I came around to try the not so new anymore mining techniques with prospector and collector limpets, and it struck me as... well, a bit unsatisfactory dur to lack of realism.
I mean, why are asteroids "depleted" after I fire a laser at more or less the same spot for a few minutes? Should there not be something left at least on the other side of the rock? I never pointed my laser there, did I?
So I propose that prospector drones, instead of just giving you statistics about an asteroid, should reveal "hot spots" on its surface, and that instead of just firing aimlessly here and there, you should need to actually hit those targets with your mining laser. To completely deplete an asteroid, you would thus have to maneuver around it to be able to hit the hot spots on the other side. This way, mining would be a little more to do and thus less boring. And certainly a bit more realistic.
Meanwhile, mining the old way, without prospectors, would be more or less unchanged: You just keep firing until you hit something by chance. The only difference would be that it would now make sense to rotate around the asteroids to find more stuff.
I mean, why are asteroids "depleted" after I fire a laser at more or less the same spot for a few minutes? Should there not be something left at least on the other side of the rock? I never pointed my laser there, did I?
So I propose that prospector drones, instead of just giving you statistics about an asteroid, should reveal "hot spots" on its surface, and that instead of just firing aimlessly here and there, you should need to actually hit those targets with your mining laser. To completely deplete an asteroid, you would thus have to maneuver around it to be able to hit the hot spots on the other side. This way, mining would be a little more to do and thus less boring. And certainly a bit more realistic.
Meanwhile, mining the old way, without prospectors, would be more or less unchanged: You just keep firing until you hit something by chance. The only difference would be that it would now make sense to rotate around the asteroids to find more stuff.