Mining and drones still needs to be fixed

Pharoah

P
Issues:

A: Collector drone system
1. constant crashing into ship and exploding
2. launching drones and getting 'drone expired'...??
3. when you launch a 2nd drone (with the cargo hatch open), there's a glitch where your cargo hatch now shows as closed (ie. the light goes off)...and you get notified 'open cargo door' or something. Yet when you press the button, you'll get the verbal notification 'cargo door retracted' ie. it was open the whole time.

I went through 50 drones in about an hour. 50 drones. half of them worked as advertised (which is great) but the other half just exploded on launch.

B: We need a detailed surface scanner for asteroids. How can you have a detailed surface scanner for a massive planet...but yet not have one for a small asteriod? Save your prospector drones - they are a waste of time and literally money! Hell I'd pay 1.5m for a proper asteroid scanner - even if it just scans the asteroid in front of me.

The ED newsletter said that mining would now be really profitable...yet I'm in a pristine metallic belt and i'm still getting crappy returns (500k for 2 hrs work?)
 

ExRex

ExRex
1-3: file in the bug reporting forum. It is also already well known and hopefully FD will fix it soon.

@2: if you do not move your ship at all, the drones will not explode.
 

Sentiant

S
Hi there, sorry to hear of your mining woes. I use a cobra and pack only 10 drones for collecting in my 36 cargo space, i do find that once hole is full (approx 600k worth of ore and 1hr 15mins) i still have 1 or 2 drones left. It made me think something else might be at work here. Do you realize that they have a maximum working range, if you leave that they will blow up and if you are moving your ship much after deployment theres a good chance of a collision. I find what works well is finding a small cluster of roids say 4 or 5, check each one (dont use prospectors just blast 1 or 2 chunks and see what the target says it is) to make sure you got a few good ones, then send out your bots to collect and blast away at the good roids. Also if you mine the larger fast spinning roids your bots will blow up as they spin around into them. I just ignore the cargo hatch errors as they don't seem to matter at all. Also get rep in your sell station so you get the lovely missions, you can pick up a lot of creds once you have a good standing with the factions paying upwards of 200k for 1 or 2 pieces or ore.

Im on 10 hours of play since save wipe and i almost have enough money for a mining asp so i think thats pretty good.

Edit. Drone expired means it died some how, either ran out of time, or hit by something.
 
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Space Sniper

S
Yeah, my mining experience was pretty much the same, took me two hrs to collect 2 palladium and 1 silver and I went through 15 drones. Made just over 40,000 or there abouts. The drones are more annoying then trying to collect through the cargo scoop. I just gave up after that.

I also made sure that I didn't move when I sent out the drones, some would run for a few minutes before expiring, then the next one, at the same distance, would just fly to the ore, then as its about to pick it up, it would expire, then I would launch the next one, it would pick it up, then start to fly back and then expire. It was really random. Also why do the drones need to have such short life expectancy, its pretty lame

I am not sure how you guys are mining but I don't see how the heck you guys are making any money off it.
 

Pharoah

P
Put it this way:

1. Mining - took me about 2 hours and approx 50 drones to get approx 400k in $$ out of mining. Thats primarily gold, silver, osmodium (or whatever its called) ie the expensive stuff but not painite, etc. I had a 170T Clipper.
2. Trading - I made approx 2m in credits in about 1 hour from trading...I downscaled so that I could go 15T in 2 jumps with 240T in cargo.

As it is, there is NO benefit of me mining. Thanks ED, you tried but its just simply NOT WORTH IT to mine vs trade. Not in the upper echolons of cargo space.

You guys stated in your newsletter that mining would become highly lucrative but yet still dangerous because of pirates. Well you're wrong. Unless every asteroid I find is filled with 100% painite, there is absolutely NO reason for me to mine vs trade. Trading is quick and costs me all other than the cost of the goods, which I get back anyway...and its quick, esp once you find a really good trade route.

I think you guys need to rethink this. Make bigger ships, make the drones last a heck of a lot longer, develop an asteroid scanner ( off the prospector drones - they're fkg useless)..then maybe. Until then? nah.
 

Abomination

A
Stay away from big lumpy astroids, drones have problems with these if they rotate half their mass towards you.
Concentrate on the round 'meatballs' instead.
Also keep some distance from the roids. Coming up to close seems to increase the chance of the drones hitting the rock or you in a wrong angle and go boom.
And don't forget to look around for a few mining missions. They can pay big time.
 

[HJ]-RedRaven

[HJ]-RedRaven
If you luck out and get lots of the "Money for Rubble" mining missions where they ask for 2 Osmium and give 150,000cr+, then its reasonably lucrative... in a Pristine metallic belt and getting decent rep missions I can net 3mil/hr.

But it is harder than trading, you get the odd pirate, and we definitely need more mining tool. Like attitude on HUD so you can tell which way is up, asteroid scanner, (and better limpet AI please @SJA)
 

Steve50

Steve50
Pharoah said:
Issues:

A: Collector drone system
1. constant crashing into ship and exploding
2. launching drones and getting 'drone expired'...??
3. when you launch a 2nd drone (with the cargo hatch open), there's a glitch where your cargo hatch now shows as closed (ie. the light goes off)...and you get notified 'open cargo door' or something. Yet when you press the button, you'll get the verbal notification 'cargo door retracted' ie. it was open the whole time.

I went through 50 drones in about an hour. 50 drones. half of them worked as advertised (which is great) but the other half just exploded on launch.

B: We need a detailed surface scanner for asteroids. How can you have a detailed surface scanner for a massive planet...but yet not have one for a small asteriod? Save your prospector drones - they are a waste of time and literally money! Hell I'd pay 1.5m for a proper asteroid scanner - even if it just scans the asteroid in front of me.

The ED newsletter said that mining would now be really profitable...yet I'm in a pristine metallic belt and i'm still getting crappy returns (500k for 2 hrs work?)
Click to expand...

You're either doing it wrong or doing it in the wrong place. My mining trips take 40-50mins and each trip I'm making an average of 1.2-1.5m
 

Zplintz

Zplintz
I recently tried mining. Admittedly I didn't try it for long enough to become proficient at it.

Cr/Hour aside, I just didn't feel it was worth the effort (it was neither enjoyable or relaxing).

While I could understand that you may need to spend some time refining the more lucrative and rare resources, I simply don't get why you spend so much time getting the lower value ones.

I think if you could mine 10, 20 x as much of the more common metals and minerals, you might at least feel you were getting somewhere - mining seemed like a slog for very little. The drones (whilst a nice idea) seemed clumsy and too automatic (for my liking).
 
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