Let's face facts: limpets are a pain. The need to not only restock but do so manually, the need for cargo space and the brainlessly suicidal behaviors of limpets are a source of endless frustration for most of us. I've taken note of a very specific kind of frustration while attempting to unlock Selene Jean's 500 ton mining requirement: keeping track of which rocks you've mined in a RES zone can be annoying beyond belief. If you can't spot the burn marks on a rock, say...when it's a little dark out, you end up wasting a lot of time flying back and forth looking for a rock you haven't mined yet. Worst case, you end up wasting limpets double checking.
Here's a suggestion: a utility mounted prospecting scanner. It could function as follows:
Hold button. Honk. Asteroids within range display wireframes whose brightness and color is affected by their remaining miinerals percentage. Higher grades of scanner have more range. No additional information is given, so prospecting limpets don't become COMPLETELY obsolete, but it allows us a quick and easy way to see at a glance which rocks we've already drained. Since video evidence has confirmed that wireframes are already a part of the asteroid creation process, this becomes a matter of simply visually overlaying them for a brief period.
If that's too much work, perhaps it could work like the SRV scanner, allowing use of existing visuals and simply adding the SRV element to the ship HUD when active.
Either option would give us optional tools to deal with a frustration without completely automating the task of mining (read: dumbing it down to brain-dead status.) Best of all, both suggestions still feel very compatible with what we know of the mining changes coming in Beyond.
Here's a suggestion: a utility mounted prospecting scanner. It could function as follows:
Hold button. Honk. Asteroids within range display wireframes whose brightness and color is affected by their remaining miinerals percentage. Higher grades of scanner have more range. No additional information is given, so prospecting limpets don't become COMPLETELY obsolete, but it allows us a quick and easy way to see at a glance which rocks we've already drained. Since video evidence has confirmed that wireframes are already a part of the asteroid creation process, this becomes a matter of simply visually overlaying them for a brief period.
If that's too much work, perhaps it could work like the SRV scanner, allowing use of existing visuals and simply adding the SRV element to the ship HUD when active.
Either option would give us optional tools to deal with a frustration without completely automating the task of mining (read: dumbing it down to brain-dead status.) Best of all, both suggestions still feel very compatible with what we know of the mining changes coming in Beyond.
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