As long as prices are controlled by a behind-the-scenes algorithm and there are no fixed limits for production we can never have a “real” economy.
So, do mineing hotspots deplete forever?
- Thread starter bladebss
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As long as prices are controlled by a behind-the-scenes algorithm and there are no fixed limits for production we can never have a “real” economy.
Nope, I sure didn't think of the possibility of hiding the 'real economy' and lucrative mining behind a multiplayer feature. Silly me.
You must just be unlucky. I've mined in lots of less than pristine rings with no hotspots and come out with a hold full of opals. Average run with 96 limpets is about two hours. Either that or you are probing the wrong asteroids. Or possibly probing the same roids over and over. (I usually start at the edge and fly towards the planet)
Even if they are bright yellow, the valuable core stuff only comes from the round, pumpkin shaped asteroids. The long flat almond shaped ones with the slit type fins wont have rares in them.
That said, a lot of these '$200mil/hour OPALZ!11' posts are a bit exaggerated. You have runs where you might only get say 30 and some where you get a lot. You also have to factor in a lot of people are using the abrasion blaster stacking exploit/bug. An Asp X can mount 5 blasters with good convergence, it can sometimes get 5 chunks per shot and fill up its hold on 4 asteroids.
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There is an asteroid that looks similar to the one with the core deposits and looks like a pumpkin with stem sticking out. If you're just looking for core deposits don't waste limpets on every pumpkin shaped roid, fly up and look for the fissures, they're easy to see. Once you see the fissures fire limpet then.
No. Not only do they not deplete, a particular core asteroid will eventually re-spawn in the exact same spot from before it was detonated. This has been confirmed by multiple CMDRs in reddit's r/eliteminers, although we're still working out the specific of the respawn timing.
Relatedly, I have confirmed you can find void opals in "depleted" level mining reserves systems that are well inside the bubble.
So the current consensus at r/eliteminers is that the depletion thing is just fluff talk intended to provide a thin veil of realism.
It is true, high traffic systems will in practice be moderately harder to find cores in due to many CMDRs looking in same spots before respawn occurs, but they will never be "depleted", at least with the current implementation.
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Not quite sure what you mean about port lockdown.How are the two related?Is this a background sim nuance or am i missing something really obvious?
And any ideas on the right sort of ship to get the job done in?
Thanks.
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Yeah, Frontier is only replenishing them to appeal to the part of the player base that refuse to go off the beaten track, even a little bit to find new sources. Personally I prefer if frontier didn't replenish rings, until there zero chance of us finding a resource in the bubble, that will never happen in our lifetime by the way.
There were reports on reddit about a week in that people put Viktorenko holdings in lockdown, because people in E: D are sometimes "fun-deniers" to put mildly. And many people screamed doom/nerf instead of looking for another port which sells opals for 1.6m.
Indeed I have never been there. No idea why people think it would be a good idea to mine where everyone else is mining instead of finding their own hotspot in the first place.
That.
The first time a core 'roid exploded near to me in another instance AND YET IN MINE TOO I decided to go somewhere remote. That is a very annoying thing honestly.
c'mon people
i feel like i'm taking crazy pills. there is no chance of depletion, unless they change the implementation or drastically tweak parameters (which wouldn't be depletion, it would be a nerf)
this is the way max credits are going to be made for the foreseeable future. we should all just be happy it's less tedious than passenger runs
- currently the list of 1.6mil stations is longer than will fit on a single page of inara. BGS seems to encourage these types of stations because the list is just growing and growing
- FD reps have confirmed the prices are as intended
- CMDRs on r/eliteminers have confirmed respawn of cores in same spot
- I've mined opals from depleted reserves level systems
- 10 minutes ago i found them 10ly from a 1.6mil sell system, within 75 ly of shinrarta
even if void opals get depleted, which they won't, we can branch out from icy rings to rocky and metallic. there are Benitoite at 1.2mil/ton and Serendibite at 950k/ton. tonight i passed 4 Serendibite hotspots in a single ring. these were almost certainly untouched as the system reserves were major not pristine. again, just 1 jump from a high sell station. i'm actually considering switching to Serendibite if I can determine that it has a higher spawn rate than opals
and as far as hotspots "shrinking", i'm pretty sure that's just buggy implementation of the glow rendering. i today found an icy ring in a major reserves that had an opal hotspot and grandidierite hotspot and neither glowed at all. but within about 10 minutes I had found 4 grandiderite cores (no opals but i probably just wasn't persistent enough)
i feel like i'm taking crazy pills. there is no chance of depletion, unless they change the implementation or drastically tweak parameters (which wouldn't be depletion, it would be a nerf)
this is the way max credits are going to be made for the foreseeable future. we should all just be happy it's less tedious than passenger runs
- currently the list of 1.6mil stations is longer than will fit on a single page of inara. BGS seems to encourage these types of stations because the list is just growing and growing
- FD reps have confirmed the prices are as intended
- CMDRs on r/eliteminers have confirmed respawn of cores in same spot
- I've mined opals from depleted reserves level systems
- 10 minutes ago i found them 10ly from a 1.6mil sell system, within 75 ly of shinrarta
even if void opals get depleted, which they won't, we can branch out from icy rings to rocky and metallic. there are Benitoite at 1.2mil/ton and Serendibite at 950k/ton. tonight i passed 4 Serendibite hotspots in a single ring. these were almost certainly untouched as the system reserves were major not pristine. again, just 1 jump from a high sell station. i'm actually considering switching to Serendibite if I can determine that it has a higher spawn rate than opals
and as far as hotspots "shrinking", i'm pretty sure that's just buggy implementation of the glow rendering. i today found an icy ring in a major reserves that had an opal hotspot and grandidierite hotspot and neither glowed at all. but within about 10 minutes I had found 4 grandiderite cores (no opals but i probably just wasn't persistent enough)
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I think first we would need to talk to some astrophysicists or astrogeologists to determine just how much opal we would expect to find in space.
I have a feeling that void opals serve the same role as mushrooms in a Mario game, only to enable a certain type of gameplay, with no real scientific foundation. In this case a discussion about realistic ring depletion is moot - if the devs want players to play in a certain way, then they will adjust the depletion / replenishing rates accordingly.
The only thing that matters really is just how often the devs want to force players to do the "prospecting gameplay" part, and that won't even be achieved by completely depleting a ring, just by making spawn rates so slightly off, so that it pays off to look up that other mining spot online and travel there.
I found that some hotspots replenished after a few days so I've tagged 2 rings for each day of the week and just rotate through them .-)
P.s I'm in the Colonia region so I'm a bit spoiled for choice.
P.s I'm in the Colonia region so I'm a bit spoiled for choice.
I'll be honest, I don't even go for hotspots, just select a random pristine ice ring and go hunting... I made over 240 million credits in two trips across 4 hours (I stopped for dinner) although I never saw another commander the whole night, Meh.
Can confirm. The only drawback of this is, surface abrasion fragments from non hotspot yield ~50% less (fully confirmed and tested, can provide reddit writeup and raw data). The detonation fragment yield is identical.
Also, cores might be more rare outside hotspots (unconfirmed, just a hunch).
These are reasonably tolerable drawbacks since the money is so big anyway.
And thus on medium ships where you are at the limit for internals, (Kraits, Challengers) omitting DSS (since you don't care about hotspots) frees up all kinds of fun options, like having an interdictor for a combo mining/pirate build with decent hull.
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A few hours ago I had a cloud of debris spawn right in front of me, presumably from another instance.