Any plans to Improve Mining?

[seawolf230]

I dunno if this has been brought up before recently or anything but: A variant of the pulse wave scanner so we can see what asteroids has whichever mineral in it and an extra tab to list them all so we can go right to that roid to mine it. Just something to replace the annoyance and limitations of the prospector limpets at least, please. I love Mining in every single other game but Elite dangerous, it feels like it needs something to make it less annoying.

Eve Online has spoiled me on mining I will admit. LUL

 

[varonica]

I dunno if this has been brought up before recently or anything but: A variant of the pulse wave scanner so we can see what asteroids has whichever mineral in it and an extra tab to list them all so we can go right to that roid to mine it. Just something to replace the annoyance and limitations of the prospector limpets at least, please. I love Mining in every single other game but Elite dangerous, it feels like it needs something to make it less annoying.

Eve Online has spoiled me on mining I will admit. LUL

You do know that prospector limpets increase the amount of material that you can pull from an asteroid right? So even if you were to change it so that you could see what mats are in an asteroid, you would still be firing prospector limpets at it anyway to increase mining yield. Ah, I see, and EVE Online comparison....do it like EVE!

 

[metatheurgist]

You are basically describing Core mining. The PWS shows you the exact rock that is worth mining. You do need to learn how to identify the Core rocks but once you do it is just a matter of going straight to them and getting the motherlode of good stuff.

 

[GroG79]

I think this would be a nice add-on

You can choose the rock you want to mine from afar and send in a prospector and get the loot.

 

[aRJay]

As a casual miner who usually only mines to mine not for what is extracted I have to say this wouldn’t interest me in fact the lower usage of prospectors could mess up my mining setup for a while as I would run out of cargo space too soon. Keep in mind after limpets and fuel anything sold is profit.

For those mining to order or for profit this could make things much easier.

 

[Makroshlyta]

I don't think mining should be meta on credits... A cool slow pace zen activity with nice rewards has it's lovers.

 

[Exeider]

You do know that prospector limpets increase the amount of material that you can pull from an asteroid right? So even if you were to change it so that you could see what mats are in an asteroid, you would still be firing prospector limpets at it anyway to increase mining yield. Ah, I see, and EVE Online comparison....do it like EVE!

Honestly, limpets need to be updated to drones, they are small unmanned computer driven devices that do tasks based on what the drone(limpet) controller is set to have them do.
That was the one aspect of EvE Online I liked, the drone system, even with the micro management that it required on occasion. I think it would do well here.

Plus, that would be the stepping stone for the gameplay loop for players in learning how SLFs work. So you go from, just your ship, ship+drones, ship+slf. Plus it would give another station for multicrew members to play with, "Drone Controller."

 

[Boone Lockley]

.do it like EVE!

If EVE does it better, then it could be a smart move.

 

[Darrack]

If EVE does it better, then it could be a smart move.

It doesn't though

O7

 

[Boone Lockley]

It doesn't though

O7

It does do some parts better. Drones, different ores in different and more risky areas of space with a pay off based on risk and reward (High, Low, Null, Wormholes), a wider variety of ores to go after for different purposes that are reflected in different market states (and gas, which is a whole other option Elite just doesn't have), OP's point about the rocks I would say is better too since idk how menu flipping is better from a gameplay or design standpoint, I would say that the simple fact tritium is generally bought instead of mined while fuel blocks in EVE have to be mined and made is a point in EVE's favor as well because buying all of our tritium due to mining being so poor producing is kind of lore/immersion breaking. I could probably come up with more ways, too, tbh.

I will say Elite does have in it's favor that it's more involved from a keyboard usage standpoint, but at the end of the day it's just flying to, and holding M1 at a rock, unless you want to do mapped mining. Elite involves more clicking, certainly, but I'm not convinced that more clicking in this comparison is actually weighing in Elite's favor too heavily. Manual Fleet Carrier jumping is more clicking than other options that could be implemented, but I don't hear too many people defending manual FC jumping.

 

[Darrack]

It does do some parts better. Drones, different ores in different and more risky areas of space with a pay off based on risk and reward (High, Low, Null, Wormholes), a wider variety of ores to go after for different purposes that are reflected in different market states (and gas, which is a whole other option Elite just doesn't have), OP's point about the rocks I would say is better too since idk how menu flipping is better from a gameplay or design standpoint, I would say that the simple fact tritium is generally bought instead of mined while fuel blocks in EVE have to be mined and made is a point in EVE's favor as well because buying all of our tritium due to mining being so poor producing is kind of lore/immersion breaking. I could probably come up with more ways, too, tbh.

I will say Elite does have in it's favor that it's more involved from a keyboard usage standpoint, but at the end of the day it's just flying to, and holding M1 at a rock, unless you want to do mapped mining. Elite involves more clicking, certainly, but I'm not convinced that more clicking in this comparison is actually weighing in Elite's favor too heavily. Manual Fleet Carrier jumping is more clicking than other options that could be implemented, but I don't hear too many people defending manual FC jumping.

I just found Eve like many other games, too automated, nothing comes close to mining in Elite for the atmosphere.

O7

 

[Boone Lockley]

nothing comes close to mining in Elite for the atmosphere.

I would agree the atmosphere of Elite is better than EVE, miles ahead there, but this is a thread mostly about mechanics, which is where EVE really pulls ahead in industrial gameplay loops.

 

[Jmanis]

The problem with just being "able to see" (a-la EVE) what's in an asteroid is the mechanics FD hooked around the economics of what earns money.

Simple fact - Despite what pricing suggests, there's no such thing as a "rare ore". From a mining perspective, they're all equally as common as each other (in fact, the laser-mined minerals like Platinum etc which also have Hotspots are more common than "common" minerals.

So if you made mining "more like EVE" in general... prices of everything should be virtually identical. 1t of Methanol Monohydrate crystals should be worth the same as 1t Silver, should be the same as 1t of platinum (in fact, 1t of platinum should be worth less, again with the above logic). And that's the big difference between mining in EVE and mining in Elite.

In EVE, everything is worth mining in it's own right, market-conditions dependent. Sure, an uninformed observer goes "but look, one ore is 14 credits, the other is worth 143,000!", but that's because mining rates are volume based, and different ores have different sizes. Yes, there gets to be some variance towards the end, but from Crokite down, you're looking at ores which are hard and dangerous to find and mine, and have more overheads obtain and move to market safely; those variances basically account for opportunity cost with some hazard pay thrown in.

But then there's also specialisation between different types of mining, whether it's low-volume mercoxit mining or high-volume veldspar mining... but Veldspar is cheap because it's a bulk material that can also be collected in bulk. There's huge demand signal in the markets in Elite for Methanol Monohydrate Crystals compared to Platinum, and both can be obtained at equal rates. If this was in a market like EVE, MMCs would be worth a fortune, and Platinum would be a trash drop. Because the market's work.

But this is Elite's quite-static markets. If you just made it so you could see everything very easily, everyone would simply mine the most valuable thing, all the time. It's only that it takes effort to detect minerals that some people hedge their losses and mine Gold instead of Platinum.

So, you can't just take a small section of EVE's gameplay and throw it into Elite, because the economy works entirely differently. You'd have to carve it out the whole market system along with it, otherwise you're just exacerbating the problems with Elite's mineral market.

tl;dr be careful what you wish for.

 

[Boone Lockley]

If you just made it so you could see everything very easily, everyone would simply mine the most valuable thing, all the time.

That's what most people who mine a lot actually do. One can find out, in like 5 minutes, which specific rings have the highest known concentrations of platinum in the game, and just farm that. Mining anywhere else is mathematically a waste of time unless one is going to learn maps or mine in a Haz RES. Many people take it even further, and only mine specific rocks in specific locations, because it's more efficient. There's zero reason in Elite to hedge with other ores because of how static the market is.

Explaining the EVE mechanics doesn't really prove the idea of certain mechanics coming to Elite isn't good, because prospectors still give a bonus to yield. The pulse would just let you know what's around you, and then if the pilot is smart, they will still have to use all of Elite's current features to maximize profit. Nobody who was in it for the money would skip prospectors just because of a QoL UI feature, they would just not fire as many prospectors.

 

[Jmanis]

That's what most people who mine a lot actually do. One can find out, in like 5 minutes, which specific rings have the highest known concentrations of platinum in the game, and just farm that.

I'm no expert miner by any measure, but I've never heard of that being a thing. How do you do that in-game? Or are you talking about using external tools and mapped mining runs, which I wouldn't consider in scope of this for a variety of reasons.

Mining anywhere else is mathematically a waste of time unless one is going to learn maps or mine in a Haz RES. Many people take it even further, and only mine specific rocks in specific locations, because it's more efficient. There's zero reason in Elite to hedge with other ores because of how static the market is.

And that's the crux of the issue I'm explaining.... with Elite's market being so static, that as a mechanic necessarily relies on the acquisition of minerals being more random and unpredictable. Otherwise, the rest of the minerals just exist for no reason.

Enter one of my problems with ED's mining, the whole mapped mining and static nature of the asteroid fields is a big oversight in the design of the game (it's very easy to imagine FD thought the problem space of mining rings was so vast, nobody would actually mark them out)

Explaining the EVE mechanics doesn't really prove the idea of certain mechanics coming to Elite isn't good, because prospectors still give a bonus to yield. The pulse would just let you know what's around you, and then if the pilot is smart, they will still have to use all of Elite's current features to maximize profit. Nobody who was in it for the money would skip prospectors just because of a QoL UI feature, they would just not fire as many prospectors.

Yeah so I'm starting to get your position now, but I think mine still stands. Elite's mining economy and implementation are mismatched in that the design intent isn't matching the economy correctly. It's a problem with it that's led to the situations you're explaining.

If your rewards are static and cover a range of low and high rewards, your mechanic needs to be one which provides randomised rewards, but allows you to optimise towards preferencing the higher end of things (but in absence of a high reward, it's a risk to leave the low.

Where Elite gets it wrong is that the rewards (i.e which ores you find where) aren't randomised (thus, mapped mining), and so yes, people do get to the point where they just know where platinum is. This is a problem in the design which, IMO, needs to be fixed[1]. And that's where I don't agree with this as a suggestion.... it's relatively sound in the current, IMO broken design. It's not in a design where those problems are fixed... thus... this suggestion just exacerbates existing problems.

[1] I know it can't, but that segues into a whole different topic, so I'll leave it there.

 

[CMDR X]

Did they ever fix that Pulse Wave Analyzer bug, where it wasn't analyzing correctly? It was why I gave up core mining at the time.

 

[Boone Lockley]

I'm no expert miner by any measure, but I've never heard of that being a thing. How do you do that in-game? Or are you talking about using external tools and mapped mining runs, which I wouldn't consider in scope of this for a variety of reasons.

You should consider it in the scope of the discussion because third party tools are ubiquitous in this game. EDSY, Inara, EDDB when it ran, EDHM UI, the Odyssey Material Helper, people using pip macros, Voice Attack, etc etc. Unless you don't use literally any of those at all?

Mapped mining runs aren't even third party appls, either. It's just images, which anyone in Elite's universe would be able to have and make plenty of sense from an in game lore perspective. Or, one google search to find r/eliteminers and find the top 3 known rings in the game. Call it a tip off from a fellow miner at the bar. But it doesn't not factor into the discussion, because everyone has Google.

 

[Darrack]

You should consider it in the scope of the discussion because third party tools are ubiquitous in this game. EDSY, Inara, EDDB when it ran, EDHM UI, the Odyssey Material Helper, people using pip macros, Voice Attack, etc etc. Unless you don't use literally any of those at all?

Mapped mining runs aren't even third party appls, either. It's just images, which anyone in Elite's universe would be able to have and make plenty of sense from an in game lore perspective. Or, one google search to find r/eliteminers and find the top 3 known rings in the game. Call it a tip off from a fellow miner at the bar. But it doesn't not factor into the discussion, because everyone has Google.

I don't use any third party tools, even Inara, strangely enough i just point lasers at rocks and gather stuff up.

O7

 

[Fizzatron]

I think a lot of this would be solved with a proper implementation of crafting from materia/ore to commodity to module to ship/base, and an update of the mechanics to allow for it. ie; a proper fluctuating market, balanced yields of materials etc..

 

[Boone Lockley]

I don't use any third party tools, even Inara, strangely enough i just point lasers at rocks and gather stuff up.

O7

So you don't plan builds using EDSY or Coriolis, or use software like Discord to organize meeting up with people or for squadron events, Spansh to plan journeys, websites to find tritium for your carrier or modules for your ships? You don't google literally anything about the game, ever? You've never taken knowledge from the forums, that you didn't have previously, and used it in game, ever?

Because that's all the knowledge of which few specific rings are best in the game is, it's not much different than learning about Diaguandri's outfitting, or that AFGK are the best stars for finding ELWs.