If there are numbers, they must update at least 10 times per second or else it will be annoying as combined with my 350ms ping, and half second to one second refresh rate on numbers, that system was horrible.
So I’ve taken a few hours (about 5-6 ish? Not sure, spread out over the day) to figure out the mining system and mine as efficiently as I could, and got out with about 300+ parts.
Any weapon with separate shots like the railgun or the shotgun, as well as enough firerate, seem to be doing the job well, though haven’t tested too much. I think they now count #hits as opposed to damage, also needs confirmation though.
I’ve mostly flown a recon with the shotgun/shrapnel cannon and a bunch of healing modules against pirate npc’s, and after some practice I can now extract a mole part from every single asteroid, poor and rich. There doesn’t seem to be a drop-rate for it, it’s guaranteed if you can understand and manage the heat mechanic (which, please devs, for the sake of your players, should be much more clear and have some explanation about it SOMEWHERE). There’s more to it than just overheating, and even now I’m not sure how to explain it in words.
Now, I also averaged about 1 per minute, but I can only sustain that rate for a while, and with my experience of not overestimating such peak rates, I’d estimate you can sustain that for a maximum of half of your in-game playtime. Therefore, I’d estimate a lower-bound optimistic time of 3000 minutes of farming, or 50 hours. For an event lasting 30 days, that’s 50/30~1.5-2 hours of time dedicated to this game EVERY DAY. That’s excessive. Like, I’ve seen excessive grinds, but this is a lot. Also, it’s a lower bound, now consider a lot of people mining all the precious asteroids right from under your nose. (Looking at you, timed tasks with collect/destroy x enemies/items with an excessive amount of people doing the same thing). I fear a tripling of the farming time at worst. Don’t even want to imagine being a casual low level player, looking at this without the equipment to farm this quickly and safely.
My take: this mining system can probably become an effective and intuitive system given serious consideration of player feedback.
Thus far my feedback, looking forward to what we can do to make this event manageable and perhaps even enjoyable, and I’m happy to help where I can 
(BTW, are we really farming for hours for a ship that is meant specifically to do that exact farm but faster? Darn. Quite profitable though, I’ll admit)
For those concerned about drop rate: at least 1 part drops 100% of the time if you destroy the asteroid at max heat. (Wavy bright yellow)
Without the right equipment? My white railgun tackler with no seed chips was doing ok ;p
I put seed chips on to destroy pesky enemies
When it goes right, it’s nice ;p
13 hours ago, RennieAshII said:
That’s funny about the delay you saw. I found the colour system is much more instantaneous feedback - but you need to be able to distinguish between a bright red glow and a slightly less bright red glow.
With the percent system, I found the numbers updated far too slowly to accurately reach the red zone.
Number system - I normally get only medium rewards
Colour system - pretty soon I was able to get 90% the highest rewards.
40 hours minimum of mining 1500 asteroids with players in sector also mining - that’s a big ask. You can probably make real money in that time and buy the DLC instead ;p
I don’t know if spacial scanner still gives a 2nd chance with overheating, but it doesn’t say in the description anymore?
For me on the contrary, I could get easily max reward every time in the old system. The only exception was lags.
In the new system when you get to max heat level, when you shot on your youtube clip it takes over half of second to get to max brightness level. Sometimes when I shoot the asteroid still cools down. If I shoot too much it can break before even reaching max color
So, let me get this straight: Since roughly the inception of the asteroid mining mechanic, players have asked that drones not randomly shoot at asteroids automatically. And they were completely ignored, until the moment that behavior became advantageous to players.
Is that about the long and short of it?
20 hours ago, deadfire3000 said:
Now, I also averaged about 1 per minute, but I can only sustain that rate for a while, and with my experience of not overestimating such peak rates, I’d estimate you can sustain that for a maximum of half of your in-game playtime. Therefore, I’d estimate a lower-bound optimistic time of 3000 minutes of farming, or 50 hours.
It took me a little over 21 hours to get all parts. Now the asteroids spawn faster and some of them are dropping two Mole parts, should be easier now.
On 4/30/2021 at 10:39 AM, kamikazeTMX said:
well i rather have the number on how the asteroid is overheated… the new system is weird and mostly i destroy the asteroid without loot or it just destroys itself without loot… so the numeric overheating helped me much more… now 8 of 10 asteroids give me nothing and before it was 1 of 10 that gave me nothing… so i dont like this overheating look of the asteroid not 1 bit 
well seems i have got the skills now for the new type of mining. so that is off the table 
2 hours ago, ScireEstMelius said:
So, let me get this straight: Since roughly the inception of the asteroid mining mechanic, players have asked that drones not randomly shoot at asteroids automatically. And they were completely ignored, until the moment that behavior became advantageous to players.
Is that about the long and short of it?
i go mining with the mole when my stupid annoiying drones shoot asteroids its 1 of the most annoiying thing ever happening… so i destroy them with pushing F… but still its really dumb that its not removed because in that free space what is like a mmo thing… its that drones around a healer ship arent suppose to attack those asteroids out of themselves since those arent enemy ships… so yeah i like the devs to remove that stupid annoiying attack on asteroids… Ow yeah and forgot to say that if your just hunting in the mmo space its not cool that you kill a asteroid of another player he is trying to mine just because you are killing the mobs there or doing mission or whatever… its like griefing players and i dont like this.
5 hours ago, ScireEstMelius said:
So, let me get this straight: Since roughly the inception of the asteroid mining mechanic, players have asked that drones not randomly shoot at asteroids automatically. And they were completely ignored, until the moment that behavior became advantageous to players.
Is that about the long and short of it?
Pretty much yeah. I imagine someone got wind that attach drones were being used to mine effectively and they patched it to keep people from abusing the mechanic that they implemented.
One plus-side was mentioned above though: combat drones around engineers will no longer attack asteroids randomly. I and many others are still mad about it though.
==============================
Also when I got the mole, I was VERY disappointed by the mining laser. Like rage quit on stream disappointed.
It’s a mining ship with a mining laser, and it’s TERRIBLE at mining. Papy had a great idea on discord where instead of being a typical laser, it should be more like an effect cone, and deal damage every second. That way it can actually be useful for mining unlike this laser. (Though the laser does look cool)
TFW a chipped Tai’thaq does a far better job at mining than a laser literally designed for it.
Another thing is why the hell these parts drops are event exclusive? It would cause zero harm if these were permanent, like Brokk, Karud and the rest of some of these premium ship were in trophy search. There are so many ship parts needed that they should drop permanently and it would also open a way for different ship part drops for empire/fed/jericho zones. Having to spend 20 hours doing some boring thing and being restricted by time is just absurd. If Mole parts were permanent I would have no problem with that but THEY ARE TIMED EXCLUSIVE.
Not to mention that asteroid drops itself are very poor now, much worse than before, getting at least 30m credits in hour before(not counting material drops) was a very easy task.
Hey thx for adjusting the drones attacking asteroids. now its fun again
5 hours ago, Gon009 said:
Another thing is why the hell these parts drops are event exclusive? It would cause zero harm if these were permanent, like Brokk, Karud and the rest of some of these premium ship were in trophy search. There are so many ship parts needed that they should drop permanently and it would also open a way for different ship part drops for empire/fed/jericho zones. Having to spend 20 hours doing some boring thing and being restricted by time is just absurd. If Mole parts were permanent I would have no problem with that but THEY ARE TIMED EXCLUSIVE.
Not to mention that asteroid drops itself are very poor now, much worse than before, getting at least 30m credits in hour before(not counting material drops) was a very easy task.
you got a very long time to get them togeter… btw join a corp and try to mine it with some1 else who have the ship already or wanna help ya little with it :). btw this is a free 2 play game so they have to get there money from somewhere. and btw these are events its normal its only in that time you can get the special stuff free of charge but time robbing… nothing weird there…
Well. Mole is a right step towards, maybe, a more complex Open Space and Economy… But… It lacks the soul of a mining ship. The ship 3D design is well made, but it DESERVES better modules focused on mining. It’s a mining ship, after all. Maybe a minion drone, like already suggested here in the forum… Some ideas:
- Make a module to scavenge hulls: know that pirate ship that you kindly exploded? Well, the hulls could have some purpose another than a chunk of black steel, it could be converted to basic materials. It would be great to have something like “Scavenger Drones” active module. The bigger de hull, the bigger the prize. We would be able to scavenge the cargo ships, even pirate destroyers… That would make people hunt big ships in groups, intercept ships for rare resources… Something like that. And would contribute to the lore, too.
- Another great active module would be to be able to drop a little mining station, near a scenery asteroid. The station would attach itself to the surface and start mining for some time, while the player would be free to do whatever else he/she wanted to, while in the same map, without range limitation. It would automatically generate ores, maybe 2 or 3 per minute. Different sectors would give different ores, also. Maybe even monos from time to time. Make it necessary to regularly empty the station cargo hold to prevent offline mining. Hostile NPC’s could also shot the thing…
- Asteroids re-spawn. When a sector is almost empty, the rate is sufficient for one player. Two players, and the things get a bit harsh. Mole isn’t quite a fast ship… But, as we all know, Asteroids Belts have hundreds, thousands of asteroids… I don’t know if something like that would be possible on this game engine, but it would be awesome mine BIGGER asteroids, blow up them to LITTLE asteroids and some resources, and then mine the little ones… Another thing: today, the rocks just appear from nowhere. You can clean some portion of a sector, and then, boom, as asteroids pops out of thin air (vacuum?) behind you. There was a game, long time ago, that used an interesting mechanic: the asteroids would be accelerated from an Asteroid Belt somewhere else (a fictional place) to a mining facility, i.e., they would actually enter a warp mechanism and would arrive in the map flying from somewhere far away from the map border, slowly entering the playable area to avoid crashes, stopping some-point after, maybe colliding with another one, making a the sound of a rock… Don’t need fancy physics there, just good animation.
- Make Open Space ALIVE! Isn’t this patch about mining? Then make NPC’s MINE TOO! Not actually “mineable” asteroids, but the ones in the background scenery. Make miners NPC’s that, when exploded, drop ores. Isn’t that awesome? Make bots mine something, load and carry ores to a mining facility, drop, get back, mine some more…
Although not everything is great in the patch, I think it’s a good beginning to a more complex game. Ships with roles are a great addition. There can be always others, like one for transport missions (get something from here, deliver there, defeat enemies in the middle of the transport route, make cash, gain reputation etc etc etc)…
Asteroids can already be spawned at the edge of the map and sent into the main area - Temple of Last Hope Mission.
Would be cool to have dynamic asteroids. There already exists moveable rocks, so dynamic rocks should be possible.
Large rocks splitting into smaller rocks - should be possible as that’s already happening with ores, debris and containers from small rocks.
“Mining” is currently a find and collect kind of game, but can be improved with dynamics and multiple layers to the mechanics.
No one upon no one gets by this monkey. Sagittarius and super old. the new asteroids are ok but the new mining ship is not up to tech standards. I would like sensors that see what is contained in the Asteroids. I mine 90% + in most of my ships I maintain a full amount of minerals for my building needs. I suppose ,as you took away my ablility to spot asteroids in the system, as now i must hunt for them I wonder if adaption for my regular ships could be invented so i dont have to take hours to find a few minerals(as i find the mining ship horrid tolook at
). I also entered this game in Dec of 2013 and never was able to receive my OBT. Why do i bring up the OBT>? Because i was the first pilot in the game to reach 10 000 destroyed Aliens. i would have continued on but had outside duties in Other nations as i am a real mining engineer. was unable to get my 25,000 till i got back home in 2020… I know this isnt the time nor place but have a little bit of compassion for a 77 year old miner who never received the credit due .
You can see asteroids easily if you equip a high sensor range
Well, today was Mole day for me. What a let down.
I’m just going to run through the key points, negatives and positives (that I can see) and some serious balance talk.
First impression
Mole is yet another Federation ship with an identity crisis. Despite being Federation there are:
- No shield slots
- No shield resistance passives
- Slight bias towards hull capacity
- YELLOW ENGINES
Although it may seem workable at first - taking any medium damage input such as singularity cannons, any Destroyer fire, missiles, shrapnel cannons and so on will completely decimate the shields of the ship as there is *no way* to stack resistance passively without the aid of 9c and multiphase shield adapter.
In result, if you want to take any form of substantial damage with your shield capacity at all you will be sacrificing a module slot for multiphase and at least one form of shield regen (aura, shield booster or both).
Not only does this practically rule the ship out of PvP instantly. Simply existing in PvE and Open Space is suffering.
The ship also has an absurdly high base speed and energy regen out of the box. Without any form of modification the ship sits at 264pts/s for energy regen which is absurd for base energy. With a single voltage regulator the ship is energy stable at 96-98% energy and can successfully recover from 3-5% energy capacity to full stability without stopping afterburners.
Moving on from regen to speed though - the ship goes 385m/s base. It’s almost faster than a Jericho interceptor without any speed modifiers other than the synergy passive active. Heck, you can easily push the ship to just shy of 500m/s without sacrifing what little “tank” the ship has or compimising energy or rotation.
As I’ve said in the official discord a number of times now - Mole is a Federation Engineer that wants to be a gunship, has the slots of an Empire Engineer and durability of a fighter. It wants to be possibly anything but an engineer.
So about that Cargo drone and passive...
- The cargo drone is completely disabled in modes other than Open Space. You can’t even spawn the drone for silly strats such as a Boremys throw instakill or messing with allies.
- A bit of a let down, but understandable.
- The container pick up passive doesn’t work on seed chips
- The only container type where this passive would mean something and it doesn’t work
- The container pick up passive… works on cloaked mysterious containers
- Finding them at small maps like Sanctuary are trivial with a Mole
Right, had to edit this one in because I almost forgot - the special module. That was the thing I wanted to talk about regarding balance issues.
So for the special module - it’s completely passive. The listed repair on the module card is per drone , not for both of them active or just a flat number - but the problem is - the regen is absolutely pathetic.
No matter what game mode you go to - the twins effect is pathetic beyond comprehension and the passive regeneration is so low it might as well not exist.
Suggestion:
- Increase passive regeneration to 150pts/s for allies (currently 50pts/s per drone) so that sending drones to healthy allies engaging enemies is less punishing
- Increase emergency repair amount from 2500 hull and shield (5,000 total durability) to 25% hull
- Emergency repair station is just superior in every conceivable way other than range to this SPECIAL MODULE despite being an ACTIVE MODULE with lower cooldown and NO LOCKOUT after activation
- Reduce cooldown to 5 seconds (currently 10 seconds)
- Drone generation is already a relatively high cooldown for Mole players to work against, this cooldown only prevents players from sending more than one drone to an ally at a time
So was the ship worth the immense grind?
No.
If the ship was _750 components only, _I’d say it’d be worth and furthermore, achievable for casual players - you know; people with jobs and families?
Was this a far better release event than Relics? By miles.
Can we please just get the next Rank 17 Destroyer already?