What is the point of Prospector drones?
- Thread starter Red Fox Four
- Start date
Yay.....
And when will we get them to display a heat map overlay on the asteroids where the concentrations of specific resources are highest thus maximising yield of when concentrating fire on these areas?
Another type of drone could do distant scans of entire rings displaying similar heatmaps on these. The highest concentration points could even be basis for where the resource extraction sites are placed. Making the RES feel more logical.
(Had to try
)
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Hi Sandro,
Reason I don't use prospectors is I have no room after fitting what I need for deep space prospecting. Make 'em fit in a utility slot and you have a deal.
That or give away free mining Pythons. That works too.
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Certainly a step in the right direction! I would LOVE it if they brought up the resource density heat map ala the ddf, instead of just giving you a flat bonus. Making a bonus available to you that you have to work for (mining in the "hot" spots on the heat map) is far more interesting that just receiving a bonus for firing a drive at the rock.
And when will we get them to display a heat map overlay on the asteroids where the concentrations of specific resources are highest thus maximising yield of when concentrating fire on these areas?
Another type of drone could do distant scans of entire rings displaying similar heatmaps on these. The highest concentration points could even be basis for where the resource extraction sites are placed. Making the RES feel more logical.
(Had to try
And from the 'Have to try' department: when will non-RES mining activity generate a 'Mining activity signature' PoI in supercruise, so that reclusive miners get what's coming to them? (Of course, this will need yields outside of RES to be tweaked up to balance risk/reward)
The advantages of prospectors over just sampling fragments have been listed many times. People cannot be bothered to read.
In addition, they don't take cargo space! They are just limpets. You decide on deployment whether they are programmed as prospectors or collectors. There are absolutely no downsides.
In addition, they don't take cargo space! They are just limpets. You decide on deployment whether they are programmed as prospectors or collectors. There are absolutely no downsides.
I'm not sure you know what you are talking about. You have limpets in your cargo. You can program them to be either a prospector or a collector. So "(8, I would say)" makes no sense.
I've been doing a lot of mining lately. I stopped programming my limpets as prospectors. Prospector limpets don't add much value once you get good at mining -- you can tell quickly what is in an asteroid by mining on it once or twice and it is pretty easy to know when the asteroid has been "depleted". I put "depleted" in quotes because that aspect of mining is a total joke; why can't we mine the whole asteroid and not just scratch < 10% of its surface?
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Just vent the stuff you don't want. If you have a 6 bin refinery it will soon just contain the 6 metals/crystals you care about.
The drones get replaced with the metal you decide to keep. So there is no competition between cargo space and drones. I fly out with my cargo full to the brim with 64 drones (will be more after I ditch my prospector controller). You should only be keeping the most valuable metals.
Agree it's easy to determine depleted, and choice to use up to you. Also agree can learn to tell quickly and execute the short mining blast, check chunks, keep mining or move on step all in one quick smooth action.
Liking or disliking prospectors is an opinion. Not caring to use them is also your right and opinion. But simply fact that no matter how good at mining you are, prospectors will add value - it is simple logistics and incorrect to dismiss prospectors as "don't add much value once you get good at mining"
Let's say for sake of argument you are so good, so fast, the entire step to micro-second blast few chunks off asteroid, target chunks, and see what kind they are to determine whether it is worth mining the rock or not takes all of 0.00001 seconds. This is not realistic of course, but again - let us say for sake of argument that literally you take ZERO time to do this check.
Logistical block #1 - mining lasers are short range, very short range. You can not check an asteroid without being in mining laser range. Agree?
Logistical block #2 - moving your ship to within mining laser range to check the next asteroid takes X interval of time ; whether you move fast or slow, this is still an X interval
Logistical block #3 - no matter how many collectors you carry, they do not instantly pick up every single ore chunk, nor do they pick them all up in one pass. There is an interval of time where your ship must sit there waiting for collectors to come back. During this time, good miners manage their refinery.
Prospector advantage - while your ship is motionless waiting for collectors at current rock, you can skip the time to move ship to mining laser range to check an asteroid by simply firing off a prospector, which closes the distance between you and the asteroid much faster than your ship thrusters can.
Whether you want this additional advantage is totally up to you. But you can't rationalize away that prospectors save you that X interval of time to move ship within mining laser range even if the step to laser, target, and check chunks is instantaneous as waived for sake of this argument.
but reality is you would save both the X interval of movement time, the Y interval of blast/target/check chunks time, and with multiple prospectors, have scouted out the highest yield of the top metal asteroids. When you check with mining lasers and you see a few chunks of palladium - you will naturally stop and mine that asteroid. Bu you may be mining only a low percentage palladium asteroid, whereas with multiple prospectors,you can cherry pick only the highest yield ones - with zero time spent to get that intel.
Huff, why are FD always doing things backwards. how's a drone supposed to give you more ore from a rock doesn't make any sense.
different mining lasers YES
different refinery's YES
Different drones No
cos you still mine it till its empty. stop trying to flog a dead horse
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Does this mean that the current implementation, wherein in flight drones are destroyed in favor of drones attached to depleted roids, is working as intended?
Or would we be getting that in addition to reworking that behavior?
What kinds of rings/rocks did you find painite?
A very interesting change. Adding additional bonuses to prospectors is welcome, though it doesn't address the fundamental issue that their basic implementation is clunky:
- They take too long to both fire and reach the target: I find myself outrunning them there at times.
- Using multiple active prospectors is problematic due to:
- 1) how slow they are.
- 2) keeping track of them is difficult as they have the same name and tab color as collection limpets in the Contacts menu, and manually targeting with fragments, collectors, and other ships flying around is a pain.
- 3) Its hard to fit larger modules due to all limpet modules not increasing exponentially as well as skipping every other class size. Running higher than class 1 or maybe 3 means dropping too many collectors.
Furthermore, the buff this brings doesn't really buff mining. Right now the best way to make money is to focus on painite, platinum, and osmium and turn in missions. This will more than double profit. Which means:
- The real bottleneck to mining is 'farming' missions on the bulletin board.
- A slight buff to ore intake means more missions needed, meaning more time spend resetting the bulletin board.
Missions need to be changed/removed and overall profits to mining need to be greatly increased, as much as tripled or more. Maybe keep the missions for an extra boost, but remove the bulletin board reset 'feature'.
do you know anything about real mining and/or geology at all?
1. Having the most accurate surveys and precise scans is fundametally a core part of mining to maximize and increase yields.
2. Whether it is in space or beneath the earth, you are mining veins of ore - not just blowing up chunks of surface material
3. The prospector is essentially a surveyor and scanner all in one - telling the miner where to mine to maximize yield as well as richer veins not found through the trial and error way which blasting without prospector simulates
do you know anything about real mining and/or geology at all?
1. Having the most accurate surveys and precise scans is fundametally a core part of mining to maximize and increase yields.
2. Whether it is in space or beneath the earth, you are mining veins of ore - not just blowing up chunks of surface material
Welcome to 3300 where scanners can revel a system 100,00ls wide, why we using 1960's mining technology.
Remote sensing is the science of acquiring, processing, and interpreting images and related data, acquired from aircraft
and satellites, that record the interaction between matter and electromagnetic energy. Remote sensing images are used for
mineral exploration in two applications:
1. map geology and the faults and fractures that localize ore deposits; 2. recognize
hydrothermally altered rocks by their spectral signatures. Landsat thematic mapper
TM. satellite images are widely used to
interpret both structure and hydrothermal alteration. Digitally processed TM ratio images can identify two assemblages of
hydrothermal alteration minerals; iron minerals,
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I really don't understand the logic behind the current system of having scanning done by drones at all. They have an entire module set called "scanners" funnily enough that could have been given an upgrade pass to allow miners to purchase different types and qualitys of scanners that perform the scanning function for ores etc. instead they went with a drone that you have to waste a slot on plus waste cargo space on plus it doesn't do anything different that just firing at an asteroid doesn't give you already??.. Logic. None.
There was a thread a few days about whether FD play their own game, prospector drones are surely clear evidence that really don't. Just baffling.
There was a thread a few days about whether FD play their own game, prospector drones are surely clear evidence that really don't. Just baffling.
Take up cargo space. Be completely pointless in general.
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