Hey Devs, Hello Chris Roberts, Hello Todd Papy, Because I wanna see Star Citizen be the best game ever, I wrapped my head around a few things. I try to show you a different point of view because I believe in your dream, Chris. I would love to see where you wanna go with mining, Todd. If you don't know the first part of "Let's talk about mining ..." https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/50259/thread/let-s-talk-about-mining/266131 please read including all my answers to the OP. I needed more fields and I used the answers to extend my OP. Now, before we start you should also know https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/50259/thread/prospector-m-o-l-e-filter-system/250344 Let's start with "Part 2". On a normal weekday, I have roundabout 3 hours to play Star Citizen. If I decide to go for mining how would it be? 1. Because Quantanium pays so much more than the other materials, and it is that easy to go for it, I will go only for Quantanium. 2. I will start my ride with a Prospector or M.O.L.E. 3. After 5 minutes I arrived in the Aaron Helo asteroid belt. Why the belt? If I would go mining on a moon or planet a big chunk falls into the surface and I lose these parts. In the belt, I do not have this problem. 4. Now I am starting pinging and scanning. It takes sometimes 2 hours to find the correct asteroid. Meanwhile, I found many Quantanium including asteroids but I am not able to scan them. I do often a visual check. I know when I found Quantanium. 5. On each asteroid I do the math. Mass*0.02=SCU and now the % ... ok x amount of pure Quantanium (mental arithmetic). Is it more or near 32 SCU I need a few minutes and everything is collected! 6. Now I will go back to a refinery and start a job. If there is some additional material ... who cares? Isn't it Quantanium, I will not go for it. 7. After 1 day and 18 hours I can sell the Quantanium. The mining process is just a few minutes in a mining run of 3 hours? Why? You CIG did some grave mistakes. 1. Quantanium is stable in a rock or asteroid, BUT from the moment it was hit by a laser it would start to become unstable. Yes, not just at extraction. Pending on the laser intensity and the duration it will become more and more unstable till it explodes. Why? Logic is simple. I used a laser and changed the stable state by the energy it received. You would need to adjust the time, yes. 2. In Mining Mode I use the laser to charge the rock/asteroid. Because of the different densities of the contained materials, a small part of Quantanium will get too much energy and cause a small explosion inside the rock/asteroid. It may bring the charge level in red or maybe instant crack or worst case the first micro explosion will trigger a chain reaction and the rock/asteroid explodes and would affect close rocks/asteroids with Quantanium and change the stable state of them or destroy a field of Quantanium. 3. There is no way to explain how your FLTR modules work. BUT ... (read the marked text) you explained how mining and the internal filter system would work. As you know from the beginning, I explained how you can build a filter system https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/50259/thread/prospector-m-o-l-e-filter-system/250344 4. Not all ships are built to scan for mining goods. A time ago I explained it in a different post... https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/50259/thread/are-the-antennas-decisive-for-the-result-when-scan/247960 With this in your mind, it would make sense to have different ships that can find different material. A ship is built with iron, copper, aluminum, and some more materials. Maybe every ship can find aluminum and iron, but only exploration and mining ships can find everything for mining. 5. No Iron? There are not enough different materials. How can we build an outpost without ... 6. Rocks/asteroids need layers with a random mix of materials. Even 2 rocks/asteroids with the same values might not have the same structure. What? A rock/asteroid is a compressed result of material with different densities. Softer layers require less energy and harder layers require more. Depending on the point hit by the laser, I have different energy requirements for the same rock/asteroid. Enough! How would fixing the mistakes improve the mining gameplay? Not everyone can go for Quantanium. Yes, there is more than pressing a button to activate the laser, scrolling the mouse wheel up and down to hold the energy in the green area and extract the material by activating the tractor beam. You may need to activate a module, you may have to wait and let the rock/asteroid cool down, you may have to know what you are doing. And maybe a newbie would start with simple material (must be also worth), going to more difficult material and after a much longer time, he would try Quantanium. Mining as a profession must be mining, not searching or something else. If I decide to go for Quantanium I would know a rock/asteroid because someone explored it before or I both the information. I would be there in a few minutes and go for mining. The mining process (I am talking of breaking the rock/asteroid) would take maybe a half hour or longer at one rock/asteroid, the extraction with the extraction mode from "Let's talk about mining..." would be up to 20 minutes, pending on my skill. If I am a miner I wanna go mining, not 3 hours searching, have 5 minutes mining, and run back. After the Starfarer can process all mining material into goods it would be better group gameplay. I hope you DEVS understood my point of view and how you could improve mining. For sure people are saying... "I can't mine Quantanium" ... "It is too hard" ... Quantanium is the extreme risk/high reward and not for everyone.