Why bother with Pulse Scanner ? Aside for its insane power draw, I found using Prospector limpets far, far better - just take the bigger module ( the one who allow you 4 of them alive at once) and "spit" prospectors at all rocks ! The painite is so generous offered now, you get at least 1 decent rock of each 4-5 Prospectors hits and a very nice one for each dozen or less. Hell, so many times I got 2-3 rocks with 10%-51% for each "salvo" of 4 Prospectors in simple hot spots, that only thinking at Pulse Wave make me laugh !
MINING after new update
- Thread starter Cold Soul
- Start date
S'funny, I've just been playing ED for the first time in a while (20 weeks, apparently) so I thought I'd spend a bit of time mining, just to get my feet wet again.
Spent a night DC mining, a night LTD mining and a night Painite mining.
Both DC mining and LTD mining were a bit of a non-starter.
Kept finding garbage in the alleged VO hotspots and only small amounts of LTDs, even in overlapping hotspots.
Laser-mining, for Painite, was the only thing that went as expected.
Thing is, FDev seem to have dealt with this in exactly the opposite way to how I would have done it.
Simply making stuff harder to find just makes the activity boring, frustrating and, ultimately, players will stop doing it.
When you go mining you want to MINE stuff.
You don't want to spend two hours flying around, finding almost nothing.
If anything needs changing, it's either the value of the stuff we mine or, perhaps, the risk that's involved and NOT the frequency stuff appears.
Deleted member 38366
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For pure Painite Laser Mining, sure, one could do that.
My Mining Rigs however are all-rounders and not specialized on Painite Laser Mining.
I intentionally used the PWS in the Metallic Ring to see if the different location (non-Icy) was affected by the same issue - which it is.
That's the point. Thanks Stealthie.
Deleted member 38366
D
Yep, exactly.
Before the Patch, one could find i.e. LTDs in Cores, Asteroid Content, SDs and SSDs - which made good use of all Mining Tools and kept you busy what you came there for : Mining.
Painite was golden on Laser strip Mining and the occasional Core, it only lacked & lacks the SD/SSD variation properly added to the mix (those are almost non-existing); the Laser Mining yields make up for it though.
But now, post-patch... it's back to an issue I described a longer time ago as "endlessly traveling through the Asteroid Rings and pinging around like a lost Submarine".
Floating around for an hour finding next to nothing - or dud after dud - while having duct tape wrapped around the Fire Button for the PWS isn't a positive Mining Experience, especially not when combined with senselessly flying over 500+km.
I think the thing for me is if I go mining in a hotspot I should find a reasonable amount of the mention stuff there, doesn't have to be crazy but it should be notably better yields and be pretty obviously present.
If they want to go and make the criteria for this more convoluted and add additional layers of information about what to find where, fine, at least I can do the work and find the right spot then start mining with a justified expectation I'll find what I'm looking for. At the moment it feels like I should be expecting to find X at spots where X is indicated but that doesn't seem to be the case much of the time.
I think one thing - easy and fast to implement - that the game lacks more than anything now, is not the changes on mining ( nerf one buff other, one always manage to find a way to make credits, is not a game breaker issue, imho) - when I was a fresh newbie I was scared of mining ( after some pathetic runs in a Sidewinder lol ), and I made my first hundred of millions in tritium runs, with the fat lady T9, on that time when you could get loops of 30-40 millions / run.
That was nerfed, so I was forced to learn mining - missions or/and kills are a joke when it comes to real credits. But also I learned the variation in prices - today you can sell painite / VO / etc at 900k - 1 million / unit in a Large station, right at your door steps, tomorrow you may need to travel 500yl to a medium outpost for 600k at best.
So, what I wish more than anything to get implemented here is a way to rent/own storing space ; I will happy pay 100k or more / week for a place where I could store, lets say, at least 1000 tons of cargo.
Nerf the mining, nerf the trade, but if we are allowed to use storage space the game could gain a bigger "fun dimension", since you could make reserves of several types of items and fulfill missions differently ways... Introduce some variables, like a stock market, with prices going up/down each day function of wars, expansion, etc and make those variations a daily change, so painite can be 1 million today, but when all players go for, tomorrow the price could drop at 100k, and other minerals may gain a 10x value, so the peoples must search for different things each day...
That could add a greater dynamic to the game, aside for combat and boring painite mining... Hurts my soul to dump so many minerals because my refinery is set to ignore all but painite, and a ring is full of so many great minerals/metals...
That was nerfed, so I was forced to learn mining - missions or/and kills are a joke when it comes to real credits. But also I learned the variation in prices - today you can sell painite / VO / etc at 900k - 1 million / unit in a Large station, right at your door steps, tomorrow you may need to travel 500yl to a medium outpost for 600k at best.
So, what I wish more than anything to get implemented here is a way to rent/own storing space ; I will happy pay 100k or more / week for a place where I could store, lets say, at least 1000 tons of cargo.
Nerf the mining, nerf the trade, but if we are allowed to use storage space the game could gain a bigger "fun dimension", since you could make reserves of several types of items and fulfill missions differently ways... Introduce some variables, like a stock market, with prices going up/down each day function of wars, expansion, etc and make those variations a daily change, so painite can be 1 million today, but when all players go for, tomorrow the price could drop at 100k, and other minerals may gain a 10x value, so the peoples must search for different things each day...
That could add a greater dynamic to the game, aside for combat and boring painite mining... Hurts my soul to dump so many minerals because my refinery is set to ignore all but painite, and a ring is full of so many great minerals/metals...
Here's a wacky thought...
Maybe what they need to do is increase the value of the stuff we go mining for?
Here's how I'd fix mining....
Firstly, I'd take the three most valuable things from Metallic rings and Icy rings and set them aside.
Then I'd adjust the prices of various other ores (maybe five different kinds in each type of ring) so they're worth between, say, Cr100k and Cr250k.
I'd then set the game up so there are NO hotspots for the three most valuable things (the things we set aside) in each type of ring system.
I'd also increase the yield from each 'roid so laser mining would generate more fragments and DC mining would yield more ore.
Finally, I'd massively increase the value of the top three things in each type of ring and I'd set them up as rare,random spawns within the appropriate ring.
The result of all this would be that you'd choose to go mining for, say, platinum or gold (no more painite hotspots, remember) and you'd earn, say, Cr60m for 256t of it but it wouldn't take you as long because the yields would be higher and, also as a result of yields being higher, if you did stumble across a couple of Painite/VO/LTD/etc 'roid you'd get a substantial boost to your income.
Basically, set it up so that it's worth going mining for the expected income, without being stupidly OP, and then stumbling across things like Painite, VOs and LTDs would be a significant bonus.
Maybe what they need to do is increase the value of the stuff we go mining for?
Here's how I'd fix mining....
Firstly, I'd take the three most valuable things from Metallic rings and Icy rings and set them aside.
Then I'd adjust the prices of various other ores (maybe five different kinds in each type of ring) so they're worth between, say, Cr100k and Cr250k.
I'd then set the game up so there are NO hotspots for the three most valuable things (the things we set aside) in each type of ring system.
I'd also increase the yield from each 'roid so laser mining would generate more fragments and DC mining would yield more ore.
Finally, I'd massively increase the value of the top three things in each type of ring and I'd set them up as rare,random spawns within the appropriate ring.
The result of all this would be that you'd choose to go mining for, say, platinum or gold (no more painite hotspots, remember) and you'd earn, say, Cr60m for 256t of it but it wouldn't take you as long because the yields would be higher and, also as a result of yields being higher, if you did stumble across a couple of Painite/VO/LTD/etc 'roid you'd get a substantial boost to your income.
Basically, set it up so that it's worth going mining for the expected income, without being stupidly OP, and then stumbling across things like Painite, VOs and LTDs would be a significant bonus.
I go for palladium once ( mission request) , lost 2h to gather, then I run in a Painite sweet spot. Fraking dropped all my palladium load, filled my bay instead with painite; mission reward was 2 millions. Lost that... Sold the painite for 320 millions. Guess was a better deal.
Hey, if there were a way to make mining actually cause a loss, like, maybe old school Cemiess pricing then we'd be inline with smugglingExcellent - balance is restored*
* Cue jmanis turning up to talk about smuggling
Back to the original topic: yesterday's update has changed the way that the Visual Overlay (orange-yellow-red) for the Pulse Wave Mechanic is loaded in.
I wish I could be more specific. The wait time for the PWA effect to actually work has increased from 0 seconds after jump-in, to about 30-50 seconds.
Please adjust your methods accordingly until we can get a patch, or workaround for this.
It may just get fixed with a stealth-server side implementation, but who knows what THAT will break. Right? lolz
Now, the conversion about the overall changes to mining made in july can continue, with this new info in mind.
Good luck to you, and your squad, OP Cmdr.
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Oo
Spike.k
Without regurgitating what I'd usually suggest, I really, really think FD thought people would just go out and mine whatever rock was in front of them, moving through and basically coming back with a hold of:
- Mostly Cheap stuff
- A substantial portion of middling stuff, and
- A small handful (maybe just a single core's worth) of the high end stuff.
And if that was the way mining worked, it'd be great, and then the values tagged to the "high end" minerals would actually make sense.
But with hotspot mechanics the way they are, and core minerals actually more common than the basics, ugh, water should be worth more than core minerals these days.
While I agree in sorts, the problem is still general availability of ores. It's all well and good to tweak the intent to be for platinum or gold... the problem is still the otherwise equal availability of more expensive ores (gold, plat), compared to cheaper ones (water, methane clathrates[1]).
I argue there should be two main mechanics:
- Go out with the express intent of rapidly bulk-harvesting cheaper materials, no more than 1-2k credits per tonne, but literally being able to fill your hold in seconds/low minutes.
- Go out with the express intent of rapidly surveying many asteroids as quickly as possible, looking for those high-end minerals.
I mean... there's no argument against being able to suck up a cutter full of, say, Methane Clathrates within seconds in the current game mechanics. Once you factor in travel time, at just 1.4m per load, it really doesn't compare to any of the core mining. Yet currently, gathering Methane Clathrates is done at a similar rate to any of the core minerals, so you might be lucky to get 100 (that's what, 200k) in an hour's effort. That's so dumb. If you factor in missions, that cutterload of clathrates might be able to be turned into 10-20 million, if you stacked twenty missions all for a single particular ore (which is no mean feat!), and would probably need an hour of board refreshes. That still doesn't come close to painite/core mining in the current game.
That's really the crux of this issue; Common, low value materials are way too rare and inaccessible, and valuable materials are, by contrast, way too common and accessible. That needs to be flipped.
In other words, an hour of effort should see you returning dozens of full cutterloads of clathrates or other low-end materials, two or three cutterloads of gold/plat, or a single Cobra III worth of LTDs/Painite/VO
(it's worth noting, that Cobra III still trumps the other activities in terms of earning.
EDIT: Oh, and the stateful pricing should be totally ditched, and instead should only be available through missions... i.e LTDs are never worth more than 100k at most, but in Investment states, you might see missions for 2-3t of LTDs rewarding 3-5m
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Yep, that could work.
I get the impression that to some extent the idea of things like VOs being bonus stuff you occasionally get was perhaps the original idea - just got a bit out of hand.
If we wanted to get more complicated perhaps a more extensive overhaul with greater per ring mapping opportunities with more information about what to expect where within a ring including a fairly clear indication of the sorts of material distribution we should expect. Could perhaps achieve this with a large increase in the number, size and type(?) of hotspots combined with a base distribution within the ring. Base distribution could be indicated somehow with location specific variations either indicated per hotspot center or more generally.. Extra colour coding based on hotspot type*? Perhaps update the pulsewave scanner to do a bit more and be more informative? And/or add other tools to help you find materials you want? I don't mind more information, more tools and the need to put in a bit of effort but I do like all those things to work
* Colour coding is interesting, this is useful but it can really mess up anyone who has colourblindness issues, really need to be mindful of this.
Buffing values of infinitely available things and reducing the effort/time needed to get those valuable commodities doesn't fix mining.
The only thing that can fix mining is to make absolutely everything you can mine valuable but not necessarily in monetary ways.
You need to implement a player dependent fixed resource and production economy. Where things that a player needs or things that the BGS needs to change certain states requires a certain amount of resources to be delivered by players before those things can be produced or triggered. Bonus if there are intermediary resources created by delivering resources to certain stations that are then needed by other stations to achieve the goal of producing something the player needs or the BGS needs.
Then suddenly, there is purpose to all but the most valuable commodities. There is purpose to mining and not simply acquiring the most valuable 1 or 2 commodities to get paid. Your efforts even if you dont get rich off them, aren't wasted, and indeed, could be more valuable to you than the credit value (especially since so many players are already so rich).
I'd basically make all ship consumables (ammo, repair services, limpets, and fuel) require player activity to replenish and get used up by player activity on all stations. These services are "recharged" by providing the raw materials (or the products of lower level stations after giving them the raw materials) needed via mining / trading and they get used up by the station on a weekly basis. Surplus items enter the commodity market where traders can try and make a buck moving them to other stations that need it still or leaving it to be consumed at a later cycle potentially.
If a station doesn't have activity by players to replenish used resources (and the resources only get used by players using them) then those services are shutdown.
That's really the only way to improve mining beyond simply making it a pointless mechanic. You have to create a reason why we have all of these commodities, and give players a reason to collect them. It's a game design flaw to make only a couple worth caring about and players have been suffering due to that flaw from day 1. We have to get away from credits being the only measure of things.
This is called fleet carrier
Without any modules installed and not jumping it will be less then 6 mil / week. With 5 modules installed but paused (unpause only for own use) it will be 8 mil / weekThat will make FC users feel more pain
They will have to upload all mats solo then, not only tritium.But idea is cool.
That will make FC users feel more pain
But idea is cool.
FC users should not think that they can avoid being a jack of all trades if they're rocking a mobile station. Gathering the supplies for 1 player's use of those consumables wont be a big deal. Players that offer services to others can depend on others to resupply.
I see no issue there. In most cases, these would be things you'd pick up while looking for tritium or other valuable commodities anyway.
Well, system already is there - synthesis. However it uses raw mats. So 1 T of mined ore could do many different materials.
So it could be steps:
1. any production/fixes/resupply in game aligned down to raw materials use production.
2. normal ships require additional "examples" like "manufactured materials". Stations / fc do not need it.
3. station / fc may have additional service - break mined into raw materials and give it back to player
Nice idea and cleans all mess to have 2 systems - like materials and commodities. Could get rid of it. Also to keep station working you need to supply mined mats or collected raw mats.
I think they want the overall number of carriers decreasing, the sheer number of them atm is causing problems and they think by hitting the highest payout areas will hopefully make people sell their carriers due to not being able to afford them