Mining missions uneven difficulty?

[Lhynn]

Hi all,

I'm a newcomer and this is my first post on this forum so please bear with me if I don't post in the right section...

I was wondering if there wasn't a lack of balance in mining missions available at stations. Most of those I see require to bring back Osmium, Platinum, Palladium and Painite in exchange for decent amounts of cash (and we all know cash is vital in this game as everything costs way too much...)
My issue is that I can find the first 3 fine, but have been looking for the last one, Painite, for hours everywhere: in metallic abundant asteroid belts and planetary belts, metal-rich belts, metallic unexploited belts etc. and never found anything. Or, to me honest, I found some once in a metal-rich planetary belt, couldn't collect a full ton of it before I had to leave the area and never found none after that.
Given that at least the 2/3 of mining missions available require Painite AND given that it's one of the most - if not the most - rare resource(s) in the universe, isn't there a lack of balance in mining missions? Shouldn't there be less missions requiring Painite, or the other way round, shouldn't there be more Painite available to farm? Or am I simply not gifted for mining? I don't ask for fully loading my Type 6 with Painite (even though it wouldn't bother me given the price at the market ^^), but at least I'd like to be able to collect a dozen of tons in a single session somewhere to be able to turn in a couple of missions, which often require huge amounts of Painite (i.e. more than 2t/mission).

Thx for your comments on this...

Fly safe CMDRs!

 

[ExRex]

Trick with mining is two-fold:

a) mine, then return to a high-tech station and take missions based on what you mine.
b) find Pristine Metallic belts with a High-intensity RES in it. Often you need advanced scanner and detailed surface scanner to hunt these down for a while.

Here is one of the more comprehensive threads on the ins and outs of mining: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=164372

 

[Lhynn]

Thx for the link ExRex, I'll definitely check it out later.
However, my problem is that I'm already applying the first trick you suggested, but in my current home system (Lembava), the resources mostly required in missions are Painite, Osmium and Platinum. All of the others represent less than 5% of the missions available. And among the first 3 which, if my math is correct, represent the remaining 95% of the mining missions, Painite alone is requested in up to 75% of the cases, despite it being one of the rarest resources in the ED universe.
As to your second point, as I said I know that these are the best mining areas, however you don't necessarily have to scan worlds yourself to find them, I found in some nearby systems Metallic Abundant planetary rings and likewise Metallic Abundant asteroid belts. But, as I also said, none of the areas I mined contained Painite except one single planetary asteroid once, and there wasn't even enough Painite in it to make a full ton. And I never came across it ever again after. Metallic asteroid belts are generally great for Osmium, Bertrandite, Platinum and Palladium, plus a bit of gold, whereas the planetary rings I farmed so far contained lots of Silver and Bertrandite, the rest was junk (Coltan, Gallite, Indite, Uraninite are worth nothing on the market and are almost never requested in missions), hence my 'distress call' to know if this situation is WAI or a kind of bug/bad mission planning. Maybe these missions are area-dependent? They are often given to me by a local faction called "Lembava Gold State Industries", maybe they've set the scores too high?
Anyway, that's why I gave up mining for now till I find better places, or better solutions.

 

[ExRex]

Thx for the link ExRex, I'll definitely check it out later.
However, my problem is that I'm already applying the first trick you suggested, but in my current home system (Lembava), the resources mostly required in missions are Painite, Osmium and Platinum. All of the others represent less than 5% of the missions available. And among the first 3 which, if my math is correct, represent the remaining 95% of the mining missions, Painite alone is requested in up to 75% of the cases, despite it being one of the rarest resources in the ED universe.
As to your second point, as I said I know that these are the best mining areas, however you don't necessarily have to scan worlds yourself to find them, I found in some nearby systems Metallic Abundant planetary rings and likewise Metallic Abundant asteroid belts. But, as I also said, none of the areas I mined contained Painite except one single planetary asteroid once, and there wasn't even enough Painite in it to make a full ton. And I never came across it ever again after. Metallic asteroid belts are generally great for Osmium, Bertrandite, Platinum and Palladium, plus a bit of gold, whereas the planetary rings I farmed so far contained lots of Silver and Bertrandite, the rest was junk (Coltan, Gallite, Indite, Uraninite are worth nothing on the market and are almost never requested in missions), hence my 'distress call' to know if this situation is WAI or a kind of bug/bad mission planning. Maybe these missions are area-dependent? They are often given to me by a local faction called "Lembava Gold State Industries", maybe they've set the scores too high?
Anyway, that's why I gave up mining for now till I find better places, or better solutions.

Hehe, you're welcome.

They want Painite because it is a rare material!
Mining missions are currently ONLY Painite, Osmium and Platinum. These are 3 metals you need to never sell from your inventory. 5 metals currently are only worth mining: Platinum, Osmium, Gold, Painite and Palladium. Sell Palladium and Gold, keep the other three and move to other nearby High-Tech to find missions where you can get rid of your remaining metal (you need a high rep, allied with the faction that owns the station). Having a high trade rank helps here (at least merchant).

Your problem seems a little backward and I am not sure I understand it, so I will repeat my current post.

Your problem is that you do not find enough Painite, Osmium and Platinum to keep up with the missions.
My solution is that you need to go to Pristine Metallic Rings, not Metallic Abundant. That is NOT the same thing. This is why you do not find Painite.

I am currently mining in merely a major metallic belt and I return home with so much painite, platinum and especially osmium that I have to sell it on the market to get rid of it. But I also eject metals that I do not want and only return with above 5 metals.
It also helps to use prospector drones as they will name ALL metals in an asteroid where prospecting with a laser only will only result in seeing two metals per chunk.

So find a better place. That is all

 

[IronGremlin]

Honestly man, I don't think the game is designed as such that you should be taking out the painite missions in advance.
I think that's just a recipie for failure. Save some up in your hold while you sell metal regularly, and then grab those missions to turn it in when they're around and you have the metal.

Also, pristine metallic rings or bust. Anything else is basically just a waste.

 

[Io_Sys]

Painite is much rarer than platinum, palladium and the rest.
It's also much more valuable. Still, it's common enough to complete the missions easily.
Remember you usually have like 15 hours to complete the mission, but as others have said it's much easier if you already have some in your hold.

Mining tips:
1) Only mine in major or pristine zones-- depleted, low and common aren't really worth your time, especially when searching for painite.
2) Planetary rings only. The belts orbiting the local stars don't tend to have many asteroids, plus it's hard to see them with the sun glare.
2) There's a reason the painite missions only ask for 2-3 tons. Sometimes even 1 ton. Best bet is metallic belts-- stick some music on and be prepared to spend an hour or two mining.
3) If you just want to get it over with, load up with a prospector limpet controller, a bunch of limpets and start scanning each rock until you find some.
4) Painite is considered a mineral rather than a metal, but I haven't tested if that means it's more common in the belts with more minerals and less metals (AKA metal rich or rocky. Never go for Icy.)


I'm currently mining in a major metallic ring. Spent about an hour there and I've got about 20~25 tons each of gold, palladium, osmium, platinum and about 15 tons of painite.
Average painite fragment percent is from 20~35% depending on the rock.

 

[Lhynn]

Mmmh ok, thx guys for the tips. I'll focus on planetary rings then instead of asteroid belts. And I'd better mine first and take missions after indeed instead of doing the other way round. I think that my mining method was really bad actually: I use a T6 with a 7-bin refinery and collector drones and rapidly gave up using prospectors as they are only 1-use things and I didn't see the interest of them when mining around 30 asteroids per run... What I used to do is mine something to the end, collect all chunks with a class A collector, keep the best materials, get rid of what is worth nothing, move on to the next asteroid, rinse & repeat. This way I fill up my cargo fast no problem, but it's true that apart from a few tons of some worthy materials (silver, gold, palladium...), 2/3 of my cargo were essentially junk. Still profitable junk, but junk anyway, and not a useful one for missions. So I'll try to get rid of a small cargo rack to add a good prospector unit, buy half a cargo of these and scan asteroids before mining, might save my time and make it more profitable.
As my game is in French, I suppose by "pristine" you mean "unexploited"? If so, what's the exact difference between a 'pristine' and an 'abundant' ring? Mineral density (in %) in chunks? Or the probability to find rare (i.e. expensive) minerals such as Painite & Platinum?

 

[Wolfman]

It's worth noting here (I think) that there's no difference between collector and prospector limpets in the munitions screen. Limpets are all the same until programmed by the relevant module. So you basically buy a shed load of them and then use them strategically (nice touch there FD by the way) until you have none left. The trick is to come back to a station with a hold full of metals AND ten full bins... which I have managed to do once. Those ten full bins are a bonus!

 

[Lhynn]

Yep, noted that full bins bonus, they automatically convert into extra tons of minerals after you sell some of your full cargo, that's really nice. And yes, I noticed that all drones are stock until programmed by the relevant module (hatch breaker, collector, prospector). I just considered that prospectors were merely a waste of money just to see what one single asteroid had in the belly (maybe it would have been better to make these drones work like the regular collector drones, i.e. time-limited and transferrable between asteroids instead of a one-shot item, however I don't know if that would be realistic and given your overall profit, drones actually don't cost that much...). I might revise my judgement though after everything that's been said here.

Any tips about the difference between pristine and abundant metallic rings?

 

[Wolfman]

From my observation it just means that you spend a lot longer in the ring because the overall yield per asteroid is lower. So where you might find a rock with 25 platinum 20 indite 7 osmium in a pristine ring the same rock in an abundant ring would contain half those amounts (roughly)

 

[Lhynn]

Ok, that's good to know. Sounds logical. I'll confirm all of these next time I'm off mining (I'm more into bounty-hunting these days)