Mining Materials like a pro

Hello everyone, like everyone else I have been chasing materials for those sweet upgrades and discovered a simple way to get a ton of mats in no time. I thought I would put a small guide together to share my experience and maybe help others out which are struggling.

The principle is simple: FD have added materials dropping from asteroid rings. The type of materials depends on ring composition AKA Icy, metallic, rocky. It appears that the 3 2 1 rule also applies to asteroid rings but unlike planets some rings which have both icy and rocky rings spawn different mats from one another. The common mats can be spawned in all rings but the better quality/rarity ones seem to be ring specific. Please note that all my findings come from mining in pristine resource systems so I can't speak for other type of systems however I assume the difference shouldn't be too big.

With all that being said, it's also noteworthy that collector limpets collect materials even if a refinery is not present on your ship. This is the key to getting mats quickly because it means you need less limpets active for each mining beam in order to be efficient. It also means that you will be only collecting materials and nothing else, leaving your cargo bay empty and being very fast at mining an asteroid and moving to the next one.

The benefit of having an empty cargo bay means that suddenly it actually is possible for us to go mining in those WTFBBQ HazRes sites which have been off-limits to miners until now. Why go in a HazRes site at all you ask? Simple the asteroid have greater yields than in normal space outside them, and since you won't be attacked because you have an empty cargo hold except for limpets... well you do the math.

In conclusion you will want a rather agile ship because you'll be prospecting, mining and moving on to the next one rather fast. I chose the python for this reason. Also keep in mind that the higher the prospector controller you have the higher yields the asteroid will give, it won't however change the quality of the mats but simply spawn more fragments increasing the chance for mats to drop. The rest is simple statistics the more mats drop the better chances of getting also good mats becomes.

Please note I have seen super rare mats drop this way, but I can't yet say if this method is valid for getting them. More testing has to be done. From my experience I've been mining around 200 assorted materials in 15-20 minutes this way.

Hope this little post helped some finding materials, and if it did please upvote for visibility. Have mercy with your comments, this is my first "guide". See you in the black commanders o7