Ongoing Community Goal - Unique Mining Module Stats!

Bruce G

Senior Community Manager
Greetings Commanders,

Thank you to everyone who has already contributed to the current Community Goal! For those who haven't, we encourage you to get involved. We'd like to take this opportunity to describe the two brand new modules that can be obtained by participating, the uniquely engineered Mining Laser and Abrasion Blaster.

To demonstrate the differences, we've compared each of these to their standard versions (showing only the stats which have changed):

Mining Laser

Stat​
Standard ​
CG Exclusive ​
Power Draw
0.5​
0.25​
Damage Per Second
2​
1.9​
Thermal Load
2​
1​
Max Range
500​
2,500​
Damage Fall Off
300​
2,500​
Integrity
40​
20​
Distributor Draw
1.5​
0.75​


Abrasion Blaster

Stat​
Standard​
CG Exclusive​
Power Draw
0.34​
0.17​
Thermal Load
2​
1​
Max Range
1,000​
5,000​
Damage Fall Off
1,000​
5,000​
Integrity
40​
20​
Distributor Draw
2​
1​
Shot Speed
667​
3,333​

Both modules are far more energy efficient, with half the power and distributor draw of the standard versions. They also boast 5x the maximum range when compared to the defaults, among other advantages. These come with the minor drawback of a reduction in integrity.

We hope this post clarifies the benefits of these exclusive modules. If you want to get these for your mining ship, all the details for the Community Goal can be found on this page!

O7
 

Jaden Capek

J
It looks like an unadvertised benefit is the extremely low energy draw. According to another thread, that makes this laser more energy efficient than the medium mining laser, although still slower.
 

Flossy

Volunteer Moderator
Flossy
Bruce G said:
Greetings Commanders,

Thank you to everyone who has already contributed to the current Community Goal! For those who haven't, we encourage you to get involved. We'd like to take this opportunity to describe the two brand new modules that can be obtained by participating, the uniquely engineered Mining Laser and Abrasion Blaster.

To demonstrate the differences, we've compared each of these to their standard versions (showing only the stats which have changed):

Mining Laser

Stat​
Standard ​
CG Exclusive ​
Power Draw
0.5​
0.25​
Damage Per Second
2​
1.9​
Thermal Load
2​
1​
Max Range
500​
2,500​
Damage Fall Off
300​
2,500​
Integrity
40​
20​
Distributor Draw
1.5​
0.75​


Abrasion Blaster

Stat​
Standard​
CG Exclusive​
Power Draw
0.34​
0.17​
Thermal Load
2​
1​
Max Range
1,000​
5,000​
Damage Fall Off
1,000​
5,000​
Integrity
40​
20​
Distributor Draw
2​
1​
Shot Speed
667​
3,333​

Both modules are far more energy efficient, with half the power and distributor draw of the standard versions. They also boast 5x the maximum range when compared to the defaults, among other advantages. These come with the minor drawback of a reduction in integrity.

We hope this post clarifies the benefits of these exclusive modules. If you want to get these for your mining ship, all the details for the Community Goal can be found on this page!

O7
Click to expand...
Also see the CG sub-forums! https://forums.frontier.co.uk/forums/elite-dangerous-community-goals/ :LOL:
 

DemiserofD

D
Ahh, if you'd mentioned it was an efficient mining laser, that would have caught my attention a fair bit faster! Might wanna change the CG description a bit, as the efficiency will probably be the main thing that catches most miners attention. Most of us have tried long-range mining options like mining lances, and ultimately found that the advantage they offer isn't enough to actually improve mining rates, while adding unnecessary complexity.

With this improvement to energy efficiency, it will cost about 5.3 MJ/fragment, vs over 7 for a medium, making it a net improvement, and definitely worth getting, compared to being a mere novelty with simply enhanced range.

Unfortunately, the abrasion blaster is probably still not particularly useful, as the same remarks on range also apply here, and abrasion blasters have never particularly had an issue with efficiency. You could potentially boost its damage, make it a hybrid combat weapon of sorts, but the mining lance has shown pretty well how that typically goes. More likely to prompt desire would be something like increasing the output of fragments released; even a 10-20% bonus would be very, very significant. Heck, even 5% would honestly be pretty significant, though that would probably be small enough most wouldn't care too much.

I appreciate posting the stats, however. Was looking like record low participation before this. Even with this, I doubt we'll hit record numbers, as mining is something of a niche activity these days, since more cash can be made via combat now.




As long as we're on the topic, it would be nice if mining missions were buffed and changed to require actually mined goods. Right now, most mining missions either don't pay well enough, or can be completed with purchased minerals. Fixing the purchased minerals problem would be a start, but more practically, missions asking for things like Bromellite simply don't pay as well as Platinum, and missions asking for things like Water definitely don't pay anywhere near enough to ever justify mining them. Perhaps add on a flat bonus at the start, on top of the actual reward per ton? They're paying for specifically mined resources, after all, there should be a bonus for taking the time to do that.
 

skyfish321

S
would definitely take this new mining laser on my exploration ship... halving the PP & PD demands for nearly the same performance is a big bonus, and being able to start lasing from 2,500m means you can just go from rock to rock lasing the whole time and checking your contacts list for the mats you need to resupply the SRV.
 

z64555

z64555
The engineered class 1 mining laser doesn't look particularly attractive for speed mining. However it does appear to be a longer range, more power efficient mining lance, but with probably the same mining speed as a standard c1 mining laser (and lacking the "combat" capability of the lance)

The engineered abrasion blaster likewise doesn't look particularly attractive. Range is something of a moot point since the shot group would probably spread out too wide at max range, but the higher shot speed would make it easier to mine surface deposits on fast orbiting rocks.

c2 mining lasers are about 3 times as fast as c1's when mining rocks, and it has a distro draw of 3MW. To get the same speed as a c2, you'd need 3x of the c1's. With 3x engineered c1 lasers (specc'ed as given) this might save 0.75MW vs. 1x c2 laser in terms of frags / energy, and 1 heat unit per second.
 

Gwyther

Gwyther
I don't really see the point in increasing the range, especially the abrasion blaster.
You need to be close to an asteroid in order to hit a surface deposit, more so if the asteroid is rotating.

As for the normal mining laser, again I prefer to be close to the asteroid so that my collector limpets don't have to travel so far.

I do love mining, but this CG wouldn't interest me, even if I wasn't currently in the core exploring.
 
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z64555

z64555
Speed mining has a technique known as "scratching" which is used in lieu of prospector limpets to find desired minerals. Essentially, you set up your contacts blacklist to ignore all junk minerals, leaving the desired minerals untouched and thus show up on radar. The ignored minerals don't show up on radar and also won't be collected by limpets. Then, you scratch rocks (by lasing them a few seconds) to see if you get a radar contact. If no contact, go on to the next rock, if there is a contact, then stop lasing, pop the rock with a prospector limpet, then mine that sucker.

The added range makes it possible to scratch rocks from afar, which is the role that the mining lances found a niche in. Not as significant for the smaller ships, but for the larger ships that have trouble slowing down the added range helps a ton.
 

Deio

Deio
I do only core mining, lasers are useless to me and abrasion blaster does already a fine job. No need for an enhanced one. Maybe a bigger diameter of blast would be useful, when firing upon chunks, sometimes they look like are hit, but do not fall. More range is useless anyway cause most of the time you are less than 1km away, limpets have lifetime that decreases faster if they have to travel more.
Same with mining lasers. I see no point in range increase. A significant power decrease would be something, but it's only 1 module.
I would love a high cap feedback rail, like one of earlier CG's, I wasn't able to play back then :(
 

Jaden Capek

J
Frillop Freyraum said:
As always, FDev supports the most boring form of mining, no thanks. Nothing against abrasion blasters, but is this a joke? The standard one needs one pip in weapons every once in a while. So improved power draw and thermal load are pretty useless. And range improvement... hello? It never came to my mind to use the abrasion blaster from a distance. Often I don't even use collector limpets and catch them manually. Sorry, wrong carrot. Doesn't work for me. 🥕🔕
Click to expand...
The one good thing about the abrasion blaster is the five times faster shot speed, which might be a little helpful for fast-spinning asteroids.
 
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