Using the Rhino and surface mining; first impressions

Capt. Hook

Capt. Hook
Well I took the plunge and cashed in my weekly ARX haul for the Rhino. In no particular order these are my first impressions and eager to hear views of other commanders!

Good
Rhino fun to drive
Impossible to roll
Easy tp deploy once main ship is low enough (low gravity planets more forgiving)
Great capacity of 72 tons
Mining rigs easy to deploy
Mining rigs fill fast and even low value sites produce engineering material
I tried mining in low security, anarchy and hight security and no pirates showed up to disturb my crappy mining
Using the turret to 'ping' for resources is easier to locate mining spots than cabin

Not so good
Positioning the rhino to collect the rig was awkward
The rigs don't seem to like being placed too close together. Not sure of distance but looks like 75m to 100m apart.
Travelling between rigs can take a while if you are not careful and rigs are not happy about uneven terrain for mining
Not sure what the 2nd or 3rd seat is for.
Charging the mining rig on foot doesn't seem to make much difference to yield but that could just be me

What would be good
Having to fly down to below orbit to see what each identified mining site has is a pain. If I can determine some organic can be seen from orbit I should be able to do same for rocks


Overall I think the Rhino and surface mining is an engaging activity and a big improvement on shooting fallen asteroids. Look forward to tales of other commanders motherlodes! I have tried rocky, metal rich and icy moons and all produce different materials.
 
here the same.
Your general impressions I share.

after re-starting the rigs one should re-charge the rigs battery.

Icy: Deuterium, Helium, Helium3, LTD
HMC/Metall Rich: Serendibit, Rhodeplumsite, Tantal, Ruby, Saphire, Uranium etc
Rocky: Thortveitite, Helium3....
after 2 hours familiarizing with the usage and testing the different body-types the last hour I did on a metal rich body,
got 62 to Rhodeplumsit, 18 to Platinum and 12 to Saphires.
Guess with some routine that surely can be improved.

First feeling: equivalent or even better yield than core-mining

Life-Hack:
after DSS, descend into the OC, stopp engines (0% throttle) and keep the ship horizontal.
Then select one after the other all possible mining-sites in the lefthand panel, it will show which Mats are to be found at each. Select the desired mining-spot, go there and start....
 
i share some of the positive impressions,
but:
after DSS, scrolling a planet with 25 to 28 mining places to look for deposits in orbital cruise is a pain.
found grandidierite from orbit, but after dropping the rhino, the spot was nowhere to be found... had to look around scaning for 15 minutes with the fuel hungry rhino to find it.
35 meters beetween mining rigs is too much, i had to setup only one and on low density deposit is painfully slow, about 50 tons in one hour.
 
CptCMDR said:
i share some of the positive impressions,
but:
after DSS, scrolling a planet with 25 to 28 mining places to look for deposits in orbital cruise is a pain.
found grandidierite from orbit, but after dropping the rhino, the spot was nowhere to be found... had to look around scaning for 15 minutes with the fuel hungry rhino to find it.
35 meters beetween mining rigs is too much, i had to setup only one and on low density deposit is painfully slow, about 50 tons in one hour.
Click to expand...

I've had a few instances of planets with, say, 12 Planetary Mining Deposit locations indicated, and on getting close to them a bunch will resolve to show a specific commodity, while a couple just never do, and remain as 'Planetary Mining Location Signal [5]' or whatever even when allegedly parked right on top of them in the Rhino. These ones also don't reveal a hotspot after being Rhino-pinged for me.
 
So I just saw a post that claims that you can reset which minerals you get just by returning to supercruise and coming back to the planet, like resetting an Odyssey settlement.

This would mean that the minerals are randomly generated, when you land. They are not static and part of the planet's makeup.

So...no need to search for a particular mineral. Just find a planet with a bunch of signals, and reset it until you get what you want.

Is that how it really works? Cuz...that would be lame.
 
Codger said:
So I just saw a post that claims that you can reset which minerals you get just by returning to supercruise and coming back to the planet, like resetting an Odyssey settlement.
Click to expand...

Haven't tested this properly yet, but my understanding is that the potential minerals available in a given location are defined by planet type and composition, so you'd still need to be looking at the right worlds if you're after a specific commodity.
 
Love the thing. The driving model felt weird at first, but you get used to it. Storage getting upped to 72 is insane.

There's a bug in third person, where the Rhino makes a constant hissing noise while moving. Also if you exit the "manage loadout" menu while in the Rhino there will be a heat blur effect over the screen that maxed out my GPU and sent the temps to 80. It can also cause the thrusters to bug out and visually fire without actually thrusting, as well as causing the hissing noise.

If you bump the rig you'll get a message about the rig being under attack which seems oddly specific. Wonder if it indicates future gameplay.
 
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Coming away with a full load of high value commodities which were only previously available by core mining is great, nearly 40k merits for one load is a bonus to. :)
 
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I find Grandidierite spot where I can deploy 4 rigs in a single spot. I think we can find plenty of better planetary mining spots out there.
 
Capt. Hook said:
Well I took the plunge and cashed in my weekly ARX haul for the Rhino. In no particular order these are my first impressions and eager to hear views of other commanders!

Good
Rhino fun to drive
Impossible to roll
Easy tp deploy once main ship is low enough (low gravity planets more forgiving)
Great capacity of 72 tons
Mining rigs easy to deploy
Mining rigs fill fast and even low value sites produce engineering material
I tried mining in low security, anarchy and hight security and no pirates showed up to disturb my crappy mining
Using the turret to 'ping' for resources is easier to locate mining spots than cabin

Not so good
Positioning the rhino to collect the rig was awkward
The rigs don't seem to like being placed too close together. Not sure of distance but looks like 75m to 100m apart.
Travelling between rigs can take a while if you are not careful and rigs are not happy about uneven terrain for mining
Not sure what the 2nd or 3rd seat is for.
Charging the mining rig on foot doesn't seem to make much difference to yield but that could just be me

What would be good
Having to fly down to below orbit to see what each identified mining site has is a pain. If I can determine some organic can be seen from orbit I should be able to do same for rocks


Overall I think the Rhino and surface mining is an engaging activity and a big improvement on shooting fallen asteroids. Look forward to tales of other commanders motherlodes! I have tried rocky, metal rich and icy moons and all produce different materials.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the update. It looks like the two lines I put in bold indicate the Devs adjusted the Rhino in response to the streamers/forums feedback. Last week, it looked like the Rhino could only carry 24 tons and no one was getting engineering mats.

I think I'm sold on this now. It looks like the primary function is fun and working. The secondary function - which I may use it for - is for interacting with Settlements just like I currently use the Nomad. By being able to deploy without having to touch down, bigger ships can deploy this (like the Nomad) for settlement interaction/assault. You could land the Nomad directly in a settlement (like parking an SRV), so that was great. However, if that settlement is hostile... probably not a good idea (hadn't tried it yet). Now I can trundle into the settlement (or near it) in a Rhino and debark. And since it has the accurate scarab gun, and 3 seats, this becomes the better multiplayer transport (minus the Scorpion's lovely missiles). And it will fit in smaller size bays than the Nomad, (apparently the "large" size 4 can carry 2 Nomads, or a Nomad and your choice of an SRV).

I'll probably pick this up later this week. No need for me to do a first day rush. I don't have time to play right now anyway.

Thanks for you report and and answering the few remaining questions I had!
 
Daniel Cloudsifter said:
Thanks for the update. It looks like the two lines I put in bold indicate the Devs adjusted the Rhino in response to the streamers/forums feedback. Last week, it looked like the Rhino could only carry 24 tons and no one was getting engineering mats.

I think I'm sold on this now. It looks like the primary function is fun and working. The secondary function - which I may use it for - is for interacting with Settlements just like I currently use the Nomad. By being able to deploy without having to touch down, bigger ships can deploy this (like the Nomad) for settlement interaction/assault. You could land the Nomad directly in a settlement (like parking an SRV), so that was great. However, if that settlement is hostile... probably not a good idea (hadn't tried it yet). Now I can trundle into the settlement (or near it) in a Rhino and debark. And since it has the accurate scarab gun, and 3 seats, this becomes the better multiplayer transport (minus the Scorpion's lovely missiles). And it will fit in smaller size bays than the Nomad, (apparently the "large" size 4 can carry 2 Nomads, or a Nomad and your choice of an SRV).

I'll probably pick this up later this week. No need for me to do a first day rush. I don't have time to play right now anyway.

Thanks for you report and and answering the few remaining questions I had!
Click to expand...
One time I read about an assault on a settlement, and this is from this vehicle and this is from this.... There is nothing to storm in Odyssey, one cmdr takes care of everything on his own, and three is like dropping into kindergarten.... I can't understand it
 
After multiple hours' testing I'm already a bit frustrated with how often the process of scanning bodies, finding the surface mining signals, descending to 25m, deploying a Rhino, taxiing over to where the signal location is coming from and pinging it with the mineral scanner ends with...well, nothing. Just stuck with 'Planetary Mining Location Signal [9]' instead of an actual mineral name and no hotspot showing up in purple when I ping it, despite being within metres of the location marker.

Anyone else experiencing similar?
 
My experience so far lines up with whats been said above - mining out in the bubble rather than anywhere off in the wilds.

Found a cluster of spots from orbit on a iceworld... went on down and from the Rhino every sub hot spot was listed as Water rather than the range of materials claimed from higher up. So that was kinda 'shrug'

Went to a different planet, went down to what should be a mixed spot of generally worthwhile goodies, On surface i had a nice splattering of all the goodies claimed from the sky in a general circle at about 1km from my drop point. Travelling out to the nearest revealed more beyond it, so Polar Wolf id say just keep driving about.

On mining machine placement, id love some more accurate way to do it, it does seem fiddly if you are trying to get multiples in a close ish formation. - overall, yeah pretty interesting, and a nice way to get planetary mats too!
 
Eros said:
Found a cluster of spots from orbit on a iceworld... went on down and from the Rhino every sub hot spot was listed as Water rather than the range of materials claimed from higher up. So that was kinda 'shrug'
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hahah yep I've had this a couple of times too!

Eros said:
Went to a different planet, went down to what should be a mixed spot of generally worthwhile goodies, On surface i had a nice splattering of all the goodies claimed from the sky in a general circle at about 1km from my drop point. Travelling out to the nearest revealed more beyond it, so Polar Wolf id say just keep driving about.
Click to expand...

Aahhh, I seeeeeee...!

So the pinpointed location for 'Planetary Mining Location Signal [9]' on the planet's surface isn't actually the location per se, and in fact you then additionally have to drive around looking - in effect, there's another layer of the onion to peel back first. That'll be where I'm going wrong then, I suppose!

I must say I don't find that very intuitive or user-friendly though - it's fine in the Nomad when you're 150m off the ground, but actually driving on the surface (particularly on any uneven/rocky ground) makes it incredibly difficult to gauge any sort of directional hints from a ping that doesn't return a hit.

It's almost as if the terrain map on the Rhino's HUD should be zoomed out about 2x or 3x when you're in the Rhino to make it useful - it feels like it's only showing me the ground within about a 15m radius of my vehicle at present!
 
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Thinking said:
One time I read about an assault on a settlement, and this is from this vehicle and this is from this.... There is nothing to storm in Odyssey, one cmdr takes care of everything on his own, and three is like dropping into kindergarten.... I can't understand it
Click to expand...
By that logic, what is the point in the two seat Scorpion?

Yes, there isn't really a reason to assault a settlement with more than one person - particularly due to all the network issues and the likely event of the other commanders being dropped from physical multicrew at each instance switch.

As for nothing to storm: have you ever had to deal (assassination or clear settlement mission) with a mission at a settlement when the alarm is raised? You can't land there, so you have to get there on foot or vehicle dropped nearby. The Rhino, like the Nomad, deploys without the ship having to touch down - this eliminates the concern of finding a smooth landing spot for vehicle deployment (or even walking in of foot).

My point with the Rhino, versus the Nomad, is I could deploy the Rhino with the same ease AND have something to drive to the 400-700m mark from the target and then proceed on foot. Perhaps the Nomad could do this too by flying low... haven't tried it. I do know that for unalerted settlements, you can land the Nomad right in the middle of the settlement (like driving an SRV in) with no issues. That has made settlement mission in big ships much easier. Rhino should give similar utility - plus have the accurate Scarab gun.
 
Polar Wolf said:
Aahhh, I seeeeeee...!

So the pinpointed location for 'Planetary Mining Location Signal [9]' on the planet's surface isn't actually the location per se, and in fact you then additionally have to drive around looking - in effect, there's another layer of the onion to peel back first. That'll be where I'm going wrong then, I suppose!
Click to expand...

Alas, I've just spent 20min driving around in ever-widening circles around the location pinpoiont, up to 1.5-2km, pinging frantically all the time - and there's still nothing mineable showing up at all. D'oh.

I'm inclined to think this can't be the intended mechanic anyway, as the Rhino guzzles fuel at a truly alarming rate - that 20min has used up well over half a tank, with nothing to show for it whatsoever, which (please god) surely can't be as designed.
 
Daniel Cloudsifter said:
By that logic, what is the point in the two seat Scorpion?

Yes, there isn't really a reason to assault a settlement with more than one person - particularly due to all the network issues and the likely event of the other commanders being dropped from physical multicrew at each instance switch.

As for nothing to storm: have you ever had to deal (assassination or clear settlement mission) with a mission at a settlement when the alarm is raised? You can't land there, so you have to get there on foot or vehicle dropped nearby. The Rhino, like the Nomad, deploys without the ship having to touch down - this eliminates the concern of finding a smooth landing spot for vehicle deployment (or even walking in of foot).

My point with the Rhino, versus the Nomad, is I could deploy the Rhino with the same ease AND have something to drive to the 400-700m mark from the target and then proceed on foot. Perhaps the Nomad could do this too by flying low... haven't tried it. I do know that for unalerted settlements, you can land the Nomad right in the middle of the settlement (like driving an SRV in) with no issues. That has made settlement mission in big ships much easier. Rhino should give similar utility - plus have the accurate Scarab gun.
Click to expand...
A before or after alarm doesn't really matter. Either you shoot the srv like ducks, or if it's a behemoth, you just get out and clean up.
 
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