Pulse Wave Scanner Works...Backwards

A question about the broken PWA was responded to by FD in the 2nd AMA:


We have answered the PWA question in our opening post however I will answer it again here for you...


The team and I are acutely aware of the PWA issue and the justified frustrations this causes our players.

We have been raising it with the development team who are currently working hard trying to establish what has gone wrong and why.



Please bear in mind that this is an incredibly busy time for them and they are also hampered by working from home, which despite the best efforts of everyone involved does affect the collaborative effort when it comes to solving problems.



A) I do not know what is causing the issues



B) There were no notes on it because there was no intention to alter it



C) The re-balancing used historical data as well as current, as was stipulated this is an ongoing process and one we will refine if required.



Link: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...e-stephen-and-paul.559921/page-4#post-8828146

In other words, they have no idea what is causing the PWA issue or how to fix it. :(
Thank you for that. That's more info than I've found. I hope they fix it and make a fool of me.
 
As far as i can tell the main problem with PWA is that there is no problem with PWA. It works as intended, scans in all directions at full range. Trying to dig trough PWA code and find the bug that does not exist and fix it isn't very useful and just distracts from solving the problem. And the problem seems to be that there's actually no resources in any asteroids until you fly face first into them. Either information doesn't get send to the client, not updated on the client, or whatever else it the reason, but end result is the same: the only asteroids with resources are the ones in a narrow ~2 km radius tunnel that your vessel creates as it travels through the asteroid field. PWA has no problem highlighting those regardless of distance to them(within its effective range) or orientation of the craft. It almost feels like some patches ago someone decided to save up on resources and reduce the distance at which data on asteroids is sent to the client from ~25 to ~2 km(they can't mine from more than 2 km, so they won't need that data, right?). If that's the case, then complaining about PWA being broken is akin to telling support that your PC is broken and demanding they fix it right now, when transformer exploded and power is out in entire city block. Issue is probably server side, so looking at PWA locally doesn't help at all.
You could be right and we know that the PWA itself wasn't altered so it's obviously something to do with the environment around it. Whatever the core of the issue is, we do know that it was the last mini patch that triggered it. FD will know what changes they made in that patch so you would think they should be able to deduct some things starting from that point.
 
You could be right and we know that the PWA itself wasn't altered so it's obviously something to do with the environment around it. Whatever the core of the issue is, we do know that it was the last mini patch that triggered it. FD will know what changes they made in that patch so you would think they should be able to deduct some things starting from that point.
It's the core field generation function. Always has been.
 
Cant believe this still hasn't been fixed.
Havent been playing since this stopped working, so im burning millions of credits due to the fleet carrier without playing the bloody game!
 
Well I've wasted enough hours trying to work around PWA. I guess mining is still viable for the players who've learnt to 'eyeball' the right 'roids without the use of the scanner, but for newer players, mining is almost a complete no-go at least for the time being. Bit of a shame. Better off sticking to alternative activities unless you're happy to throw away loads of hours that you're putting into a grind-game already. Hell, even trade loops was less mind-numbing for me than attempting broken mining.

I've tried experimenting with the external camera positioned a bit behind my ship as it moves forward (obviously flying just above the field to avoid collisions I won't see coming—also had camera controls switched on so that I didn't accidentally adjust the ship's control.) The problem is that the view of the 'bubble' that the PWA creates changes extremities based on where the player's perspective is, even if that's outside of the ship... TLDR, it's awkward and only narrowly helpful. Not in any way worth the effort.

FYI: I spent around 3 hours 'mining' last night and came away with maybe 30Mcr. I'm not that new to it. Last time I played—long before even the mining sell nerfs or whatever occurred—I was getting 90Mcr/h+ VOs—and I was going through a bad patch, then.
 
Castor Sugar, I feel your frustration. Seems to me, asteroids need scanning from 2 sides to illuminate.
The method I use is to target the centre of the hotspot, plunge in about 2Mm from it then scan toward it for a minute or 2 then flip over and scan back the way you just came - that is when you will see the goodies.
 
Castor Sugar, I feel your frustration. Seems to me, asteroids need scanning from 2 sides to illuminate.
The method I use is to target the centre of the hotspot, plunge in about 2Mm from it then scan toward it for a minute or 2 then flip over and scan back the way you just came - that is when you will see the goodies.
Yeah, I've done some more experimenting today against my better judgement. I find that it works as a workaround but it still just adds unnecessary hassle to the mix that makes me (at least) give up. I still didn't get great payoff. Admittedly, I did come away with another ~20Mcr in the space of about an hour—but it's still far lower than I'm used to. I reckon trade-loops can do the same/better.
 
As a new player who got ED free from Epic, I actually find core mining quite enjoyable and was already ecstatic with finding 1 - 2 cores an hour. It took me about 2 weeks to be able to afford a Python.

Now I'm learning that it used to be many times more profitable and it kinda sucked the fun out of core mining a bit. Don't get me wrong, I still find core mining interesting. But I would feel better if I am adequately compensated since it requires a higher skill level compared to laser mining.
 
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Yeah, I've done some more experimenting today against my better judgement. I find that it works as a workaround but it still just adds unnecessary hassle to the mix that makes me (at least) give up. I still didn't get great payoff. Admittedly, I did come away with another ~20Mcr in the space of about an hour—but it's still far lower than I'm used to. I reckon trade-loops can do the same/better.
If You can find silver on a cheap, 3500cr/t you can make 30mil in 640T capacity cutter per load
 
I deliberately say "your" because I've never had any major problems with the PWA

o7

not the first time i read that the PWA still works as intended (for some CMDRs),

next week, i intend to test core mining (at the moment i'm scanning rings way outside the bubble for my tests),

maybe you're mining in hotspots unaffected by the mini patch that causes problems for the majority of players ?

can you tell me in what type of hotspot you're mining, and if it overlap with another hotspot (and the type of overlap) ?
 
As far as i can tell the main problem with PWA is that there is no problem with PWA. It works as intended, scans in all directions at full range. Trying to dig trough PWA code and find the bug that does not exist and fix it isn't very useful and just distracts from solving the problem. And the problem seems to be that there's actually no resources in any asteroids until you fly face first into them. Either information doesn't get send to the client, not updated on the client, or whatever else it the reason, but end result is the same: the only asteroids with resources are the ones in a narrow ~2 km radius tunnel that your vessel creates as it travels through the asteroid field. PWA has no problem highlighting those regardless of distance to them(within its effective range) or orientation of the craft. It almost feels like some patches ago someone decided to save up on resources and reduce the distance at which data on asteroids is sent to the client from ~25 to ~2 km(they can't mine from more than 2 km, so they won't need that data, right?). If that's the case, then complaining about PWA being broken is akin to telling support that your PC is broken and demanding they fix it right now, when transformer exploded and power is out in entire city block. Issue is probably server side, so looking at PWA locally doesn't help at all.

Interestingly I thought last night whilst mining that it could be the spawning that was not working. IIRC the problem first appeared just after the patch to fix being able to get almost infinite LTD's from always being able to return to the same asteroid, so it could be something in the fix for that is causing the issue and they needed to fix it without undoing the previous fix again.
 

Apparently it's getting fixed. Thank goodness.
 
Looks like it's working again! Got this haul in about 3 hours!
 

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Hmmm. Is Core mining even worth the effort anymore? I found prices to be just under $1M at my HOME station! Sucks, missed out on that :( But then, I'm used to getting $1.3 on average for VO Cores, so... my Core mining days seem to be over. I guess if they fix the PWA, then at least it can be FUN again, finding Cores on the regular, even if they jacked prices all to hell

 
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I took the Blind Squirrel, my mining ship, out for an hour this morning to a good mining location, testing the PWA and from what I can tell full functionality has been restored. Ordinarily, I'd confirm the malfunctioning of the PWA by marking an asteroid with no light returns, then proceed past it, turn around (backwards, in effect) then scan the asteroids to see them light up where they had not before. Now? They light up in front of me, behind me, with no discernable difference in position. Can any other Commanders confirm this? Is it fixed? Is this merely too much cough syrup, and too little sleep? Anybody?
 
I took the Blind Squirrel, my mining ship, out for an hour this morning to a good mining location, testing the PWA and from what I can tell full functionality has been restored. Ordinarily, I'd confirm the malfunctioning of the PWA by marking an asteroid with no light returns, then proceed past it, turn around (backwards, in effect) then scan the asteroids to see them light up where they had not before. Now? They light up in front of me, behind me, with no discernable difference in position. Can any other Commanders confirm this? Is it fixed? Is this merely too much cough syrup, and too little sleep? Anybody?
It's supposed to be patched today but idk what time it will actually drop. I personally won't try to test it until at least tomorrow just to be sure. Someone else said yesterday they thought it had been fixed so idk. I'll try tommorow to remove the possibility of the placebo effect.
 
It's supposed to be patched today but idk what time it will actually drop. I personally won't try to test it until at least tomorrow just to be sure. Someone else said yesterday they thought it had been fixed so idk. I'll try tommorow to remove the possibility of the placebo effect.
It works ok now, plenty of cores I can see. I think, it was broken long ago prior eggs but not noticed until last fixes.
 
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