Mining Cutter Issue

I have just bought and fitted out a laser mining cutter. I have 4 mining lasers in the medium hardpoints.
The problem is that when mining roids all the fragments are coming from the far left laser horizontally. This makes collecting a lot slower than if they were coming out infront of the ship.
How do I get the fragments to come out from the close left or right lasers if possible?
 

Deleted member 38366

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Unless something changed, stop firing and restart firing Mining Lasers. This should RNG which Mining Laser hit ejects the fragments.

But if it's a very annoying issue, I'd also recommend to reconfigure the Mining Laser locations to be all as centered as possible.
 
Don’t place the mining lasers on the nacelles.

This.

Best place for your mining lasers is the three chin slots (the huge and two mediums). You can fire 3x 2Ds forever on four weapons pips as well (on a charge enhanced distro), which is much more convenient than the 19 seconds you get for 4x.
 
You could try with an intermediate fire group with just your preferred laser, on the same button as it is in the normal one. Start with that, keep the fire button pressed, and switch to the full group.
Moving the lasers would still be the better solution however. Using the nacelles puts about 180m of Cutter between laser and roid, potentially reducing their effectiveness.
 
Two fire groups.
Group 1 has the laser you want the fragments to fly out from. (You might have to move your mining laser to a more central position, but thems the breaks).
Group 2 has the rest. So long as you engage with group 1, continue firing that and then engage group 2 when your fragments are flying, you should get the increased rate and the position you want.

That said, I haven't mined in a dog's age so they might have changed the behavior.
 
This.

Best place for your mining lasers is the three chin slots (the huge and two mediums). You can fire 3x 2Ds forever on four weapons pips as well (on a charge enhanced distro), which is much more convenient than the 19 seconds you get for 4x.
For 4 lasers one really should weapon focus the distributor. Basically the same WEP recharge rate but much more capacitor. This will easily deplete any asteroid before running into capacitor issues, which really is the only important factor.
 
I only use 3, on the weapons list the bottom 3, Distributor is weapons focused, I open fire before I come into range and the lowest positioned laser will hit first, as I get nearer the other two come into range, all fragments go down and slightly left.

Other weapon slots are AB on other size 2, SCL on size 4 and SSDM's on large slots, My cutter is set for general purpose mining.
 
The chunks always depart perpendicular to the roid surface that you shoot at. Shoot to a surface which the perpendicular line is pointing down or roll the ship to adjust the direction. It always worked for me independently on the position of the lasers.
 
I have my 4 mining lasers in the medium slots in my mining Cutter and the fragments come out from the middle, so there is more to it than just the positioning of the lasers. When I first started with this configuration, I did get the fragments coming from the side sometimes, but that might have been when I had three lasers in the medium slots instead of 4. I didn't change anything other than adding the 4th laser. I'm not saying that adding the 4th laser fixed it. Something else must have because Hawknerd has the same arrangement as me. Maybe it's my positioning at the rocks, though I don't think I do anything special.

The reason I use the medium slots for the mining lasers is so that I can have weapons in the huge and large to deal with the lesser pirates.

There's no question that the most efficient load out for mining with a Cutter is 4 lasers, 12 collector limpets and a weapons focused PD.
 
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Update:
I did a run this afternoon without changing anything and now the fragments are behaving themselves. A few were naughty but generally they seem to be coming from the front rather than the side.
 
I have just bought and fitted out a laser mining cutter. I have 4 mining lasers in the medium hardpoints.
The problem is that when mining roids all the fragments are coming from the far left laser horizontally. This makes collecting a lot slower than if they were coming out infront of the ship.
How do I get the fragments to come out from the close left or right lasers if possible?
A couple of points:
  • A cutter can't maintain 4 mining lasers indefinitely, 3 is it's PD limit. In my experience, there are a small number of asteroids you can fully deplete with 4 beams before the PD runs out but most asteroids outlast the PD. In all those other cases, the steady 3 beams get the job done as fast or faster due to recharge and/or heat issues. I've switched to 4 - have to pay a little more attention to overheating once the capacitor is drained, but 90%+ of the time the Capacitor outlasts the 'roid. I can always disable one of the Beams if I'm feeling lazy...
  • Contra the centerline laser argument, I run a Beam in each nacelle and a beam in each of the large hardpoints up top. The forward beams contacts the 'roid first and usually determines the chip path. The chip-rate and chip-path is unaffected by the wide spread of the nacelle beams, and that leaves more centerline hardpoints for the SSM Launcher and SC Launcher.
 
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