To jettison a specific amount of cargo, click the box next to its name, on the jettison screen. It should have a number inside of it already, type in the number of units of the cargo that you want to jettison and then press the "J" button next to it.

Alright, I try the beginner's mining tutorial. Pretty straight forward.

Next, I look at the mission board. There's low paying per-unit for some ore, and high paying per-unit for Ishik (I think).

Naturally, I go for the higher paying ore. I figure it will tell me how to find it, right?

"If you're mining ishik, you know the score. Bring it to us".

But no, I don't know the score. I don't know what kind of rock to look for. You obviously know where there's an ishik rock or field around, so why aren't you telling me? Ok, maybe it's likely to be hot, but at least give me a starting point.

Obviously you didn't read the wiki to discover which ores appear in what type of roid. Honestly, part of the fun in mining is discovering that anyways. Why the hell should the mission tell you where to find it, or for that matter even what type of roid it's even in?

Ok, so everyone has told me that I can get a large mining beam at mining license 1, right?

I'm in the mining station, and the first large mining beam is license 2.

I don't think people are wrong, but why isn't specialized mining equipment available at the station that mining players are sent to?

Also, I don't understand the logic behind saying that focused mining equipment is only available to fairly high license people. I can understand "keep dangerous weapons out of people we don't trust", but if you are short enough of good ores to pay a lot for them, why make it harder for people to mine them for you?

EDIT: Ok, I came up with a perfect justification: "Union rules".

So I'm noticing what looks like a major "mining is a bad second child" type of bias.

If you want combat, your sector nav will tell you what bots are in a sector. Your global nav tells you where the nations are.

If you want trade, your daily news tells you what was in short supply at the start of the day. It even tells you where to pick stuff up, and where to deliver it to. Of course, by halfway through the day, that trade run will probably be dry, but at least it's something.

If you want missions, then combat missions will tell you where to go to fight; trade missions and courier missions will tell you where to go to get things.

But mining?

There's no "This sector has X minerals". Heck, there's no "This group of rocks has minerals X, Y, and Z; that second group has minerals A, B, and C. You'd expect mining stations to be set up near the rich, valuable minerals, not the cheapest. If you get a mission, it doesn't tell you where to go to mine the rocks. There's no daily "Please move rock type X from system-sector to station zero."

Mining seems to be barely implemented as an afterthought.

EDIT: There's no easy way that I've identified to even track where a good rock is. There's no "radio emitter" equipment; no "VOR encrypted broadcaster" to help you track what's where. There's apparently some third party add-on that I saw discussed in chat for tracking the locations of things, but that seems like a cheat.

What would a "VOR encrypted broadcaster" do? Well, anyone could locate it. But if you knew the encryption code (it was yours, or the code was given to you), then you would know to go X distance away on radial theta-phi.

targetless. Of course, the larger guilds tend to have member-only online databases of roids. ;)

EDIT: No plugins are cheats, unless the developers deem them so. Targetless is definitely not a cheat. :p

Alright, this is even worse.

Mining: Get close to a rock, hit a button, and watch a bar repeatedly fill up to the right. Get a book. At least it could beep when it finished, or something. It feels like nothing more than a waste of time, on a trial account that limits you by time.

If that wasn't bad enough, using "j" as the guy in the station told me to track what's being mined, shows that another station in the system is paying about three times as much as this mining station is.

Once and only mining trip.

EDIT: I take that back. The "best price" is telling you the price for the whole load, not the price per unit. That's confusing. This station is paying the best price after all.

Alright, now I'm unhappy.

I did take another mining mission -- only wanted 5 crates of ferric. Heck, I jettisoned that much (and more) trying to get carbonic.

So, I decided to look around, and see if the smaller rocks had more ferric. I found one that did.

I drive towards it. And for some reason, it seems a lot closer than the displayed range. A LOT closer. I stop heading forward. Yep, I've got speed of zero, but it's still getting closer to me.

<RAM>.

Are the rocks supposed to be moving? That's a hazard that nothing in-game has mentioned.

/me is amused.

What do you think of the game so far?

Rocks do not move, but they do rotate.

jeeez, this is not twitter. Collect your thoughts and present them if you please. Posting every 17 minutes is idiocy, unless that is your point.

if you type "/join 1" while in game that takes you to the help channel so you can stop spamming the forums with dumbasss posts.

What do I think so far?

1. The basics of the game seem pretty straight forward.
2. Mining seems pointless, dull, and boring; the only point of the dull, boring, pointless early mining is the valuable later mining. No thanks.
3. Combat seems reasonable, but trying to maneuver your ship in physics mode seems hard. (Hence my request for a velocity vector display.)
4. At license levels of 1, too much of what you might want to do is hidden away from you, but the trial is too short to see license levels of 2.
5. A vocal minority on the forums is very harsh on anyone new with different ideas or thoughts. Harsh enough to drive other people away. The idea of saying, "We don't want a permanent record of a new person's impressions" is horrible.

( The structure of the free trial -- 8 hours, fixed -- means that you are penalized for trying to socialize or talk in-game; you get that much less time to play and learn the game. You have to quit, post, think, and come back later. )

If I were a game designer, then since growing the population base has to be either #1 or #2, learning what new players think and see, and trying to figure out how to make the game more attractive to new players is critical. Seeing the forum trying to push new players away is something I'd be upset about. Keep in mind that the game repeatedly encourages new players to post suggestions.

( Some games actually make a "New players" section for their forums. )

6. Some parts of the game seem inconsistent. For example, we're told that goods marked "Locally produced" are important trade goods, yet the truth is that product X (Locally produced) is just product X, not "Dau X" or "Verasi X". You can take it half way across the galaxy and it doesn't get valuable.

Or "These bots are automated miners, bringing in tons of stuff every day, yet a few are misbehaving" and "Kill all of them on sight, every one of them is a hive collector".

7. The lack of any sort of "where am I" inside a sector, except that apparently there's a plugin that everyone in chat recommends using, seems to indicate a big missing functionality.

Still got about an hour left.

will we be free of your inane spam then?

-1 Peytros and Whytee. You guys got fished in, IMHO.

You get 1/1/1 just by completing the training missions, I believe, and then mining level 1 by completing the mining tutorial. Getting your first 'real' license level from there doesn't take too long at all, although it is a bit of grinding.

Why should flying in physics mode be 'easy'? Shouldn't it take some skill to fly properly?

1/1/-/-/- for completing basic flight test. -/-/-/-/1 for completing mining tutorial. -/-/-/1/- for completing the first Courier mission.

Flying in Physics mode takes practice. After a bit of time using it it becomes easier. To some that play often and use Physics mode, it becomes almost second nature.

Spam it may be (I don't really think it is), but at least he's providing feedback, which is much more than many others do.

duh its opposite week whistler.

Hmm. Noted

sigh. Does that give you -1 for being doubly fished in?

If he writes this much it must be because he either cares or is a self-glory-seeking retard. As I am a nice person, I was aiming for number one. Apparently you assumed otherwise?

edit: written before I became Lecter...