Multi-crew Mining - Why it is pointless, and how to improve.

[Red Fox Four]

With the new wing mining missions we decided to try this out.

We took a mission to mine 208 units of Brom-something. Brombalite? Brellite? Bromellite?

I had a Type 9 for cargo runs which I retro-fitted to a mining build instead.

3 x Turreted Class 2 Mining Lasers
2 x Turreted Class 1 Mining Lasers
5A Collector Limpet Controller (3 collectors at a time)
4A Refinery (10 bins)
3A Prospector Limpet Controller (2 prospectors at a time)
Loads of cargo space

So I flew to the ice belt, my friend joined as multicrew.

He joined in via telepresence as a multicrew member.

Our plan was:

I'd control the ship and the two class 1 mining lasers (mounted by cockpit) and manage the refinery. He'd control the prospector limpet, collector limpet controller and the 3 x mining lasers on top and bottom of the ship.

First problem:
Apparently when you have a multi-crew gunner then the pilot can control NONE OF THE HARDPOINTS. In other words, my friend had to operate all 5 mining lasers thus we'd be unable to mine 2 asteroids at the same time for instance.

Second problem:
Apparently when you have a multi-crew gunner the pilot can NOT control the prospector limpet launcher either... DESPITE the fact that this launcher ONLY fires forward like a dumbfire missile. This meant I had to aim the ship, then he'd push the button to launch it. How insanely dumb is this? Why can't the GUNNER fire the prospector in the direction he is aiming... optionally, if the gunner can't aim the prospector (which is how it is today apparently) then let the pilot fire the prospector since he has to aim the whole ship anyhow.

Third problem:
Even with 3 x Collector Limpets it takes way too long to collect all the fragments. You blast the rock until it is depleted in X amount of time. Then you have to wait 3 * X amount of time for the collectors to wrap up (even if you are using the fragment ignore list to exclude worthless ore). While this is not specifically a problem in multicrew it becomes a problem when your friend could be in a separate ship with his own collectors and thus you'd have twice as many collector limpets out there and collect the fragments in half the time.

Fourth problem:
This also ties into the argument of your friend having their own ship rather than being a crew in yours. When you are mining an asteroid the "Minerals: 100%" counter (which you can see by targeting the prospector limpet which is attached to the asteroid) will decrease from 100% to 0% and generate X amount of fragments to collect.

However, if your friend has his own ship then he will also see the "Minerals: 100%" counter, BUT (and this is a huge one) his counter does NOT DECREASE when you are mining the asteroid and YOUR counter does not decrease when your friend is mining the asteroid. This means having 2 separate ships mining the same asteroid will generate TWICE as many fragments since both players have their own individual "Minerals: 100%" counter. Or, if you have 4 ships mining the same asteroid you generate FOUR TIMES as many fragments per asteroid, thus increasing your mining efficiency by a factor of 4.

This does NOT happen when you multicrew. When multi-crewing the asteroid only has a single "Minerals: 100%" count. Ergo, you are gimping your mining yield per asteroid to half, compared to just having separate ships.

How to improve this for multicrew?

1. Allow pilot and gunner to operate different hardpoints. This would allow pilot and gunner to be able to shoot different asteroids to speed up "spawning" fragments to collect.
2. Allow gunner to aim and fire the prospector limpet in any direction, optionally place the control of the prospector limpet to the pilot if it is to remain as a forward-firing dumbfire missile.
3. Improve the speed / efficiency of the collector limpets. Currently they operate at 200m/s for a single-target collect, but only 60m/s for "free for all" collection. Increase their speed in the "FFA" mode so collecting the fragments doesn't become the choke point. In my book having a multi-crew member should be (close to anyhow) as ideal as having separate ships. This means a bonus to collector limpets speed and pick-up rates when having a multi-crew member onboard should be added so the collection speed of 1 ship with 3A collector limpets should be as good as having 2 ships with 3A collector limpets. In simple terms... if you have a multicrew member the collector limpet speed should be doubled (from 60m/s to 120m/s in "FFA" mode)
4. Allow multi-crew member operating the mining lasers to have their individual player counter for the "Minerals: 100%". This ties in to the first point of allowing pilot and gunner to both be able to operate different hardpoints. This will increase the yield of fragments for a multi-crew setup to the same as the second player bringing their own ship.

With these changes the multi-crew for mining would be more on-par with just bringing your own ship. Obviously by bringing separate ships you'd have more total cargo capacity and thus be able to remain in a belt longer, but I suppose that is a downside to multi-crew that can't really be mitigated.

Thoughts?

Ideas?

Would love to hear them.

My conclusion after the weekend of mining has been that multi-crew for mining is so full of disadvantages and drawbacks that it is entirely pointless to do it. BYOS (Bring Your Own Ship) is the only way to go for mining right now and that needs to change.

 

[V'larr]

So I'd just like to point out a few things:

- You don't need to use more than ~2 class 2 mining lasers per rock. You can figure 2 small mining lasers as roughly equal to 1 medium mining laser. More than that is tough for most distributors to handle and really doesn't chunk the rocks into pieces faster than your collectors can work.

- Only one 5A collector limpet controller is woefully underequipped. You should be thinking of at least 3 limpet controllers (as large as you can, wherever you can fit them), and ideally aim to have around 8-10 or so of the things all active simultaneously. You don't really need a ton of cargo space (~250-300 is what I'd go for), any more and you're going to be out there for an excessively long time before you'd run out of limpets and/or fill your hold up.

- Regarding multicrew: The helm controls fixed mining lasers, the gunner controls ALL turreted ones. Set up your hardpoints accordingly. Fdev could do a better job of lining it out for players how that works, though.
- I'm pretty sure you can mess with fire group settings to put the prospector limpet back under your control. It takes a bit of finagling and it's admittedly not as easy as it ought to be to figure out.

- Regarding rock instancing: when you are in Multicrew, the commanders in your ship are in *YOUR* instance. When you are in a wing, players in their ships are in their own duplicate instance. You can see them, they can see you, but the rocks you see sort of exist in two dimensions at once, one in your space, the other in their space. I guess they could change that for uniformity's sake, going either way.

They *have* mentioned that they are going to improve limpet behavior, make them less suicidal and easier to use in general.

Lastly, you probably want to head over to here and check out the MOTHERLODE topics; possibly ask a forum moderator to move your thread over for more direct visibility since this is currently a Focused Feedback topic?: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php/234-Beyond-Series-Focused-Feedback

 

[Ian Doncaster]

3 x Turreted Class 2 Mining Lasers
2 x Turreted Class 1 Mining Lasers

A mix of turreted and fixed might have worked better if you intended to shoot different things at the same time.

5A Collector Limpet Controller (3 collectors at a time)

This I think was a big problem, wings, multicrew or nothing - 3 collectors is about enough for the output of one medium mining laser. With that many lasers, especially if you *had* been able to shoot two asteroids at once and therefore not been able to position your ship optimally for both mining sites, I would have gone for at least 10 collectors and a smaller cargo hold.

However, if your friend has his own ship then he will also see the "Minerals: 100%" counter, BUT (and this is a huge one) his counter does NOT DECREASE when you are mining the asteroid and YOUR counter does not decrease when your friend is mining the asteroid. This means having 2 separate ships mining the same asteroid will generate TWICE as many fragments since both players have their own individual "Minerals: 100%" counter. Or, if you have 4 ships mining the same asteroid you generate FOUR TIMES as many fragments per asteroid, thus increasing your mining efficiency by a factor of 4.

Yes, this.

While the new mining features for Q4 look like they will provide a bit more for a multicrew pilot to do in a mining ship, they won't change this ... and it looks like the new features will largely be better for solo mining than wings because they involve one-off effects on asteroids.

That's perhaps not too surprising, I guess - the way mining works with wings at the moment is a little strange and presumably more a technical limitation than originally intended gameplay - but just as they made bounty hunting give the full bounty to each wing member to stop wing hunting being worse than solo hunting ... I think they need to consider how to bring the same benefits to mining.

 

[Red Fox Four]

So I'd just like to point out a few things:

- You don't need to use more than ~2 class 2 mining lasers per rock. You can figure 2 small mining lasers as roughly equal to 1 medium mining laser. More than that is tough for most distributors to handle and really doesn't chunk the rocks into pieces faster than your collectors can work.

- Only one 5A collector limpet controller is woefully underequipped. You should be thinking of at least 3 limpet controllers (as large as you can, wherever you can fit them), and ideally aim to have around 8-10 or so of the things all active simultaneously. You don't really need a ton of cargo space (~250-300 is what I'd go for), any more and you're going to be out there for an excessively long time before you'd run out of limpets and/or fill your hold up.

- Regarding multicrew: The helm controls fixed mining lasers, the gunner controls ALL turreted ones. Set up your hardpoints accordingly. Fdev could do a better job of lining it out for players how that works, though.
- I'm pretty sure you can mess with fire group settings to put the prospector limpet back under your control. It takes a bit of finagling and it's admittedly not as easy as it ought to be to figure out.

- Regarding rock instancing: when you are in Multicrew, the commanders in your ship are in *YOUR* instance. When you are in a wing, players in their ships are in their own duplicate instance. You can see them, they can see you, but the rocks you see sort of exist in two dimensions at once, one in your space, the other in their space. I guess they could change that for uniformity's sake, going either way.

They *have* mentioned that they are going to improve limpet behavior, make them less suicidal and easier to use in general.

Lastly, you probably want to head over to here and check out the MOTHERLODE topics; possibly ask a forum moderator to move your thread over for more direct visibility since this is currently a Focused Feedback topic?: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php/234-Beyond-Series-Focused-Feedback

Thanks for these tips.

Good, solid feedback that would have made our experience somewhat less painful I suppose. And yes, I noticed the 5A collector was not enough so I have since added another 3A collector and considering yet another 3A collector and even a 7A collector (since T9 has 2 x Class 8 cargo slots giving it 512 cargo). That would put me at 13 active collector limpets at max.

Anyways, there is still the issue of 2 ships being able to field twice as many collectors and being able to get twice as many fragments per asteroid compared to doing it as a multi-crew.

I just don't see how multi-crew can "compete" with separate ships as long as asteroids don't provide fragments individually per player and the collectors being more efficient. Those are the two key points that hold back multi-crew mining.

 

[Muzz UK]

The new mining in Q4 apparently has multicrew in mind.

 

[V'larr]

Thanks for these tips.

Good, solid feedback that would have made our experience somewhat less painful I suppose. And yes, I noticed the 5A collector was not enough so I have since added another 3A collector and considering yet another 3A collector and even a 7A collector (since T9 has 2 x Class 8 cargo slots giving it 512 cargo). That would put me at 13 active collector limpets at max.

Anyways, there is still the issue of 2 ships being able to field twice as many collectors and being able to get twice as many fragments per asteroid compared to doing it as a multi-crew.

I just don't see how multi-crew can "compete" with separate ships as long as asteroids don't provide fragments individually per player and the collectors being more efficient. Those are the two key points that hold back multi-crew mining.

I'm not wholly certain wing mining ought to be competitive with multicrew, though. Two ships are being used, as you pointed out - twice the investment, and twice the risk, is going into the venture, so you get twice the profits. Ostensibly, the benefit of multicrew mining is that you can do it a little faster.

One thing I'm excited for, is that I spotted Barry hinting at a SLF with mining lasers - that would definitely give an edge to multicrew mining, particularly combined with smarter collector limpets (they do already have the capability of collecting fragments from multiple sources at once, it's just a bit of a hazard with how prone to suicidal collisions the things are).

I mean, think on it: one multicrew ship with the help of turrets and/or SLFs could work on 3 separate asteroids simultaneously. You still wouldn't be getting twice the fragments like you would in a Wing, but you *would* be proceeding at least twice as fast through the asteroids as you would solo. An advantage that's a fair bit more measurable than using an SLF in combat, that's for sure....

Knowing Fdev and how they've failed to address the combat splitting problem thus far, though, they'll just divide all the profits you make in multicrew and make the entire point of all this moot.

 

[Red Fox Four]

I'm not wholly certain wing mining ought to be competitive with multicrew, though. Two ships are being used, as you pointed out - twice the investment, and twice the risk, is going into the venture, so you get twice the profits. Ostensibly, the benefit of multicrew mining is that you can do it a little faster.

One thing I'm excited for, is that I spotted Barry hinting at a SLF with mining lasers - that would definitely give an edge to multicrew mining, particularly combined with smarter collector limpets (they do already have the capability of collecting fragments from multiple sources at once, it's just a bit of a hazard with how prone to suicidal collisions the things are).

I mean, think on it: one multicrew ship with the help of turrets and/or SLFs could work on 3 separate asteroids simultaneously. You still wouldn't be getting twice the fragments like you would in a Wing, but you *would* be proceeding at least twice as fast through the asteroids as you would solo. An advantage that's a fair bit more measurable than using an SLF in combat, that's for sure....

Knowing Fdev and how they've failed to address the combat splitting problem thus far, though, they'll just divide all the profits you make in multicrew and make the entire point of all this moot.

Mining SLF sounds like a lot of fun.

You could have the SLF work as a lead scout to tag asteroids and start mining them while the main ship would slowly move up behind to scoop up the fragments.

This would require the SLF to have some sort of Scan-&-Tag equipment, and for fragments to stay "alive" longer so the big ship has a chance to move up and start collecting.

Normal SLF's have 2 weapons + 1 Utility slot (chaff, heat sink etc). A Mining SLF could have 2 mining lasers and a scan/tag utility item.

ScanTag module would work like: Aim the SLF at asteroid, hold down the button for ScanTag and after X seconds (like a detail scanner) it would reveal the contents of the asteroid and mark it as a target (enabling the main ship to target it) for 10 minutes or so (plenty time to finish up the current asteroid, collect fragments and move to the tagged asteroid.

Just throwing an idea out there. Would make Mining SLFs very useful and further boost the multi-crew part of the game and make it more appealing.

 

[V'larr]

Mining SLF sounds like a lot of fun.

You could have the SLF work as a lead scout to tag asteroids and start mining them while the main ship would slowly move up behind to scoop up the fragments.

This would require the SLF to have some sort of Scan-&-Tag equipment, and for fragments to stay "alive" longer so the big ship has a chance to move up and start collecting.

Normal SLF's have 2 weapons + 1 Utility slot (chaff, heat sink etc). A Mining SLF could have 2 mining lasers and a scan/tag utility item.

ScanTag module would work like: Aim the SLF at asteroid, hold down the button for ScanTag and after X seconds (like a detail scanner) it would reveal the contents of the asteroid and mark it as a target (enabling the main ship to target it) for 10 minutes or so (plenty time to finish up the current asteroid, collect fragments and move to the tagged asteroid.

Just throwing an idea out there. Would make Mining SLFs very useful and further boost the multi-crew part of the game and make it more appealing.

Well, hopefully they'll think to allow a crewmember in an SLF to be able to target the prospecting limpets, which can just continue to be managed from the mothership - no new scanning equipment necessary.

But, that said, I'm not against them coming up with a way for a SLF to do its own rock-scanning.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

about the limpets -
you can set your gunner role to "restricted", then the helm got the limpets and the gunner can do noting more then aiming the turrets.

aside from that
i doubt that the Q4 update will REALLY improve upon multicrew mining more then just providing the mining laser equipped SLF

after all, they keep prospectors,

and the three new mining methods are all destructive, so as far as i can tell, synced for all player in the instance no matter if multicrew or wing.
For the new mining "hardpoints", their multicrew implementation will probably just be another turret version that fails to work because none of the DEVs thinks about the stupid auto-aim the gunner has to deal with.

 

[Daynen]

Having the asteroid produce a completely different "supply" for each ship is really kind of dumb if you ask me; it sounds like that's really the tipping point for wing vs. multicrew. I understand the increased investment and risk of bringing more ships, but that's a very artificial way to inflate the value of wing mining in my opinion. The new mining options sound great, but given that the standard mining method will still be available, I don't see them solving the problem. Unless the new methods are extremely efficient, players will still have plenty of reason to just wing up and zap the same rock for double the payout. That honestly needs to be addressed.