Mining... this is not a "money making gripe" more a mechanics one

dgrafix

D
I just want to ask FDEV if they think that letting players learn a skill for months or even years to simply rewire the mechanics is fun?
First of all this is not about making money. If i -just- wanted to do that i would remove my brain and do robigo runs till i go insane.
No! making money should be rewarding and FUN. I actually find mining and my strategy to sell the goods a quite relaxing pastime.
I have just found a DOUBLE LTD overlap in HIP 13804, quite out of the way to be drained especially as it does not seem to appear in the miners tool. I have been out there for [at least] two hours and have not found ANY diamonds at all neither as a core (of anything) or laser as minable content. I found a few sub surface deposits, but while profitable, it needs constantly having to go back for ammo or wasting resources synth-ing them (plus i seem to be crap at it! :D ). Found plenty of bromellite and tritium (which is great, i take/need that too, but i expect to at least get -some- diamonds in a diamond hotspot!)
Again this is not a moan about money, it is a moan about changing the apparent virtual "laws of nature & physics" which is really not a way to keep players happy. I mean sure make them cheaper in the stock market (again) if you want to control player's riches, but please stop ruining the game by changing the nature of the gameplay!

An analogy: Take a fisherman, they spend perhaps many many hours out in nature, looking for the signs he/she knows are an indication of a good catch. However they stick the line in and nothing, for hours and hours, then gives up confused.. but the signs were there... goes to another place and the same thing.. nothing.
So in desperation walk to a sewage choked stagnant pool and throw the line in... and Lo! against all instinct (and in our case instrument readings and experience) and there they are a few fish!
So my request is PLEASE stop "fixing" what isn't broken. If you want to "balance" it then change it on the monetary level and stop changing the laws of players' "suspension of disbelief".
 
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Northpin

Northpin
dgrafix said:
I just want to ask FDEV if they think that letting players learn a skill for months or even years to simply rewire the mechanics is fun?
Click to expand...

You need to rewire as well. The mechanics did not disappear.
But you should rather forget about mining in Ice rings (with some exceptions tho - for example bromellite still works) since the mechanics for Ice rings were... altered (and this is a hole new subject)

Get into Metallic Rings and do Platinum as laser mining (and other precious metals like gold, osmium, silver, palladium)
If you really want to do core mining get into Rocky rings and do Benitoite or Musgravite

Also, i'm not sure about how skilled you are with the core mining.
For example, being in a double hot-spot does not increase the number of cores. Just the chance that if you find a core it will actually have the hot-spot main material and not one of the secondaries
If you stood if the same 20km area then it may be normal to not find a single core in 3h.
For example for core mining i'm using a Clipper with 600+ boost speed. Because it is not uncommon to have 50km between cores.
 

here_it_comes

here_it_comes
It would be nice if FD leveled out the playing field between the various mining methods and let the economy determine the price of various minerals instead of openly rigging it from time to time.

I would actually be interested in mining if that were the case. As things have been ever since Cores were introduced, one must check what the currently FD enforced mining meta is and what the current mining gameplay crippling bugs are in effect. Really socks the fun out of it.

So, just to check, what's the current meta and bug? PWA still broken? Apparently Hotspot are broken? What sells good? Which mining method is a waste of time? Very immersive.
(Being cheeky but not joking, considering saving for a FC.)

P.S. Small Seismic Charges when?
 
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dgrafix

D
Nobody would want to eat a fish from a poop pond.
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haha very true.. :D
The irony is, if i just jump into any old ring (not even pristine) i seem to find more of something than i do in the hotspot. Especially cores, i was finding lots of grandiderite cores and it was in a "depleted" ring system in a hotspot for something else!
I mean what gives?
 

Northpin

Northpin
A little bit of mining history - at least how i remember it:

Economy always lead the mining booms (past 3.3 patch, before mining was worthless), when a faction reaches a combination of 3-4 favorable BGS States, the price for certain precious minerals introduced in patch 3.3 dramatically increase.
For example, Void Opals used to reach 1.6 millions and LTD used to reach 1.1 millions per ton. Back then it was more profitable to mine VO than LTD
Laser mined Painite, especially mapped mining, also was very profitable, reaching only 770k per ton, but it was mined very fast in a double overlap.
So people had 2 highly effective mining methods: Core VO and lasered Painite.
Then they added some new BGS states (like public holiday) - VO were not affected, but that meant LTD could reach 1.7 millions per ton in special conditions.
So LTD became the most profitable, especially by mapped laser mining and especially when the triple overlap at Borann was found

So they rigged the economy.
Initially by implementing demand and bulk sale tax. But somehow demand was not affecting the LTD stocks, only bulk sale tax which was manageable because there were stations with high enough demand that people could still get the full price - especially if they mined in a Conda with 320t cargo.
When a station had the demand met for a certain mineral, the price under de most favorable conditions would be halved - so maximum one would be getting for LTD was like 800-900k. (but remember, demand didnt worked for LTD) Then this value was reduced again by the bulk sale tax (if you had in your cargo more than 10% LTD of the station demand) you'll be getting a really low price. But since there were stations with 3500+ demand people could show up with 320t condas full of LTD and still get close to the maximum price.

Then Carriers Launch happened.
People complained that Tritium mining sux - aka is too slow (it wasn't actually)
So they try to improve this by boosting SubSurfaceDeposits - they used to release 1 fragment per rocket - making them absolutely useless
The net result? After the boost Tritium SSD were yielding 2-3 fragments per rocket. But LDT were starting to yield 5-6 fragments. Then people found the EGGs and they also found out they could be reset using a SLF, without resetting the instance and so avoiding the pirates. (EGG = a fixed position special kind of asteroid with 4 LTD SSD - people would be getting like 50-80t or more from a single asteroid)

So FD panicked when the EGG reset mechanic was revealed to the public and Borann had thousands and thousand (people were naming it Exploit, but FD never did that and they did not removed the credits from the people that used to reset the EGG)

So - they crippled the ICE rings as in they reduced the overlap effectiveness by diminishing the overlap bonus starting much much closer to the center than it was before (which means a perfect overlap is still good). They removed the LTD from the 3x and 4x SSD LTD asteroids and replaced it with bromellite and also patched the SLF reset for SSD (SSD still reset by relogging, but at least you will get pirates ontop of that)
And they also altered (intentionally or not) the material distribution in Ice Rings - so for a while, a Tritium hotspot had less tritium than a non-hotspot area. Same for LTD
This was corrected sometimes after, but not sure if to the full extent.
And not at last, they also capped the prices for precious minerals along with correcting the demand bug for LTD.
As a result, technically mining LTD sux - since it was feasible only in triple ltd (nerfed) and with high BGS prices (nerfed too)
For a while painite was still worth mining but not for long.

Then they raised the prices for some other less precious metals and minerals and we reach the current meta.

So currently, Benitoite and Musgravite might be worth core mining, but not as good as before since prices are topped to about 800-900k and Core mining was profitable (150-200 millions per hour) only when VO were 1.6 millions. So atm one will get way less than 100 millions per hour doing core mining.
Most effective mining now is Platinum laser mining in a hotspot with a haz rez - there are maps to follow and one can fill 500t in way under an hour - so 150+ millions per hour are attainable

And yes, PWS works

Generally as money making methods:
  • Robigo can still yield like 80-100 millions per hour
  • Core mining might be yielding like 60-80 millions per hour (only for certain minerals, definitely not for LTD nor for VO)
  • Mapped platinum mining in a hotspot+hazres can get 150-200 millions per hour (requires a Cutter tho, heavily shielded and armed - pirates might try to rain on your parade)
  • Massacre missions in special systems can get 200-300 millions per hour by stacking missions and using highly engineered murder boats.
  • Running certain missions in certain systems can also be worthy (delivery missions, mining missions for precious metals - that can be purchased - like gold or silver)
 
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Brrokk

Brrokk
I'm not sure, but I think ice ring hotspots went a bit wrong when tritium was added. Does anyone else see that?

As said above, metallic rings are the easiest laser mining.
 

Northpin

Northpin
Brrokk said:
I'm not sure, but I think ice ring hotspots went a bit wrong when tritium was added. Does anyone else see that?
Click to expand...

They were messed up when they tried to improve tritium mining
Initially, right after Carrier Launch there was nothing wrong with Ice Rings and tritium mining in double overlaps was quite productive - up to 300t per hour
 

Susanna

Susanna
Northpin said:
You need to rewire as well. The mechanics did not disappear.
But you should rather forget about mining in Ice rings (with some exceptions tho - for example bromellite still works) since the mechanics for Ice rings were... altered (and this is a hole new subject)

Get into Metallic Rings and do Platinum as laser mining (and other precious metals like gold, osmium, silver, palladium)
If you really want to do core mining get into Rocky rings and do Benitoite or Musgravite

Also, i'm not sure about how skilled you are with the core mining.
For example, being in a double hot-spot does not increase the number of cores. Just the chance that if you find a core it will actually have the hot-spot main material and not one of the secondaries
If you stood if the same 20km area then it may be normal to not find a single core in 3h.
For example for core mining i'm using a Clipper with 600+ boost speed. Because it is not uncommon to have 50km between cores.
Click to expand...

Which the 'fixed' wave scanner is still useless at picking out...

Overall, aside from mining for fun/relaxing, mining for profits is a waste of time. It just isn't profitable, especially if you have an FC already as even basic trading will earn more than 100mil / hr and with a ADC and flight assist it's virtually effortless, requiring next to no input from the cmdr apart from a couple of button presses at the right time.
 

Starshot_Jigawatts

S
I've sold my Cutter and I'm done with mining. Mining in Elite, like every other game with space mining, is boring and tedious and not even worth it anymore. Laser mining is super reliable but even a full load of Platinum in a Cutter will only get you ~150 million credits or something. That's an hour or less at Robigo or doing massacre missions. Which are WAY more fun than staring at space rocks while your computer shouts "Programming Infant Drones" over and over again for hours on end.

Core mining is just trash now as well it feels like. They nerfed the profit potential but left the bad RNG in place. Last time I went core mining I did everything right, was in the perfect spot, and found jack crap for cores. It's fine if you want core mining to be a "needle in a haystack" feel to it I guess, but when players find that needle they should be seriously rewarded. Which they currently aren't anymore, so what's even the point?

When people literally publish maps of asteroids hotspots FDEV? Yeah, that's a sure sign you've screwed up big time on something lol.
 
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Winterwalker

Winterwalker
I think adding Tritium shuffled the other minerals down the order which is why metallic rings are now better, relatively speaking because unaffected (no tritium in metallic rings). It was a bit masked though because the PWS was borked at the time. The prices changed too but that was a separate event, appearing in Galnet later, as a price crash.

If you'd not been mining for a while both significant changes together do nett as one very significant change and mining is much closer aligned to trading now. Combat got it's buff too so, even though the good times might be gone for now, I think at least there's a fairly even choice and an incentive to try different things because no ONE thing is the ONLY thing worth doing. They're all about the same, earnings wise.
 

[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos

[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos
I own a carrier, I like to take it out in the black, so I do mine. I'm ok with it. I do what I need to get some Trit for the next jump, I always have a healthy reserve. If someone aims at mining for hours to make credits, well good luck to them but it sounds tedious to me.

I'll mine for an hour or so, then change activity. Then I'll change to another activity. I pick up a few different treats as I mine for Trit, bonus. I don't rely on the credits they bring to keep my credit balance healthy, they are just that, a bonus.
 

VoluptaBox

VoluptaBox
Northpin said:
  • Massacre missions in special systems can get 200-300 millions per hour by stacking missions and using highly engineered murder boats.
  • Running certain missions in certain systems can also be worthy (delivery missions, mining missions for precious metals - that can be purchased - like gold or silver)
Click to expand...
Do you happen to have recommendations for good systems for massacres and mission systems? More specifically I'm interested in ones with lots of Feds or Empire factions, as I would also like to gain rank while doing missions. I've been roaming the bubble for the past few days but I couldn't really find any satisfactory ones. Cheers :)
 
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