Mining SLF or piloted drones

[Dreamsquasher]

This is probably a stupid idea that I have not thought thru very well. lol

I think it would be great to have either a slf or some other module like the planetary vehicle hanger with small non combat ships miners could launch. These could be used in multi-crew and by your npc crew. The idea behind this small drone would be like a super prospector limpet. The drone would have no weapons, but would carry some sort of prospecting device or limpets, and marking flares. The drone would be deployed and start scouting the area, flying to asteroids in the area and prospect them. There could be a menu with filters you could set such as 15% painite ( I don't mine ) and if a asteroid was found that meets whatever criteria you set, the pilot would shoot a flare into the rock, marking it on your radar for you. Obviously filters would be bypassed with multicrew.

Again probably dumb, just a thought I had earlier today in multicrew.

 

[Alexandr]

The idea to have srv analogue for mining is perfect.

But prospecting shouldn't be by flying for each asteroid. There must be a sort of scanner of surroundings - in order to get fast the info from all the asteroids inside the scanner sphere. So it shouldn't take a much time.

Such a mining SRV could be a scanner center module. So you obtain the info from it's sphere and move it to another part of field. The info should transiting between this scanner srv and the ship so when you board the ship back you will be able to see prospecting results for all the field.

It also can be an elements (for synthesis) only extractor - just as you gather them from the surface asteroids but in the space fields.

Mining should be reformed.