Remove RNG from Mining

[Blackcompany]

The new mining mechanics are pretty great. Minus the tedium of the new DSS, everything about how we mine - the actual playable mechanics - is really great. This is a mechanics win for FDEV.

Unfortunately, it still falls flat. And this is a direct result of a continued over reliance on RNG to inflate game play time.

Taking the time to probe a planet, mark hotspots and then float among the rocks...only to find nothing of value in 2+ hours per attempt...its insulting. It disrespects time and effort. Once we mark hotspots, valuable mining takes should be guaranteed. Instead, its all up to RNG.

Which is why, despite engaging, fun mechanics, I wont bother with mining ever again. It wastes my time and its not rewarding to partake of. Hopefully, FDEV will see the light and remove the RNG. For the sake of fun, here is how I would like to see mining improved now:

DSS: Eliminate the menu based mini game. Let us fire probes direct from the cockpit and let the probes handle mapping. Maybe we dont get the efficiency bonus this way, but its much quicker and less fiddly and does not take us away from flying our ship.

Rock scanning: Let the scanner tell us what is in each rock. Remove prospector limpets entirely. If I can scan the rocks, the prospector is just redundant. Let the scanner show composition of rocks within a certain a distance...say, roughly the range of the prospector limpet.

Hotspots should guarantee valuable takes. Right now, they are meaningless and finding and scanning them down is a waste of time, since they do not guarantee anything of value.

Fractures and blowing up rocks needs to be a LOT more common. In fact, I would say this is just how medium and large rocks should work. Period. Its far more rewarding game play than watching lasers and limpets while sitting idle. This would mean that medium and large rocks, should be more valuable since they would all take more time to break apart and mine.

As of now, mining still relies on RNG. And it wastes far too much time with nothing of value, for players to bother with. Which is a shame, because the new mechanics are a real win and something FDEV should show off as proof that they can still innovate mechanically.

 

[Feculator]

Rock scanning: Let the scanner tell us what is in each rock. Remove prospector limpets entirely. If I can scan the rocks, the prospector is just redundant. Let the scanner show composition of rocks within a certain a distance...say, roughly the range of the prospector limpet.

Hotspots should guarantee valuable takes. Right now, they are meaningless and finding and scanning them down is a waste of time, since they do not guarantee anything of value.

Fractures and blowing up rocks needs to be a LOT more common. In fact, I would say this is just how medium and large rocks should work. Period. Its far more rewarding game play than watching lasers and limpets while sitting idle. This would mean that medium and large rocks, should be more valuable since they would all take more time to break apart and mine.

Rare materials sell for more, because they are rare. Sadly there aren't many ways to make an ore rare without RNG... they could make it so that they show up on scans, but there's just not much of it, encouraging miners to travel the galaxy, searching, mapping, and extracting. I dunno, that has its allure as well, but I like having a home base.

In any case, I am all for replacing/drastically improving prospector limpets, they make the search for regular minerals way more tedious than it could be.
Hotspots don't seem to make a lot of difference either. They only affect crackable asteroids, but so far it seems to me that their radius is actually quite small, so it doesn't result in many more crackable rocks.

As for exploding rocks being more common... yeah, but there is one caveat: currently, the one good thing the pulse wave analyser is good for, is finding hyper-valuable rocks (usually worth a good 2-3M), because they are the only ones that glow brightly and have fissures. So while I support the suggestion to let us blow up more rocks, I'd want to still be able to see the valuable gemstone rocks distinctly on the scanner.

PS: Try a faster ship. I am able to sell 22 tons of core gemstones around every half hour with an Imperial courier at Veach Hub. That's one cracked asteroid every 15 minutes, and most of that is actually waiting for the damn collector limpet. You could prbably get even better results with bigger but still fast ships.

 

[Blackcompany]

Rare materials sell for more, because they are rare. Sadly there aren't many ways to make an ore rare without RNG... they could make it so that they show up on scans, but there's just not much of it, encouraging miners to travel the galaxy, searching, mapping, and extracting. I dunno, that has its allure as well, but I like having a home base.

In any case, I am all for replacing/drastically improving prospector limpets, they make the search for regular minerals way more tedious than it could be.
Hotspots don't seem to make a lot of difference either. They only affect crackable asteroids, but so far it seems to me that their radius is actually quite small, so it doesn't result in many more crackable rocks.

As for exploding rocks being more common... yeah, but there is one caveat: currently, the one good thing the pulse wave analyser is good for, is finding hyper-valuable rocks (usually worth a good 2-3M), because they are the only ones that glow brightly and have fissures. So while I support the suggestion to let us blow up more rocks, I'd want to still be able to see the valuable gemstone rocks distinctly on the scanner.

PS: Try a faster ship. I am able to sell 22 tons of core gemstones around every half hour with an Imperial courier at Veach Hub. That's one cracked asteroid every 15 minutes, and most of that is actually waiting for the damn collector limpet. You could prbably get even better results with bigger but still fast ships.

I appreciate it, but I have sold off my mining stuff and mothballed the Asp E I was using, outside of Taxi service. Mining simply isnt worth the time. When its a choice of flying around the rocks HOPING to make $3 million in an hour...or taking salvage, delivery and combat jobs GUARANTEED to make $3 million per hour...since I enjoy salvage and combat, too, its not really much of a choice, for me personally. I wont bother with mining again until they get rid of prospector limpet, and make it much more rewarding, however they manage it.

Dont get me wrong. If mining were the only thing I enjoyed in the game, its fun enough, I would do it. Buts it is, BY FAR, the least rewarding activity I also happen to enjoy, so...why bother?

 

[Pville_Piper]

Dont get me wrong. If mining were the only thing I enjoyed in the game, its fun enough, I would do it. Buts it is, BY FAR, the least rewarding activity I also happen to enjoy, so...why bother?

So you just game for credits? I space truck for credits so I can enjoy other things.

 

[YinYin]

Asteroids are as persistent as planets. The RNG was done when they seeded the galaxy. (= there is no RNG to remove)

If you can't turn a consistent 10+ Mcr/h mining you need to consider that you've either got a lot to improve or need to stay away from this business for money.

 

[Factabulous]

The OP is the RNG. And he is removing himself from mining

 

[DustyArne]

40 diamonds an hours here.. ( 80 with a bit of luck)

Some stations sell them for 500k +, in Maia, 800k +

do the math... lol

Mining rewards are insane now. Its almost an exploit..

(maybe the economy and BGS reset with the 3.3 patch has influence on it though, prices might level out after the first weekly tick.. what will be tomorrow I think (??) )


Also, Asteroids are consistent, if you would be able to pin point them, they would be there on the exact same spot as before the reset.

 

[CmdrZaratan]

How did you manage to spend 2+ hours without finding anything of value? If I go 10 minutes without finding a valuable core I feel like the RNG is messing with me badly. 15 minutes is my absolute worst effort, and I've mined a bunch in beta and in live.

I don't mine in Rocky rings though as they seem to have vastly fewer cores than the others.

So:

1) Where were you mining?
2) Are you using the pulse wave scanner properly?
3) How many different types of ring/hotspots did you try mining in?
4) Were the rings Pristine?

Seriously. I found 5 good cores in an hour and a half last night and that was a really bad run. If you're doing it right and spending 2+ hours finding the good stuff then your bad luck is seriously epic level. Karma owes you a beer or 3.

 

[CmdrZaratan]

40 diamonds an hours here.. ( 80 with a bit of luck)

Some stations sell them for 500k +, in Maia, 800k +

Honestly that has to be a bug. Was it like this before 3.3? I check yesterday and the highest is 460k (and I immediately go diamond mining). I check today and it's 600-800k? Something must have gone horribly wrong in the BGS.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Oh great, more layered RNG? First you roll for a hotspot, then for it's contents. What is exactly the point of hotspots if they don't contain hot spots?

 

[Whitehair]

I've seen this argument in other threads.

"I've found a hotspot, I want the first asteroid I target to give me the highest payout. Otherwise I'm not going to play your game."

Prospecting doesn't work like that......

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I've seen this argument in other threads.

"I've found a hotspot, I want the first asteroid I target to give me the highest payout. Otherwise I'm not going to play your game."

Prospecting doesn't work like that......

You're missing the point. What good is this hotspot mechanic if you can just drop into your favourite asteroid belt and mine there randomly? What's it good for?

 

[DustyArne]

You're missing the point. What good is this hotspot mechanic if you can just drop into your favourite asteroid belt and mine there randomly? What's it good for?

You can find the asteroids everywhere indeed, but in hotspots, there are more of them.. It's not rocket-science. (no pun intended)

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

You can find the asteroids everywhere indeed, but in hotspots, there are more of them.. It's not rocket-science. (no pun intended)

You can't really desire more asteroids than in a ring. Where you can go forever until your limpets run dry.

 

[Ozram]

Asteroids are as persistent as planets. The RNG was done when they seeded the galaxy. (= there is no RNG to remove)

If you can't turn a consistent 10+ Mcr/h mining you need to consider that you've either got a lot to improve or need to stay away from this business for money.

Or need a tutorial. Care to share your ten million per hour strategy?

 

[DustyArne]

You can't really desire more asteroids than in a ring. Where you can go forever until your limpets run dry.

with "The Asteroids" I obviously mean the Deep-core asteroids, I think that would be clear since we are talking about Deep-core asteroids.

I

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I know only from what is in the popular mining guide. Essentially it looks just like the old days when you picked a planet and had to drive along for quite a while to figure out which minerals would spawn. That's just too much time wasting dropping in and out time and time again when the "hotspot" yields nothing but trash.

 

[CmdrZaratan]

I know only from what is in the popular mining guide. Essentially it looks just like the old days when you picked a planet and had to drive along for quite a while to figure out which minerals would spawn. That's just too much time wasting dropping in and out time and time again when the "hotspot" yields nothing but trash.

Do you know how to find asteroids with valuable cores? Because from reading all your posts in this thread it sounds like you don't know how to find the new asteroids that can be cracked apart.

For instance, if you go to an Alexandrite hotspot, most of the crackable asteroids will contain Alexandrite. If you wander around the ring randomly not in a hotspot, you'll find a random assortment of cores.

 

[Jockey79]

Or need a tutorial. Care to share your ten million per hour strategy?

My friends and I last night just kept using the pulse wave and prospecting the orange rocks until "Core" was shown and fissures came up.
We got 10 million in no time at all, I was in an Anaconda with 1 friend using standard mining turrets to gather the normal stuff and my other friends was in the SLF on guard.

What slowed us down in the end was when we just decided to mine everything in front of us.
As much fun as it was, all the junk we mined was worthless.

So it's pulse & prospect, pulse & prospect, pulse & prospect until you find one with "Core" (in my case was "Core: Opal").
Blow it up and get the limpets working. 10 Mil / Hr is easy doing that.

 

[DustyArne]

i played the mining game
-outfitting the python : checked
-getting a pristine unhabited system : checked
-mapping rings and giant gas : checked
-going down in a "cold temp diamond hotspot" (cold hotspot. ah. ah. ah.) : checked
-spending 50 prospectors to find ONE asteroid with cracks : checked
-blowing it up, getting enough to make 4 diamonds units : checked
-trying to get the last surface diamonds for 10 minutes before giving up : checked
-trying to get the diamond container floating in front of me but impossible to grab : checked
-giving up on diamonds : checked
-going to another ressource hotpost : checked
-getting attacked with all that juicy cargo (4 units of diamonds aka 400k) by NPC : checked
-trying to fire back "you cannot shoot in this cockpit" : checked
-boosting and running away like a coward from a cobra mkIII : checked
-heading back to base, throwing the diamonds in the face of the market, putting the mining equipment to the trashcan : checked
-prepping a ship for a 6 months in the dark exploration trip : todo

thanks a lot, and see you in next update.

edit : and yes, i did aim at the most yellowish ones.

When you do it right, there will spawn 10 till 14 raw materials form the core, and then there are also 10 till 14 to be harvested as surface deposit.