Have collector limpets been MASSIVELY improved recently?

[Scoob]

Hey all,

Last time I went mining was several months ago, early this year. At the time, I noticed that my collectors were colliding with asteroids far less often than perhaps they had in the more distant past. This was good, I could see improvements had been made over time. However, I'd typically spend three times as long waiting for my Limpets to collect all fragments vs. the time it takes to deplete the asteroid. So, not real numbers but, if I depleted an asteroid in say 20 seconds, with 18 Collectors already deployed, it'd be another minute at least before all fragments were collected and dropped off at the ship. This is while being good with positioning, taking note of the direction the fragments are ejected, and orienting the ship accordingly. This was my normal mining experience.

Online this evening, not mining myself, but my friend is testing out his Panther II mining build and we're communicating over voice chat. His ship can deploy a total of 13 Collector limpets at a time - 5 less than mine (Type 9, not a Panther II) - however, his limpets are collecting and delivering stuff back to the ship in record time. From us chatting live, testing this specifically, with 13 Collector Limpets deployed, he's measuring a little over 10 seconds before ALL fragments are collected and delivered to the ship after the asteroid is depleted.

To break it down, he has 13 Collector Limpets deployed before he starts firing. He then starts laser mining a prospected asteroid with three C2 Mining Lasers. Once the asteroid is depleted - which takes around 15-16 seconds, only 10 seconds or so (13 is the max he counted) after that pass before ALL fragments are delivered back to the ship.

So, his collector limpets are working MANY times faster than mine traditionally would. Bare in mind that I've done a LOT of laser mining. Indeed, it was that that contributed the bulk of the funds to buy a Fleet Carrier back in the day. So, I've done my time out in the fields, so to speak. I'd prospect an asteroid, shoot it, then sit there waiting for collections to complete. I'd be waiting at least twice as long again as it took me to deplete the asteroid, for all fragments to be collected and delivered.

I was wondering, with FDev obviously knowing the Type 11 "Miner" was incoming, they've been refining Collector Limpets to work MUCH better.

 

[Stealthie]

Have you seen collectors "orbiting" your cargo scoop yet?
AFAIK, that was the most recent "official" change, which occured a few months ago.

I dunno, though.
I recall my limpets used to have a habit of deciding to collect something 7.5km away and then expiring.
I've noticed, recently, they seem a bit better at finding their way back without me having to round them up.
Maybe there's been unofficial tweaks to their AI?

 

[aardappelianen]

I always like your big wordy posts, they remind me of my early days playing this game.
I should stop drinking and go to bed now.
2 More days to go

 

[Scoob]

Have you seen collectors "orbiting" your cargo scoop yet?
AFAIK, that was the most recent "official" change, which occured a few months ago.

I dunno, though.
I recall my limpets used to have a habit of deciding to collect something 7.5km away and then expiring.
I've noticed, recently, they seem a bit better at finding their way back without me having to round them up.
Maybe there's been unofficial tweaks to their AI?

Yes. Last time I was playing for a bit the "orbiting" collectors was the new thing, and I observed they died less from hitting asteroids. I've not played much this year though.

I'd often have limpets chasing down things that'd perhaps drifted a little too far away - they never had the intelligence to know they'd gone too far.

Now, I've not directly experienced this faster collection behaviour myself, but I was voice chatting to my friend and we were timing things. His mining experience was vastly different to the last time I mined, in terms of collection time.

I always like your big wordy posts, they remind me of my early days playing this game.
I should stop drinking and go to bed now.
2 More days to go

Thanks I tend to waffle a bit, and I'm a bit tired so I do worry that I'm not making sense lol.

Heh, I only stayed up this late cos I was still chatting to a friend after exiting the game myself. Keeping him company until he managed to dock safely. His mining experience is still quite remarkable vs. my own though. I might take my own miner out tomorrow if I get the chance and see if my own limpets are equally performant.

Thought: I wonder if something about the Panther II allows Collector Limpets to work so well? I last mined in a Type 9...

 

[CMDR_UKmouse]

I can't see anywhere of you mentioning what level and type of limpet controller you and your friend use.
A 7A collector limpets are much faster than a 7A universal controller limpets (although the universal will have more limpets out).
Can you please confirm.

 

[CMDR Rethalis]

I have been hanging around compromised nav beacons recently my collector limpets seem to function just fine as a long as I am not moving backward.

moving forward, no problems.

 

[Kira Goto]

I don’t believe any listed changes have been made to limpets recently, but there was one patch which supposedly improved their collision avoidance… although I cannot remember when or which one that was exactly.

 

[Scoob]

I can't see anywhere of you mentioning what level and type of limpet controller you and your friend use.
A 7A collector limpets are much faster than a 7A universal controller limpets (although the universal will have more limpets out).
Can you please confirm.

He has one 7A Multi and two 5A Collector controllers, that's 8 + 3 + 3 Limpets in total, but of that he has at least one deployed Prospector Limpet at a time, with no more than 13 Collectors actively deployed at one time. My Type 9 has one 7A Multi, a regular 7A, a 5A and a couple of 3A - I'll need to get back in-game to double check that. I did tweak the loadout last time I was mining, so I might be remembering wrong. Whatever the Limpet Controller configuration, I could deploy 18 collector limpets at one time.

I have been hanging around compromised nav beacons recently my collector limpets seem to function just fine as a long as I am not moving backward.

moving forward, no problems.

Mine have generally worked fine, they're just slow. His are collecting and delivering fragments several times faster than mine were last time I mined. We've both mined a lot over the years and he is also stunned by how quickly collections are taking place.

I don’t believe any listed changes have been made to limpets recently, but there was one patch which supposedly improved their collision avoidance… although I cannot remember when or which one that was exactly.

Yeah, I was aware of that one, as I observed the results of it when I was mining earlier this year. This is when the "orbiting" behaviour was introduced too. This super rapid collection though is new. I'm not refitting my Panther II for mining to test this, but I might test it in my Type 9.

Regardless, what was typically a collection time of a minute or more, after the asteroid is depleted, is now around 10 seconds. 5-6x the collection speed. This is a major improvement. I'd spend so much time just waiting for collections to complete. My friend was not. He could mine an asteroid and he's done 10 seconds after it's depleted, with all fragments collected and delivered. This could quite literally HALF my time mining, if it proves consistent.

My friend was mining pretty much the entire time we were chatting last night, so, as per my prior post, we were timing things. Bottom line, his 13 active collector limpets were massively out-performing my 18 collector limpets by a crazy amount. Caveat: just to reiterate that I'm going off my prior mining experience, I've not mined in several months. He however was mining "live" last night of course.

 

[Stealthie]

My friend was mining pretty much the entire time we were chatting last night, so, as per my prior post, we were timing things. Bottom line, his 13 active collector limpets were massively out-performing my 18 collector limpets by a crazy amount. Caveat: just to reiterate that I'm going off my prior mining experience, I've not mined in several months. He however was mining "live" last night of course.

It's not just something as simple as your friend was mining non-spinning 'roids, which allows the fragments to form a nice, orderly, queue for collection?


Thinking about it a bit more....

Recently I've been running a bit low on all mat's.
For the most recent combat CG, the only reliable places to find criminal ships were a couple of RESs that regularly spawned single fed' ships or the odd iClipper so it wasn't exactly challenging.
To make the best of it I took my Corvette out, loaded up with limpets, and just sat still in the RES, exploded the criminal ships as they approached and the hoovered up the mat's.

I noticed regularly that there's be times when a couple of my collectors would be fetching mat's while the other two would be sitting around, orbiting my ship.
I know it wasn't cos a couple of the collectors had picked something up that they couldn't deliver, 'cos none of my mat's got filled all the way up, and I know it wasn't cos the mat's were out of range, 'cos eventually the functional limpets would hoover everything up.
Also, I noticed that sometimes (often when there was a lot of stuff to collect) my collectors would scoot off, intercept something and then sit there for 30-odd seconds before they'd start on the return journey.

AFAIK, these are both known issues and one suggested solution is to transfer your limpet controller into storage and then refit it to your ship.
Tried that a couple of times and, subjectively, it seemed to make a temporary difference but sooner or later I'd see the same issues happening again.

I dunno.
Maybe it's just normal, slightly oddball, limpet behaviour or maybe it's still the remnants of the recent "ownership" bugs?

One thing I did was try replacing my 7A collector controller with a 7A universal controller and I gotta say that I didn't notice that one was more reliable than the other or outperformed the other (aside, obviously, from one allowing the use of more limpets).

 

[nemolomen]

Hey all,

Last time I went mining was several months ago, early this year. At the time, I noticed that my collectors were colliding with asteroids far less often than perhaps they had in the more distant past. This was good, I could see improvements had been made over time. However, I'd typically spend three times as long waiting for my Limpets to collect all fragments vs. the time it takes to deplete the asteroid. So, not real numbers but, if I depleted an asteroid in say 20 seconds, with 18 Collectors already deployed, it'd be another minute at least before all fragments were collected and dropped off at the ship. This is while being good with positioning, taking note of the direction the fragments are ejected, and orienting the ship accordingly. This was my normal mining experience.

Online this evening, not mining myself, but my friend is testing out his Panther II mining build and we're communicating over voice chat. His ship can deploy a total of 13 Collector limpets at a time - 5 less than mine (Type 9, not a Panther II) - however, his limpets are collecting and delivering stuff back to the ship in record time. From us chatting live, testing this specifically, with 13 Collector Limpets deployed, he's measuring a little over 10 seconds before ALL fragments are collected and delivered to the ship after the asteroid is depleted.

To break it down, he has 13 Collector Limpets deployed before he starts firing. He then starts laser mining a prospected asteroid with three C2 Mining Lasers. Once the asteroid is depleted - which takes around 15-16 seconds, only 10 seconds or so (13 is the max he counted) after that pass before ALL fragments are delivered back to the ship.

So, his collector limpets are working MANY times faster than mine traditionally would. Bare in mind that I've done a LOT of laser mining. Indeed, it was that that contributed the bulk of the funds to buy a Fleet Carrier back in the day. So, I've done my time out in the fields, so to speak. I'd prospect an asteroid, shoot it, then sit there waiting for collections to complete. I'd be waiting at least twice as long again as it took me to deplete the asteroid, for all fragments to be collected and delivered.

I was wondering, with FDev obviously knowing the Type 11 "Miner" was incoming, they've been refining Collector Limpets to work MUCH better.

It was a change introduced in the release of System Colonisation, v4.1.0.0:

Elite Dangerous: Trailblazers – Available Now - Elite Dangerous

Expand the Bubble in the Elite Dangerous: Trailblazers update. With the brand-new System Colonisation mechanic launching into Beta, the power to claim...

www.elitedangerous.com

From there:

Issue ID 67049: https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/67049

IIRC, it was to fix a bug introduced in an earlier release...possibly PP2.0 Release (Ascendancy: https://www.elitedangerous.com/upda...medium=community&utm_campaign=ed_trailblazers) just two days earlier...

 

[Scoob]

I just popped in-game to test myself.

Time to deplete a typical Asteroid: 26 - 30 seconds with 3x C2 Mining Lasers
Time until all fragments to be collected and returned to the ship: 63 - 70 seconds
Limpets were already launched at 0 seconds.

So, I am seeing a slightly faster collection speed, but not even close to what my friend is seeing. He's using the same 3x C2 Mining Lasers, and LESS limpets.

Is this some magic of the Panther II? I'm in a type 9, he's in a Panther II - that's the most obvious difference between us.

It's ONLY my friend's recent mining experience that's remarkable, mine is pretty much the same.

Edit: I've edited the numbers to show what range of times it's taken, now I've mined dozens of asteroids. There is variance ~5 seconds in how long it takes to deplete an asteroid with 3x C2 Mining Lasers. There's also a slight variance in total time with collections. Collection time is still no where near the time it takes my friend. Something isn't quite right here, I'm going to speak to him later.

Note: I know he's prospecting an asteroid, but I wonder if the prospector is still in place when he mines? That'd half the yield (IIRC) thus half both mining and collection times with less (half) the number of fragments to be collected.

 

[Scoob]

Have done some more testing on this with my friend. With lots of asteroid depletion and collections timed, he can generally deplete an asteroid in about 55-60% of the time it takes me, so significantly faster. He can also collect all fragments in about 60% of the time. We're BOTH using 3x C2 Mining Lasers, but I deploy slightly more Collector Limpets than me.

My longest time from starting to shoot the asteroid to having all fragments collected is about 70 seconds. That's with me orienting the ship for optimal Limpet flight path. My friend just time a complete start shooting to all fragments collected in a little over TWENTY SECONDS.

I'm flying a Type 9, he's flying a Panther II. The difference is VAST. What's going on?

Note: we confirmed (sanity check) that the asteroid is Prospected, as are the ones I'm targetting of course. Has the Panther II been given some sort of bonus, perhaps intended for the Type 11 when it comes out?

Regardless, my friend's 3x C3 Mining lasers work MUCH faster than mine, and his Collector Limpets collect and deliver fragments MUCH faster than mine. It's a night and day difference.

 

[Neilski]

My longest time from starting to shoot the asteroid to having all fragments collected is about 70 seconds.

Your shortest time (or at least the mean) would probably make more sense for this comparison, no?

 

[Stealthie]

Are you seeing a neat stream of fragments drifting away from the 'roid when you mine it?

When the fragments emerge like that it's a lot quicker for collectors to hoover them up, compared to if the fragments scatter.

If a 'roid is stationary, or if you shoot the axis of rotation, you're less likely to get fragments scattering.
Also (more related to the T9 vs the PC2), hardpoint placement, and weapon convergence, can have a significant impact on how neatly fragments emerge,
If you're both similar distances from the 'roid, it's possible the T9's weapons aren't converging and you're getting multiple streams of fragments emerging, which'll take longer to hoover up.
Conversely, depending on which hardpoints the mining lasers are in, the PC2 might be getting better convergence and, thus a neater stream of fragments for the collectors to hoover up.

FDev will have had these ships in development for months so it's highly unlikely that they've given the PC2 some kind of hidden mining-buff, knowing that the next ship they release is the T11 Prospector.

If the PC2 does have some advantage, my bet would be it's related to either hardpoint placement or cargo scoop placement.