Mining suggestion - Asteroid tagging

[CmdrBream]

I rather like mining. It's oddly therapeutic when accompanied by a few glasses of wine. However, there's one aspect of it that really gets on my [insert bodypart here]...

I can never remember which asteroids I've been to and which I haven't.

Any chance of adding some sort of method of showing which asteroids have been mined recently on the scanner? Maybe some sort of module would do it, or possibly even giving asteroids a heat signature that shows up on the scanner - after all, we've just warmed them up with the laser and the scanner's a thermal thing. It would certainly make the task of finding the unmined ones a bit less irritating than the current game of "Chase Mr. Hankey".

 

[MrPrise]

That would be great, but there is a little trick / workaround that you could do already. Always fly toward to the planet, so you will always know everything that you left behind have been tried.
Of course this is not as effective as having some advanced way to mark them, but it helps a little.
Please check youtube for the video about advanced mining.
I would not even mind if we could completely destroy an asteroid somehow just to clear the area. I believe you could even earn money for that in the old Elite-s (for destroying asteroids)

 

[Naszar]

Mining needs more then just tagging.

First, asteroids in a belt should be displayed as Contacts. This should be easier to implement.

They should be scannable, same as ships in supercruise. Maybe introduce Asteroid Scanner modules of various accuracy but ship sensors can scan chunks for ore/mineral type and yield so its debatable. If such scan or scanner would also show probable chunk yields, that would be great.

With mining as it is right now, income is not directly scalable as with trading. Bigger cargohold lets you remain in belts longer but you attract more pirates on account of which you lose time but more importantly you still have to pick every single chunk same as you did when you started, just now you have bigger and less manoeuvrable ship.

Im not sure about the lore and tech in Elite universe but some sort of tractor beam or multiple harpoon launcher system to collect asteroid chunks is needed. If this game ever creates a actual need to use this barren system it requires plenty of work to facilitate scalability of income and investment or player enjoyment even.

 

[Ninjakebab]

Mhm

I really like the idea of a heat signature, after a rock has been mined. Perhaps make it relative of size and mining time, so there is a logical result based on absolute heat capacity of the rock.