Anyone playing primarily as a miner and enjoying it right now?

[Dukeajuke]

Like the majority of people I play as a bounty hunter mainly because it is the fastest and easiest way to make money in Elite right now. To mix things up, I have twice now tried mining to see if it was possible to make any decent money. The first time was a miserable failure. I tried again a second time only after finding an unbelievably dense, metal, planetary ring (I mean so dense you could spin in place and hit 2 - 3 asteroids at time..). I even bought a type7 and dual mining lasers thinking there is no way I couldn't make a decent living in this field. After about 5 hours of mining and hauling back to the station, I was only able to make about 50,000 credits.. And in that time the most valuable metal I remember seeing was Indium and there was only enough ore to make one load of it. I tied jumping around it different parts of the belt but still no luck finding anything valuable..

So in my opinion the whole mining mechanic needs some serious love, in the form of these 3 items:

1. A mining scanner that would allow you to quickly scan an asteroid from a distance to see what it contains
2. A tractor beam to suck in the ore
3. A programmable refinery that allows you to choose what stuff you want to refine, move the finished product to our hold, and then discharge the crap (all automatically).


Without these things mining is about as much fun and profitable as walking down your street and manually looking though garbage cans on garbage pickup day..

 

[Robbie Rocketpants]

My career has changed quite a bit through progression, I started doing odd jobs and bounty hunting in a sidey until I bought a Cobra - this was the miner.

Maybe I was lucky but I found a pristine metallic belt and in each cluster you normally only had to hit 2 to 3 asteroids before you found some platinum or palladium and the chunks were usually 20%-30% each. It didn't take long to fill the hold at that rate, which was 36 tons at the time.
It was an LP system but I don't recall the number, I do remember that one jump away was a station called Rodenberry something or other and they paid top dollar for both. Easily made between 400k and 500k a trip (with the potential to earn more but it was never *all* platinum). Bought an Asp from there and started trading some more profitable routes, I think mining only suits that intermediate stage.

 

[zj951]

DukeaDuke
As per previous poster from my experience you need to find Pristine Reserves & Metallic to hit paydirt.
Pristine/Metal Rich or Major/Metallic might be OK-ish (not done comprehensive search to be sure).
You can try searching on forum for Pristine/Metallic locations, one that pointed me in the right direction was System Njikan - it was worth the trip, also high tech and civil war so lots of variation when wanted something different to mining. Njikan as high tech also had good outfitting to get refinery with good number of bins.

My style was to fire up the mining laser, target the first sample, if it had any gold/pall/plat then get it**, otherwise move on - keep pointing in fixed direction to avoid circling and repeat sampling same old rock e.g. by heading towards the planet - the pris/metallic is a series of rings so never going to run out! **EDIT - on average (guessing) every 5th or 6th rock had something interesting, sometimes they came in 2's or 3's others took a bit more to find.
Using that technique in a Type 6 (96t cargo) I got about 450k cr in about 3 hrs. I am sure there are other ways of making more money in that timescale eg bounty, trading - but it was sort of relaxing - no hassles from pirates/security - just tootling along in my only little world.....deep immersion!

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

I'm not sure anyone would want to be a full time miner. But I enjoy a bit of it mixed in with everything else - I am flying a jack-of-all-trades Cobra.

 

[ozlizard]

I have a Lakon 6 and I am in Njikan as well. 100t cargo space, 6 bin refinery and two mining lasers.

OP You are mining in a "rocky" belt, so you won't get anything of value there.

I only mine rocks over 20%, platinum, palladium, gold and silver. My last trip netted me 1.4m (about 3-4 hours work).

Yes, mining is tedious, but it can be rewarding.

 

[Andravez]

Tractor beam would be cool. I can't reallocate for some reason. So I only get to pick up a debree one single time, refining it, but it won't compile more on top of the refined materials. I must be doing something wrong.

 

[AluminumAlloy]

I don't do much mining anymore but instead transportation and delivery missions. It will usually take some hours into work. The quickest way is to go for the metallic rings, not the metal rich rings, then again it's still a few hours that will be spent.

 

[Googol]

My Asp is fitted with mining kit so that when I explore I can assay the belts and rings I find (i.e. take a break from just flying around ).
-
There is a sweet spot to mining in smaller ships when, as some of the other replies indicate, you can make as much by mining at the right locations as you can by trading, but imo you move out of that zone as soon as you get into upgraded T6 territory.
-

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

Tractor beam would be cool. I can't reallocate for some reason. So I only get to pick up a debree one single time, refining it, but it won't compile more on top of the refined materials. I must be doing something wrong.

Can you elaborate, we might be able to help.
How many bins do you have in your refinery?

 

[Andravez]

1 bin I think. Say if I score som bauxite, pulls it in and also get a few procentages of coltan with it. Refining the baxuite and im left with the rest materials, wich I can not dump out the vents. I don't know how to explain it, heh.

 

[trumpet]

I am playing the game at a very casual pace. I had done enough courier work since launch to buy an Adder & have been enjoying mining at a metallic ring in mantxe which has been fun. The scooping does get tedious- although I don't scoop till I've chipped enough off for one unit.

It's slow, but at the casual pace I'm working my way up to a cobra I'm fine with that .

How do you tell if a ring is pristine metallic?

 

[Llewelyn]

Back in the early years, I used to fill up and hold onto stuff. When I bothered to call back at a station I'd check the BB for ore requirements, sell them what they wanted at the premium asking price, and save the rest for later. Obviously need a large cargo bay, but mining in a Cobra a couple hours per day was at little risk of filling the ship up. Also find fields with Paladium, Gold and Silver tends to make for better returns.

Though since release I've really not bothered with mining as, yes, it is immensely boring and there's a lot of universe out there to explore.

 

[c0m4ndo45]

I've gone to dozens of pristine metallic and they don't often drop 25%+ gold/pall/platinum. I'd kill for a scanner, though

 

[talharbash]

How do you keep pirates off you? I tried once, even in solo mode, and NPC pirates showed up and shooed me away.

 

[Eldonorian]

How do you keep pirates off you? I tried once, even in solo mode, and NPC pirates showed up and shooed me away.

remote locations

 

[burzum]

Without these things mining is about as much fun and profitable as walking down your street and manually looking though garbage cans on garbage pickup day..

That applies to every game mechanic except space trucking stuff from A to B which obviously satisfies some of the audience for whatever strange reason. Guess if you're already getting your pension you have the time to spend in super (boring) cruise.

If you check the DDF and compare it to what you've got for mining this can be called a prototype or skeleton the best. Well, some die hard fanboys will now rush in and claim the game is good, great, awesome and finished as it was released the 16th... Right now mining is a totally random dice rolling game mechanic without any depth - like everything else. Just take the USS as another example or missions.

 

[Dweezil_Moon]

I just did something like 60-70K in my lowly hauler, equipped with 14T cargo bays, 4 bin refinery, a single mining laser, no shields. Took me approx. 15mn.

My default spot : a Major Reserve Metallic belt... First asteroid I hit today was 40% palladium, 15% gold. Slow rotation too. Jackpot! Some nasty NPC Pirate and a NPC miner in an ASP were there too. Pirate scanned me on arrival, but my cargo bay was empty and he was no psycho so he let me live and drifted over to the Asp. I chunked away as fast as I could, as the pirate didn't seem to want to just FSD away. I got 8 stones out of the asteroids, which gave me 4 palladium and 2 gold plus some change. I started flying away from the pirate who was still hanging around the Asp after scanning me a second time (BEFORE I had my first ton thankfully). Just for safety I set my destination to my home system, in which 'my' station is only 25Ls away from the sun and started probing other asteroids .. indite ... bertrandite ... 2.9K/Ton so not too shaby, especially as it was ~60% pure bertrandite. But the pal/gold combo had spoiled me for the evening ... more indite ... some gallite ... all not worth it. Meanwhile I had forgotten to keep an eye on the pirate and so was slightly taken aback when he started scanning me for the third time.
The one thing you learn fast while looking for the perfect stone is that pirates are not particularly choosy. If you have something in your belly and they learn about it they WILL want it. So, as soon as I heard the dreaded words "scan detected" I closed the cargo bay, retracted the mining laser and hit my "friendshift drive". I got out just as the first laser beams were starting to fly. 2mn later I was sitting in Julian Dock sipping a martini.

Not my "main" job .. just one of the jobs I do and enjoy regularly. I don't do "mains" in Elite.

 

[Raaya]

[h=2]Anyone playing primarily as a miner and enjoying it right now?[/h]

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Hell, no! NO!

 

[Googol]

1 bin I think. Say if I score som bauxite, pulls it in and also get a few procentages of coltan with it. Refining the baxuite and im left with the rest materials, wich I can not dump out the vents. I don't know how to explain it, heh.

Sorry for the delay, been taking some screenshots to help explain.
-
With only one bin in your refinery you obviously have to vent the Coltan. Until you do that you will see this in your scoop display:
-

Spoiler

View attachment 6875

-
and your hopper will show the unallocated mineral, in this case Indite. (Ignore the fact that I have a 6-bin refinery, venting works the same way for all of them)
-

Spoiler

View attachment 6876

-
To get rid of the mineral that you don't want, you have to vent it by moving focus to the hopper's "VENT" control,
-

Spoiler

View attachment 6877

-
and then selecting it (Space bar on my keyboard layout) to vent the hopper. If you can't do this then there is something wrong with the refinery and you should ticket it.
-
Hope this helps
-
Edit: A single bin refinery isn't very efficient as you have to vent the mineral you don't want each time you collect a chunk. When you can afford it, try to upgrade to a 2- or 4-bin refinery, it will make things much easier. Happy mining!

 

[Cat_Astrophe]

How do you keep pirates off you? I tried once, even in solo mode, and NPC pirates showed up and shooed me away.

Why would you want that? Collecting a nice bounty to go along with the materials is like a cherry on top of ice cream. But anyway, if the pirates are too thick, try resetting the instance. Pirate activity has been different for me in the same belts. Sometimes I have been all alone, other times I spend more time shooting pirates than mining. Once in a while I have even had police escorts flying around randomly.

 

[Unpleasant]

Like the majority of people I play as a bounty hunter mainly because it is the fastest and easiest way to make money in Elite right now. To mix things up, I have twice now tried mining to see if it was possible to make any decent money. The first time was a miserable failure. I tried again a second time only after finding an unbelievably dense, metal, planetary ring (I mean so dense you could spin in place and hit 2 - 3 asteroids at time..). I even bought a type7 and dual mining lasers thinking there is no way I couldn't make a decent living in this field. After about 5 hours of mining and hauling back to the station, I was only able to make about 50,000 credits.. And in that time the most valuable metal I remember seeing was Indium and there was only enough ore to make one load of it. I tied jumping around it different parts of the belt but still no luck finding anything valuable..

So in my opinion the whole mining mechanic needs some serious love, in the form of these 3 items:

1. A mining scanner that would allow you to quickly scan an asteroid from a distance to see what it contains
2. A tractor beam to suck in the ore
3. A programmable refinery that allows you to choose what stuff you want to refine, move the finished product to our hold, and then discharge the crap (all automatically).


Without these things mining is about as much fun and profitable as walking down your street and manually looking though garbage cans on garbage pickup day..

+1
Tried mining, the lack of the first 2 things you mention just made it tedious and dull... Never again until it's fixed.