Horizons Mining improvements

After trying out mining A LOT , all kinds of combinations with hardpoints with different ships, I noticed that even with a fully loaded python, which harvest metalls like there is no tomorrow, I came to the conclusion that mining seriously needs improvements.

Some suggestions:

Prospected astroids needs to contain A LOT more. All the struggle of finding the resources you need takes a lot of time, even with firing multiple prospector limpets. When you finally find a good astroids, you drain it too fast and doesn't get enough from it, even if it contains 30+% of the resource you want. I can say with no problem, without ruin the game balance, increase it by a great amount, such as maybe ten times more. As it is now, the time and effort you spend in mining is the worst in the game. Blow up a ship 100-200k, earning a million credits in a compremised nav beacon takes just a few minutes, and if you do a cargo run, between 2 stations, back and fort 600k+ (280T cargo), then comes the mining, you spend A LOT more time and more hassle for not even close to that profit you get from other things, even missions gives more and they suck.

A good thing would also be that astroids that are depleted changes texture, like a depleted texture of some sort. When firing at the astroid with the mining lasers, it creates glowing effects, maybe it should show some sort of heat apperance? U decide.

Also reduce the time it takes to fire of the prospector limpets, that it fires quicker, and faster so I can click away in a fast order, to speed things up.

And the Collector limpets, make sure they don't die so quick, they kamikaze into rocks and they don't work on surface worlds, would be nice to use limpets to pick up cargo from the surface.

Also a thing about something else, the shaking screen when throttling up or down, or other events, please let us who have problem with it, able to turn it off in the options, please it makes me dizzy after a period of time, not fun to always have to look away during the shakes . Please fix this!
 
casue you die on the way to sell them by a magic knowing pirate who doesn't know how to shoot out a hatch.


"right on time theres the load i was told about"

    you takin about iv been alone mining the entire time.
 
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mining in a lowly t9 nets me what? 3 million credits or so...how is this not easy mode???

Mining with t9 gives you 3m per hour ?

Lets compare some numbers :

Combat at power play with an cheap fas : 10m per hour
Combat at any hazardous or comp-beacon with my anaconda : 6m per hour
Trading with an cutter : 14m per hour
Smuggling with an asp : 23m per hour
Piracy with any ship : 0 per hour or less...

Right now, the only thing that is worse then mining in cc per hour is exploring and piracy...

Conclusion : There is really a need to balance "hour effort" x risk x investment x reward in this game. Mainly for mining, exploring and piracy. I would guess for combat as well. Right now, only trading and smuggling have some balance.
 
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some yes; some no; and some even more awesome Stuff

Asteroid color change after depleeting sounds good. (Would be more awesome if it would brake apart and crumble all over the place, but i would call that technically impossible to handle)

To care for the dump limpets is kind of normal mining gameplay. I don´t think it needs to be fixed. I don´t want mining to be too easy and even more simple than it is.

Would be great if the collector limpets would ignore "abandoned" containers of crap cheap materials. Or an option to auto-discard these materials from the refinery.

The asteroids need some more variation in size, texture and colour. The current asteroids all look to much alike and after a while it really gets visually mind numbing. And: all the asteroids of the same type (metallic for example) look identically in every ring in every system. That’s a bit mäh too.

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More Ideas:
While mining I had some more futuristic Ideas, but sadly I locked them away somewhere rather than to communicate.

For a more interesting mining gameplay:
It would be awesome if you would have to hit an asteroid in specific spots to increase yield or the kind of mineral composition of the fragments.
Example: Maybe an asteroid contains 4 Metals. But if you hit the wrong spot, you would just get mostly 1 kind of what you don’t want.
The different materials/(spots to hit) could maybe just be visible with a special mining Screen/scanner/whatever (like a thermo camera; to avoid the need to add visible textures if normal-visible Textures would be too hardware-demanding).

Mining outposts inside ring Instances.
It would be beyond awesome to have moving mining Outposts inside ring-instances to quickly drop off materials that are otherwise too cheap to keep in the cargo hold. (maybe moving along with a speed of 20-30) Could be like a small outpost-kind of vessel with big/medium landing pads.
Or the delivery could be done maybe with an automated "transport" vessel that cycles all ships that activate an auto-sell beacon. That ship could empty your hold with already existing limpet transfer means.

These could be located just like special extraction zones within rings. Maybe some crazy stuff with minor factions or pirate bases or or or.

Just fantasy ... ?
 
Mining is a reasonable earner given the low risk involved but it could use some minor short-term improvements.

The scanner isn't very helpful when it comes to figuring out which direction the asteroids are in - the vertical lines become practically invisible at less than maximum zoom.
There needs to be a cargo jettison option that tells collector limpets to ignore them.
The on/off cargo hatch cycling is annoying as hell - needs a fix.

Kamikaze collectors is easily avoided by target selection; avoid the faster spinning elongated rocks and target the axis of rotation and make sure you don't move on until all the fragments are collected.

Longer term, it'd be nice to have some visual indications of where to aim on the rocks for different minerals and which rocks are depleted.
A second type of prospector would also be nice, one that flies through the field identifying rocks of interest (and marking them on the scanner).
 
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Mining is a reasonable earner given the low risk involved but it could use some minor short-term improvements.

The scanner isn't very helpful when it comes to figuring out which direction the asteroids are in - the vertical lines become practically invisible at less than maximum zoom.
There needs to be a cargo jettison option that tells collector limpets to ignore them.
The on/off cargo hatch cycling is annoying as hell - needs a fix.

Kamikaze collectors is easily avoided by target selection; avoid the faster spinning elongated rocks and target the axis of rotation and make sure you don't move on until all the fragments are collected.

Longer term, it'd be nice to have some visual indications of where to aim on the rocks for different minerals and which rocks are depleted.
A second type of prospector would also be nice, one that flies through the field identifying rocks of interest (and marking them on the scanner).

I agree with all of that, I would like to add :

1- Fix prospect limpets modules, today any prospect module that handle more then 2 limpets are completely useless since when you send the second the first dies.
2- Doubling the value of all minerals would make mining profitable again.

I am curious about the new ice mining, it needs to be profitable thought otherwise nobody will do it.
 
The problem is not this magic Cr/h number, the problem is that we are looking at it.
A lot, I mean really a lot of great ideas were already discussed on forums and DDF, why it is like it is now, I still don't know.
 
Agree about the texture changes. The biggest pain is trying to figure out which asteroids you've already tackled.

A minor thing -- it would be nice if the drones moved in smoother arcs -- they feel too computery, which might be correct, but feels wrong.

I hope mining gets some love in the future. Think it will if they add asteroid bases.
 
HIP 16607
zap rocks, sell painite, platinum, palladium and gold.

What he said but mining and restocking at Delkar, selling at Komovoy - I also collect Osmium because it's a popular mission to find it.
The first station at Komovoy is at 7ls for a quick turnaround and the other provides a reasonable profit on Personal Weapons if you decide to stop at a station in Delkar on the way back to the ring.
Having an extra stop adds time but provides more missions.
 
Ok cool, can you give me some tips, where do you mine, and how do you mine?

Hajong has a pristine metallic ring and a station in orbit of the same planet, 7ls away. Not many mining missions there though.

Load up with a prospector controller and as many collector controllers as you can fit and still have cargo, 50% or so of your cargo in limpets (adjust as necessary; some people use less, many use a LOT more), and as many mining lasers as your distributor can handle, and then just mine everything that isn't silver/bertrandite/indite/gallite (because those suck).
 
A few of basic tips:

1) Use a PROSPECTOR Limpet to find your best rocks and increase your yields substantially

2) Use a LARGE Refinery module with lots of bins

3) Use 3 or more Collector Limpets at a time

4) Fly at least 30km away from the drop point before you start mining to avoid hassles from pirates.

:)
 

Deleted member 38366

D
I'd be happy to see :

- Refinery improvement : select preferred Ores vs. Automatic reject
- Prospector Limpets : fail oldest 1st, so Class3/5 etc. start being useful, sure with they'd be a tad faster to travel to their Target
- Collector Limpets : better intelligence to avoid collisions with Asteroids
- Ship : mark depleted Asteroids, fix the proximity Alert from nearby Limpets, no more unneeded Cargo hatch cycling when firing Limpets (and no more Voice Alerts :p )
 

Ripbudd

Banned
A few of basic tips:

1) Use a PROSPECTOR Limpet to find your best rocks and increase your yields substantially

2) Use a LARGE Refinery module with lots of bins

3) Use 3 or more Collector Limpets at a time

4) Fly at least 30km away from the drop point before you start mining to avoid hassles from pirates.

:)

Who the hell goes mining in resource extraction sites? Random pirates at random points spawn just as you enter random point on ring so yeah this doesn't help much either.
Mining pays crap but it's fun.
 
Who the hell goes mining in resource extraction sites? Random pirates at random points spawn just as you enter random point on ring so yeah this doesn't help much either.
Mining pays crap but it's fun.

RES have a nice bonus to mining so its worthwhile mining there, the trick is to enter the RES and then run/boost 30-40k away from the nav marker before mining and then 8 times out of 10, you'll be able to mine in peace. also a RES seems to have less garbage ore than a RES, ie stuff that's not worth collecting (anything less than Osmium)
 
I agree with all of that, I would like to add :

1- Fix prospect limpets modules, today any prospect module that handle more then 2 limpets are completely useless since when you send the second the first dies.
2- Doubling the value of all minerals would make mining profitable again.

I am curious about the new ice mining, it needs to be profitable thought otherwise nobody will do it.

I don't think doubling the value of the minerals is a good idea, because the value of the minerals is fine the way it is. Simply increasing amout of minerals in an astroid will balance it all out better. Mining is the worst thing of income at the moment. Even tho I mined a lot of 40+% painite, it's still much less than cargo runs and shooting wanted ships in a Compremised Nav Beacon. If the amount of minerals increased to about 200-300% if would be really nice. Now you spend a lot of time looking for the damn minerals you need, and when you find it, you get about 10-15 tons, if there is a good yield, then spend 20 minutes more of searching for a new one. Reward the players of searching for those minerals, and when they do find it, let us mine them longer so we ger more from them.
 
what would really help mining...

Bearing in mind we can 'scan' a planet easily to determine content...we need to rethink the function of prospectors..

1) The detailed discovery scanner determins composition of an Asteroid : Speeds up discovery of mineral composition.
2) Need to be able to fire a TAG onto an Asteroid of Interest..so that you or a wingman can come back to it later. This would help wing mining, where you can split the functions between players, some go 'prospecting' and some mine.
2) Propsector can be fired to help collectors harvest more frags, as they do now.

The simple act of speeding up the search would help the overall $M per hour....
 
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