Mining Lance - Yay or nay?

Saool

Saool
My newly fit Exploration Phantom is armed with a pair of 2D Light weight mount, gimbled beam lasers. I was going to take one off and replace it with a Mining laser in readiness for some much longer range trips. But I was then thinking: can you engineer mining lasers (light weight mount). Probably not. So my next thought was, what about Mining Lances? Are they worth the sitting around in Power Play for four weeks and shooting a few random Feds?

Can they be engineered? Do they class as beams? Three years on, and they still effectively over heated Class 1 fixed beams with less damage (but crucially, can mine)?
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Nope.

No engineering for mining lances.

Time was, the mining lance was a useful tool for those who knew what they were doing because it's extra range allowed you to extend your area-of-operations when mining.
The only thing you shouldn't really do with mining lances was consider them as a weapon.
They weren't very powerful and they drew a lot of power too.
You'd just end up getting into fights which you couldn't win with them anyway.

Now, it seems like you can toss the mining lance in the bin along with all other mining lasers.
 
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Lobey

Lobey
I was wondering on this as well, I still use "traditional" mining alongside blowing up asteroids as I still find them with low temp diamonds that can be "sucked" out with a normal mining laser. Might as well have one with more range and some dps as not ? - heat and power are never really a concern these days with even mild engineering or guardian gear (least for me).
I have dumped the subsurface missile thing though as that, so far hasn't seemed worth the bother - blow up asteroids, blow bits off them or suck em dry the "old" way seems to work fine - and shoot any pirate that comes along in the face and gather the scrap left behind is working quite well so far :)
 

Tifu

Tifu
Personally I think mining lasers should remain short range but more capable than they are now in doing damage. This would give Torval's mining lances a reason to be upgraded and be truly useful like Aisling's prismatic shields.
 

Bigmaec

Bigmaec
Stealthie said:
Nope.

No engineering for mining lances.

Time was, the mining lance was a useful tool for those who knew what they were doing because it's extra range allowed you to extend your area-of-operations when mining.
The only thing you shouldn't really do with mining lances was consider them as a weapon.
They weren't very powerful and they drew a lot of power too.
You'd just end up getting into fights which you couldn't win with them anyway.

Now, it seems like you can toss the mining lance in the bin along with all other mining lasers.
Click to expand...

Why should you toss away the mining laser/lance though?

For exploration I fit one to get some materials from asteroids *just in case*

I don't see how that changed?
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Bigmaec said:
Why should you toss away the mining laser/lance though?

For exploration I fit one to get some materials from asteroids *just in case*

I don't see how that changed?
Click to expand...

A fair point and I was indulging in a bit of hyperbole.

Truth is, though, that laser-mining (and, by extension, the Mining Lance) is now "the bottom of the barrel" when it comes to mining-related activities.
At best, it's what you do when you're out of limpets/ammunition for the other toys and your Refinery has a bin that's 90% full of Painite.

If FDev brought out some kind of "impact neutraliser" module which rendered shields redundant (or, at least, made them into an early-game stopgap) I'm pretty sure people would be questioning the point of the Purple Princess' Prismatic Pshields and, probably, asking for them to be replaced with a special version of the new module instead.
Same thing applies to the Mining Lance too, IMO.

Speaking as somebody who was bonkers enough to obtain a stockpile of Mining Lances for all my exploration ships (I live in hope that there might be something out there that you need to shoot at to get it to drop stuffz), it's kind of disappointing to see it apparently forgotten about.

I mean, could they not have, at least, modified the Mining Lance so it could be used for ablation-mining as well?
That would have turned it into something that was actually a desirable item within the new paradigm.
 
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Mo Ronik

Mo Ronik
Stealthie said:
A fair point and I was indulging in a bit of hyperbole.

Truth is, though, that laser-mining (and, by extension, the Mining Lance) is now "the bottom of the barrel" when it comes to mining-related activities.
At best, it's what you do when you're out of limpets/ammunition for the other toys and your Refinery has a bin that's 90% full of Painite.

If FDev brought out some kind of "impact neutraliser" module which rendered shields redundant (or, at least, made them into an early-game stopgap) I'm pretty sure people would be questioning the point of the Purple Princess' Prismatic Pshields and, probably, asking for them to be replaced with a special version of the new module instead.
Same thing applies to the Mining Lance too, IMO.

Speaking as somebody who was bonkers enough to obtain a stockpile of Mining Lances for all my exploration ships (I live in hope that there might be something out there that you need to shoot at to get it to drop stuffz), it's kind of disappointing to see it apparently forgotten about.

I mean, could they not have, at least, modified the Mining Lance so it could be used for ablation-mining as well?
That would have turned it into something that was actually a desirable item within the new paradigm.
Click to expand...

I dunno about bonkers as they have the same mining capability as the same size mining lasers with additional use albeit not a lot. If I had mining lances I'd put them on my mining Sidewinder in a heartbeat. Too bad we can't sell modules player to player because if you decided to part with them I'd buy two of them from ya sight unseen.
 

Kzak

Kzak
Bigmaec said:
Why should you toss away the mining laser/lance though?

For exploration I fit one to get some materials from asteroids *just in case*

I don't see how that changed?
Click to expand...

Ditto, I keep a Mining Lance on my Exploraconda, just in case. Admittedly, it'll take a lot of bad luck to run out of the common materials you can get that way.
 

IndigoWyrd

IndigoWyrd
I own several pairs of mining lances. I like them where I use them and even incinerated an NOC sidewinder with them once. As a weapon they’re fairly pathetic. As a mining tool, they’re decent. They don’t engineer at all, and do have a fair heat production and power consumption, but on an Exploration ship they’re valid and the extra range is nice if you’re material scrounging.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Mo Ronik said:
If I had mining lances I'd put them on my mining Sidewinder in a heartbeat. Too bad we can't sell modules player to player because if you decided to part with them I'd buy two of them from ya sight unseen.
Click to expand...

I tried mining with them in a T6, ages ago, and it was a nice improvement.
The extra range means you could start mining sooner and if you did find more than one decent 'roid close together you could mine 'em both without moving.

Mostly, though, I got them to fit to exploration ships.
They weigh the same as mining lasers so there's no penalty for fitting one, they have the improved range and they could, at a push, be used as a weapon.
I wouldn't want to use one in a fight but, as I said, I live in hope there might be something out in the black that you need to damage/destroy to get it to drop stuff.
They use a bit more power than a regular mining laser but, while exploring, you can always shut down a heap of modules to get the power you need if you ever need to use it.
 

AdagioKonrinzai

AdagioKonrinzai
Yay

The only real benefit that gets overlooked often is the the range. It's got twice the range of a regular mining laser which does help with the spinners. It is unfortunately still the only powerplay item that CANT be engineered...sigh.[up]
 

TheSisko

TheSisko
I have a couple of lances, I will be fitting one on the Condy for DW2. Might be useful if there's anything out there that needs shooting to activate it, like the Guardian ruins.
 

AaronWatkins

A
Vedmo said:
Abrasion blasters will harm ships too, no clue what the dps is compared to a mining lance, but I dropped an NPC DBS with 4 abrasion blasters on my AspX. Sadly, I couldn't land a seismic charge on it, and not for lack of trying.
Click to expand...

Ha I was wondering about this as just gone from large ship based "normal" mining to core cracking with an asp x... (Very profitable, almost addictive too). I wondered if they do much damage, is there any impulse or push effect on the target?
 

Nadreck

N
I haven't tried the new mining toys, but I've used mining lances. I could fire them continuously if I put 4 pips to WEP (using four of them on a T10), otherwise they tended to cut out. I didn't actually get around to using them as weapons, as when I was attacked I carried on mining and let my turrets and SLF handle the problem. The limiting factor on my mining speed was the number of collector limpets I had active, my ability to blast off fragments greatly exceeded my collection speed anyhow. So even if they're no more powerful than size 1 mining lasers, that hardly matters unless you're using very few of them. With new mining gear using up hardpoints, that might become an issue.

I've now fitted a couple of them to my exploration Krait Phantom, for getting materials from asteroids if I urgently need some (plus the ability to activate Guardian stuff that requires shooting at it).

If the abrasion blaster does do significant damage to ships, that might make the mining lance somewhat redundant, and FDev might have to revisit it. IIRC, each PP module can only be engineered as its nearest equivalent regular module (i.e. there is no "standalone" PP module that isn't a variation of an existing module, and no PP module has engineering options tailor-made for it). So the problem with the unengineerable mining lance is that it's classified as a mining laser (which has no engineering options). The problem could be solved either by reclassifying the mining lance as a beam laser (that you can mine with), or by making mining lasers engineerable.
 

Kreada

Kreada
I have not read every comment but... You can use the mining lance in combat mode.

The right build will allow you to defend yourself without having to stop mining.
 

Sylow

Sylow
If you compare them to other C1 mining lasers, the mining lance is a good choice. As effective for mining as any other C1 mining laser and having longer range. Its combat capabilities are very limited though.

As soon as your ship has access to C2 mining lasers, the mining lance generally falls short, though. The higher range can't compensate for the slower mining speed. On the above given example of taking one mining laser along for an explorer build, the lance is great, though. Just as good and as light as a C1 mining laser and doing the same job as that one, while having more range.

It really depends on what you want to use it for. Unlike some PP equipment, it's not completely worthless, but if mining for volume is your goal and your ship has medium hardpoints, the lance looses out.

Mind you, this is based on me tooling around with the mining lance well over a year ago. I tried to make these things work, but it just never really added up. getting as much fragments as the regular 2 C2 mining lasers required me to carry like 4 mining lances. Which on the ship i used put some burden on the capacitor. It just didn't work too well at that time. And as far as i know, nothing affecting the performance of mining lasers was changed since then.
 
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