Not water though. Can't live without water. I cannot count the tons of water I've hauled.
What’s the state of mining ?
- Thread starter RamboChicken
- Start date
From what I hear overlaps don't produce more yield anymore. The one thing you could do to combat the tedious RNG. Now it's again complete RNG, I guess. Waste your time by rolling the dice. You can actually map the results and revisit the same place with same returns. Only hardcore players do that and you still have to roll to uncover the yield. And those rolls aren't in your favour.
Such a depressing game, why play it? Oh, wait...
roid yields aren't rng. every single roid, it's position, size, look, type, including the content of those roids are set in stone by the stellar forge. the yield you get is affected by prospector limpets and the class of that limpet and if you count wing mining.
so what are you rerolling? npc spawning is rng. materials are rng. you are correct that overlaps are not cumulative any more.
Do you know the yield before you mine? No? Then you're picking an asteroid by random from the trillions of asteroids in the game. They may not be randomly generated but do you honestly want to claim there was a difference when you as player encounter one?
i pick them that way, but there are a whole group of people that map roid fields for the express purpose of eliminating that variable. something that is only as random as you decide to make it isn't something you can call random.
I know that and think that is a very small subset of player who go that length.
Sometimes we find miners hauling ores in best sell systems... they're our heroes.
Ozric
Volunteer Moderator
They do play the game though.
This is a very valid point.
I never sell my Osmium, I always keep it in my FC.
When missions for Osmium come up with allied factions, they pay around 357,000 Cr/t.
Mining Osmium alone isn't smart, or efficient, by any stretch of the imagination but as a byproduct of mining Platinum, it's a treat
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They game the game. To circumvent overreliance in RNG.
And dont think I misunderstood the jab at me.
Ozric
Volunteer Moderator
It's an MMO. People min/max and guide everything in all of them. Working out the most efficient ways of doing things has been a staple of players for decades.
And good. Because coming into threads where people are asking genuine questions, and then starting a dig at the game with things like "From what I hear" is not remotely helpful for anyone. If you don't know the answer to something someone is asking, then don't try to derail the thread by just complaining about things you've conjured out of thin air.
I don't see what's wrong with RNG here. Alternatives would be to clearly label all asteroids with their contents or make them all the same. Both dumbing-down the game.
Well are hotspots still a thing or are they not?
They are. What got changed (a long time ago) is that overlapping hotspots aren't as "good" anymore.
Thank you.
There you go. I'm content being corrected when I'm wrong. There is no need to make a big fuss about it just because it's me who is complaining.
As to "how good" or "how bad" they are now - well if you browse this forum you basically don't see it endorsed much for gameplay so how "good" can it be - compared to trudging along the asteroids you mined yesterday (or whatever timer makes them respawn drops) with no up, down, left right and by visual cue when most of the players have no clue how to orient in space and to whom most asteroids look the same.
Additionally, there's already several visible overlays on the generation
- ring type
- system reserves level
- hotspot presence and type
- RES presence and type
No matter how lucky or unlucky you are, you're going to get considerably better results in a pristine metallic ring than a depleted rocky one.
Leaving aside the ability to map the rings completely - which given the effort required to produce the map and learn how to reliably read one, isn't even necessarily an "exploit" when viewed in the long-run - even once you get to the mining site there's several ways to manage the randomness:
- do you take a single prospector just for the improved yields, or do you take several so that you can be scanning multiple adjacent asteroids while your (fewer!) collectors work, or do you mine in a wing so that one of you is prospecting for the next great rock while the other three mine the last one?
- do you take a large refinery and collect everything, filling up your hold quickly for reliable earnings, or do you focus on a few high-value types which will usually give higher earnings overall, but risk having a bad day?
- do you go for the steady profit of laser mining Platinum/Painite/Osmium, or the much more variable profits from core gems? (much more valuable per tonne, but significant opportunity costs to finding the right sell locations)
Noting of course that provided your ambitions are "tens of millions of credits per hour" rather than "hundreds of millions of credits per hour" the answer to the above doesn't matter - drop randomly in a pristine metallic ring, start mining, you'll end up a fair bit richer at the end.
"Managing the range of random events to come out ahead in the long run" is the fundamental game mechanic of a substantial number of games, and a major one of an even more substantial number - though there are plenty of people who insist on only playing games with no randomness, the Elite series is hardly for them (ED is less random than its predecessors in a lot of areas, of course).
RNG isn't wrong per se. It's quite wrong when you have a sea of millions of asteroids with a wide range of drops. That is just lottery and provides for these nifty tricks to circumvent the noise. Because when you go there you are likely to just toil your rear off for little gain.
That's why the hotspot was a good idea. Give indication where to go to find higher concentrations. But the space covered was still too large to have any satisfaying impact. So players found overlaps. And these overlaps were like an inkling of exploration, skillful navigation - in short it was way better gameplay than wading through myriads of asteroids at random.
And from what I hear subsurface mining is the thing people now endorse, basically. Surface mining, not so much - only for some niche activities. It's pretty much a whole gameloop wasted.
Ozric
Volunteer Moderator
Hotspots are still a thing yes. Overlapping hotspots producing far more asteroids of the named spot was rebalanced 3 and a half years ago! So those gaming the game could no longer do that
So the state of mining is the same for the OP. Except the PWA might be working now, or it might have broken again, it's hard to keep up.
If you want to have fun, then go deep core mining and blow up some asteroids. I personally don't do it as I'm not very good at identifying the ones that have the cores, but it is great fun if you're in a wing with a couple of people cracking and a couple scooping.
If you want to make money then you do surface mining. Find a single hotspot and the overwhelming majority of asteroids contain some of the named metal/mineral. It's quick, it's easy, it's relaxing and it pays well.
That's a much more helpful and informative post. And since I trust you're not making it up you won't see me nag about how crap I think it is anymore. Life can be pretty easy.Hotspots are still a thing yes. Overlapping hotspots producing far more asteroids of the named spot was rebalanced 3 and a half years ago! So those gaming the game could no longer do that
So the state of mining is the same for the OP. Except the PWA might be working now, or it might have broken again, it's hard to keep up.
If you want to have fun, then go deep core mining and blow up some asteroids. I personally don't do it as I'm not very good at identifying the ones that have the cores, but it is great fun if you're in a wing with a couple of people cracking and a couple scooping.
If you want to make money then you do surface mining. Find a single hotspot and the overwhelming majority of asteroids contain some of the named metal/mineral. It's quick, it's easy, it's relaxing and it pays well.