Mining - Am I alone feeling it's unbalanced/not quite working?

[Annath]

The hotspots aren't even that relevant. You can drop out at any point in a ring and still make absurd amounts of credits from mother lodes even though they are rarer. Of course rings are huge structures of many times the surface of the Earth, so depletion shouldn't even be a big deal...


Those magic minerals need to be devalued drastically, there is no way around it. They shouldn't be much more valuable than painate or diamonds. Sub-surface mining could be made more profitable for larger ships by drastically increasing the number of chunks released from a rock instead of rasing their market values.

If FD is preparing us for carriers, magic minerals is a dysfunctional way of spreading more money. Actually this is a non-argument, because player wealth can be balanced much easier by amending asset prizes. The amount of time needed to get to carriers can be controlled better by simply prizing them sensibly.

Other factors that could be used to balance this shlt are for example higher insurance costs and higher fuel costs.

This is a terrible idea. If you don't want to have a high credit balance, then mine less or jettison cargo. Let those of us who enjoy having a lot of money continue to do so.

Other people making a lot of money has literally​ no in-game effect on you whatsoever.

 

[GeoJase]

Old-school mining isn't dead, its simply overshadowed by the profits attainable from core mining.

Sure, the peak prices for Opals is crazy high - but maybe that's a deliberate move by FD:

1. CMDRs have to travel a fair distance to sell Opals at peak prices. This gives opportunity for the pirates and other scoundrels to get involved in the "gold rush", thereby making gameplay more dynamic. You're making crazy profits, so be a community and play in Open to give those who like a different style of gameplay something to get excited about. (this is one reason I spend 95% of time in Open - not because I like combat, but to give those that do someone to chase)
2. Why do we need so many credits? Is something really really expensive coming in future (perhaps 2020 update). I imagine that everyone's complaints about over-the-top pricing will evaporate once they have the option to buy a capital ship (for 10 billion credits).

I really like the new mining mechanics, but agree with others that sub-surface features could be more frequent and contain target minerals (have encountered very rare LTDs and bromellite only).

Opals really expose the need for a more dynamic economy - surely we've mined and sold enough Opals that they hold lesser value by now...

 

[NeilF]

Old-school mining isn't dead, its simply overshadowed by the profits attainable from core mining.

Sure, the peak prices for Opals is crazy high - but maybe that's a deliberate move by FD:

1. CMDRs have to travel a fair distance to sell Opals at peak prices. This gives opportunity for the pirates and other scoundrels to get involved in the "gold rush", thereby making gameplay more dynamic. You're making crazy profits, so be a community and play in Open to give those who like a different style of gameplay something to get excited about. (this is one reason I spend 95% of time in Open - not because I like combat, but to give those that do someone to chase)
2. Why do we need so many credits? Is something really really expensive coming in future (perhaps 2020 update). I imagine that everyone's complaints about over-the-top pricing will evaporate once they have the option to buy a capital ship (for 10 billion credits).

I really like the new mining mechanics, but agree with others that sub-surface features could be more frequent and contain target minerals (have encountered very rare LTDs and bromellite only).

Opals really expose the need for a more dynamic economy - surely we've mined and sold enough Opals that they hold lesser value by now...

Yes, mining 2.0 needs a good solid 2.1 release to kick it into a far more sensible place.

As regards your first point about Opals forming some sort of gold rush with piracy, ED really doesn't offer the mechanics for that to work unfortunately. Now, if there were more involved OPEN on only CG mechanics on offer, with gold rush mechanics in the form of hotspots that could deplete more logically and meaningfully, then maybe, just maybe, we then start getting into some more interesting and meaningful gameplay along the lines of your suggestion.

But what FD have release in mining 2.0 IMHO hasn't been very well thought through (designed), so it's yet another example of a classic FD half-baked outcome.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Your post is assuming that the only thing interesting to mine is the most valuable selling core only commodity. Everything you suggest assumes that is the only option.

The balance and depth thats worth exploring as an individual is really down to:

- Core only for the highest possible reward with a real, non zero chance of failure and a compulsory periods of extended downtime

vs

- Painite (and low temp diamonds? at these laser mined also?) where the sell price is about 1/2 of the core materials but you get much more out of it, and the *experience* is completely different too.

Its not so much as a matter of "everything now has to be like and compared to this new one" as in here are two options, go pull each as far as you can to see which comes out on top.

While over one run, core mining works, if it is possible that you don't get any over a second run...

Me personally i can't stand all the waiting around for core mining. For reference, i didn't event attempt the last glitch passenger exploit (it really was kinda) because there's no way im going to keep board hopping for extreme rng luck for the extreme payouts. That's just not my style.

There's more into the mining mechanics than the basic starter tutorials to dig into, there's more to refine i suspect before throwing the ball back at frontier (not like they're in the building to even hear your post anyway).