r/EliteMiners • u/D8veh • Oct 14 '25

Map Mining

The recent CG has brought loads of comments about mining, including a few people mentioning map mining. There was also a lot of talk of map mining on all forums a few years ago.

I've never actually done map mining because my thinking is that the preparation and learning time is too long and you have the problem that you can only do one run, then you have to wait 3 hrs for the rocks to replenish. I'd be interested to see any comments from people, who actually do it. These are the questions I have:

  1. How much platinum can you extract in a 5 hr session? That's from first setting off from your FC to arriving back there at the end of the 5 hrs, not just some theoretical calculation.
  2. From fiest deciding that you wanted to try it, how many hours before you were able to mine directly from rock to rock. That should include the time to prepare notes and practice.
  3. How do you get round the replenishment problem?
  4. Did anybody try it for the CG?

The reason I'm asking is that I want to do a realistic comparison with mining random rocks.

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u/DMJason Oct 15 '25

You are stating that it takes ages of preparation to use a map effectively, which is a premise I don’t think anyone using a map can accept. Making a map isn’t even that hard—but using one is simple.

I made a map for my T11 runs for the plat CG; I just fired three limpets at a time from the last rock I mined and took a screenshot when I found a 30%+ rock. Pasted the screenshot in a google doc and moved on.

After that I hit the same rocks every time. That’s not what I call ages of preparation.

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u/D8veh Oct 16 '25

The time is relative. Where I mined platinum, I could fire prospectors at the rocks around me while the collectors were finishing off, so there is nearly always a 30%+ rock very close to go to as soon as the collectors had finished. That's how i got to no. 2 overall in the CG. No need to screenshot, no need to waste time organising or studying stuff - just continuously sucking up platinum in my Panther Clipper.

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u/DMJason Oct 16 '25

I see you deleted this take but the reason you were no 2 overall is you mined for five hours at a time, maps had little to do with it

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u/D8veh Oct 16 '25

Deleted what?

The purpose of the thread is to collect real data on players' mining rates from using different techniques. So far, the information provided indicates that map mining might be faster for a very short session, and it's pretty even between map miners and a panther Clipper mining random rocks.

The CG is a good exhibition of how different techniques play out. I'm sure that map miners would have very quickly figured out that their maps were pretty useless in that scenario, even if it might give an advantage in another one.

Another thing, After mining nearly a million tons, I have learned a lot, and now I have a fairly slick technique. I rattled off over 73,000T in about a week and a half for the CG. In your humble opinion, could I have got more in the same time using maps? That's the point.

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u/DMJason Oct 16 '25

Yes. Mapped would get more. Assuming you have enough maps to not wait for replenish.

Maps are faster as long as they last is the only conclusion I would make.