Limpets make mining all but unusable.
Today I just fitted a Python to do some core mining. After a couple asteroid cores, 30 tons of limpets are gone from just deleting themselves. I don't think a single one made it to its proper expiration. (Why should they expire anyway?) On the last asteroid, something like 6-8 collectors in a row didn't even make it out of the ship before "expiring." This makes core mining totally unplayable; I literally could not collect the load. This has been going on for years; how have they not fixed a completely broken, core game mode?
Oof since I'm complaining, might as well mention the god-awful features of mining that I assume are working as intended, such as:
- After the game deleted all my collectors, I try to painstakingly pick up a few remaining floating minerals manually with my ship. Nope, not allowed to do that either: the minerals have been floating for a few minutes because your collectors un-alive themselves instantly one after another as you do deploy them until you run out, so better just delete the clusters from the game too. So when it's not possible to have limpets quickly collect the load … it's also not possible to collect it infuriatingly slowly with your ship either. Why tf does floating cargo expire when you haven't left the instance?
- Pulse scanner just straight-up not highlighting 50% of the time. Why can't the scanner just clearly show which asteroids have deep core minerals?
- S-charges have a mandatory 90s timer? Ffs 1000yr in the future, it's impossible to plant a bomb without it just going off on its own? Why can't s-charges just wait for us to detonate it?
- I see that rare mineral prices are way down since the last time I tried this too. Felt like I was making the same money just hauling silver back and forth between the same two stations.