TLDR: 3.0 has made material farming in metal-rich rings harder by making nearly all roids "Medium".
FD have recently increased the yields of materials from asteroids.
Here's the proof:
I have done a fair bit of testing in metal rich rings, both before and after the 3.0 update. The materials increase has resulted in a dramatic change in the ratios of the material content displayed for roids when they are prospected.
This is the ratios of low, medium and high roids in metal-rich rings. Both before and after the 3.0 update:
So there has been an increase. I'm not disputing that. But when you look into the number of fragments you get for each roid, the picture isn't as good.
This is how the material content of medium roids used to be:
This is how the material content of high roids used to be:
This is how the material content of medium roids is now:
Note: medium roids with a material content of zero do exist, they just didn't show up in my test sample.
This is how the material content of high roids is now:
Material mining in metal-rich rings before 3.0 was simple. You prospected a roid and if it was either medium or high you mined it. You'd get a few with only one or two fragments, but the majority were more than that.
The problem now is that you are almost forced to mine medium roids. But the vast majority of these roids will only have one or two material fragments in them. This is much worse than it was before 3.0
You could ignore the mediums and just mine the high roids, but that means you are ignoring 4 out of 5 roids and the result is it's much slower than before 3.0.
Solution:
There are two solutions to this problem.
1. Increase the material content further
This would make medium roids worth mining again. It would also have the flow-on effect of increasing material yields in other ring types. It might even make ice mining worthwhile.
2. Increase the threshold for displaying medium and high content
The result of this is that we could again be more selective when choosing which roids to mine. I suggest that the threshold be changed so that 50% of roids in metal-rich rings display as Low material content.
There is a precedent for this (though that was a decrease). Soon after fragments were changed to drop 3 materials, the number of fragments per roid was heavily reduced. This made High roids extinct and Medium roids were pretty rare. So FD lowered the threshold for displaying roid material content.
FD have recently increased the yields of materials from asteroids.
However, instead of making materials collection easier, it's actually made it harder.
Here's the proof:
I have done a fair bit of testing in metal rich rings, both before and after the 3.0 update. The materials increase has resulted in a dramatic change in the ratios of the material content displayed for roids when they are prospected.
This is the ratios of low, medium and high roids in metal-rich rings. Both before and after the 3.0 update:
| Asteroid Type | Low | Medium | High |
| Old ratios | 52% | 38% | 10% |
| 3.0 ratios | 1% | 82% | 17% |
So there has been an increase. I'm not disputing that. But when you look into the number of fragments you get for each roid, the picture isn't as good.
This is how the material content of medium roids used to be:
This is how the material content of high roids used to be:
This is how the material content of medium roids is now:
Note: medium roids with a material content of zero do exist, they just didn't show up in my test sample.
This is how the material content of high roids is now:
Material mining in metal-rich rings before 3.0 was simple. You prospected a roid and if it was either medium or high you mined it. You'd get a few with only one or two fragments, but the majority were more than that.
The problem now is that you are almost forced to mine medium roids. But the vast majority of these roids will only have one or two material fragments in them. This is much worse than it was before 3.0
You could ignore the mediums and just mine the high roids, but that means you are ignoring 4 out of 5 roids and the result is it's much slower than before 3.0.
Solution:
There are two solutions to this problem.
1. Increase the material content further
This would make medium roids worth mining again. It would also have the flow-on effect of increasing material yields in other ring types. It might even make ice mining worthwhile.
2. Increase the threshold for displaying medium and high content
The result of this is that we could again be more selective when choosing which roids to mine. I suggest that the threshold be changed so that 50% of roids in metal-rich rings display as Low material content.
There is a precedent for this (though that was a decrease). Soon after fragments were changed to drop 3 materials, the number of fragments per roid was heavily reduced. This made High roids extinct and Medium roids were pretty rare. So FD lowered the threshold for displaying roid material content.
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