i find that the abilities adv. mineral scanner arent worth the time spent doing the 120 prospecting missions. being able to scan something from a further distance isnt always that beneficial... unless it's from really far away.

my suggestion, for completing these 120 missions, is to have the navmap tell you what ore is in that sector.

sector contains:
3% pentric
11% heliocene
9% apicene
30% carbonic
47% ferric

to mine the ore, you would have to scout the sector to find the roids anyhow, but it will give you a head start on the sector mapping.

Thumbs up.

I like that idea. Maybe finishing the prospecting missions gives you access to your long-range mineral scanner which will give you that sector mineral info for a few surrounding sectors.

*edit* ...or just in the sector you're in...

The types of minerals it will detect are based on your mining level. (Corresponding somewhat to the types of mining beams you can get at those levels.) (If anything though, the scanner for a type of ore should come after you can buy the mining beam for it.)

rough example:
level 2 - it'll detect common ores only
level 5 - above plus xith
level 7 - above plus lanth
level 9 - above plus apicene
level 12 - helio
level 14 - dentic
etc...

This way the reward for completing the prospecting missions is related to your mining level. (I think rewards for mining levels are still very lacking for now.)

I prefer krazyivan's idea to drdoak's but yes, 120 missions for a scanner and genpurpose beam is a bit too much.

especially when you can just steal the damn beam and the scanner off of any convoy

And even more especially when you can just buy tons of scanners and beams from the good souls who already prospected the galaxy and who give you the equipment out of kindness or for some spare change...

Beams aren't in convoys, look. Just the scanners.

/me suggests splashing high level miners and/or buying HD beams through a shell pilot =D

That is an excellent idea, Doak. Now, instead of scanning through EVERY frikkin posible roid in one of those miles-long strings, we know if a sector is any good just by jumping in and taking that general reading.

That's well worth doing the mineral missions for.

apparently i have had a couple good ideas lately...

i dont know what's happened, but i hope it stays.

Revealing the ore locations is a very bad idea. There won't be any guild secret locations anymore. Plus, theres going be a massive wave of UITs stripping the ores from Serco and Itani space.

One of the reasons why I've enjoyed prospecting is that sense of exploration. Currently, theres nothing else in the game that gives such a feeling. This will just ruin it.

Instead, I'd prefer getting better S-port beams as a reward, or perhaps even a wide range of scanners with various functions (and colors).

-Nautargos

suppose there is a huge helio roid in a sector of carbonic/ferric roids...

the content of this massive roid would be 90% helio / 10% carbonic.

the remaining roids would be all Fe/C.

out of 100 roids, 1 roid has heliocene. that would make the percentage of helio in the sector 1%. therefore, secret guild locations COULD still exist. and the avg miner would subconsciously avoid a 1% helio sector.

Not to mention the fact that most helio isn't in monitored sectors. UIT aren't stripping anything out there... at least not safely.

Wrong, Nauty. Revealing the overall makeup average of all roids in the sector will lead to MORE exploration.

Ever been to Pelatus? There are SEVERAL sectors in Pelatus with strings of roids that extend 4 or 5 times past visual range. (As in, you warp in, fly to where you THOUGHT the roids stopped, but they redraw as you keep going, they last a long time.) Exploring every asteroid in one of those strings would take... well, a long time, and I'm sure it hasn't been done by anyone but the most hard-core miners.

Now if this device was available, you could warp in, immediately see that the sector was crap except for 2% pentric somewhere amongst the other ferric and silicate asteroids. Now you can look for that pentric asteroid, or you can write it off.

Perhaps some of those long-string fields harbor heliocene at their farthest ends, and only the crap silicate in the normal "warp-in" area. Now, with your super-scanner, you enter the sector and you see that... BAM! The sector is FULL of heliocene! Say, like 30%! So you'd have to turbo for like 5 minutes to get to the rich Heliocene deposits, but you'd know that they are there at least, and it would give you a reason to explore the asteroid field...

Maybe there are other things out there as well for you to discover besides rich heliocene deposits... (LIke this: OMG! Did you hear about the miner who found that old abandoned alien battlecruiser? It's Waaaaay out in Pelatus, sector F-5!)

did it have a velveteen picture of elvis?

negative on the full-sector scanner, though I do agree that the adv scanner should have a longer range than it does... as it stands, it's just not worth it. Up its range to 3000 or 4000 meters, and you'll finally have a scanner worth working for.

I agree with Naut that exposing overall sector composition is a bad idea... for one, it eliminates the possibility of keeping any rare ore locations a secret, since it would be a simple enough task for anyone to map them all in one go. Furthermore, contrary to what Doak suggests, a <1% helio concentration WOULD be investigated, especislly since there are few if any helio sectors with more than that in the first place.

Let's not forget that in completing the prospecting mission, you've already gained an advantage in knowing the locations of ore deposits on a sector-wide level.

Prospecting should yield the (3000+ meter) mineral scanner and HD beams (these should be better too, BTW... decrease their heat), and also some better s-port mining beams (at least on a par with the Adv Mining beams). Other missions could add mineral-specific s-port beams.

Cunjo said that sector-wide scanning is bad because:
1) It eliminates the possibility of keeping any rare ore locations a secret, since it would be a simple enough task for anyone to map them all in one go.
2) A <1% helio concentration WOULD be investigated, especially since there are few if any helio sectors with more than that in the first place.

re: 1)
I'm not saying that all of a sudden you know where all the nice ore IS in a sector, you still have to find the appropriate asteroid in order to get at the "sweet, sweet ore." Which, in a large field, could take days and days. I'm saying that you'd get a readout average of all the asteroids in a sector and the component mineral compositions, along with overall mass and average mass of asteroid objects in-sector, maybe average temperature, etc. So, the player would know that there was some pentric ore in-sector, but not WHERE it is. The boring and tedious roid-by-roid scanning would still be necessary.

re: 2)
This doesn't support your "sector-wide scanning is BAD" argument, but I'll respond to it.
OK sure even one heliocene asteroid might be worth exploring a sector for. But it sure would be nice to know that you can jump into a sector, see that there's nothing better than VanAzek ore in there, and then move on to the next sector.

Eventually with a sectorwide insta-scanner you would see a LOT of areas become well-known for mining. This is good, since these sectors will become places where players meet up and "interact." Maybe the hive learns about these sectors and must be beaten back. Who knows? We'll need more places to interact than Sedina B-8 pretty soon.

AND, like I said above, cool new things could be introduced silently into the game, without fanfare, and be "discovered" by miners who are looking for that one heliocene asteroid amongst the silicates. Like Velveteen Elvis Paintings. Or disabled mysterious ships. Or secret racetracks. Or abandoned stations that can be mined for their mineral content. Right now there's no reason to explore much because, well, there's nothing IN some sectors but boring fields of Ishik" Ice-yo's" or Silicate "bone roids." To encourage the total exploration of a sector, all the devs need to do is to drop in 1 or 2 asteroids with high-concentrations of valuable minerals.

Now, if such a sectorwide scanner were available, I think it opens up some twists on mining:
a) The ore values could change periodically and randomly. Say, five of the sectors in the VO universe change every day. They get a new asteroid configuration with new mineral deposits. Having the sector-wide scanner prevents a huge amount of outcry from the playerbase when their favorite pyronic ore sector is reset. They can go look for another one with this device.
b) New minerals introduced into VO for the purposes of crafting (gold, iron, copper, uranium, whatever). More variety = more sectors that can have something valuable in them.

I like the idea of a sector scanner, which would report in format along the following:

Ferric Found
Carbonic Found
...
Apicene Traces
Heliocene Not Found

However 120 missions is too easy to get such a scanner. Perhaps something closer to 1000 missions (and a new badge) would be fairer. As for HD beams and current scanner 3000m and slightly less heating does sound good to me.

Perhaps something closer to 1000 missions (and a new badge) would be fairer.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha... oh, wow... yeaaaaaaaah...

Whew! I'll stop laughing in a few days or so...

Holy Christ, Antz, have you ever thought how long it takes just to do the 120 mission one? It's by FAR the hardest badge in VO.

Doing a system a day took me a month or so. And that was doing it with someone else too, so I wouldn't go nuts.