Mining: Balancing Rewards

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Hello!

Currently mining is either super lucrative, or meh, depending on what type you choose to do.

Core mining can basically stay as is, my only suggestion is maybe add a few floating element materials when they blow up?

Subsurface deposits, so far, have never contained anything of value, so there's little point losing a hardpoint for it.
My suggestion is simply have a higher chance, a core asteroid will also have similar value subsurface deposits to get, making carrying them worth while.
Plus more high value subsurface deposits scattered around non-crackable asteroids, inside hot spots.
Also, add a small amount of shield damage, and a good (but not in comparison to weapons) hull damage to SSMs.

Abrasion Blaster. I assume the double fragment bug will be fixed soon.
But again, there's very little in the way of valuable ores to scrape off normal rocks.
Maybe dot some valuable surface deposits around inside hotspots.
Also, make the AB do a bit of both hull and shield damage. (Nothing extreme)

Seismic charges are basically spot on. But we do need a class 1 version, with 50%~ less ammo.

If any of this is already in game, then ignore me, as I've just been incredibly unlucky. Lol

 

[Lestat]

This is not about balance or anything. But I think Frontier has the right idea of how Hardpoint is setup. For small ships, I think it comes down you can't have everything on your ship. So you have to make Sacrifice and choices. My Cobra MKIII or 4 should not be able to use all the Mining tools.

 

[Daynen]

Given that small ships are at an advantage for maneuvering after cracking a core, I don't see why a smaller, more ammo limited seismic charge is unwarranted. Even at a third of the ammo it would be popular for smaller miner ships.

What irks me about the new mining is how ONLY asteroids with the new materials can be popped--and those asteroids can be quite rare at times, depending on the mood of the instance RNG. I was excited to see we could actually blow up asteroids, but quite disappointed that only certain ones could explode. I'm less concerned about getting void opals or alexandrite, honestly; I just want to blow up some asteroids more than a couple times an hour! It's fine if they have to be a sufficient size in order to prevent mass explosions and lag and all that, but come on. I want to see an asteroid, laser it clean, blast the surface chunks off, dig out the subsurface deposits, then blow the whole thing up and collect whatever drifts out. So what if it's only a mid-level ore? The new mechanics are cool and interesting and have breathed new life into an otherwise mind-numbing tedium...BUT WHY MUST WE BE LIMITED SO?

Blowing up asteroids is fun. The game by the same name proved that decades ago. LET US BLOW UP MORE ROCKS.