Can someone give me an update on mining from the year?

Hi there, I'm ashamed to say that i've been absent from Elite for most if not all of 2020. I'm looking forward to getting back into it for 2021 though, what with Odyssey and everything.

I have one ship, a Python, with balance of 800mil which I made mostly from mining. But i've heard mining has been nerfed, and I just wanted a brief run-down on what exactly has been nerfed in mining, what's changed there, and what I need to be aware of when I go back in? etc.

Could someone help with this?

o7
 
Painite : nerfed to the ground
Ltd : nerfed to the ground
all core : nerfed to the ground
SSD : nerfed to the ground

Mining that is left are :
_ Core but you will have to seek prices for days with hope that at least 2 others cmdrs are not selling the same mineral.

_Platinium - osmium surface mining : 300mil per unit , easy to find , this is imo the only way to get "some" credit per hour with mining.

Platinium single hotspot is enought to fill fast.

Omicron Capricorni B, B 1 ring A (136LY from Sol) is one well know double platinium hotspot.

Tbh people wanted to buff combat , it is now the new "credit maker" , that leave this

Best credit maker : combat
Best reputation maker : combat
Best influence maker : combat
Best material maker : combat (at least for manufactured)

Have fun in the "risk" vs reward world.

And yeah i'm salty.
 
Summary of the patch notes for mining...
June-July 2020
Ice ring nuke part 1... LTD Price crash due To Unlimited demand removal... The more people sell at a station the Lower the price now...
Ice ring nuke part 2... LTD/VO Quantity lowered in every ice ring...
Ice ring nuke Completed in July 2020
Ice ring mining worth a lot less no matter core or Laser... other ring types NOT effected negatively at all painite production increased due to Single hotspots increase in quantity in all other ring types metal or Rocky rings boosted

September 2020
PWA broken
November 2020
Price rebalance on ALL mining items... unlimited demand removed for all items..
Rocky ring now pay highest for core mining...

Current
PWA fixed
Core mining in rocky rings any core type...
Laser mining Platinum...
How you mine not change... Where and what changed...
RNG Laser mining in cutter for 320-400 tons inside the ring in 1hour...
Mapped laser mining in cutter for 700 tons per hour but 512 ton cutter full in ~50 mins...

Mapped mining platinum does require Empire rank for the cutter still to make the most CPH...
 
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I've only been playing Elite since Sept of this year. Laser mining has been nerfed hard. I have not mined since Fdev decided to remove the large profits from mining, by limiting the demand. Only reason I'll mine now is to unlock engineers.
Edtools cc is one web site that can help you find some sell locations.
Core mining is not something I have done yet, as the Pulse Wave Analyzer (PWA) was broken in the summer of this year and fixed only recently.

Npc combat via massacre mission stacking (edtools pve search), or bulk trading with loops seems to be the best money at the moment for my time. I am enjoying combat with NPC's myself.
 
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FDev have reduced the value of Painite, Void Opals and LTD's to roughly 20% of what they used to be (see EDDB for more details).

On the bright side, this means a whole bunch of other stuff (from both core-mining and laser-mining) is almost as valuable as those things, which means you can pick up a variety of stuff when mining instead of obsessing over Painite or VO's and LTDs.

Overall, you can still make Cr25m - Cr50m an hour from mining without breaking a sweat.
If you're chasing credits, combat is currently the most rewarding activity (massacre missions pay well in terms of credits and G5 mat's) but mining is still a reliable source of income.
 
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Mining is still good if you enjoy it (I do). In fact, I prefer that now there are multiple ores worth mining rather than just a couple. Void opals still collect the same high price as before (assuming correct BGS), which is reasonable as they do seem to be quite rare (I like mining in LTD/void opal overlapped hotspots). I do more metallic mining than ice mining at the moment, as there are far more things worth mining that are metallic.
 
What gets me, is they nerfed mining into the ground and raised Tritium by over 10 times.
I guess Fdev doesn't want us to use our carriers or mine anymore.
 
🍿
Wow! 300 million per unit! <spills popcorn> I'm going mining!!

Pt selling prices in ED.jpg

Oh. Oh well...
 
There are those of us who will always chase the gold. If there's an insane amount of Cr to make by outfitting differently and running to system X to do activity Y, that's what we do. The nerf hammer follows us around like an ex wife trying to collect spousal support.
 
That makes no sense. My primary use for my FC is to store what I mine until I can be bothered to find somewhere to sell it. Mining is fine - lots of profit to be made.
Same here, heading back in slowly towards Colonia then back to the bubble, over 16,000t of mined commodities on board:)
 
Basically mining got a huge boost, it has then been corrected a couple of times, not always successfully, at one stage some were mining a full hold and selling at 1.6mil+ per ton in as little as an hour or so, this has now stopped and a lot are moaning about it.

There is good money to be made mining, a lot better than was available a year or so ago, but money can be made other ways as well. Have a good look at the commodities prices on Inara, try to ignore the top priced core only minerals, look things such as Bromellite, Tritium, Osmium, gold, silver, Samarium, Platinum and Palladium, all easy to sell at over 40,000cr, if in the process of mining you find a core or two obviously crack them.

The advantage of the lower value metals and minerals is that they can be mined a lot faster and sold a lot easier than some of the core only minerals.

Keep an eye on your mission boards, there are occasional surprises there and you can make an even better profit if you have what they want sitting in your hold.
 
Mining still makes fairly decent money but be under no illusions that credits p/h are about a third of what they were pre-nerf, if that, so if you're going to mine then you're going to do it because you like it.

As mentioned, combat got a decent buff as did exploration, but in my limited testing I keep coming back to simple min/max hauling for my 100m p/h, until I figure out how things work.
 
If credits per hour matters:
  • mining pays better for noobs
  • stacking massacre missions pays better for elites (from allied factions)
 
If credits per hour matters:
  • mining pays better for noobs
  • stacking massacre missions pays better for elites (from allied factions)
Unlike mining though, the windows of opportunity come and go for stacking.
Mining is still good if you enjoy it (I do). In fact, I prefer that now there are multiple ores worth mining rather than just a couple. Void opals still collect the same high price as before (assuming correct BGS), which is reasonable as they do seem to be quite rare (I like mining in LTD/void opal overlapped hotspots). I do more metallic mining than ice mining at the moment, as there are far more things worth mining that are metallic.
I was getting 1.6m per on VOs before. I haven't seen them anywhere near that recently. Did I miss something?
 
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