Mining: Colonia vs Bubble.

[Stealthie]

Just wondering whether other people's experiences reflect my own...

Earlier in the year I toddled off to Colonia to do some stuff.
One of the things on my "To do" list was to earn roughly Cr1.5bn while I was there.
This meant going mining.

After doing some other stuff I built myself a Python and set about mining VO's.
Thing is, it was really easy.
Drop into ring, DC 'roid, mine, fly, DC 'roid, mine, fly, DC'roid, mine, fly....
It was so easy that earning Cr1.5bn wasn't an actual "task" in itself. Instead it was just something I did between other activities.

So, back in the bubble and I decide it's time to earn some credits for my alt-account.
Python, VO hotspot and... not quite so easy.
Drop into ring, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, DC 'roid, mine, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly......
Each time I've tried, it's taken so long to fill the hold of my Python that I've split the trips over 3 or 4 sessions/days.

It's not my first rodeo so I pick remote systems with very little traffic and I always use a similar procedure when mining.
Possibly the most important factor is the distance I have to travel to collect 128 VOs.
I usually drop into a ring around 1000km from the POI and then just fly toward it in a zig-zag, looking for VOs.
In Colonia I start from ~1000km out and I'd have collected 128 VO's by the time I'd travelled 200km, ending up ~800km from the POI.
In the bubble, I start from ~1000km out and by the time I've collected 128 VO's I'll be around 250km from the POI, having travelled roughly 750km.

In a nutshell, it seems like the DC 'roids are much more common in Rings in Colonia than they are in Rings in the Bubble - at least, in the Rings I've visited.

I guess it's plausible that FDev have deliberately made it this way to encourage people to "visit the wild west" to get rich quick.
Alternatively, I guess it's possible I just found some especially good Rings in Colonia or, conversely, some especially bad rings in the bubble.

Anybody else had a similar experience?

 

[K Olley]

Don't know about VO's but on my run out to Colonia scanning systems as I went and also while in Colonia I filled up my hold a few times with LTD's.

Flying an Anaconda with laser, collector and refinery as basic equipment, limpets manufactured as needed and plenty of practice with SRV collecting mats.

I did notice that they seemed a lot more LTD's around and no NPC's to worry me either.

I just assumed it was because most of the rings were in systems that had never been mined before.

 

[BrazHos]

I just returned to my home area in the Pleiades from Colonia flying my battle annie (500+ jumps). Sold about 70 mill in cart data and then decided to go check out my normal VO mining spot. It was as you described above, fly fly fly with hardly a core asteroid to be found. 90% of the ones I did find were bromelite. I spent 2 hours hunting in 2 separate hot spots to end up with 32 opals. Normally I would have filled my 192 cargo with them in 2 hours. I sold them and went exploring for more hot spots further away from where I was.
I flew 2Kly farther out from there to hopefully get away from other miners. I found some hot spots. Behold! an asteroid belt that looked like it had been mowed through by the Dune worms. Nothing but exploded rocks and nary a VO rock to find. At least not in the 30 minutes I checked. The closest system with a base is over 1Kly away. No idea if this is the new normal but I have my doubts about belts actually getting refreshed.

 

[Stealthie]

Behold! an asteroid belt that looked like it had been mowed through by the Dune worms. Nothing but exploded rocks and nary a VO rock to find. At least not in the 30 minutes I checked.

That's worth mentioning too.

It's taken me a week to complete 3 mining trips, 2 in inhabited systems where the traffic reports say there's only been a handful of ships each day and one in an uninhabited system on the edge of the bubble.
I genuinely haven't seen a single pre-exploded 'roid in that entire time.

That would seem to confirm that the lack of DC 'roids ISN'T due to other people getting to them first.
They just don't seem to be anything like as common as they were when I was mining around Colonia.

Obviously, half a dozen mining trips in Colonia vs 3 mining trips in the bubble isn't exactly a massive sample-size but my experience definitely seems to have been different in the bubble to Colonia so I was wondering if others had noticed the same thing.

Course, in the grand scheme of things, it's still only taking me 3 or 4 hours to earn what would have taken months to earn pre-3.3.
It's just that it was even easier in Colonia.

 

[CapitanAceRimmer]

I've been mining in the bubble, out in the Maia region, T Tauri, and a couple of spots on the way to the Witch Head Nebula (Alinitak, and some HIP xxxxx B star system). The mining spots away from the bubble are always better me thinks, simply because there are less people mining them. Even if the system is just outside the bubble.

 

[Max Bothin]

"pristine" is the solution. there are much more pristine systems in Colonia, than at the Bubble...

 

[NCFCpaul]

Just wondering whether other people's experiences reflect my own...

Earlier in the year I toddled off to Colonia to do some stuff.
One of the things on my "To do" list was to earn roughly Cr1.5bn while I was there.
This meant going mining.

After doing some other stuff I built myself a Python and set about mining VO's.
Thing is, it was really easy.
Drop into ring, DC 'roid, mine, fly, DC 'roid, mine, fly, DC'roid, mine, fly....
It was so easy that earning Cr1.5bn wasn't an actual "task" in itself. Instead it was just something I did between other activities.

So, back in the bubble and I decide it's time to earn some credits for my alt-account.
Python, VO hotspot and... not quite so easy.
Drop into ring, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, DC 'roid, mine, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly......
Each time I've tried, it's taken so long to fill the hold of my Python that I've split the trips over 3 or 4 sessions/days.

It's not my first rodeo so I pick remote systems with very little traffic and I always use a similar procedure when mining.
Possibly the most important factor is the distance I have to travel to collect 128 VOs.
I usually drop into a ring around 1000km from the POI and then just fly toward it in a zig-zag, looking for VOs.
In Colonia I start from ~1000km out and I'd have collected 128 VO's by the time I'd travelled 200km, ending up ~800km from the POI.
In the bubble, I start from ~1000km out and by the time I've collected 128 VO's I'll be around 250km from the POI, having travelled roughly 750km.

In a nutshell, it seems like the DC 'roids are much more common in Rings in Colonia than they are in Rings in the Bubble - at least, in the Rings I've visited.

I guess it's plausible that FDev have deliberately made it this way to encourage people to "visit the wild west" to get rich quick.
Alternatively, I guess it's possible I just found some especially good Rings in Colonia or, conversely, some especially bad rings in the bubble.

Anybody else had a similar experience?

Yes, my experience entirely, mining in the Colonia region has seemed very straight forward. The only, slight, drawback is that there aren't quite so many places to sell - you might end up accepting cr850k rather than the full cr 1.6m. Usually Inara helps out here to find the best price.

But making money is very easy from mining and also exploration, you don't have to go far to get first finder bonus.

 

[Stealthie]

"pristine" is the solution. there are much more pristine systems in Colonia, than at the Bubble...

See, that's something I was wondering about too.
A while back I did ask whether hotspots in Pristine rings had better yields than elsewhere but the consensus seemed to be that a hotspot is a hotspot.

Even so, that shouldn't really have affected what I've been doing over the last few days 'cos the rings I've been mining in are Pristine too.

 

[Max Bothin]

See, that's something I was wondering about too.
A while back I did ask whether hotspots in Pristine rings had better yields than elsewhere but the consensus seemed to be that a hotspot is a hotspot.

Even so, that shouldn't really have affected what I've been doing over the last few days 'cos the rings I've been mining in are Pristine too.

well, I made the experience that at Colonia the Pristine Rings do have a lot more asteroids (probably one every 5-10 Minutes) than the ones near the bubble. they are probably "more pristine"...

 

[Midian Cabal]

Yes, my experience entirely, mining in the Colonia region has seemed very straight forward. The only, slight, drawback is that there aren't quite so many places to sell - you might end up accepting cr850k rather than the full cr 1.6m. Usually Inara helps out here to find the best price.

But making money is very easy from mining and also exploration, you don't have to go far to get first finder bonus.

So far I didn't run into the situation when there are no stations that buy VOs for 1.6m. Right now there are 3.

 

[Stealthie]

So far I didn't run into the situation when there are no stations that buy VOs for 1.6m. Right now there are 3.

I think it happened to me once while I was in Colonia.

Oddly enough, EDDB was telling me there was somewhere I could sell them for Cr1.6m/t an hour earlier but when I went to sell them, prices had changed.
I just parked-up for the night (without selling my cargo), checked back in the following day and there was a different station offering Cr1.6m/t.

Unless you're desperate to sell your cargo and get on with something else, it's probably best to just wait until another station offering a good price pops up.

 

[Max Bothin]

Oddly enough, EDDB was telling me there was somewhere I could sell them for Cr1.6m/t an hour earlier but when

could be the tick...

 

[Ian Doncaster]

well, I made the experience that at Colonia the Pristine Rings do have a lot more asteroids (probably one every 5-10 Minutes) than the ones near the bubble. they are probably "more pristine"...

It wouldn't surprise me if the reserve levels were broad descriptions of a finer numeric scale and a lot of the in-bubble Pristine systems were still below maximum - lots of other system parameters are like that. Should be testable without going as far as Colonia by popping a bit outside the edge of the bubble, though.

So far I didn't run into the situation when there are no stations that buy VOs for 1.6m. Right now there are 3.

A lot of the pirate attack cycles are semi-synchronised, especially in the systems capable of consistently maintaining the Inv+CL states as well where they've ended up on a regular schedule, so there can occasionally be a gap for a few days with none of them.

Painite is a bit more sensitive to it because there are fewer economies importing it at all.