Ok just spent about a half an hour mining with drones, and it is great. I can see myself building a ship just for mining and spending hours in the asteroid belts collecting rocks, or should I say having my drones collect rocks for me. The prospecting drones tell you the asteroid content and the percentage left of ore as you mine it and your little drones run out and collect the ore for you and put it in the cargo scoop. Really awesome in the Rift too. Well done.
Ok Mining is a HOOT ! in Powerplay
- Thread starter Jake_blakeson
- Start date
Now that's great news! as it was Mining was about as exciting as watching old cars rust. Hopefully this kicks it up a notch or thirty.
I can't wait to try it!
I have to second this. Just been mining in a maxed out Anaconda, in a high intensity RES. It was a blast. Was able to collect bounties while my drones were collecting the ore, Thanks to the new turret behaviour. Looks like this scales really well with bigger ships. Unfortunately in game I've only got a Python but I expect you would get the same results if you and a friend or two were to co-op mine. There's even a job for new pilots in Vipers and the like, helping to keep the flak of you 
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Buy a separate dedicated mining ship?
I haven't had chance to work out the averages but I seemed to make about the same money in an hour as hitting a good RES spawn, due to easily picking up bounties on small ships whilst collecting the ore.
Please deposit all 10% equipment sale reduction ideas and sour grapes in the 10% Equipment Sale Reduction Ideas and Sour Grapes thread.
Do mining profits count towards the trading rank? If so that would be a nice alternative to the usual A-B grind. Like dropping 400 tonnes of Painite at a station for 36k each. Question is how fast you can get your cargo hold full though.
The only issue I did seem to have with the drones, Is that they will also pickup any Illegal salvage nearby, which can get you in to trouble fast with the local system authority vessels. I'm hoping they will add some sort of toggle in the function menu (like turrets) to specify legal salvage only or all salvage.
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You can obviously fill up the hold faster the more active drones you have. Its not super fast though and will still take considerable time. Also finding the rare minerals takes time flying about. I didn't find any Painite though even in a pristine metallic belt, so I expect that is pretty rare.
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You can obviously fill up the hold faster the more active drones you have. Its not super fast though and will still take considerable time. Also finding the rare minerals takes time flying about. I didn't find any Painite though even in a pristine metallic belt, so I expect that is pretty rare.
What sort of price are the drones? I seem to recall lots of whining about having to buy them and them being a one-shot thing
Ha, +rep for this. I am looking forward to the mining changes, always enjoyed mining in other games. It's relaxing, kind of like fishing, but in this case with pirates and lasers. =P
Thanks for this post. This does sound like it's incredibly fun. Can't wait for 1.3 to go live.
Yeah. Them being one shot is a big turn-off for me and one of the reasons that I'll likely never even bother using them unless they're cheap and take no cargo hold to store them. I don't mind buying them but one-time use is stupid, it cuts into profits a lot.
hm Karl, i can't help to think that this sounds strange coming from you..
lol, classic edit!
I am willing to try the drones, but I don't really see how farming these tasks out to AI is somehow more "fun". Turrets and Drones? Isn't it just more automated and more profitable? But where is the actual fun gameplay? Sorry, I am not trying to be negative, I just want to know if I am missing some gameplay aspect about how drones are handled, and what the UI is like that makes it more interesting than regular mining. Btw, I actually like regular mining. The mini-game of scooping is kind of fun in a really nimble ship, especially one that can fight, like the Vulture.