How long does it take to mine an asteroid?

[Logoscyth]

Recently, I've contructed a corvette - sized carrier with a 7*7*40 mining beam array. After completing the beam array, I decided to have some fun and mine an entire asteroid.
It took about five minutes. Here's the yield:
28k Red Rock
3k Red Dirt
1200 Lava
5 Quantagen L3
17 Quantagen L2
200 Quantagen L1

1 Vappecide L3
17 Vappecide L2
166 Vapecide L1

2 Plextanium L2
4 Plextanium L1
I hypothesize that mining on a large scale yields much less than on a small scale, say with a fighter-sized mining ship. Can anyone else confirm this?
Fly safe.
-Logoscyth, ScyTech Mining & Engineering

 

[Calbiri]

are you infering that the faster mining arrays somehow harvest less total blocks? or a lower percentage of certain rarer types? I dont beleie this is an intended function, although an update/lag bug might plausibly cause it.
I would actually LIKE to see an increasing % chance to destroy a harvested block rather than collect it, starting after say 10 blocks in an array (or maybe 10 salvage blocks per ship?)

 

[Flashburn283]

no, it yields the same amount, just much faster

 

[Ferdi265]

he says it yields much less rarer stuff to mine an entire ansteroid than to just go surface mining.
Today I found 5 Extranium L4 (however it is spelled, idk). I have a pretty decked out starting ship now. Surface mining really yields more. In the beginning I mined an entire asteroid with just 16 Salvage Cannons. Not much loot.
Anyway, is there anyone who knows which asteroids have the most expensive minerals (and the most of them). Currently the best I found are the sand/rock ones.

 

[JKinloch]

same here, the ones with sand seem to have a lot more ore than others

 

[MichaelSeph]

It loads the same ammount, the harder thing is finding two asteroids with the same ammount of rares :P

@Calbiri: When Mobs won\'t drop nearly anything at all, you won\'t LIKE that idea so much. Why the counterproductive ideas now...

 

[Calbiri]

I meant in relation to mining, not the loot items dropped by mobs, I wouldn\'t call picking those up \"harvesting \"

 

[MichaelSeph]

That\'s what I ment as well, when mining will be the best way to get money/rares (instead of mobs), you won\'t like it (mining) nerfed up cus a small harvester ship is not small enough to avoid \"destroying\" rares.

 

[grimzod]

With 70 or 80 4by4by4 boxes of salvagers asteroids go in 30 seconds or less

 

[The Last Baron]

Don\'t argue, Calbiri. Michael KNOWS what it is that you want, both now and in the future.

Omnipotence.

 

[The Last Baron]

I\'m relatively certain that with most other game mechanics, more = better right now. There isn\'t any sort of penalty for utilizing more salvagers to mine (as far as I can tell, I\'ve mined quite a bit). And the ore seems to randomly spawn, regardless of the type of asteroid - I haven\'t done anything to test this, just what I\'ve noticed thus far.

 

[GenuineDickies]

Yeah, I went nuts one night, have about 4200 salvage cannons on my Battlecruiser class harvester. I go through an asteroid in about 45 seconds. I\'m presently trying to fit an entire ice planet in my cargohold right now.

 

[Synapse]

The base game mechanic of More=better is really hurting this game. In mining its just annoying because you can mine the whole world, but in PVP it\'s just silly. Talking abour arrays of 10,000 missile blocks etc.



There should be an upper limit on the effectiveness of a single array, and a drawback to having a bigger ship beyond just \"it takes longer to build.\"



I would suggest limiting the boost a gun can have from getting multiple cannon/harvester/missile blocks to a diminishing return around 15-20. Beyond that you should have more guns on your ship, not bigger. Basically a normal distribution around 0 (only the right half) of \"gun damage increase per block\" on the x axis and \"blocks added\" on the Y axis.

Of course everyone likes planet destroying ultra beam cannons that run down the core of the whole ship, but those should actually use the same mechanic but shifted up the scale. At just a few blocks it is only 0.2% effective, as you get up to 100-400 blocks or maybe 600 it gets to 100-150% of full damage and then drops off again as it goes into the thousands of blocks.



There needs to be a similar loss for having a more massive ship and more massive guns. Massive guns should probably track slower because of their mass, and massive ships should take forever to get moving and to stop.

Small ships should be speedy and agile and be able to avoid a massive ship if it has no guns light enough to be able to rotate fast enough and keep up with it.



More=better just means whoever has the most time and the least creativity wins.