Exploring and Mining?

OK, well, I've verified that for some not very clever reason the mining missions are tied to merchant rank. So, uh, you can only get the really sweet "collect this metal" mission if you've been trading instead of mining and exploring. That's stupid.

Now I'm going to go on RatChat and offer 10t of Painite to anyone who wants to collect and turn in some of those missions. I'm also sitting on 40t of Platinum. I'd rather see someone take advantage of it. :(
 
I run at about 40% of cargo space in collector drones, with an A3 controller, although I suspect with experience I will find I don't need so many. 2 active drones and 2 med lasers allow me to strip and process a rock in about 1 minute. You have to be dead still or the drones crash into you and die. The drones are great time savers. The prospectors as they are currently are just about useless. But the time you save makes the collectors quite nice. If you are concerned about jump distance then go with 20%, or none, it's your time. Also, lots of bins are nice. I have an 8 bin refinery and that seems to be about right allowing me to store some common crap and not have to keep venting every load which slows down the collectors.

On a different note, I am fairly new to elite and newer still to exploring. Some questions, if anyone has the time...how come I discover new objects in common bubble systems all the time? Are they worth scanning? After the adv system scan, I have to fly up to and detail scan the interesting rocks and stars? Regular ship scanners seem to do a job, is the detailed ship scanner going to do more of a job, or faster? Is it worth upping the reg ship scanners for exploring?

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I wish my Asp had better brakes :p I'm finding in the 'roids I can deploy my cargo scoop as an air brake it it brings me down faster than backthrusting, which is just plain silly, but there you are. Of course, it's silly my asp sounds like a twin engine airplane, but I give up...
 
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...On a different note, I am fairly new to elite and newer still to exploring. Some questions, if anyone has the time...how come I discover new objects in common bubble systems all the time? Are they worth scanning? After the adv system scan, I have to fly up to and detail scan the interesting rocks and stars? Regular ship scanners seem to do a job, is the detailed ship scanner going to do more of a job, or faster? Is it worth upping the reg ship scanners for exploring?

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I wish my Asp had better brakes :p

If it's 'undiscovered' in the inhabited bubble, that just indicates that it is unknown to you personally. You navigation computer has no record of the system, but it has been discovered and mapped before.

Yes, they are worth scanning. You won't get a 'discovered by' tag, but the rewards are the same for the rest when you hand them in 20LY away from there at least.

Yes, you must get closer to most objects to do a Detailed Surface Scan. the Advanced Scanner just shows you roughly what is there (well, exactly really, as there are a few ways of looking at the system maps / listening to the sounds each object makes when pointed at it to work out what type of object it is).

And for the last two, yes and yes. You will get more money when handing the scan details in. Always buy an Advanced Discovery Scanner and Detailed Surface Scanner. Unless you are one of those people that prefer to find system objects via parallax methods or similar (the Advanced Scanner discovers every body in a system, the other scanners have decreasing ranges).

Hope that helps :)
 
Here are some systems I found:

Closer to the bubble:
COL 359 Sector CB-O d6-51 (5 A Ring) AKA "Yummy"
COL 359 Sector BC-J B23-1 (A A Belt)
COL 359 Sector PI-J c9-3 (B Belt)
COL 359 Sector HF-F b12-4 (A A Belt)
COL 359 Sector YI-S c4-18 (A A Belt)
COL 359 Sector RA-O B7-2 (B A Belt) (long flight time)

Lesser strikes:
SWOIWNS DF-Z C16-8 (A belt)
SWOIWNS TM-E C14-13 (A belt)
SWOIWNS KY-P D6-8 A (A belt)

This stuff can get yummy:
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Unfortunately, it turns out that the "get me a ton of painite" missions are locked to merchant rank. So I couldn't do anything with my Painite except give it to another Fuel Rat who can swap it for mission cred.

Screenshot_0165.jpg
Mining at La Diamante
Screenshot_0151.jpg
 
All pristine metallic? I will add them to the list.

By the way. I did a few mining tours with only precious metal and painite and was on merchant in no time.
 
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i have found the same with BB missions. they are quite highly ranked. fortunately i am Broker, but I have seen several that are ranked higher than that! seems crazy. Also some you have to be allied to the faction! again crazy.

anyhow i did manage to sell 1t of Painite for 118699cr! yes 1t
 
For the miner, does metal rich planets mean anything? There's no rings, so I'm assuming no.

Not yet. Honestly, I can't think of much reason to land on planets other than for the views, to collect life-forms, or to collect materials.

(eyeroll) and probably to drop high explosive, for the pewpewpew crowd.

I am pretty happy with the mining game-infrastructure at this time; it's pretty good overall, and I think it'd scale to planetary landings, too. Orbit, do an assay scan for minerals or life, then vector in on it and capture/collect it.
 
When launching drones, it pops your cargo scoop. That means if you're drifting slowly toward a rock, you'll suddenly be drifting quite a bit faster toward the rock. This can have interesting consequences.
 
For guys mining out there, how is the yeld of asteroids ? How many chunks you get until depleted ? Because I found out that in HI RES the yeld of asteroids is most likely determined by RNG upon entering the instance. In HI RES I usually get 1 chunk of material per 8% so thats around 13 chunks so if the composition of asteroid is 50% (metals, minerals...) I get around 6-7 tons of material per asteroid. But once in HI RES every asteroid I mined got 1 chunk per 4% so I was getting 12-14 tons of material per asteroid I wasnt prepared for that amount and had to throw away many limpets but the limpets collected them back and so on... But I filled my 160T cargo in notime
 
I set of my my ExploMining trip last night with a 1kylie blast out of Antal space, roughly Bubble nebula wards. Rather cheekily yielded 1 ELW and 2 WW as i was only checking the SysMap when i felt lucky!

Going to set about findig some lovely mining locations now. There was what looked like a pink Jovian i think i'll pop back to investigate. pinkjov..JPG

Does anyone know if there is any correlation between body type and asteroid yield. I have a thought that a ringed HMC would deliver mining utopia!

final loadout for the Perpetual Dawn

happy flying
 
I doubt that.

there are millions of asteroids.

i think it is random where the good rocks are, no clusters.

But I think, they are not respawned.
 
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