Streamlined Mining - Auto-Refining

[Valo56]

No, I'm not asking that miners get the ore sucked right into their cargo bay. I like the system as it stands but with some small exceptions.

Refining: I hate having to open my menu and put the ores into the hoppers constantly. I would appreciate it if once a mineral reaches 100% its slot was reserved until the excess is vented. As such, you would only need to assign minerals to a hopper the first time, and then could continue scooping up the cloud of minerals you just mined without having to juggle menus. I feel at present it is more frustration than is necessary.

Asteroid Targeting: I believe a special sort of sensor that has a low range but is able to target and perhaps even determine the composition of asteroids might be nice to have, though might make things a bit too easy... then again, from what I've heard, most of the other professions are vastly more profitable than mining when you consider the time involved, so it might be nice anyway.

 

[Lestat]

Mining fine the way it is.

 

[Valo56]

Exactly what part of having to juggle menus and constantly have to reset the refinery to put your gold in a hopper in a supposedly highly advanced ship is "fine?" It's just a lot of busy-work. Everything but the fumbling with the menus is fine. I hate having to navigate menus like that.

What, it's an advanced ship capable of going over 2000c but it can't automatically divert stuff from the cargo scoop into a section of its refinery?

A keybinding for "refine all" would also be nice, if nothing else.

 

[MARPATdroid]

I really like your idea for refining, mine and collect the first ore, then that slot remains assigned until the highly unlikely perfect match for what you have in there which makes it 0% or you vent the remaining ore to clear it. Would really simplify the mining process, without making it too much easier, personally I wondered why they wouldn't do this from the start. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a lot of changes to mining, since FD has said that this was the bare bones for mining at launch, I assume there is more to come for that profession.

 

[Genus]

An idea would be for a beacon, that is tuned only to your ship unless someone runs into it, that you could drop next to the ~Palladium asteroid you've found and can now come back to without spending 20 mins gauging distance from the sun by sight. Again, in advanced ship, you'd assume there is a button to be as good as "take me back to those co-ordinates".