. The best selling system was 4 jumps away. Its something to get better at and another source of revenue. By comparison, 200 mil is about 4-5 days of bounty hunting.

 

[Ezren]

Mining was always a relaxing activity. Nowadays it's relaxing, more engaging with core mining, and also a good way to make credits. It's a good way to spend time when you've got an uncertain amount of time to kill playing the game.

 

[Ezren]

Also, good job making a thread that isn't about Fleet Carriers.

 

[Winterwalker]

Well that was fun for about 40 minutes... I now consider it a GOOD thing that I'm disappointed in Fleet Carriers, because I really don't have the stamina to grind for one.

Absolute key to mining is a dusty coloured flight suit imo. Sure I have a shiny space age suit for visits to popuated stations but mining is a dirty, industrial business, dress according!

I go for a low volume radio in the cab (no footy at the moment sadly) and, rule number two, is let the commodities come to you .. Trying to mine quickly can be frustrating, less haste really is more speed. So Zen, Commander.