IMO the Beyond upgrade has been the best change to mining since collector limpets were added.
I think mining is now in a much better place. But there are still a few issues.
The Good
The Bad
The Ugly
The "refinery Full" bug is still a thing. Even with half the minerals being ignored by the limpets and refinery, the refinery still thinks it's full when there is plenty of space in the cargo hold and ther are a few empty bins in the refinery.
Here are some previous suggestions for mining, a couple of these have been implemented:
I think mining is now in a much better place. But there are still a few issues.
The Good
- Ignore function. No more stopping to purge unwanted minerals from the refinery. This is an awesome change.
- The material limit increase, No more purging materials every few minutes makes mining much more enjoyable.
- The increase in materials spaw rates is nice, though I tink they should be increased a little more. However, I think the thresholds for displaying Low, Medium and High now need to be reset.
- Sold some painite last night. At 120K per tonne it was quite profitable. But I wonder if it's less common now.
The Bad
- The new class 1 materials aren't "very common" at all. So all everyone will do is trade for heaps using the materials traders. I think FD have missed the mark on these.
- Rhenium - very common? If FD want this to be common, they should rename it as Handwavium. (also see the previous point)
- The ignore function only works by selecting a fragment or canister. This is fine, but to un-ignore something, you also need to select a fragment. So it would be very easy to forget that you previously ignored a material or mineral because you can't see them on the scanner. I think ignore/unignore should be added to the materials screen.
The Ugly
The "refinery Full" bug is still a thing. Even with half the minerals being ignored by the limpets and refinery, the refinery still thinks it's full when there is plenty of space in the cargo hold and ther are a few empty bins in the refinery.
Here are some previous suggestions for mining, a couple of these have been implemented:
- Refinery that doesn't lock up
- Stop displaying the incorrect "Refinery Full" message (it makes the info screen completely useless when mining)
- Remove the unnecessary delay when deploying a limpet - particularly prospectors
- Balance pass over collector controllers (is 128 tons for 4 limpets in a class 7 controller reasonable?)
- Add some engineer upgrades that are actually useful to miners (currently the only useful engineer upgrade is weapon focused distributor, as module weight or integrity are irrelevant to miners).
Allow limpets to be synthesized. This would make long range prospecting (see 12) possible.- we now have this one. \o/, though I'm not convinced that 7% of used limpets replaced is really QoL.- Rethink the mechanic of having pirates spawn every time you drop into a ring - especially in remote systems
- Display the material percentages of a ring on the system map
- Add class-5 element materials to rings, also add yttrium now it's class 4. Maybe just in 0.5%-1% amounts
- Balance pass over the ore yields in the different ring types - particularly icy, which is less than 1/3 the yield per roid compared to metallic
- Add some rare profitable ores for rocky and metal-rich rings, more gem types would be good
- Add some reason to mine well away from the bubble, such as extremely rare ores (see 19), radioactive isotopes, rare vacuum life forms (see 14), jackpot roids (see 21)
- Add LTDs, painite (and the new ores from 11) to ores available in asteroid clusters
- Add vacuum krill as a minable resource - particularly in Baltha'Sine 4B, and similar small lifeforms for the dangerous ones (see 15) to eat when they can't get miners
- Add some dangerous vacuum life forms, especially where minable life forms (see 14) are present. They could also be valuable resources.
- DSS scan displaying areas of the ring with varying ore concentrations, also show points of interest (see 22)
- Specialised mining ships - mostly multi-purpose, important features are: power distributor, lots class 3 modules, cargo space, specialised modules (see 18)
- Specialised mining modules for the specialised mining ships (see 17)
- Gold-rush mechanic for very rare ores in remote locations (see 12) that eventually deplete from players mining them
- Add some skill based mechanic to the fragment chipping part of mining. - Currently, the only skill mechanics are: directing the fragment stream so that your limpets are more efficient, and how to chip fragments of wildly tumbling roids without losing all your limpets. If there were techniques that maximize the yield of metal per fragment, and others that maximized crystals, or materials. This would make mining much more interactive, immersive and fun.
- Add rare "Jackpot" roids. Ones that have 100 fragments of 100% platinum, or 100 fragments of class 4 and class 5 elements. These roids shouldn't be persistent.
- Points of interest within a ring containing unusual stuff (see 12, 14, 15 ,21). They would be unknown unless the CMDR has investigated the same type previously.
- Tourist missions to take prospectors to unusual mining places (see 22), particularly big game hunters (see 15)
- Large and Huge mining lasers
- Balance pass over the distributor drain and heat generation of mining lasers
Increase the materials storage.- \o/ this is very nice now- Mining missions that take you to USS in a ring, e.g. tip a-off for a jackpot roid (see 21)
- Hotkey to cycle targetting prospector limpets.
- Ability to create a small area with RES type fragment yield increase by dropping a load of bioreducing lichen. Will need to create a semi-persistent USS.
- Missions to drop bioreducing lichen into RES (see 29)
- Prospector limpets that move a tad faster. It's a bit of a joke in the Clipper, Orca or Cutter to sit and wait in front of a roid for your limpet to catch up.
- Ability to package partial tons of an ore instead of venting it, automatically reloaded into the refinery when a bin has been allocated to this ore.
- Rings thick enough to get lost in
- Rings dense enough to be a hazard in a large ship
- Very sparse rings - so sparse they seem more like how asteroid clusters have been implemented, until you fly a little further
- Chaotic rings, very recently formed. These will be hazardous places, but possibly good sources of rare ores (see 12)
- Display the refinery bars on the HUD
- Display the limpet lifetimes on the HUD
- Alternative to lasers for mining, maybe projectile and/or explosive based
- Balance pass over the profitability of mining compared to other professions
- Mining of volatile gasses that is a very different mechanic than collecting fragments
- To be able to set a limit of how many times a limpet will suicidally be sent after the one fragment
- Display which fragments are currently targetted and/or carried by limpets.
- Graphical overlay of roids displaying the axis of rotation
- Seeker prospector limpets that search for roids with a particular mineral
- An indication of the direction of rotation of a planet's ring would be handy.
- Prospector limpet information added to the journal
- Prospector targeter that doesn't keep dissapearing from the HUD
- Prospector limpets should leave a stub in roids so you know you have already prospected or mined the roid
Last edited:
