Sub-Surface mining, whats the point?

[Kenneth McGrew]

Unable to get small seismic charges in the game i was forced to have a play with sub surface mining, but whats the point of it?

now all this came about while harvesting water and other stuff for the CG but i also went to a LTD hotspot to .... well mine some LTD, as exciting as gathering water for the CG is i just wanted to have a crack at sub surface.

Armed with 32 limpets in the Dolphin and stocked up with sub surface missiles here's the stats

Limpets - 3,200 CR
Re-stock - 4,324 CR
Fuel - 30 CR

Total - 7,554 CR

Profits from LTD from a LTD hotspot - 0 CR
Filling cargo hold with "stuff" to sell - 18,259 CR
Time spent - 30 mins

Profit per 1/2 hour - 10,705 CR

Nerf it quick!

but seriously... whats the point of sub surface if all they spawn is water, Methane Clathrate and other such clagnuts?

 

[Factabulous]

There is no point. When they added it the deep core "specials" were not in, so that also gave nothing. Really they should change sub surface and surface deposits to also spawn ltd / vo / etc.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Grab a ship with a C2 hardpoint.
There are many.


But yeah, subsurface deposits are kinda pointless. I don't bother carrying them.

 

[Kenneth McGrew]

Grab a ship with a C2 hardpoint.
There are many.


But yeah, subsurface deposits are kinda pointless. I don't bother carrying them.

bit difficult without a shipyard 26kly away

its like... why even bother spending the design time on them? just delete them from the game,

all those hours spent designing the appearance of the hardpoints, the sound effects, the asteroids & game mechanics to extract them along with the left hand panel visuals, & 15 minutes testing during a lunch break wasted.

There is no point. When they added it the deep core "specials" were not in, so that also gave nothing. Really they should change sub surface and surface deposits to also spawn ltd / vo / etc.

you can get LTD from strip mining though and even they dont appear as sub surface deposits, at least im yet to find one... its bonkers, who thought of this non-sense

 

[Jukelo]

bit difficult without a shipyard 26kly away

its like... why even bother spending the design time on them? just delete them from the game,

all those hours spent designing the appearance of the hardpoints, the sound effects, the asteroids & game mechanics to extract them along with the left hand panel visuals, & 15 minutes testing during a lunch break wasted.

Alas, isn't that the tragedy with ED? So many features and interesting systems... all but a few made obsolete by p-poor balance.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

all those hours spent designing the appearance of the hardpoints, the sound effects, the asteroids & game mechanics to extract them along with the left hand panel visuals, & 15 minutes testing during a lunch break wasted.

From the Livestream is clear to me that they test the new mechanics with "FDEV MAGIC", so they make all the good stuff appear in front of them and shoot to see if the game crashes or it makes something unexpected.

If you take part to the CG don't look at the income from the mined materials, just look at the CG bonus reward. At the moment I'm in the top 50% with a bonus of 18 milion credits.

You will also find seldomly some motherlode with Alexandrite and Void Opals, there you get the real credits (3-4 milion per crecked asteroid).

Surface and Sub-surface deposits are supposed to give a higher yield, still these minerals are worthless. If you want to make a living out of mining you only need seismic charges and abrasion blaster to remove the chunks from the cracked asteroids.

If FD wants that all mining tools are meaningful they have to:
1. rise the values of common minerals
OR
2. increase the yield percentage of the minerals extracted with the laser and even above 100% for the ones extracted from the sub-surface deposits, so that from 1 chunk you get 3-4 tonnes.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Why are you mining 26kly from a shipyard?

I do like subsurface missiles, and the gameplay element they bring, they just need to add in some worthwhile payout for it.
Primarily just add higher value ores to it, and on top of that, rare element materials.
If I had a chance of being able to extract valuable ores, or some grade 4 elements (or large quantities of low grade), I wouldn't hesitate to bring one along.

Admittedly, my mining Anaconda is still setup with 2 abrasion blasters because of the dupe glitch, so I could just as easily swap one for the Subsurface missile launcher.
But at the moment, it'll just be collecting space dust. Lol

 

[Muetdhiver]

None.

The payout is so low it's not even funny. It's probably on par with surface salvaging with the SRV.

I pointed this out twice during the beta with numbers and ways to solve it and… nothing.

It needs to get buffed about x20... that how broken it is.

Worse part : the mechanics are actually fun.

Simple fix : set the yield per fragment at 100%, and have each detonation release 1-3 fragments. (that would be about x5 buff in output)
Then : replace the low value crap by better paying stuff with value in the platinum - painite - low temp diamond range of price.

 

[Factabulous]

you can get LTD from strip mining though and even they dont appear as sub surface deposits, at least im yet to find one... its bonkers, who thought of this non-sense

They are (as I understand) rare when strip-mining - and I imagine that if they are present in sub-surface they will probably be 'as rare', hence 'mostly impossible to find'. You would hope fdev would do a balance pass at some stage, but unless the forums revolt it probably won't be anytime soon - as others have said, balance is a thing fdev have heard of, but don't seem able to do at all.

I'm still mildly peeved that when they talked about being able to find 'other stuff' in asteroids they just meant 'more pixels with a different number attached', I was holding out a hope for alien artefact finds in asteroids. Ah well.

 

[Powderpanic]

OP its another PVE thing to keep you entertained with DEEP content.

The excitement of being able to do it, is its value!

Powderpanic
The Voice of Griefing

 

[Kenneth McGrew]

Why are you mining 26kly from a shipyard?

explorers anchorage, lack of shipyard to transfer / buy a more meaningful mining vessel, lack of small seismic charges make the current vessel useless, albeit the station is 1ly away with outfitting available

If you take part to the CG don't look at the income from the mined materials, just look at the CG bonus reward. At the moment I'm in the top 50% with a bonus of 18 milion credits.

even harvesting water from these clagnuts using sub surface missiles vs shoot at any asteroid with a ye olde laser or two while watching netflix, there is no comparisson, i can fill my poxy hold with water in 10 minutes using the ye olde method.

better still i dont need to re-stock on missiles, & i dont need a prospector = more T per run

sooo... an absolute waste of development time, which invariably is a 5 minute fix by adjusting the spawning RNG and text / figures on the pixels, i mean there are water hot spots FWIW just in case you wanted water sub surface deposits which take 20x longer to harvest than strip mining ye olde stylee any old clagnut.

 

[Nadreck]

Well, I did find a use for it when unlocking Marsha Hicks. I found subsurface Osmium deposits. But I haven't tried mining for money.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

even harvesting water from these clagnuts using sub surface missiles vs shoot at any asteroid with a ye olde laser or two while watching netflix, there is no comparisson, i can fill my poxy hold with water in 10 minutes using the ye olde method.

better still i dont need to re-stock on missiles, & i dont need a prospector = more T per run

I have a different experience. With the laser I can get 2-3 tonnes per asteroid (medium content).
If you look for yellow/orange asteroid with sub-surface and surface deposit you extract from the deposits AND with the laser and you get a total of around 8-10 tonnes per asteroid which is 3x more.

Without new tools I couldn't collect more than 15-20 tonnes per hour. Now I have an average of 50 tonnes per hour. It's not much but still more.

 

[Requiem Mortis]

Why are only surface and no subsurface deposits created when an asteroid is shattered with seismic charges ?

<SNIP>...

I do like subsurface missiles, and the gameplay element they bring, they just need to add in some worthwhile payout for it.
Primarily just add higher value ores to it, and on top of that, rare element materials.
If I had a chance of being able to extract valuable ores, or some grade 4 elements (or large quantities of low grade), I wouldn't hesitate to bring one along.

...<SNIP>

I Agree with the above and I too would like to see Materials being able to be recovered using the new tools.

 

[Brrokk]

It's a game, there's no point to any of it.

It's nice to have those missiles in a fully equipped mining ship, and in a metallic ring there are good things sub-surface. But if you're short on hardpoints it's usually the one to leave out.

(But for the CG I've left out the seismic launcher instead as there's no need to mine cores).

 

[VR andysonofbob]

Agreed!

FD should defo add some LTDs or VOs to the mix. Then it would be compelling!

 

[Iskariot]

its like... why even bother spending the design time on them? just delete them from the game,

Why delete them?
I'd rather see FDev make subsurface mining worthwhile.
And that is easy to do.

 

[avow555]

Sub surface mining is fairly pointless and slow.

 

[Kenneth McGrew]

Why delete them?
I'd rather see FDev make subsurface mining worthwhile.
And that is easy to do.

yeah it would take 5 minutes by twizzling some numbers in the RNG but realistically we will see the 2020 update before FD "fix" this which is a shame as, I too would like to make it worthwhile

I have a different experience. With the laser I can get 2-3 tonnes per asteroid (medium content).
If you look for yellow/orange asteroid with sub-surface and surface deposit you extract from the deposits AND with the laser and you get a total of around 8-10 tonnes per asteroid which is 3x more.

Without new tools I couldn't collect more than 15-20 tonnes per hour. Now I have an average of 50 tonnes per hour. It's not much but still more.

you can easily strip 75-100T per hour using the good olde lasers and an average laser set up, ice mining is a little less fruitful in yield but Bauxite is on the CG list. you can steal more than 20T per hour off other miners by pirating them.

in any case Sub surface is certainly not quicker regardless of what you're looking for if you're a seasoned miner.

 

[Jukelo]

It's a game, there's no point to any of it.

It's nice to have those missiles in a fully equipped mining ship, and in a metallic ring there are good things sub-surface. But if you're short on hardpoints it's usually the one to leave out.

(But for the CG I've left out the seismic launcher instead as there's no need to mine cores).

Yes it's a game. That's hardly a good excuse for doing a poor job at balancing the various activities.