The Mining discussion thread.

Good Idea?


  • Total voters
    7
Made 40k with an hours work in a cobra w Mining Laser Class 2, 3 hopper refinery. i wish i saw % as high as 20 (solo-play do to difficulties connecting). I enjoyed it, I could make money faster doing lots of hauls probably,and even more with pew pew, but those will incure more risk, less relaxing. It seems each rock is limited to the number of rocks it can release, and yes the mining beam noise does change occasionally but does not appear to be related to anything. Wish there was more mechanics prior to the scooping, the scooping and hoppers is fine.
 
Mining is exactly what I was expecting it to be. That's kind of unfortunate though, as I had kept my expectations low.

Devias's explanation (back a handful of posts) is spot on, so I'm not going to recap it. I'll say that I had equipped (2) mining lasers. I'd get 5 chunks of ore in about 5 sec. of laser burst. I have a 4 hopper refiner, well worth the extra price. The fields I ran into had (4) different ores types each, so it worked out nicely.

The bottleneck is definitely the collection process. The ore tends to string out in a line, so by using thrusters, I was able to quickly maneuver my asp to pick it up. I seem to have to target each piece of ore to scoop it though. I haven't found a way to scroll through ore targets either, so I have to: scoot forward, back up, target, scoot forward, repeat.

Most valuable metal I found was cobalt, but I was definitely looking in the wrong place apparently (out near Perendi). After (2) different ring clusters and an hour and a half of flight time, I walked out with about 15t of various worthless minerals (only 1t of cobalt).

I guess success will come from finding the pockets of rare metals, like the palladium others have found. Which is a shame, I was hoping focusing on large hauls of lower value ore would be profitable if you're consistent at it. I'd love to see those collection drones (DDF) make it in by release.

I do wish the system had more to it though, like being able to break up the asteroids to get to their cores; or having the asteroids throw out some surprises like gas pocket explosions to make you take evasive action.

In the end, it's kind of a shallow experience.
 
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Do you need a cargo rack as well as the refinery ?

Would the basic sidewinder be able to mine?

You do need the cargo rack to store your processed minerals/metals. The Sidewinder can definitely do it, but you'll have to ditch the shield.
 

psyron

Banned
Mining in Beta 3: I don't like, because ...

I don't like mining in Beta 3 because the mining laser only produces a very small crater on the asteroid meaning that a single asteroid could be enough to satisfy a miner his whole life!!
That makes no sense!

I would prefer the mining laser producing a huge crater, melting down a huge junk of the asteroid and producing huge amount of smoke/rubble.

At the moment it's completely not plausible why the asteroid is nearly not affected at all by the mining laser.
Maybe this is a limitation due to the procedurally generated asteroids, but this need to change.

As a miner i want to see how the big asteroid gets broken in smaller and smaller parts till there is only worthless remains of it.
And there should be a scanner showing exactly what materials the parts are composed of.

At the moment the asteroid is only affected on its surface. So what about the minerals inside of it?!?
Makes no sense.
Big disappointment!

Edit:
I would like to have a 3d-scanner for the asteroid showing exactly the potential minerals on every part of the asteroid in a 3d-overlay to force the player to actually target specific parts of the asteroids. Doing so would make it plausible why only little parts of the asteroid are interesting and why a miner would not pulverize the whole asteroid.
 
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ShadowGar

Banned
Just a tip for people struggling. You don't need to go to an extraction site of a ring site.

Find a planet in a system with a ring around it. Fly to the ring. A typical ring has different bands within the ring. I found the outer band more plentiful. Fly into the band until your ship goes into emergency jump. Poof, your away from the extraction sites and depending on the band you picked, higer yields and rarer stuff. Whats the chance you may smack into something on an emergency jump? *shrugs*

So far I've got low grade stuff from extraction sites. I found an unexplored system with a gas giant with rings. I flew into the outer most band of the ring and its high yield 30%-40% mining. I'm doing a decent haul.
 
I think the whole point of this is to encourage exploration and find the best rings, correct?

People are getting bent out of shape that they can't go to the nearest extraction site and get rich in an hour.

I don't believe that's what the intent is.
 
Mining is exactly what I was expecting it to be. That's kind of unfortunate though, as I had kept my expectations low.

Devias's explanation (back a handful of posts) is spot on, so I'm not going to recap it. I'll say that I had equipped (2) mining lasers. I'd get 5 chunks of ore in about 5 sec. of laser burst. I have a 4 hopper refiner, well worth the extra price. The fields I ran into had (4) different ores types each, so it worked out nicely.

The bottleneck is definitely the collection process. The ore tends to string out in a line, so by using thrusters, I was able to quickly maneuver my asp to pick it up. I seem to have to target each piece of ore to scoop it though. I haven't found a way to scroll through ore targets either, so I have to: scoot forward, back up, target, scoot forward, repeat.

Most valuable metal I found was cobalt, but I was definitely looking in the wrong place apparently (out near Perendi). After (2) different ring clusters and an hour and a half of flight time, I walked out with about 15t of various worthless minerals (only 1t of cobalt).

I guess success will come from finding the pockets of rare metals, like the palladium others have found. Which is a shame, I was hoping focusing on large hauls of lower value ore would be profitable if you're consistent at it. I'd love to see those collection drones (DDF) make it in by release.

I do wish the system had more to it though, like being able to break up the asteroids to get to their cores; or having the asteroids throw out some surprises like gas pocket explosions to make you take evasive action.

In the end, it's kind of a shallow experience.



And you know all of this after how many hours of experimenting with a brand new system?
 
Id be happy with having what seemed to be in-exhaustable asteroids, IF, when they were finally devoid of all material, they DIDN'T spawn new resources....

Once it's gone, its gone .... there are 399.9 billion other solar systems to find rocks in .... go hunting :p
 
ok tried a test having watched the live stream of mining tonight with ET and he was using 1 mining laser to good effect so i loaded up my sidie with 2 lasers and an above average refinery.

here is what i found i could definitely mine faster with the two lasers as my refinery seemed to process faster than the stock one ET was using, these findings are rough for now as it's very late and im too tiered to continue ill bee looking for some high metal rings in out of the way systems later today after i sleep and ill post here to let you know how i do.

im also thinking of trying a cobra with multiple refineries (not sure if that's even possible but i want to try it any how)

till next time happy space 49ing folks!

unlike some other folk im finding it quite relaxing got me some mellow Kraftwerk on the phones and imma scoopin like a boss baby!

also need room for a discovery scanner high class as im sure way out we gonna need em to even find the resources in the distant uncharted systems. (just an after thought)
 
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Mining is exactly what I was expecting it to be. That's kind of unfortunate though, as I had kept my expectations low.

In the end, it's kind of a shallow experience.

Mining in space always is ... but there will be people who enjoy it exactly for that reason... It will probably be a popular group activity (security, efficiency, logistics) ...
 
I think the whole point of this is to encourage exploration and find the best rings, correct?

People are getting bent out of shape that they can't go to the nearest extraction site and get rich in an hour.

I don't believe that's what the intent is.

This'll be what I check out tomorrow night: hit up planetary rings. However, I did expect the asteroid rings they just added, specifically for mining, would be more fruitful for the time invested. It's not even close to the rate of income you can make doing other professions.

And you know all of this after how many hours of experimenting with a brand new system?

It's true that I haven't had long playing the new system. That makes me even more worrisome as I've already mastered the mining process. All I have to do now, is find the right spot to grab palladium. That might be a timesink via exploration, but that's all it is.

Again, I was really hoping the mining process would be more involved, more...dangerous.
 
I hope we will be able to land on the asteroid and start drilling instead, it would seam more realistic, however looking forward to try it out.
 
ok tried a test having watched the live stream of mining tonight with ET and he was using 1 mining laser to good effect so i loaded up my sidie with 2 lasers and an above average refinery.

here is what i found i could definitely mine faster with the two lasers as my refinery seemed to process faster than the stock one ET was using, these findings are rough for now as it's very late and im too tiered to continue ill bee looking for some high metal rings in out of the way systems later today after i sleep and ill post here to let you know how i do.

im also thinking of trying a cobra with multiple refineries (not sure if that's even possible but i want to try it any how)

till next time happy space 49ing folks!

unlike some other folk im finding it quite relaxing got me some mellow Kraftwerk on the phones and imma scoopin like a boss baby!

also need room for a discovery scanner high class as im sure way out we gonna need em to even find the resources in the distant uncharted systems. (just an after thought)

I get the red triangle when looking at a second refinery
 
Ascent the space game has mining roids right. This is pretty awful. Chasing roid dots is not Fun. Need a tractor beam bad or bots that go fetch. Was really disappointed that all my cargo space went away with that refinery installed.(Can deal with this though by having a dedicated mining ship) Ya cant even haul regular freight even though I have 16tons of hauling cap. This is what betas are for though so hopefully enough people wont like it and it will get changed. If not, I wont be mining until I can drop my mining rovers like in the old elite and leave them for a week and then come back and get them.

LOVE the darker interiors! Ran into a few mission bugs were I couldnt complete the contract because there was no contracts board at the station. I have some Fines also I cant pay no matter what I do. Will boot it back up this weekend after they get a patch or two into it.
 
Mining in space always is ... but there will be people who enjoy it exactly for that reason... It will probably be a popular group activity (security, efficiency, logistics) ...

Of course you're correct. Plenty will love it for exactly what it is. I'm considering it to be like fishing mechanics in MMORPGs I've played: not very exciting, but you might hit something big.

I don't think the game needs to limit what mining could be though, by not at least offering different mining experiences. Keep simple mining with amazing vistas in certain areas. But throw in a few dangerous (and lucrative) hot spots where miners can get a bit more action too.
 
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I would prefer the mining laser producing a huge crater, melting down a huge junk of the asteroid and producing huge amount of smoke/rubble.

At the moment it's completely not plausible why the asteroid is nearly not affected at all by the mining laser.
Maybe this is a limitation due to the procedurally generated asteroids, but this need to change.

If this is a technical limitation (which it is) then this can't change...no matter how much you feel it needs too.

It's not really because of PG though. It's simply because making changes to the structure, possibly breaking the asteroids up into large pieces would require this information to be sent over the network to sync with other players. It would also add a performance hit due to the physics involved that your computer needs to keep track of. This would become a HUGE resource hog for very little practical gain in terms of gameplay.

This was brought up back during the DDF and I don't expect to see it changed.

I do like the indeed of seeing a more detailed scan of an asteroid making it possible to target specific areas of the asteroid. I even think this was mentioned at some point.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Id be happy with having what seemed to be in-exhaustable asteroids, IF, when they were finally devoid of all material, they DIDN'T spawn new resources....

Once it's gone, its gone .... there are 399.9 billion other solar systems to find rocks in .... go hunting :p

That will kind of be the case. Not because FD servers will keep track of every single asteroid in the galaxy. Something I hope everyone realizes is impossible. They will however track how many players are extracting resources from a particular area and when a threshold is reached they will lower the level of resources there...then repeating this until it's completely mined out.
 
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I personally hate mining lasers something unreal about the idea, Would have been nice if a grappling hook was fired from the ship that attached to the asteroid and started mining sending the ore back through pipe to your ship.

Anyhow we really need a grappling hook that shoots from the cargo hold to grab ore that's lined up or drones to auto retrieve "Targeted" ore chunks.

Or have mining drills arms attached your ship so you have to "Land" on the asteroid and activate your drills/lasers (personally I like the landing idea seems more real).

As for the refinery that needs to auto eject the ores that you have not selected to keep and 1 hopper per refinery? really, This needs work.

we really needs a way to identify asteroid fields/yields scanner ect.

Mining fields need to be setup like the extraction zones like Traffic coming and going security ships and other miners, less as you head to low sector security areas.

(IDEA) group mining encouragement the more you mine an asteroid the hotter it gets and the hotter it gets the more yield you get per chunk (more mining lasers = more heat)
 
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