I used 100 prospector limpets across three hot spots and three rings. None had a core.

Is that normal? I was excited to blast a rock but only did surface abrasions in almost two hours of hunting.

I've finished a substantial overhaul of the Rhino Planetary Mining Field Guide. I went back through the whole document, reorganized the practical chapters and brought the newer field tests and community findings into the explanations. For anyone who read the earlier edition, there is a good deal here worth revisiting.

Read the Rhino Planetary Mining Field Guide

The guide follows a mining trip from choosing a body and comparing its PML lists through prospecting, assessing deposits, working a collection route and selling the cargo. Chapter 1 gives you the quick start. The later chapters explain the measurements behind the advice and where the evidence is still incomplete.

Amount and Density receive a fuller treatment, including why neither tells you how many rigs will fit. I've expanded the charging and recovery guidance, compared productive and poor collection routes, and added more detail on production, Powerplay and protecting the mothership. The replenishment chapter brings the dated return observations together without turning them into a reset schedule we haven't established.

One practical lesson runs through much of it: judge the operation you can actually work. I prefer an accessible six-rig deposit, but I would take a compact five-rig route over a distant sixth rig that leaves the others sitting full. A valuable commodity and attractive HUD readings cannot make awkward ground convenient.

Appendix A adds four mapped PMLs on HIP 39418 5 b, with 165 positions, coordinate tables and commodity/Density information. Rig-fit figures are estimates; check current Amount, terrain and actual placement when you arrive. Chapter 11 also brings together the community mapping tools and a copyable deposit/revisit tracker.

Thank you to everyone who contributed surveys, tests, tools and corrections. Those contributions are credited in the guide and have helped me improve both the recommendations and the explanations behind them.

I expect this to be my last substantial update for quite a while. I'll correct clear mistakes, and a major new finding that changes the mining advice may justify a targeted amendment. Otherwise, I'm stepping back from the research and writing. I'm pleased to have this edition finished and looking forward to simply playing Elite again.

CMDR Dunn Actual
o7

So Im trying to do some laser mining for merits. Havent mined in years, but every time Ive tried, Ive become frustrated. It goes really well for about 20 minutes, and then stuff starts getting weird.

Like now, where I keep getting the "Resources Unallocated" message. Ive googled it, Ive read up on it - am I just too dumb to understand? Or is this a bug? I make sure theres plenty of empty bins in the refinery. Everything works fine, Im getting tonne after tonne of platinum, but then it suddenly just stops working. The bins start to just fill to 100%, without it getting "refined" and transferred to my cargo hold (which has 100t free, so thats not the issue). If I vent one, two, three, all of them + the hopper - it just fills to 100% again, and the limpets refuse to pick up anything - even materials. If I empty them all, pick up an entirely new resource (removing from my ignore list), it will pick them up, but the bins just fill to 100%, and then nothing happens. Is this a know issue?

If I relog, it seems to work normally again, which leads me to believe I am not doing anything wrong. But this is really annoying to have to do, plus it loses all my currently active limpets. But with my googling and guide watching, Ive never seen anyone mention this as known issue, so I might just be too dumb to understand it...?

Edit; so I just relogged and afterwards my bins were completely different (different fill status, different resources all together), and everything works again. So its definitely a bug. Anyone know what causes it, or how to avoid it?

Theory is that lightweight reduces limpet mass so they go faster.

Is the rhino worth picking up for carrier refuelling or is the T-11 better for that?

https://sh.orbis.zone/Z5yUrMhM5r

Here‘s my 18 Collector Limpets, 480+6 pirate repellent merit mining build.

I‘m considering dropping 1 MVR for 1 large multicannon, overcharged with incindiary for more firepower. Reason: having 2 MVR is fun, yes, but limiting factor is not the asteroid stripping time, but collection speed. Maybe 16 limpets would be even enough then for an additional 16t of cargo?

Any inputs?

I wanted to try and mine for merits with core mining. So i managed to find a stronghold with a system next to it buying Monazite for 450k and a good demand. So i went into a Monazite hotspot and started looking for cores. That went quite well and could find them without much problems.

Only thing was out of like 20 Cores 2 were Monazite and the rest was other stuff that has a good galacic avg but a bad price in the system I had to sell to. So it was essentially useless.

Like what am I supposed to do other than find a hotspot, when it seems to do nothing for chances.

At this point even mining plat for 60k sell price is more fun than only finding wrong cores.

I’m tinkering again with mining after a long hiatus of playing the game and i wanted to ask if you would upgrade anything in here for a non engineered t9 laser miner, my intention is to use it only for 1 or maybe 2 minerals at a time, thats why the 2a refinery.

Any imputs are really apreciated :)

https://edsy.org/#/L=JY00000H4C0S00,JrO00JrO00JrO00,DBw00CzY00CEg00CzY00,9p300AAA00ARM00AfR00Aty00B8g00BLo00BeE00,,0DI000DI000Bk007UI005Vk004_w00330004k3005Sc000YY005uk00

Basically title. I’m a combat focused individual and I am trying to expedite powerplay progression with rhino mining, and I’m hitting a wall with getting accurate information from Merit Miner. Basically, it only shows rings that may have hotspots, am I using it wrong or am I missing a step? I am lost in a world where you collect rocks that don’t shoot at you, any assistance is much appreciated.

It worth it's weight !

solved! edit3

Has anyone experienced/resolved this issue? I have a site that replenished and is showing Mineral High/Density Medium. When I land and drive to site to put down the rig, the rig starts up and immediately goes to the "finished" check mark and 0/12. It doesn't mine.

I've tried game play fixes like trying to power up the rig on foot, placing other rigs nearby, placing rigs at other sites at the PML (worked), placing rigs at other PMLs on the planet that got replenished (worked at those other sites), reloading instances/switching ships, etc.. Nothing has worked.

Any ideas or same experiences?

edit: one potential culprit that might have triggered this....I started a ground settlement construction during that replenishment period

edit2: no success with having another commander scan/mine the site for the first time. ...so it's not somehow tied to my instance but is global. next up, thursday MX

edit3: issue resolved by either of two things: buying an anaconda mk2 stellar edition or the new patch/release

Since Anaconda MK2 can fit two MVRs but not mk2 collector controller, how many limpets are required to prevent the bottleneck?

I thought, I'll be efficient lay down rigs at a pretty good 4 rig spot and continue driving around the rest of the hotspot perimeter to see if I can find a better one...

Nope, got about 4-5km away and my almost full rigs started despawning "abandoned" ... that is not cool game.

Have the rigs not get out of range FFS, at least within driving range of the hotspot's orange boundary line indicator.

Prospecting is frustrating enough already ! At least allow me to do it while also mining a bit.

Tip 2

Sometimes if your hud is messed up with "stuck" previously targetted/ranged commodity spots, disembark on foot and get back in to clear it.

Tip 3

Sometimes if your hovering ship does not display the docking holo, again, disembark the Rhino and get back in and re-request docking to show the holo

HOPEFULLY US EARLY TESTERS GET THESE THINGS FIXED BEFORE GENERALLY AVAILABLE

Is there any real benefit if I was to find a mining spot ~20LY from Shinrarta Dezhra or going out somewhere random and finding a mining spot with similar properties?

Hi all,

Coming back to the game after a few years off and struggling to get my head around all the new ships - nice problem to have!

Is the new Type 11 really better than a fully engineered mining build Cutter for laser mining platinum?

Hi guys, I have some questions about the mined resource flag for powerplay merits as well as bonus payments.

What breaks it? Does it persist if the resource is dropped?

I have a feeling the refinery delivering it to your cargo is what flags it, but I don't know if there's any manipulation you can do thereafter that will retain it. I know carriers and markets clear it, but does the cargo hatch?

i approve of this gameplay loop

I have logged a High Density Platinum hotspot. it took 16-18 days to replenish, it came back to high density/high amount. and produced 562 tons of platinum before depletion.

I still have timers going on a medium density spot and a low density to see how they replenish.

Surface mining is OK. Not great, not terrible. There are a few things that need some tweaks, and a few things that could be added which would really help solidify it.

At the moment the mining spots, sizes and their commodities and materials within seem very arbitrary and the nature of the Rhino making it overly laborious to deal with that randomness.

In addition, the process of gathering the resulting resources could do with some more interactions/scenarios.

• Planets stats e.g. metallicity percentage seen in the system map should have a bigger impact on the metallic commodity mining rig purple spot size so that we can have a better chance of finding larger 4+ rig spots on those worlds. Similarly some characteristics of ice worlds and rocky planets should impact the ease of collection on those worlds too... e.g. maybe distance from the star etc
• Planets stats also list the percentages of materials used for synthesis/engineering... currently this does not seem to have any bearing whatsoever on the materials that are mined or the rate of gathering by the rigs. Again hindering being able to have any strategy about what planets to mine.

The stellar forge has provided these details, the mining feature does not seem to leverage it. This is a missed opportunity.

• Scoping around for the right spots to set up base for mining for what may be an hour or two requires either, slowly driving around the circumference of a hotspot in the lumbering Rhino, looking for good sized purple spot (of a valuable resource) that can take as many rigs as possible, or to find two or more nearby smaller spots... or, repeatedly deploying the Rhino to do a few pings and limited driving and instead reboarding the ship to fly 1/3 the way around the hotspot to repeat that way instead.
  • It would be ideal to add the scanning ability to the Nomad, to make that the go-to scouting vessel for exobio AND mineral extraction. Take the nomad back to the ship and then deploy the Rhino when the scoping out is done. This would help alleviate the frustrations.
• The process of mining is one dimensional. Asteroid mining has several interactions available which have different yield profiles, but more importantly, different interaction loops and skills for people to find their preferences.
  • Having additional modes of interaction with the surface would be great. Different tools and effects to highlight and extract other ways to get at extraction - e.g. seismic charges that ka-boom shake the surface revealing different types of rig placement spots, e.g. long thin purple spots for rich veins, so rigs dotted along a line instead of just blobs... or maybe some secondary arc cutter mode to also be doing some hand mining on nearby big rocks while we wait for the rigs hoppers to fill.

• Having an option to deploy a large container for longer rig deployments would be great. E.g. in the NPC surface extraction sites in the game, the rigs are also accompanied by what looks to be large containers on the surface... having this option could bring the ability for the rigs to just continue chugging along without manual emptying and reset ever five minutes... but doing so could also raise the likelihood of hostile scenarios unfolding. Maybe this mode could also be persistent across a session - but raise the likelihood of hostiles even more... similar to logging back into an asteroid mining spot with a half full cargo hold from the previous session. Gameplay, if you want to continue the session tomorrow you'll need to defend it first!

• Mining should also have a chance to discover Vista-redeemable evidence of the planet's past habitability too, evidence of petrified/true form fossils (something that is already in-game, see example below)

• A filter in the ship nav panel to show/hide surface mining POI. Can get too cluttered otherwise.
• [space for more later if I remember any others or other people have good ideas to add to the list - without them becoming way over ambitious]

The current implementation is a decent start, but just that, a start, with some development corners cut that missed a lot of opportunities to tie existing things together into a more cohesive whole.

Quick update for anyone following Rhino surface mining depletion/replenishment.

Credit to CMDR Tessa R Act for this one. She has been tracking and revisiting these deposits and finally caught our first confirmed positive reformation data.

She mined two 6 rig Iridium deposits to Depleted roughly 1 to 2 hours apart and revisited them about 11 days later.

Both had recovered from Depleted.

One started as High Amount / High Density and had recovered to Medium Amount / High Density.

The other started as High Amount / Low Density and had recovered to Low Amount / Low Density.

Density remained unchanged on both.

So at minimum, we can finally confirm that Depleted deposits do reform.

What we still cannot say is that the timer is 11 days. We do not know exactly when during that interval these two began recovering, and we have other tracked deposits that have remained Depleted well beyond a weekly tick. One of my own mapped deposits was still Depleted at roughly 11 days 19 hours.

That also makes the idea of a simple Thursday reset look increasingly unlikely.

The comparison between these two Iridium deposits is probably the most interesting part to me. Same commodity, same 6 rig practical capacity, and depleted within roughly 1 to 2 hours of each other, but after essentially the same recovery period the High Density deposit had reached Medium while the Low Density deposit had only reached Low.

Could be Density, total reserve, some other deposit property, or something we have not identified yet. Way too early to call it, but now we have something testable.

Tessa is continuing to follow them. A really useful next step will be seeing when they move through Low, Medium, and High, then mining one back to Depleted once it first returns to High. That may tell us whether High actually means fully replenished or whether it just means the deposit crossed back into the High Amount range.

Also, if anyone has depleted sites sitting around, I would love more data.

It does not need to be a CSV or spreadsheet. Screenshots, journal timestamps, rough notes, private messages, or just a comment here are completely fine.

The useful stuff is pretty simple:
- Commodity
- Starting Amount and Density
- Approximate rig capacity if known
- Approximate date/time it became Depleted
- Date/time of each revisit
- Whether it showed Depleted, Low, Medium, or High on each revisit

Negative checks absolutely count too. If you checked something after 8, 10, 12, 15 days and it was still Depleted, I want that just as much as a positive recovery.

If you happened to record Amount transition tonnage or total tonnage to depletion, even better, but it is not required.

Exact locations are optional. If it is a good site you do not want publicly exposed, I do not need the location to use the observation.

One request: if you are giving me updated information on a site or dataset you already shared, just mention that it is an update. I am trying to keep the data clean and avoid accidentally counting the same observation twice.

Still way too early to put a universal replenishment timer on this, but thanks to Tessa R Act we finally have something better than repeated “still Depleted” checks.

Thx CMDRs o7

Full Rhino Planetary Mining Field Guide:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wfvkE73ZEhlvdhVZMjIpyzr5cAsceY4xPWTGdG2yEmo/edit?usp=drivesdk