The Mining discussion thread.

Good Idea?


  • Total voters
    7
I have just spent 3 hours Mining playing Solo and have found it a very inefficient way of making credits in the game

after 3 hours of Mining I had collected 17 tons of metals 3 ton of which I was able to sell on the Bulletin Board which netted me a grand total of 19,300 Credits for 3 hours game play

at least 20% of my mining collections had to be jettisoned because with only 4 collection bins
I could not continue mining without continually jettisoning the 5th type of metal gathered

a lot of time and hard work must have gone into creating the mining element of the game but I don't see this part of the game being used by the players very much in its current format

a more efficient method of collection and processing of metals needs to be added into this so that at least 50 tons of metals can be collected in an hour of game play or a player will not bother after there initial first tries to mine resources

a great deal more credits can be earned in less time and with less hard work by bounty's or trading so this part of the game I think will very quickly become obsolete unless major changes are made before release
 
Guys how to scoop chunk of ore?? I retracted cargo scoop but chunk is bouncing of my ship.Is there a button for scooping or what?
 
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Guys how to scoop chunk of ore?? I retracted cargo scoop but chunk is bouncing of my ship.Is there a button for scooping or what?

Extend cargo scoop, target ore like you would a ship, line up the crosshairs in the cargo scoop "camera" on the bottom left. Fly towards at 10-20kph. You will go over the top of the ore, scoop will grab it.
 
Why should mining be a chore?

Does anyone agree with me when I say that the magic of Elite Dangerous is FLYING your ship? Since joining the beta, everything has been about flying, and with a good flight stick, it is so immersive I am awed.

In every other game I've played, resource gathering has always been delegated to a brainless time sink that is often barely justified by having it be the start point for something in the game that can't be achieved any other way. Gameplay, that originated 10's of years ago amounts to the following: Go somewhere, wait (gather), come back, do something with your 'stuff'. Waiting as a gameplay mechanic is poor game design. That being said, Frontier did add the basic requirement of having to scoop chunks of rock, a minimal requirement to actually FLY your ship that I applaud.

But it is not enough. The end goal of mining is to sell what you mine to make Credits. There are already other ways to make Credits. Mining as it is now at the introduction of Beta 3 has no engagement. It is boring. I can expect to be as good at it within a few minutes as I'm ever going to get. That does not draw me towards doing it ever again. Not when I have other options that achieve the same end goal.

Not to be a critic without offering suggestions, here is what I envisioned after a few minutes with the goal of making mining about FUN FLYING:

Envision a dense asteroid field, similar to the belts around planets, but with smaller asteroids that are much closer together. So close that flying between them is like flying thru the slot in a station with a big hauler. And those asteroids are all moving relative to each other, bumping and orbiting because ~reasons~. Now, your job as a miner is to fly into that mess, scan a nugget that has value and make room for your ship to scoop it up by shooting the junk away from it. Doing so causes everything to smash around even more. The more you shoot, the faster stuff moves around, risking collisions with your ship and potentially, ship destruction.

In my mind, that would be a good start. I would further add some complexity by making what you shoot to 'push' away the junk a finite resource, so you have to load up on ammo before leaving a station with the intent to mine. That ammo can even take up room in cargo, so that the end goal is to exchange cheap ammo for much more valuable ore/minerals.

To conclude, make mining about FLYING thru a minefield (sorry for the pun, I just had to) while managing a profitable exchange of resources.
 
ore already have white target icon but I cant unlock or lock it.And I cant see any "camera window" for cargo scoop.

You have to lock on visually, you can't select it from a list or scroll through them. Line up the ore in front of you so it has the diamond select box around it, then press your button for "Select Target Ahead".
 
Tested it a while. Without scanners to find high yield roids and without drones that collect the ore mining is pretty annoying. Takes forever to get a ton of cheap ore. It's also not like in the DDA. They talk about targeting specific parts to get higher yields. Some sort of mini game. Mining is just like exploration far from what has been talked about.
 
You have to lock on visually, you can't select it from a list or scroll through them. Line up the ore in front of you so it has the diamond select box around it, then press your button for "Select Target Ahead".

tnx mate I had malfunction button for targeting.I fix it an now everything is ok.

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Tested it a while. Without scanners to find high yield roids and without drones that collect the ore mining is pretty annoying. Takes forever to get a ton of cheap ore. It's also not like in the DDA. They talk about targeting specific parts to get higher yields. Some sort of mini game. Mining is just like exploration far from what has been talked about.
this kind of mining is only for groups.Miners and haulers.
 
and why mining must mean as making a lot money ? its mining .. take it or leave it ..
p.s. does everything in this game must be for making money ? wrong game then

OK, this is just silly. Money is the name of the game. You need money for better ships, for fuel for travel, for equipment to do anything. As there is no player manufacturing, what would be the point of shooting rocks? That's great that there are people who like shooting rocks for no profit and there is a game for that; it's called asteroids and it's on the Atari 2600.

In all seriousness, mining has some of the right mechanics in place, but it's super raw. I agree with most of the ideas floating around.

- asteroid scanner
- asteroid tagging
- harvest drones
- H-A refineries for better chances at bonus ore
- H-A or even specialized mining lasers (Mineral, ice, metal) for better yields
- Better ROI. Seriously, there is 0 reason to mine rocks. Mine ships at a nav point instead.
 
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Perhaps because you don't manufacture lasers for drilling like this company that used to offer its products way back in 2014.
http://www.mining-technology.com/contractors/exploration/laser-services/

Granted back in 2014, due to power restrictions, lasers were mostly used for alignment. Since then, with the advent of much more powerful energy sources, lasers have evolved to replace the drill-bits that would wear down and generate dispersal of mined matter.

Sure, but they're used for surveying stuff, not actual cutting out sections of rock.
 

ShadowGar

Banned
But apparently FD and its fanboys refuse to add anymore technology because they are space faring amish. Technology will make things easier. I'm surprised we are not forced to space walk to the asteroid with a shovel and hand pick the rocks. They created hyperdrives to jump dimensional barriers but everything else is still in the industrial age. And all of the mismatched mechanics show. But fan boys will defend.
 
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I have just spent 3 hours Mining playing Solo and have found it a very inefficient way of making credits in the game

after 3 hours of Mining I had collected 17 tons of metals 3 ton of which I was able to sell on the Bulletin Board which netted me a grand total of 19,300 Credits for 3 hours game play

at least 20% of my mining collections had to be jettisoned because with only 4 collection bins
I could not continue mining without continually jettisoning the 5th type of metal gathered

a lot of time and hard work must have gone into creating the mining element of the game but I don't see this part of the game being used by the players very much in its current format

a more efficient method of collection and processing of metals needs to be added into this so that at least 50 tons of metals can be collected in an hour of game play or a player will not bother after there initial first tries to mine resources

a great deal more credits can be earned in less time and with less hard work by bounty's or trading so this part of the game I think will very quickly become obsolete unless major changes are made before release

I spent 3 hrs mining and made close to 200k!
You are either doing this in a Sidewinder (If so everything is slow in a sidewinder) or your doing it wrong.

Firstly get to know your more Exotic minerals and Metals. Only shoot at a roid long enough to get 1 ore out of it if it's rubbish move to another roid if it's good then process the ore. Each ore has 2 materials in it if you have the reasonable priced 4 bay refiner then you can easily chose the 2 most desirable materials and process the ore from them, just jettison what you don't need It'll always make someone happy. The more money you make the more you can upgrade your ship for more cargo space and so on.

ATM I have a Cobra with 20t of Cargo, a fuel scoop, 2 medium Mining Lasers (considering removing one), 2 pulse lasers, Chaff launcher, PDT, a 4 bay refinery and I've pretty much upgraded everything but the FSD and Shield Gens. I've been taking Cargo runs in the mean time to wait for the roids to respawn and then I just rinse and repeat.

I would love an Ore scanner something similar to how Battlestar Galactica (the game) had that coloured the asteroids to the type of ore it has or something similar.

If you are in a Sidewinder try moving up to a Viper ASAP you are bound to get more out of that, Hell Even a Hauler might be fun to try mining with :D at least you have the Cargo Space in it.
 
OK, this is just silly. Money is the name of the game. You need money for better ships, for fuel for travel, for equipment to do anything. As there is no player manufacturing, what would be the point of shooting rocks? That's great that there are people who like shooting rocks for no profit and there is a game for that; it's called asteroids and it's on the Atari 2600.

In all seriousness, mining has some of the right mechanics in place, but it's super raw. I agree with most of the ideas floating around.

- asteroid scanner
- asteroid tagging
- harvest drones
- H-A refineries for better chances at bonus ore
- H-A or even specialized mining lasers (Mineral, ice, metal) for better yields
- Better ROI. Seriously, there is 0 reason to mine rocks. Mine ships at a nav point instead.

I'm with you although not on the scanners and drones, making the process to automatic will make it dull pretty quick, if I want to grind for money there is trading and missions for that, mining should be just something diferent to do and not a fast way to get rich, there are already 2 ways for that in game.

But apparently FD and its fanboys refuse to add anymore technology because they are space faring amish. Technology will make things easier. I'm surprised we are not forced to space walk to the asteroid with a shovel and hand pick the rocks. They created hyperdrives to jump dimensional barriers but everything else is still in the industrial age. And all of the mismatched mechanics show. But fan boys will defend.

In skyrim was fun, why not on Elite? :D

elder+scrolls+skyrim+mining.jpg
 
I'm with you although not on the scanners and drones, making the process to automatic will make it dull pretty quick, if I want to grind for money there is trading and missions for that, mining should be just something diferent to do and not a fast way to get rich, there are already 2 ways for that in game.
Sometimes I'm amazed how little creativity creative people show. There are at least some possibilities even I could think of to make even fully automatic processes at least dangerous. Methane or other frozen gases for example. Always fun to shoot a high powered Laser at :D Less round asteroids, so you have to adjust your position constantly so it stays automated. Oh and one of my very early ideas, The sun-barque, kind of like a Gremlin waiting to be fed after midnight :D
In skyrim was fun, why not on Elite? :D

elder+scrolls+skyrim+mining.jpg

There's a thing called setting and I'm pretty sure it is not medieval ^^ I tried hard to help make this a future setting and not an industrial age space sim. In retrospect, I'm just glad we don't have to set sails and use gunpowder driven cannons :D
 

ShadowGar

Banned
I'm just glad we don't have to set sails and use gunpowder driven cannons :D
Don't give them any ideas. Apparently planet landings will consist of rolling people out the cargo bay inside a rum barrel. Big game hunting will be with a musket. And if you wasn't told already, declaring war starts with being slapped in the face with a glove, resulting in messing up your handle bar mustache.
 
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Try putting weapons on full. Worked for me.

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Does anybody know where or how to get the mining platform or what ever it's called. I need it to mine. Cheers
 
Anybody know how to get that Mining platform.

Does anybody know where or how to get the mining platform or what ever it's called. I need it to mine. Cheers in advance.
 
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