Why mining is STILL bad

[ChaosCloud]

I just vented 70+% Osmium because the default focused entry when opening the refinery window is "vent the first ore" and it wanted me to tell it if it should put a new ore into one of the two free bins or if it should keep asking me on every single pickup from now on.
And me being fed up by it asking WHILE THERE ARE FREE BINS clicked too quick -_- yeah my fault, I know. My fault for expecting mining to have become better with the mining update.

Atleast modules can be sold for 100% so this loadout mistake will not hurt my wallet, only my opinion of mining. If there'd be any way to make it even worse that is.


Seriously now, why, just WHY can't the damn refinery put stuff automatically into free slots and only ask when it can't do that?
Sure some might not want to get the crap ore into their bins, or if it's abudant in their cargo, but I'd prefer easier picking up of ore and then tossing the remains later than having to manage this crap every few pickups.

I just don't get it, but I'm absolutely convinced of one thing: IF humanity makes it into space in 3300 and uses mining machinery I'll guarantee you that it WON'T be that stupid and incapable of efficient workflow


PS: I'll just skip mentioning the collector drones that use up 2 limpets for 1 drone and most of the time crash into you or other things, no point in beating a dead horse that much more.

 

[CmdrZaratan]

I just vented 70+% Osmium because the default focused entry when opening the refinery window is "vent the first ore" and it wanted me to tell it if it should put a new ore into one of the two free bins or if it should keep asking me on every single pickup from now on.
And me being fed up by it asking WHILE THERE ARE FREE BINS clicked too quick -_- yeah my fault, I know. My fault for expecting mining to have become better with the mining update.

Atleast modules can be sold for 100% so this loadout mistake will not hurt my wallet, only my opinion of mining. If there'd be any way to make it even worse that is.


Seriously now, why, just WHY can't the damn refinery put stuff automatically into free slots and only ask when it can't do that?
Sure some might not want to get the crap ore into their bins, or if it's abudant in their cargo, but I'd prefer easier picking up of ore and then tossing the remains later than having to manage this crap every few pickups.

I just don't get it, but I'm absolutely convinced of one thing: IF humanity makes it into space in 3300 and uses mining machinery I'll guarantee you that it WON'T be that stupid and incapable of efficient workflow


PS: I'll just skip mentioning the collector drones that use up 2 limpets for 1 drone and most of the time crash into you or other things, no point in beating a dead horse that much more.

Since the last patch the collector drones no longer crash into you and they never go after the same fragment as another drone (finally). They still crash into asteroids sometimes (especially if a fragment makes its way inside the asteroid).

It would be nice to have more intelligent refineries, but I reckon that'll happen down the track.

For the record I vented platinum by mistake today. From one of the bins.

 

[Malkevin]

They really need to have prospectors destroy the oldest not the newest first, right now a bigger controller is worthless.

 

[CreepyD]

It shouldn't be too hard surely to create a button next to each slot that works like this..

If I have Platinum in slot 1, I click the button and from now on Platinum is locked to that slot and will automatically go into that slot when I collect it.
I simply click the button again to unlock Platinum from that slot.

Sounds simple but would be a HUGE improvement.

Other than that, I disagree, mining in 1.3.02 is a massive improvement over what we had before.
Especially now Collector limpets seem to be working great (at leas they are using 2 at a time).

I do wish we could have a single limpet controller (still with a max limpet active count).
But then we can assign any type of limpet to it, pick and mix style.
A 2nd collector controller will always beat having a prospector controller, which I have no room for (3 module bays taken up with limpet controllers?!)

 

[ChaosCloud]

It shouldn't be too hard surely to create a button next to each slot that works like this..

If I have Platinum in slot 1, I click the button and from now on Platinum is locked to that slot and will automatically go into that slot when I collect it.
I simply click the button again to unlock Platinum from that slot.

Sounds simple but would be a HUGE improvement.

Other than that, I disagree, mining in 1.3.02 is a massive improvement over what we had before.
Especially now Collector limpets seem to be working great (at leas they are using 2 at a time).

I do wish we could have a single limpet controller (still with a max limpet active count).
But then we can assign any type of limpet to it, pick and mix style.
A 2nd collector controller will always beat having a prospector controller, which I have no room for (3 module bays taken up with limpet controllers?!)

I've given collector limpets another try too and they are indeed useful, IF you goddamn use them right, because there are two ways for them:

Not target anything and they will be like timed "pets" and loot everything nearby.

The way I did it of course was having a chunk of mined stuff selected and fire one then, that one will ONLY grab that something and then bug off forever, along with the limpet.
This is the main reason limpets managed to give me the impression that they are crap.

Also given they have a lifetime how about showing that when targetting one?
And the ability to tell them to stop grabbing certain stuff because I had one hell of a time trying to actually dump finished ores when I needed cargo space for better stuff, the buggers kept bringing me my stuff back, which also at one point turned into illegal salvage once xD
But seriously, how about making the Discard cargo option available all the time, atleast around collectors would it be useful <_<

 

[fluffa]

got agree mining its 8 parts rubbish now instead of 10 out of 10 parts rubbish before drones. they have a long way to go before this even remotely becomes interesting

 

[Nexien]

The way I did it of course was having a chunk of mined stuff selected and fire one then, that one will ONLY grab that something and then bug off forever, along with the limpet.
This is the main reason limpets managed to give me the impression that they are crap.

Oh I didn't know that one! thanks.

About the prospector drones destroying the latest one you send off. You can send all the ones you can off, then when you are done with them cut power to the Prospector module and *PUF* they all vanish and you can start over

 

[stevodavo]

below is my take on the whole mining debate (i love it )

Find pristine ring don't go to res just drop into well light spot( made that mistake crashed few times trying to get out ) strip ship down. Fit two limpet controller then nine bin refinery. I went to local stations and wrote down who gave best price for top eleven resources. Then just vent everything else. Twin mining lasers two limpets. Away you go. Get 80 tonnes per load. I usually take 22 limpets then if hold gets full just jettison a few and carry on sometimes they will go and pick up ones u just jettisoned. I find if you blast a asteroid then get close to fragments. Jettison what ever u wanna get rid of wait till they are further away than fragments then launch two drones. Happy mining.

 

[ChaosCloud]

below is my take on the whole mining debate (i love it )

Find pristine ring don't go to res just drop into well light spot( made that mistake crashed few times trying to get out ) strip ship down. Fit two limpet controller then nine bin refinery. I went to local stations and wrote down who gave best price for top eleven resources. Then just vent everything else. Twin mining lasers two limpets. Away you go. Get 80 tonnes per load. I usually take 22 limpets then if hold gets full just jettison a few and carry on sometimes they will go and pick up ones u just jettisoned. I find if you blast a asteroid then get close to fragments. Jettison what ever u wanna get rid of wait till they are further away than fragments then launch two drones. Happy mining.

Literally what I did last night, went mining in my Asp for 2h (gotta love that thing, really versatile but rather bad for combat, great for everything else though) and I vented everything but gold, palladium, osmium, platin and painite.
Painite was easier to find than platin btw, and well after the 2h I got a nice load of stuff, 80% of the time was wasted with venting because throwing stuff away is nearly impossible with the loot buggers around, and what I ended up with was stuff worth around 750k.

Sounds alot but not if I compared to smuggling where I can make way easier more in the time, not as relaxing though but also not as time wastey.

IF I'd sell the Platin, osmium and painite through missions though I'd get a hell lot more out of this, managed to sell 4 painite so far for 1x 122k and 3x 90k, but aside that do no missions pop up.
Finding a good place to sell these is already a pain because the ship computer has NO memory for station prices whatsoever at all, but finding a place that has the matching missions is even worse.

And as said, most of the time was wasted by venting the stuff I don't want or reassigning the stuff I did want.
If we could get the refinery to auto use slots and maybe even offer auto venting for player selected stuff then even manual pickup mining could be more fun as you wouldn't constantly have to go "fly, aim, loot, look right, vent, look forward, select next, repeat", which is the worst about manual mining.
Limpets make that less of a pain because I simply hold the laser down on the roid and just babysit the refinery the whole time (after testing whenever the asteroid is worth it or not), and it gives a really calm feeling (not) that the focus constantly jumps from the hopper main slot venting button to the first bin's venting button, that constant feeling of "if I misclick now my precious stuff is gone..." adds also to the refinery deserving the hate it gets
It'd be way safer if the focus would stay on the hopper's vent button and the button would only be not shown anymore instead of jumping down to the first bin's button.


For now I'll be smuggling again and just carry my stuff with me in the hopes that I'll find missions for it on the way.

 

[Muffindrake]

A profession isn't bad as a whole just because it isn't "point crosshair at target, press a button and go afk" and you aren't good at it yet. The bins not being automatic is indeed finicky, thus requires you to pay attention to what you are doing.

You can really no longer argue about profits through mining; that has been buffed hard enough. 1.7mil/run +- a few hundred cr, depending on how lucky I get with asteroids, in my Orca. Outside of RES. Please stop comparing professions money-wise. I know that you could be making a hundred times more profit trading, but most people that find their profession fun will not be put off by that.

The only literal problem is drones crashing into asteroids due to fragments clipping through the latter (something outside your realm of action). That should be changed at some point.

Certain parts not being automatised as a mere excuse to keep you glued to your keyboard/handstick/whatever is certainly controversial. But isn't that the point of a game?

 

[Cmdr Ultra]

Credits are not my main goal, but with a bit of preparation Mining can be quite lucrative.

I found a Pristine Metallic in a uninhabited system with three High Tech systems surrounding it. I built up my rep to Allied or Friendly with all the factions by smuggling, bounty hunting etc... just because i was doing that for fun in the area at the time.

I then would take 130 drones in my Python and prospect hard for the usual suspects Platinum, Panite & Osmium. Once full with about 20 tonnes of each plus a full cargo of other precious metals i would do a milk run around all the Stations & Outposts in the three High Tech systems.

Everytime i landed i would get at least one maybe up to three Mining missions paying up to 280K. I already had the metal so i would just cash in. Also to choose my next stop on the run i would just accept a high paying smuggling mission or stockpile any smuggling missions that i knew would take me to a High tech in the area.

The drones work great now and will often last the full 720 seconds. And in uninhabited systems no one bothers you when mining. Also get a refinery with 9 bins as there are only 9 types of metals in Pristine rings.

 

[ChaosCloud]

A profession isn't bad as a whole just because it isn't "point crosshair at target, press a button and go afk" and you aren't good at it yet. The bins not being automatic is indeed finicky, thus requires you to pay attention to what you are doing.

You can really no longer argue about profits through mining; that has been buffed hard enough. 1.7mil/run +- a few hundred cr, depending on how lucky I get with asteroids, in my Orca. Outside of RES. Please stop comparing professions money-wise. I know that you could be making a hundred times more profit trading, but most people that find their profession fun will not be put off by that.

The only literal problem is drones crashing into asteroids due to fragments clipping through the latter (something outside your realm of action). That should be changed at some point.

Certain parts not being automatised as a mere excuse to keep you glued to your keyboard/handstick/whatever is certainly controversial. But isn't that the point of a game?

The refinery not being automatic makes the whole thing unneededly tedious, and I don't compare moneywise, I compare money + pita + time wise, and there did mining indeed get better but still can't hold up.
If it were no pita but time intensive to get a good amount of money out of it that'd be compareable to a quick but bothersome way, but when compared to smuggling in the Asp or bounty hunting in a RES site (Hi RES felt worse to me than RES) in a Vulture you get the same way quicker for a little more pita.

Also how would the refinery being automatically using it's bins make me be less infront of the pc? It takes maybe 15~30sec to mine an asteroid empty with 2 C1 Mining Lasers, then roughly 30~40 sec after starting with 2 drones to scoop everything up and of you'd go to the next one, or if manually done, you'd be constantly flying after blasting the chunks out.
Why die ore fragments twice as fast as dropped cargo btw? For manual picking up could they really live longer, and for drone pickup they don't even get close to their lifespan end.

As it now can you add 2min on top of that JUST for selectively and carefully venting the crap. (the times might be totally wrong as my perception of time is rather inaccurate but the perception of the time spending ratio is pretty much this)
Point is that even with a smart refinery you'd NOT be able to afk, the rather small content in asteroids for their size makes sure of that.
And no this doesn't it's ok, makes not much sense but gameplay wise it's ok, IF anything then they should blow up after being empty, just so you get some fireworks and have a very clear way of seeing that it is empty

Maybe you are right and it's better that way, maybe you are not, who knows, I only know that it looks forcefully tedious to me.
Maybe the blacklist is indeed a bit pushing it but atleast the automatic use of empty bins should be given.


Gotta admit that with smuggling I'm always subject to the RNG BB to actually get a good mission, or even multiple, but so are you for getting the ore gone for a good price via the BB.
It also feels like most of the mining missions are denied by rank and or rep, but that feels less of a problem for smuggling. Maybe just because there are usually more of them so a higher chance that they don't go "screw you lowie".

But well if we rate by fun then yes, mining's totally NOT for me then because that perceived forced tediousness is anything but fun. And I talk just about the venting here, aside that did I actually like the mining, was relaxing. But the venting constantly disturbed that.
So going by fun we could literally close 95% of the discussions here as it's just personal opinions.

Same like you and me, you find it fine as it is, a few others here think that it got better but can still get some improving, juuust personal opinions all the way.

 

[BillD]

They really need to have prospectors destroy the oldest not the newest first, right now a bigger controller is worthless.

Yes Indeed +1
I want to glide through the belt firing off the prospectors left and right, up and down to check out the contents and cherry pick, but at the moment you fire off the second one and It blows up the one you just fired and is in transit instead of the one that you fired 3 mins ago grrrr!
So you can only fire one at a time anyway. It seems to start off OK but eventually leaves one behind and keeps blowing up more recent ones.

 

[Steve50]

Mining is a lot easier since 1.3 hit. If you run 4 limpets at once you can mine an asteroid totally in seconds. I usually make 500-700,000 per trip (I do short trips, around 25-30 mins mining max) and with mining missions that can boost it up to 1-1.3m

Tbh operating the refinery is really the only thing I do, I rather enjoy it.

For people who still hate mining and are bored by it, the solution is simple. Do not mine. I find trading deathly boring and my solution? I don't trade. I don't moan for it to be changed so I will like it.

 

[BillD]

I have been mining my Asp off and using prospectors and collectors in a pristine, I can usually do a mill in an hour in a High Intensity res. a bit less just in the ring, but it has the advantage of no other ships. I make Lots more if I find some extra requests on the BB at the High tech station.
I have 64t of space. I fill up completely with drones. I then go out to a pristine ring
I always start by firing off about 4 prospectors to make room and find the best roids for my first pickup, then drop 2 collectors, this basically gives me enough room to pickup only the top 5 and keep bay full or close as I launch collectors at the further rods and sample the close one with the lasers.
If I am not finding enough I slow down when I am down to about 6 drones and just use the lasers and save the last 6 drones for collecting.
I always have a full load and love it when I have to start dumping osmium to make room for the plat, pall or painite.
I am working my way up to the Python. Started with only 5 mil cash when 1.3 came out. Now have 60mill I reckon I will make my mining python at about 85mill.

 

[Karakhian]

I've managed to make 7.2 million from mining without really trying that hard - the new collector and prospector controllers made it work (especially once the bugs had been ironed out). I don't mine usually, but I found a pristine metallic ring in a refinery system that generates the mining missions and the income is great when I need it. I actually also find it fun.

I wouldn't exactly call that bad. It seems a bit much to blanket condemn the whole profession because you had one slip-up (something you do admit is your fault, so good on you).

I'm pretty sure the reason none of it is automated is that they want mining to be a profession you actually pay attention to while doing. This has certain gameplay effects. For one, as you and nearly anyone has gone mining has discovered, you can screw up. You need to actually pay attention to what you're doing with the refinery, and you need to interact with it. I haven't vented painite yet, but I did vent platinum when it was on 92%. The screaming in the cockpit went on for quite a while. I actually look back at that moment as being quite cool, and adding some colour. The fact it can happen at all (rather than just afk mining, where everything is automated) is likely the whole point.

It also means you can end up lost in your refinery screen when someone shows up to attack you. This is extremely funny. If you could keep your eye on your scope the whole time, then this element wouldn't be there - I think it's deliberate that you have to be paying attention to your refinery while mining to create this opportunity. It means you have to remember to look across at the scope now and again, just in case. There's other stuff you can do, obviously - not mine in a RES, etc. But selecting your mining position through freeform supercruise, working your refinery, watching your scope, trying to aim at the centre of axis on a rotating asteroid is all part of mining, managing your power by switching on and off your refinery/mining laser/limpet controllers, managing your fire groups - I'm glad it isn't some afk thing where you're not expected to pay attention.

By the way, I now don't bother with anything bigger than an A2 refinery. With 6 bins, I can collect the three 'P's', Painite, Platinum and Palladium, and have three leftover for Osmium, Gold and Silver. It seems to let me make a lot more money quickly.

My only slight disappointment with mining is that the different types of field seem to be on a linear scale of quality - Icy, Rocky, Metal-Rich and Metallic. It would have been nice if each one had a higher likelihood of finding a specific high value ore, so no type of field is necessarily any better than the rest. It means there's no mining reason to go to the most beautiful field, the sparkling glittery glory of the Icy

Other than that, it's working okay for me. That's not to say it can't be better - but I don't find it bad.

 

[Dommarraa]

It nearly works as a process, but I appreciate that nothing in this game is allowed to actually work well.

If you had an audible warning when all of your collection limpets were idle, you could just monitor the refinery rather than having to flip between screens all the pita time

I also wish the limpets could dock without damaging themselves when you are moving at a reasonably slow speed. 100 or even 50 would do

 

[Karakhian]

It nearly works as a process, but I appreciate that nothing in this game is allowed to actually work well.

If you had an audible warning when all of your collection limpets were idle, you could just monitor the refinery rather than having to flip between screens all the pita time

I also wish the limpets could dock without damaging themselves when you are moving at a reasonably slow speed. 100 or even 50 would do

Have you tried using freelook? Also there is an audio cue for 'No Valid Collection Targets' though I know that is per individual collector, so not necessarily what you're after. I tend to use freelook to glance from my right hand status screen, up to info and across to the scope. This is especially true when you use a medium mining laser and it cores out an asteroid in moments... leaves me free to look at other stuff, launch a prospector, etc. You can also continue firing the mining laser while in freelook and just hold it on while looking around and navigating menus.

 

[davebispham81]

The Main problem with mining is the Collectors being bugged and destroying them selves on my hull after 1 rock (Please don`t tell me they fixed the collectors because they are broken) and the prospectors being slower than it takes me to fly to the roid myself and chip a bit off to see whats in it, And the fact that launching a new one destroys the last one you launched not the first. Oh and the inability to permanently set the refinery bins to a certain type of metal/mineral or to set the collectors to NOT pick up the sh*t stuff, Babysitting the refinery is getting tedious. And lets not forget that the collectors often try and fly straight through a roid to get where they are going.

As for the ridiculous tier levels on the Abres Osmium mining community goal, that`s just a big slap in the face for all of us who try and stick at he whole mining thing through all its faults.

 

[Mosait]

In the realm of all possibilities in the future of technology, how is it that the refinery isn't automated on some level for collection? That to me, is ridiculous. I would even consider it believable if there were a more expensive refinery that can automate. But not have the ability to lockout a bin to prevent venting? That is ridiculous. Not having safeguards like that in a complex system is plain bad engineering. Anyone who's worked on complex systems knows that. If you want to chalk it up to gameplay, then I have no answer for you bc that's a stupid reason.

And, limpets/drones that have no self preservation and can't steer around asteroids? Is this the future, or did technology only progress to being able to traverse galaxies?

Lastly, and this is personal and doesn't apply to everyone, but having to constantly look to my right is painful after awhile. That's bc I use the rift. I understand, it is my choice to use it, I don't have to, but I also am unable to play ED without the rift. It's just too awesome, jumps, judders and all.