Surface/sub surface mining pointless

Can I get away without using prospector limpets, or will that nerf the yield like the old system used to work?

Yes, you can mine deep core without prospector limpets. Use the PWS to find the roid, the cracks are visible, night vision can help you see them, but once you know what the look like you can just fire the seismic charge and it will stick. The only issue, which makes no sense, is that you can't select the charge and disable it if you go above the optimal.

Generally with no prospector limpets 2 high charges and one medium will get that roid into the optimal zone, but sometimes you will need more. It can be tricky do, but I ran a Keelback, on a couple of mining sessions and it worked well with no limpets at all as it is a no drama scooper. The Cobra III works well in this roll, but scooping is harder in the Cobra.

What I have found using the prospectors is that if you set to medium charges in 2 separate low strength fissures and one high in a medium strength the roid will go to the optimal zone. You can also do 2 high in 2 separate mediums and one medium in one low to get the same result. Targeting high strength fissures will take more charges and be more likely to flip you over the optimal range.
 
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How many resource chunks exposed do you get without limpets on average? When i blow up a asteroid i get a message saying 10 to 16 resource chunks exposed

Also i found that asteroids seem to have different thresholds for cracking open, i always start with high charging low strength fissures and then tweaking with low or medium charges to higher strength fissures.
in some cases I have been able to crack a roid with just 2 high charges to 2 low strength fissures or 1 low strength and 1 average strength fissure with high charges
 
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From my understanding - and which experience seems to confirm so far - low strength fissures generally require lower charges than higher strength fissures to gain a comparable result. That said, I always try to start with a strong blow into a low strength fissure, then, depending on the result shown in the diagram, a weak to medium blow into another low strength fissure.

For fine tuning (if only one or two rows in the diagram are left) I would chose a high strength fissure for adjusting cause these don't overcharge that easily. With this method I often get away with even just two loads. But that's mainly down to personal preferences I guess, not saying that's the optimal procedure. I'm sure you can do it differently as well.

One hint for those new to deep core mining and to help them to prevent the same beginner mistakes I did at first: You need to scan the rings with a surface scanner at first to find the hot spot(s). This is something you only need once, it stays persistent then. BUT - don't think you could spare the surface scanner from now on! You still need them, otherwise you won't see any hotspots at all.

The high strength to tune is a good tip... I usually just put, low to low or medium to medium as well, it all works the same, but with the buggy charge reticle the high strength would be safer. I find it confusing that you need to have the DSS on board to find something you already found. Do you need one to find volcanic activity you already found with the DSS?

How many resource chunks exposed do you get without limpets on average? When i blow up a asteroid i get a message saying 10 to 16 resource chunks exposed

Also i found that asteroids seem to have different thresholds for cracking open, i always start with high charging low strength fissures and then tweaking with low or medium charges to higher strength fissures.
in some cases I have been able to crack a roid with just 2 high charges to 2 low strength fissures or 1 low strength and 1 average strength fissure with high charges

About the same, the only issue is if you go over optimal as you can't select a charge and disarm it. Also, you don't know what is in the roid, you just can tell, because it has fissures and you can visually see these, that it has core deposits. If you're in a hot spot, most of the core depositis will be the new stuff by about 2/3 thirds of the time. The other thing, because you can't select the charge, you have to wait out the full time and can't detonate now.

So for doing small ships, you don't need limpets of any kind when hunting core deposits, this makes ships like the Adder, Cobras and Keelback (small medium) viable and quite profitable as miners. When I'm mining in my Krait I will take a 3A collector and a 3A prospector along for the convenience factors. I enjoy using the Keelback as a miner, sessions are relatively short and very profitable.
 
Leaving surface/sub-surface stuff is like leaving food on the plate. My dad told me not to leave food on the plate. :p

If its the materials I'm looking for, why wouldn't I grab them? And I for one, enjoy sub-surface mining. The thinner the blue bar when drilling, the more yield you get, up to 1 ton in my experience. That was great when I went into a LTD hotspot.
 
How many resource chunks exposed do you get without limpets on average? When i blow up a asteroid i get a message saying 10 to 16 resource chunks exposed

Also i found that asteroids seem to have different thresholds for cracking open, i always start with high charging low strength fissures and then tweaking with low or medium charges to higher strength fissures.
in some cases I have been able to crack a roid with just 2 high charges to 2 low strength fissures or 1 low strength and 1 average strength fissure with high charges

I do the same as you and have come to the same conclusions.
Some roids need more charge than others.

I have found the yield is slightly random, as well as based on the Grid.
 
Leaving surface/sub-surface stuff is like leaving food on the plate. My dad told me not to leave food on the plate. :p

If its the materials I'm looking for, why wouldn't I grab them? And I for one, enjoy sub-surface mining. The thinner the blue bar when drilling, the more yield you get, up to 1 ton in my experience. That was great when I went into a LTD hotspot.

If you're going to some place like LTD hot spot or Painite hot spot then, yes, it pays to bring all of the tools. For Opals, Grandidierite or other of the new gems, you won't find much that is very profitable except for maybe Bromellite in the one or 2 markets that pay well. Really no point in it.
 
What do you mean by best? Most enjoyable? It’s not the most profitable.

That's kind of like saying it's not worth picking a quid up off the floor on the way to work.

Sure, deep-core mining might get you the bulk of your profit but anything extra that you can get in the process is a bonus.
Even if you're deep-core mining, if you can manage to keep the trigger pressed while you're laying the charges, you can get extra stuff by shooting the surface as you move around a 'roid.
In my (fairly brief) experience, it's easily possible to deplete a 'roid using a C2 laser in the time it takes to lay 3 seizmic charges.

Why would somebody not do that?
 
That's kind of like saying it's not worth picking a quid up off the floor on the way to work.

Sure, deep-core mining might get you the bulk of your profit but anything extra that you can get in the process is a bonus.
Even if you're deep-core mining, if you can manage to keep the trigger pressed while you're laying the charges, you can get extra stuff by shooting the surface as you move around a 'roid.
In my (fairly brief) experience, it's easily possible to deplete a 'roid using a C2 laser in the time it takes to lay 3 seizmic charges.

Why would somebody not do that?

For the same reason I don't bother with filling up a T9 with scrap to sell 10 cr a ton. Yup, money lost, but in the scheme of things, just another annoying slow down.

In the old mining I used to dump Silver to get gold, gold to get painite... The I just stopped picking up gold or silver. What's the point, painite sold for (then) 120,000 a ton, why bother because I will have limpets left over that need to be dumped and a prospector limpet could be worth a million in painite or 1/2 million in platinum.
 
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For the same reason I don't bother with filling up a T9 with scrap to sell 10 cr a ton. Yup, money lost, but in the scheme of things, just another annoying slow down.

Well, yeah.
If you're spending time lasering a 'roid it would be an inefficient use of time.
If you're just holding the fire button down while you move around a 'roid to place seizmic charges, though, how is that a "slow down"?

Obviously, you want to ensure your ignore list is set to filter out the dross but don't forget that it's also a source of "free" mat's too.
 
If you're going to some place like LTD hot spot or Painite hot spot then, yes, it pays to bring all of the tools. For Opals, Grandidierite or other of the new gems, you won't find much that is very profitable except for maybe Bromellite in the one or 2 markets that pay well. Really no point in it.

That's kind of like saying it's not worth picking a quid up off the floor on the way to work.

Sure, deep-core mining might get you the bulk of your profit but anything extra that you can get in the process is a bonus.
Even if you're deep-core mining, if you can manage to keep the trigger pressed while you're laying the charges, you can get extra stuff by shooting the surface as you move around a 'roid.
In my (fairly brief) experience, it's easily possible to deplete a 'roid using a C2 laser in the time it takes to lay 3 seizmic charges.

Why would somebody not do that?

^^^ What Stealthie said.

I'm a miner. I mine. Not fussy about not mining anything which isn't paying 1.6M CR per ton. With that logic we might as well remove all other materials from the game, and remove mining lasers and the surface/sub-surface tools while were at it.

You can make extra profit from sub-surface mining. That's a fact. I'm not leaving more credits in rocks when I can extract them. Just because something isn't Void Opals doesn't mean its not worth mining, not in my book anyway. Some people seems to be completely discounting all types of non-core mining because it doesn't pay 1.6M per ton.
 
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Well, yeah.
If you're spending time lasering a 'roid it would be an inefficient use of time.
If you're just holding the fire button down while you move around a 'roid to place seizmic charges, though, how is that a "slow down"?

Obviously, you want to ensure your ignore list is set to filter out the dross but don't forget that it's also a source of "free" mat's too.
Like I said in a previous post, if you're in a metallic, you can pick up decent amount of decent paying goods. If you're in a ice ring, you're wasting space for precious goods. But look, I'm not trying to tell you how to play the game, but for me, it's wasting time and space because I'm just going to dump it later.
 
^^^ What Stealthie said.

I'm a miner. I mine. Not fussy about not mining anything which isn't paying 1.6M CR per ton. With that logic we might as well remove all other materials from the game, and remove mining lasers and the surface/sub-surface tools while were at it.

Or.... we could hopefully have FD revisit the balance at some point and continue to tweak what have by and large been extremely positive changes to mining. I’ve always enjoyed mining once in a while because it’s relaxing. I also enjoy the hell out of drifting about looking for crack rocks and watching them go boom. I think now that mining got so much attention it just needs a few tweaks to make it really shine. Bulk mining should at least be close to as profitable as motherload hunting and also, the often ignored aspect of material drops could be improved as well. Personally I think it’s a great opportunity for the subsurface missiles to shine. I really enjoy using those. I wish they also dropped some decent mats along with whatever stuff is hunted to make that a viable form of raw mat gathering (alongside and not inferior to SRV foraging).
 
Or.... we could hopefully have FD revisit the balance at some point and continue to tweak what have by and large been extremely positive changes to mining. I’ve always enjoyed mining once in a while because it’s relaxing. I also enjoy the hell out of drifting about looking for crack rocks and watching them go boom. I think now that mining got so much attention it just needs a few tweaks to make it really shine. Bulk mining should at least be close to as profitable as motherload hunting and also, the often ignored aspect of material drops could be improved as well. Personally I think it’s a great opportunity for the subsurface missiles to shine. I really enjoy using those. I wish they also dropped some decent mats along with whatever stuff is hunted to make that a viable form of raw mat gathering (alongside and not inferior to SRV foraging).

Sure, its FD's game and they will tweak stuff along the way. Core mining should pay well (and it does). Buffing the other types of mining too much devalues core mining rewards.

Personally I'd move the more profitable core materials out of the bubble altogether, to encourage deep-space mining, but its not my game.
 
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^^^ What Stealthie said.

I'm a miner. I mine. Not fussy about not mining anything which isn't paying 1.6M CR per ton. With that logic we might as well remove all other materials from the game, and remove mining lasers and the surface/sub-surface tools while were at it.

You can make extra profit from sub-surface mining. That's a fact. I'm not leaving more credits in rocks when I can extract them. Just because something isn't Void Opals doesn't mean its not worth mining, not in my book anyway. Some people seems to be completely discounting all types of non-core mining because it doesn't pay 1.6M per ton.

Sorry, mining is a waste of time. Metallic mining in a large ship, I will take all the tools. If you enjoy mining other things, awesome. I enjoy the hunt for core deposits, I often do it in Keelback with no limpets because it like it. Your milage may vary.

As far as taking it out of the game... Why? Have they taken rares out of the game?
 
Sure, its FD's game and they will tweak stuff along the way. Core mining should pay well (and it does). Buffing the other types of mining too much devalues core mining rewards.

Personally I'd move the more profitable core materials out of the bubble altogether, to encourage deep-space mining, but its not my game.

Yeah I guess at this point we’re discussing fine tuning.
 
Sorry, mining is a waste of time. Metallic mining in a large ship, I will take all the tools. If you enjoy mining other things, awesome. I enjoy the hunt for core deposits, I often do it in Keelback with no limpets because it like it. Your milage may vary.

As far as taking it out of the game... Why? Have they taken rares out of the game?

We'll disagree to disagree. Its actually great that mining now gives so many options. [up]
 
So just spent an hour doing surface/sub surface mining, didn't find any core roids so guessing it's a lottery in finding them. But how disappointing are these mining points. Surface provide 1 rock per deposit and sub surface gets you about 2 deposits, not really worth it, especially when mining lasers will provide you with a lot more ore over time. After an hour I had around 10t cargo worth around 70k, using just mining lasers I would probably have a least 500k in cargo within a hour. So I'm guessing only core mining is really worth it at the moment.

I do not agree, or have had the experience you had, in my python i've earned tens of millions in what amounts to maybe 4 hours of mining total, just playing around.
 
I do not agree, or have had the experience you had, in my python i've earned tens of millions in what amounts to maybe 4 hours of mining total, just playing around.

Yeah, I stopped to go hunt materials as I’m low on those but earned several hundred million amounting to the bulk of my 1.2 billion credit balance. It’s not RNG.
Here’s the impact that Void Opal hunting has had on my credit balance:
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And I genuinely enjoyed every minute of it. In fact I’m planing on fine tuning a ship for maximising single core finds. Mine and fill up on just one core and sell. Why? Because it’s fun is why.
 
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