I tried some mining recently as I've not done it before and it's good to try everything at least once. But came away really deflated by the experience and wondering whether the reward vs effort isn't balanced in the right way.
I have two pristine metal asteroid belts, rich with Silver which isn't too bad on the commodity market but mining was just too painfully slow.
Apart from chasing chunks of rock before they time out, the refinery aspect and netting only a %age of a single unit each time is such a bad gameplay mechanic. Or in reality, there's a real lack of gameplay to this part of ED. It shouldn't need to feel like such a chore for such little reward.
Before people jump on this, I'm not saying 'mining is broken', what I am suggesting is that the experience needs to be improved somehow for the player. People have suggested tractor beams and so forth to track the fragments into the cargo hold, fine. But I'd rather see the reward side dialled up a lot more in the first instance than introduce fancier elements. I think a lot more people would try it out over trading if they could get something better from it.
Anyway, back to hunting and trading I go, I'm hoping I can add mining to that list in the future.
I have two pristine metal asteroid belts, rich with Silver which isn't too bad on the commodity market but mining was just too painfully slow.
Apart from chasing chunks of rock before they time out, the refinery aspect and netting only a %age of a single unit each time is such a bad gameplay mechanic. Or in reality, there's a real lack of gameplay to this part of ED. It shouldn't need to feel like such a chore for such little reward.
Before people jump on this, I'm not saying 'mining is broken', what I am suggesting is that the experience needs to be improved somehow for the player. People have suggested tractor beams and so forth to track the fragments into the cargo hold, fine. But I'd rather see the reward side dialled up a lot more in the first instance than introduce fancier elements. I think a lot more people would try it out over trading if they could get something better from it.
Anyway, back to hunting and trading I go, I'm hoping I can add mining to that list in the future.
