If I can add my two cents into the fray:
OP, the problem I'm seeing is that you are comparing your gains in mining (going back to that) to veteran miners. Everything in your first post (and most subsequent ones) shows that you are essentially expecting a 1-1 return: use your PWA, find a glowing 'roid, shoot it and rake in the cash.
It doesn't work that way. DC mining takes practice - not just in using your equipment but in developing a
feel for which 'roids are going to pay out.
Let me point out a couple of misconceptions you're having, still sticking strictly to mining:
I tried common, major and pristine reserves, and it doesn't make a difference. I'm using a Python equipped with all the mining tools, so I can do all four kinds of mining I'm aware of. (That's another thing: Doing that leaves you unarmed, and that is ridiculous. If there was any realism to it, mining ships would be heavyly armed or at least very well protected, and you could hire NPC pilots for protection. Or perhaps not because hiring them would be forbiddingly expensive; but then, it would raise the question how pirates finance what they're doing ...)
Yup - and in addition to taking away weapons, you're more or less guaranteeing that you're not going to have any success at mining either. There
are four ways to mine: Laser, SSD, DC and Surface.
Pick one.
Surface mining is mat collection, so let's ignore that for now. In order to do the other three you need beams, SSDM's, an abrasion blaster, a Seismic charge launcher, plus all the goodies in your Internals and utilities. A Python has 3 Large and 2 Med hardpoints. This means that by mounting everything you need for
mining, as you've noted you've got nothing for defence. However, in addition to that, most of your missiles and charges are going to be in awkward positions. You can put an SSDM
or the SCL in the chin bay, which you need for accuracy - not both. Beams can go anywhere, but your A-blaster needs fairly careful aiming - so no matter what you do you're going to have a bad time using all three methods.
Pick one. If you want to go for Void Opals, select Deep Core. If you want diamonds, go SSD or laser - though I personally prefer SSD. You get a LOT of fragments lasering, but they're small, giving (I think) 15% of one ton. Each chunk you get subsurface gives you 75%. If you want to laser, go for Painite.
Regarding pirates - forget about 'em, they don't matter. One WILL scan you when you enter a Ring and then that's the last you need to worry about them. Blow them up if you wish - you now have the spots to arm yourself - but you don't need to bother. If you're interdicted, you kind of have to
work at it to fail the minigame; a Python can easily break any interdiction by an NPC.
Also:
Without mining lasers, which produce the largest number of fragments, why do you need so many limpets?
This one quick: to put it simply; speed. A top laser miner barely (and often doesn't) stop his/her ship while lasering on the way to the next 'roid. They blast the rock, move on, retarget and hit the next one while the limpets gobble up the fragments. It's pretty impressive watching painite miners go at it. You
can mine with only a few, but it'll take time and you will get bored. Also remember that all those fragments have a life-span. They will degrade on you if you don't get 'em into the hold quick enough.
With subsurface deposits, I have trouble letting the trigger go at the right moment because the display scrolls at an uneven speed. I guess the hit rate is about 50%, and it's only on spot when I'm lucky. I don't even really know which of the blue bars is relevant, the first one, another one or the bar before the first blue one, or somewhere else.
Is it normal for the drill display to scroll at uneven speeds? If that's so, it will contine to be all random.
OK - gotta stop you there. This is what I was talking about above - you need to
learn what you're doing. Yes, in fact, the missile
does burrow at different speeds, depending on the density of the substrate it's drilling through. that density is shown on the SSD readout - the bright lines above the horizontal bar. The longer the lines, the denser the substrate and therefore the slower the travel. you need to practice and get
good at timing your release.
How do you get more than 1--3 tons from a subsurface deposit? With the asteroids I've found, there is no way that I could fill 224t from a single asteroid that has 4 subsurface deposits.
The largest known single payout for one asteroid is the Egg, in Kirrae's Icebox - that is the area you referred to earlier. With four SSD's it can on a regular basis deliver up to 74 tons of LTD's in a single pass - but you need to know
how. Don't just hit any blue reading, hit the 2-bar ones. They deliver on average 6 chunks
per hit and can be hit anywhere between three and nine times. Once you know how fast the missile is burrowing - you now know to look at the density reading - you can accurately release and hit them every time.
And I don't understand the pilot handbook about core mining. It says a weak fissure would need a strong charge and a strong fissure a weak one. I would expect a strong fissure to need a strong charge because it needs more strength to blow something up that is stronger. In any case, I tried both, and it didn't make a difference. When the asteroid is blown up, it has 3 outcroppings, and that's it. That gives maybe 1.5t and that's it.
you've got that backwards, and
that's why you're not having much fun - or earning much coin. All I can say is read the handbook again - I just did and yes, it does seem counter-intuitive. What it's saying is that the greatest boom comes from a high-strength charge into a weak fissure. You need to
balance your charges, like in my video above (well - on page 2). In that vid, I put high-strength rounds into high strength fissures, weak in weak, but the last - a weak fissure - I dropped a med in to bring the detonation into the blue. Once again, and this is what it comes down to,
it takes practice. A normal DC 'roid will have anywhere between 10 and 18 chunks freed; that doesn't
count the ones you need to abrade off.
What it boils down to is that you're not getting returns and you're not having fun because you haven't learned how to mine yet. There is NOT a 1-1 return - i.e. 'blow this up, get so many chunks' as in other games. It's a matter of careful work, searching, hunting, planning your set once you
find the 'roid, dry-running the 'roid until you understand its movements, and ONLY pulling the trigger when you know you're ready. It is NOT easy.
You certainly won't get any better just sitting around and complaining that the game's broke - pick ONE type of mining, and get out there!
THEN you'll be raking it in. I got my Elite DC'ing void opals and did it in a short time - you can too, once you pick it up.
Good luck.