Mining
- Thread starter deeepblue699
- Start date
There is nothing wrong with that proposition.
TheLoneTrucker
Banned
mining took a big step in the right direction. Just still needs some tweaking. It'll get there eventually. 
Some mining tips as there are people here that are simply doing it wrong
I am not saying its perfect and no its not a big money earner, but some people are doing something wrong if that cant turn over 500k to 1mill an hour. Yes I know it does not compare to other professions but not all of us are about maximum profit or we would all be trading. But I don't want to go down the path of bickering which is a better earner. I prefer to do what I enjoy or feel like at the time. Sometimes I make no money but I still have fun or chill or whatever I need at the time.
Anyway I mine a lot. Its been my favourite way of chilling with some music in the background. I mine in an ASP and average 800k an hour but it does vary as its based on luck.
Some tips:
I am not saying its perfect and no its not a big money earner, but some people are doing something wrong if that cant turn over 500k to 1mill an hour. Yes I know it does not compare to other professions but not all of us are about maximum profit or we would all be trading. But I don't want to go down the path of bickering which is a better earner. I prefer to do what I enjoy or feel like at the time. Sometimes I make no money but I still have fun or chill or whatever I need at the time.
Anyway I mine a lot. Its been my favourite way of chilling with some music in the background. I mine in an ASP and average 800k an hour but it does vary as its based on luck.
Some tips:
- Only mine in Metallic rings . Preferably Pristine, That is where you will find all the high earners
- If you go to the Res Sites, there are higher yields (a little) but more pirates. This adds bounty income if you have a good defensive ship and skills, Almost doubles my profit but more risk. In a small ship you spend a lot of time running away so it defeats the purpose.
I also think.. but not yet sure, that the closer you are to the res (i.e within 10 km) the higher the yield / quality.. still checking that. - You don't have to go to the res sites, you can mine anywhere in the ring (less pirates if any). Just make sure you go to the right Ring if the planet has multi rings (ring 1 = inner, ring 2 further out etc).
- Use your laser (or prospecter (no use on small cargo ships) ) to sample the rock. If it does not have a yield higher than 15% of something good don't waste your time. Go sample another.
Most of your time is spent collecting. If you waste it collecting low grade low %, in that time I might have sampled 10 more roids and found much higher grade, high yield to spend my time on. - In regards to drones they are a bit buggy and very DUMB:
- Fast spinning odd shaped rocks crush them. I tend to avoid mining those unless I am carrying lots of drones.
- DONT have a frag or cargo targeted when you launch a collector. That makes them one use only and they then destruct after collecting the target
- If you move your ship while the drone is out collecting and you end up with a roids between you and the drone, it will smash into the roid.
- 2 drones work sometimes .. but there are some bugs at the moment and they either end up with one expiring or they start syncing up and behaving as a single drone
- After chipping off the frags, manoeuvre your ship so it sits above the main cluster and fairly close for faster cycle time
- Drones that get left out of range will self destruct
- Drones pickup your jettisoned cargo.. I often want to dump the gallite, bert, indite that gets collected to make room and they pick it up again grrr. So I do the purge after a drone has expired and then boost some distance away before launching the next one so they are out of range
- You can close the cargo bay when the drones are parked so you can get to the next roid faster.
- Get a Big refinery (7 or 8 slots) the addition or more than two ores per roid keeps you managing that refinery a lot.
- I have 64 ton cargo space. I take 20 collector drones out with me and that's just enough on average for me to return with 64 tons full of silver , gold, osmium, platinum, palladium and painite. Usually takes me an hour to 1.5 hours to fill up and come home. I sometimes take more drones as I like dropping two but the mortality is higher. Towards the end of the session I sometimes need to dispose of some drones to make room for the last few tons of goodies. I want to return with ore not drones. Keep in mind a 1ton drone costs 100. Dumping that for even 1 gallite is worth 20 times the drone.
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There's one thing we should try not to forget: mining, in and of itself, is a hard, painstaking, laborious and often boring endeavor in the first place. There's only one thing that kindles a miner's heart - the prospect of striking it BIG! While the rarity of high stakes metals in Elite is perfectly acceptable, it is rather a kick in the butt when you DO find those metals, but only in miniscule proportions. FDev, reward the Miner's sweat and toil, enrich his soul, and let us strike it rich once in awhile with some BIG finds.
Just picture: you're out there mining away, finding a whole lot of nothing, just about ready to pack it in for the day. Okay, just one more rock... And then, all of a sudden, you test an asteroid and find 89% paladium. Next chunk 94%. The astroid along side, the same thing. Now we're into the miner's dream.
Just picture: you're out there mining away, finding a whole lot of nothing, just about ready to pack it in for the day. Okay, just one more rock... And then, all of a sudden, you test an asteroid and find 89% paladium. Next chunk 94%. The astroid along side, the same thing. Now we're into the miner's dream.
Well, you're half way there... you got 92% of ~ 43% Painite chunks left.
I wanna see that screenshot when you find 90% chunks of the good stuff.
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I'm not greedy...I'll settle for regular 45% rocks.
Im loving mining at the moment.
I kitted out a Python for mining with a couple of burst turrets and a beam laser.
Drop into a high intensity RES and look for high value metals with prospector drones. When the inevitable pirate arrives I let the turrets take it out - if its a wing of pirates I engage while the collector drones continue to pick up ore.
I come back with a hold full of precious metals and a fat load of bounties.
With mining/resource collection mission rewards, bounties and cargo profit Im clearing at least 2 Mil in an hour and a half.
Yes I could make much more money trading but it wouldn't be as much fun and I wouldn't be gaining any experience towards my Elite combat rank.
I kitted out a Python for mining with a couple of burst turrets and a beam laser.
Drop into a high intensity RES and look for high value metals with prospector drones. When the inevitable pirate arrives I let the turrets take it out - if its a wing of pirates I engage while the collector drones continue to pick up ore.
I come back with a hold full of precious metals and a fat load of bounties.
With mining/resource collection mission rewards, bounties and cargo profit Im clearing at least 2 Mil in an hour and a half.
Yes I could make much more money trading but it wouldn't be as much fun and I wouldn't be gaining any experience towards my Elite combat rank.
I'm currently mining in an Asp with a 40t cargo bay. My last two trips have resulted in 484,500 and 519,700 profit each.
It's not a fortune but it's fine for me, mining with limpets is very easy and half the time I spend browsing and irc'ing on my 2nd monitor. I find mining fun and relaxing.. Even more relaxing now as it takes no effort to let the limpets do all the work.
As for changing the refinery I say a huge "No!!" working the refinery is the only real task I have whilst mining now, but I quite enjoy "juggling" ore and getting the most optimal ore. If they totally automate that too, mining might as well be stopped as all you do is sit there, press a button and wait. But I guess that's what some people want? Crazy
It's not a fortune but it's fine for me, mining with limpets is very easy and half the time I spend browsing and irc'ing on my 2nd monitor. I find mining fun and relaxing.. Even more relaxing now as it takes no effort to let the limpets do all the work.
As for changing the refinery I say a huge "No!!" working the refinery is the only real task I have whilst mining now, but I quite enjoy "juggling" ore and getting the most optimal ore. If they totally automate that too, mining might as well be stopped as all you do is sit there, press a button and wait. But I guess that's what some people want? Crazy
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first time i tried mining in 1.3 i simply equiped my conda with A class 4 prospector and collector module and fly to the nearest High RES. It didn't go well
Then i asked myself: why would someone hope to have good profit simply trying to dig in his courtyard for gold and other precious metals?
My second run i decided to go far away from "the bubble" and found a system with pristine cluster @ 230LY from my home system.
Osmium, palladium, gold silver and platinum all with good % chunks! 336 cargo capacity with 200 limpets inside.
Prospector save me time as with the conda the move speed is too low to move, mine and see what's inside the asteroid.
Collector are awesome but sometime when i try use more than 2 at the same time.
Bonus, some poor pirate wanabe npc tried shooting me, turrets killed them really quicly.
Profit was good (nearly 4M credits) for 2 hours of work selling in Torval controlled system and completing mining mission for rare. Got some bounty vouncher and got stellar data to sell!
Hope bugs will be fixed in the future but mining in 1.3 is far superior than before.
Then i asked myself: why would someone hope to have good profit simply trying to dig in his courtyard for gold and other precious metals?
My second run i decided to go far away from "the bubble" and found a system with pristine cluster @ 230LY from my home system.
Osmium, palladium, gold silver and platinum all with good % chunks! 336 cargo capacity with 200 limpets inside.
Prospector save me time as with the conda the move speed is too low to move, mine and see what's inside the asteroid.
Collector are awesome but sometime when i try use more than 2 at the same time.
Bonus, some poor pirate wanabe npc tried shooting me, turrets killed them really quicly.
Profit was good (nearly 4M credits) for 2 hours of work selling in Torval controlled system and completing mining mission for rare. Got some bounty vouncher and got stellar data to sell!
Hope bugs will be fixed in the future but mining in 1.3 is far superior than before.
Just made a run in a Lakon 7 outfitted for mining.
10 minutes to get to my mining location.
Then I mined for 50 minutes which resulted in 600000 profit.
However, I had more luck in other runs, so I guess 750000 would be more normal.
Furthermore, once the limpet bugs are fixed, I exect at least a third more profit.
Currently I see four bugs that make your life as a miner much harder than it should:
- The common bug that collectors go in sync
- The looping bug: Collectors start going in a loop. They are useless until expired.
- The missing bug: Occasionally collectors don't follow you anymore. Neither do they self destruct. You either have to go far away or wait until they expire
- The random prospector bug: My plan was to plant three prospector limpets and then choose the best result for mining. This works well at first, but later on it seems that prospector drones are deactivated not based on the order in which they were deployed but on chance. This means that sometimes you lose several limpets before they even reach the target. Which makes the whole possibility to have more than one prospector limpet active at once pretty useless.
You can certainly make much more money by trading (boring) or bounty hunting (I don't like fighting) but mining is much more fun and once the bugs are fixed I expect it to be even somewhat profitable.
I watched a couple of Buffy reruns two months ago. However I have to admit that I watched the series for the first time just two years ago.
10 minutes to get to my mining location.
Then I mined for 50 minutes which resulted in 600000 profit.
However, I had more luck in other runs, so I guess 750000 would be more normal.
Furthermore, once the limpet bugs are fixed, I exect at least a third more profit.
Currently I see four bugs that make your life as a miner much harder than it should:
- The common bug that collectors go in sync
- The looping bug: Collectors start going in a loop. They are useless until expired.
- The missing bug: Occasionally collectors don't follow you anymore. Neither do they self destruct. You either have to go far away or wait until they expire
- The random prospector bug: My plan was to plant three prospector limpets and then choose the best result for mining. This works well at first, but later on it seems that prospector drones are deactivated not based on the order in which they were deployed but on chance. This means that sometimes you lose several limpets before they even reach the target. Which makes the whole possibility to have more than one prospector limpet active at once pretty useless.
You can certainly make much more money by trading (boring) or bounty hunting (I don't like fighting) but mining is much more fun and once the bugs are fixed I expect it to be even somewhat profitable.
I watched a couple of Buffy reruns two months ago. However I have to admit that I watched the series for the first time just two years ago.
Planetary rings do NOT count for how much they have been worked (pristine to depleted)
Only asteroid fields orbiting suns do.
Cause I sure have never seen a description of "pristine" or whatever associated with a planetary ring, only as said, with orbiting asteroid clusters
yes, I love it more and more after finding better and better spots
BUT: There should really be some improvement to the collector drones. Ranges should be increased by about 50 - 100% and there really need to be an improvement in their behaviour (I would really love to use them in range of the asteroid, but that in most cases is too close for 4 drones to work collision free - when lauching drone 2 drone 1 explodes very often.
BUT: There should really be some improvement to the collector drones. Ranges should be increased by about 50 - 100% and there really need to be an improvement in their behaviour (I would really love to use them in range of the asteroid, but that in most cases is too close for 4 drones to work collision free - when lauching drone 2 drone 1 explodes very often.
Just wanted to say a couple of more things that might help others...
I did a run with prospectors and used them to Presample roids before I could get to them. It either allowed me to avoid poor content or find good stuff. So they have potential but still with Only 64t cargo, its not really enough for a big session at one shot per sample. Would be helpful if you could carry hundreds.
I have had the orbiting drone problem a couple of times and I solved it by moving my ship into the drone's path, it bounced off my hull and then started behaving. I did destroy one once, but the hull bounce works more often than not.
Also I never got into Buffy...well poor choice of words but you know what I mean.
Sorry that is what it is and will be.
Instead of some voxel based asteroids that yield realistic amounts of ore, the ability to scan asteroids for mineral composition and tag them with your dumb computer and have drones that can return and refuel.... we still have this. This is what they want for us.
Instead of some voxel based asteroids that yield realistic amounts of ore, the ability to scan asteroids for mineral composition and tag them with your dumb computer and have drones that can return and refuel.... we still have this. This is what they want for us.
Wrong. I have seen pristine in relation to rings very often (as well as depleted etc). If I get the chance I will get a screenie for you. My main mining location right now says pristine reserves at the bottom of the planet data and below that it gives the description of the ring composition etc.
I used to think the same thing, but because I saw lots of posts mentioning it... I actually took time to look at the system map. Select a planet with minable rings. On the left scroll down so you can see what type of rings. Just about that, literally just above it it says Depleted, Low, Common etc.
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