MINING after new update

[Meechie1]

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.

its even better when you go into a void opal hotspot and find 0 void opal cores after 3 hours. I found a ton of bromellite, LTD and other cores... but not a single VO core. much fun,.... so excitement..

 

[Darth Ender]

but surely, Fdev would have created a purpose and viable reason for other commodities to exist and for users to mine them and sell them - if not for the credits then for the other economic reasons such as being needed for a given station to produce what it produces and thus keep the intersystem economy moving. Thus allowing your time spent looking for void opals to not be wasted as you acquired plenty of other useful things in the search.

What? Fdev hasn't done any of that and the only commodies worth caring about are the top 5 or so that are worth the most credits at a given time (with the exception of tritium which is the fuel commodity for carriers). I'm shocked.

 

[gruzuk]

This is such a big sad. :C I just want to have fun and enjoyable mechanics. When I want to mine, I want to actually MINE. Not fiddle with buggy scanners, or flying around for 10+ mins trying to find a decent rock.

 

[Stiopa]

I've been doing both laser and core mining in December, and it works just fine for the intents and purposes of a laid-back, pleasure-focused gaming. Then again, I don't need to absolutely buy FC next week, so mining for 2-2.5h and getting between 75-100mln out of it is fine by me.

 

[GraphiteGB]

Mapped mining has passed the 1000 Tons per hour in collection multi times now...
Multi users on reddit have broken the fill a 512ton cutter in <30 min window...

Thats ~140mill worth of platinum in ~30mins... but you can only do that once every 3 hours...

 

[microwar]

What is the point of using a pulse wave, when i probe a glowing rock in a low temperature diamond hotspot, and it only has low content of water, but the not gloing rock next to it has diamonds? Also i keep hearing the prospector drones still playing the engine sound long after they done their job.

 

[GraphiteGB]

What is the point of using a pulse wave, when i probe a glowing rock in a low temperature diamond hotspot, and it only has low content of water, but the not gloing rock next to it has diamonds? Also i keep hearing the prospector drones still playing the engine sound long after they done their job.

The point is that at High range and long distance That it Shows A rock with a chance of the rock being MORE than laser mining...
PWA is not needed for or used for laser mining...
As you get closer you are to use player skill To see if the brightness and surface is showing Sub surface or Surface items only...
Or if the rock is the correct shape for the ring type to contain cores. wrong shape will result in ZERO cores...
With out the PWA you have ZERO chance to find any thing as the non laser items do not show untill just meters from a rock and your ship lights may randomly highlight some thing on rock but thats luck only..
PWA confirms rock type supports more than laser mining buy Bright rock return... It does not insure material type and As ICE rings generation was nuked in July 2020 no body goes there for any thing but tritium laser and SSD mining... as LTD and VO demand amd price was nuked in Nov 2020...
Rocky rings is were core mining is now done as booby prize cores of rocky rings are worth the most over the other rings...
The PWA is not an instant win device... Its a combine brightness of signal return and shape of rock while flying fast = instant win device...
You still have to learn to use it...

 

[Tormentor89]

Can somebody explain why FDevs like to do it? To destroy the fun, to make it more boring, even without info?
Some days before Patch5 I enjoyed mining - found info (Reddit) about very rich icy ring, 44 hotspots, lot of overlaps, VO, LTD, Tritium etc. I just entered there, between
this overlapping hotspots and enjoyed mining - everywhere around yellow rocks, many Tritium SSDs, often VO and LTD cores etc. It was fun to use all the mining tools,
always changing. It was not about credits, I have enough, it was about pleasure. I collected Tritium for my FC, Bromelitte for missions in Jameson Memorial, also collected
Samarium, Osmium, Praseodymium (in metallic, metal-rich rings) for missions, and by the way, Opals and Diamonds.
Now, I can continue to do it, but 5 times slower, and needless to say - very boring. To drive around 10 - 15 mins doing nothing, using pulse wave for nothing.
I would agree immediately to change mining into something more difficult, more challenging. But to change the game into more boring?
And it's not the first time. In perfidious way - to not inform us about this changes. Isn't it offensive? Obviously they enjoy it!

Because Fdev's idea of "fun gameplay" is making every gameplay loop as grindy as possible.

 

[Dragsham]

The pwa works best when you know how to use it.
It's mainly for deep core spotting. Leastways for me. But l use it also because it points out rocks of interest which naturally when you fire a A rated prospector at, reveals its contents.
Anyways my question is, are triple or double hotspots still yielding more surface & subsurface than a single ?

 

[Dragsham]

Oh must use a prospector limpet on any rock before commencing mining on it...because it increases the yield hence using A rated only.
Not sure if this applies to yield of a deep core. But certainly all other types yes

 

[St0rmFury]

Not sure if this applies to yield of a deep core. But certainly all other types yes

It doesn't, but you kinda have to prospect it anyway or you won't be able to target fissures effectively.

 

[Dragsham]

Yes laser mining isn't interesting unlike deep core.
Seen as both are now nerfed don't matter about hourly rate hehe...I haven't mined since borann days.
So it's good to keep abreast of any subtle changes to how one does it

 

[St0rmFury]

However, I have not yet investigated to what extent class and rating have an impact on the result.

From a quick search:

A-rated: 3.5x
B-rated: 3.0x
C-rated: 2.5x
D-rated: 2.0x
E-rated: 1.5x

Class doesn't affect the multiplier, only lets you fire more limpets.

 

[Northpin]

Yes, exactly. However, I have not yet investigated to what extent class and rating have an impact on the result. It might sound strange, but I've only recently started doing laser mining a little more often. I almost exclusively do SSD and core mining. I still consider laser mining as Coma mining . So I'm still a beginner in the latter.

Rating of the prospector is dictating how many fragments an asteroid will release
As seen below.

From a quick search:

A-rated: 3.5x
B-rated: 3.0x
C-rated: 2.5x
D-rated: 2.0x
E-rated: 1.5x

Class doesn't affect the multiplier, only lets you fire more limpets.

The number of fragments also depend where you are mining. Pristine rings DO matter. And mining in a Res site also matters.
So the best number of fragments one can get happens in a Haz res, in a Pristine ring using an A-rated prospector
Sure, that's valid only for laser mining.

 

[Northpin]

Also overlapping spots were massively nerved at some point. The last time I had two overlapping Tritium spots I didn't see any difference.

Yes, indeed.
Now an overlap is good only if it's an almost perfect overlap - else whatever benefits the overlap used to bring are decaying to zero really really fast.
Basically if the overlap does not happen in the first 10% from center, it's not worthy. You'd get better results mining somewhere near the center of one of the hotspot than in the center of the overlap area.
Also the results seem to vary alot between rings - as in: not all rings are the same. Some rings can be as good or even better than a triple overlap

 

[Northpin]

Thanks for the tip. I could never quite believe it, but now I think I'll have a new project once I'm back in the bubble. And that's exactly what I designed my mining Vette for. Time to dust off this fine ship.

Mining in a pristine ring, in a haz res (well, outer part area between 15-20km) will yield lots and lots of fragments. However, if a rock is farther than 20km from the center, it will lose the haz res bonus

 

[Northpin]

But this statement makes me wonder. I never found a significant difference between center and say 1 or 2 Mm away from the center. If there is a difference at all, I doubt it is significant. Or maybe Tritium hotspots are actually differently seeded than any other stuff...

Iirc it's a percentage. If the hotspot is big enough, 2 Mm might still be within the inner 10%

 

[Spike K]

Those shots are great and tell a goodly chunk of the days tale.
I still enjoy relogging on a 5-7 node Core Deposit and Sub-surface mine drilling for hours on end.
\\///
Oo
Spike.k

 

[Northpin]

I'm trying to confirm this statement (sorry, but I'm a notorious disbeliever) but so far I can't. If it ever was true, it is not anymore. All assuming that Tritium hotspots are not fundamentally different as any other hotspot. Of course I don't expect you to believe me, but be invited to check it out for yourself. Here a few incitations (all shots were taken in 11.2 Mm away from the hotspot center)

The screenshots are not telling much of a story.
You can mine outside of the hotspot and still find rocks with decent percentage and still fill a cargo hold (albeit at a slower rate than in a hotspot)

A hotspot will increase the yield compared to the non-hotspot area, presumably the increase is better closer to the center and smaller and smaller as you get farther from the center.
But the yield will not get down to 0, it will get down to the level you'd get while mining outside of the hotspot

If you want to check the yield you need to use the mining analyzer and see how much you get from a hotspot within 10% of the center and how much you get from the same hotspot when mining 50% away from the center and how much you get from the same ring, but outside of the hotspot (not all rings are the same, some are way better than others)

However, i would assume this is rather academic since you're not in a mining competition and you do mine whatever you need for the next jump and you do it at your own pace.

Edit:
Also, distances in MM are not telling much of a story when we dont know how big is the hotspot
For example: system 63 G. Antlia, ring C10A. The ring is listed at about 160,000 km. Based on this screenshot i'd say the hotspot is spreading over about half the ring so about 80,000 km.
11.2Mm would mean about 14% from the center of the hotspot.

 

[Judz]

All this sounds like my deep core mining or SD/SSD mining, always poor, nothing ever comes up and always a waste of time. I gave it up as a bad effort.