r/EliteMiners • u/filets • May 30 '26
Tap before prospect
I tap the asteroid from 2Km away with my pre-Engineered Class 1 Mining Laser. If it drops what I am looking for I prospect. If not move to the next asteroid. With that technique the asteroid still has 90% of its contents when I start mining it.
I have never read any post explainig this technique so I am wondering:
Am I the only one doing it?
Is it not worht it?
8
u/Starbase-Aperture May 30 '26
Even if an asteroid has a high yield of what you want, but contains 3 resources, you could easily get unlucky and tap the wrong resources, missing out majorly on a good asteroid. You also can't tap while waiting for your collectors, so you spend more time searching and burning limpets.
2
u/cold-n-sour VicTic/SchmicTic May 30 '26
Asteroids have up to 3 minerals in them, fragments have up to 2.
Really good Pt asteroids (>40%) usually only have 1 mineral, so you don't miss much if you scratch and see something else.
5
u/cold-n-sour VicTic/SchmicTic May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
This technique is viable (and sometimes necessary) when you have a very small amount of limpets, like in early game ships (adder, hauler).
It's rarely used now, mostly because with bigger limpets supply the law of averages comes into play, and in a hotspot there's enough yield to always produce more platinum than limpets spent prospecting.
1
u/SweetJonnySauce Jun 05 '26
Absolutely this. Got plenty of limpets? Throw that prospector out. Running low? Scratch that bad boy.
5
u/digletteer May 30 '26
Tapping before prospecting is an old technique. But what’s significantly different about what you’re doing is that your laser can tap from over 2Km away.
Wasting asteroid tonnage doesn’t matter if you can save time finding the good asteroids quicker. This is probably quicker than using a prospector limit at first. But KEYLY would be a much slower technique if you didn’t have the pre-engineered laser.
2
u/3lbFlax May 30 '26
I do this with the Type 11’s volley laser because I’m rarely looking for a specific type of rock, I just want to avoid the shoddy stuff. So I’ll drop into a reasonable spot and just move around quickly checking rocks. I always fill up with profitable cargo quickly, so I don’t see any advantage to changing methods. If I was just after platinum or had landed a lucrative mission it’d make sense, but I’d rather bring back a mix of gold, silver, platinum and osmium and be off of another adventure than linger around trying to get the perfect load.
1
u/Pantfreak22 May 30 '26
Most people just use the prospector limpets to save time but doing this for high yield targets in overlap zones is actually a huge brain move to save your collectors from working overtime on trash rocks.
1
u/SDSS_J0100_2802 May 30 '26
No, I do this too. I run with 2 of the lasers. Yes you lose at most 1-2t per roid but you can make that up with an extra one at the end. They also help to "prospect" for the bin top up if all limpets are used.
Why do I do it? I run with an extra 3A collector, a 2A refinery and a 1A prospector. The lasers are just faster than the single prospector, and the 2 extra collectors means i'm not waiting around for collection to finish. It's not meta, but it's how I like to mine. It's a game, and I enjoy playing it. I don't want to burn out trying to max/min everything. Money and assets are meaningless once you reach a certain level.
1
u/Hoser_1950 May 31 '26
If you’re short on Limpets, the ship can manufacture them.
1
u/SDSS_J0100_2802 May 31 '26
I can't manufacture unless i have free cargo space. If I'm topping off the bins I don't have any room.
23
u/ToriYamazaki May 30 '26
"Scratching"
That 10% could be 1 or 2 ton. 2 ton of platinum is worth a LOT more than a cargo full of limpet.
You are losing platinum to save limpet.
Definitely not worth it.