Elite: Dangerous PvE - Mobius

Not looked at mining yet, but my minds been working... Having played eve for a few years in null sec I often partook In mining ops with my hulk and a group of pilots to watch out for and evils that came our way and mined expensive resources in safety..

Are the res extraction sites an npc gankfest and mining more of a mine and run tactic? Or do you get left alone?

I've seen you tube clips where people head to the res sites and then drop out of SC in a random spot in the rings and then get peace and quiet to dodge roids and strip em...

Basically if I fit my ship to mine do I take some sort of protection
Thanks

There's no real reason to mine at this time unless you maybe find a belt of that super rare metall.
But even then you are better off trading or bounty hunting in the same area.
And it's not relaxing it's closer to playing squash without the walls.
Sure you can use limpets but those cut into profits and are about as reliable as drones where in eve online in 2006.

Until they introduce the mining/crafting system next year mining would be an annoying waste of time imo.
As for res's they mostly serve to randomly spawning npc's but if you fly 20 km from the beacon you will be out of the area and should be left alone if you so desire.

TorTorden wrote:And it's not relaxing it's closer to playing squash without the walls.

I actually find it strangely relaxing.

I believe mining is only really profitable with a pristine ring (no Kharma, no ).

With RES just fly to a different part of the ring and you won't be bothered, but it's worth having shields as accidents can happen.

I've found the limpets to work quite well, don't target anything when using them as collectors (if you target something first it makes the limpet a one time only use), just fire the collector limpet at nothing then start mining, the limpet will scuttle around collecting stuff, after a while it will expire (the time depends on the quality of your controller, as does the distance in which they work).

Currently you have to monitor your refinery as it stops until you assign stuff to an empty hopper, but after 1.4 this should be automatic.

How many limpets you'll need depends on the quality of your controller and some experimentation, but I found I could mine 2 to 3 'roids per limpet.

But in reality mining, whilst strangely relaxing, is not particularly profitable and is very time consuming, it's worth trying at least once just to watch the limpets buzzing about, they seem oddly happy in their work.

In 1.4 mining is getting a big buff. In 1.4 you will want to bring collector drones as well as prospector drones. If you use a prospector drone on an asteroid before mining, the asteroid will drop upwards of 40 shards (i've heard reports of 60 shards from a single asteroid in the beta). So if all this is true, it should make mining a bit more profitable.

Also in Hi-Res sites you tend to get better drops, but you have to deal with npcs.

I've also heard reports that Metallic aren't going to be the only profitable rings in 1.4. I've heard metal rings are dropping high value resources as well. Again that's just what i've heard from the beta.

In it's current form, it's true mining isn't the best for credits per hour. But for me it's more active than trading so it tends to keep my interest more. The best is going with a mining wing into a hi res. Two miners, two fighters, loads of fun.

I admit I probably didn't do it quite right when I tried for that one time for an hour

My experience with limpets was mostly them exploding in my face..

TorTorden wrote:I admit I probably didn't do it quite right when I tried for that one time for an hour

My experience with limpets was mostly them exploding in my face..

Lol i know that feeling, they are a little finicky the first time you use them. The main thing is to not have anything targeted when you deploy them so they'll be in aoe collection mode. Also I've noticed they suck at flying around objects...so if you mine an asteroid and then move to another while the limpets are still doing their thing, if an asteroid is in between you and the limpet...well the limpets will crash straight into the asteroid. So what i'll do is open cargo scoop, deploy 4 limpets, mine asteroid, wait for all the limpets to finish collecting, move to next asteroid, repeat. When 1.4 drops, you will just add the step of firing a prospector limpet before mining each asteroid.

I've just spent a day or so messing around with mining and gave up on it pretty rapidly.

The time/credit ratio makes it probably the least profitable activity out there (you can make more on basic BB missions).

I couldn't get to grips with scuttling around trying to collect fragments only to be told "resource unallocated" half the time, I think I sold a ton of Cobalt or something.

So ... sold that DB-X, picked up a Vulture at last and got back to doing what works for me - bounty hunting in the RESs.

I mined all the way to a Cobra. Now I'm back in a Viper, bounty hunting in a RES and laughing at the credits/hour I'm making and the associated fun.

The collector limpets are really fickle, even in 1.4. Launch, frequent immediate expiration, rinse and repeat. In small ships, you can't afford that too many times due to the laughable mechanic of having to store them as cargo.

The collector limpets are also dumb. They don't prioritise fragment collection. They will also collect ejected, abandoned, cargo and sit on it if there is no more room in the hold, but the refinery still has empty, or part filled bins.

The refinery could do with actually being programmable, so it will auto vent anything you're not interested in.

You can risk RES mining without a shield, but get a long range scanner and drop everything (including that juicy painite roid you just found) and run when unknown contacts pop in. Setup shop again after 3 or 4 boosts and start again. Rinse, repeat.

Finally, take the long way back home, or risk 1.4 unavoidable interdiction.




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Did they fix mining regarding NPCs?

I did some mining early on, and no matter where I went, even uninhabited systems, I'd always have NPC pirates show up. That wasn't fun in a Hauler. Or even in a better ship, it seemed like I spend more time killing pirates, while my fragments would expire.

I still found it kind of interesting and fun. I may try it again in my T-9 with 3 beam turrets to keep the pirates off my back. Nor for money, but for fun. It sounds like waiting for a future update may be the way to go.