SRV prospecting made fun (3.3)
20 Dec 2018Krash.Megiddo
I was low on some mats such as selenium (as always), so last night I decided to go to my bookmarked planet for selenium and see how this works with the new tools. I read something about geological features as a source of raw materials, but when I get to my selenium planet, I dont see anything different in the way of POIs. The planet is already 100% mapped, but what the heck, I mapped it again anyway and voila! A bunch of geological POI's sprout up in the navigation panel. This is when I realize mapping planets isn't just for exploration. Do I have to map this planet every time I visit or is once enough?I target the nearest POI and cruise down to the surface in my DBX. I'm on the dark side of this planet and all I see is the orange circle in a sea of black, then the glide, under 100km, still pitch black, the POI jumps around here and there, no big deal. Dropped out of super glide at around 20km and I see some specks in and around the circle. Then I remember night vision. Activate NV. Whoa. The scales drop from my eyes as the landscape lights up in a livid green tracery. There is a nice flat plain surrounded by this beautiful steep valley with all kinds of fissures and protruding rocks. Landing is easy.
Indeed, there are crystalline nettles, bunches, spines and whatnots wedged in the protruding rocks scattered across the valley floor. Only a certain type have the selenium I seek. Its annoying that the SRV gun reticle is off by just enough I often have to go into turret mode in order to register a hit on these things to crack open the gooey center. But that's a minor inconvenience. Overall the experience of farming raw materials is more satisfying in this new approach. Farming feels like less of a grind now.
Aashenfox's reply-
I've been doing a LOT of this. It is indeed much better.
The trick to getting G4s, is to go to a Pristine system with a metal rich body that has volcanism (use eddb.io) and ideally, ONLY the G4 raw you want. This is because needle crystals ALWAYS drop from the POOL of G4 raws the planet contains. So, if you're on a planet with Ruthenium and Selenium, when you shoot down a needle crystal it has a 50-50 chance to be one or the other (I'm sure the percentage shown in sysmap plays zero role in this), so naturally, murphy's law says you'll get more of what you don't want than what you do, so yeh, try to find a planet that only has 1 G4 (the one you want) and then every single needle crystal will drop those.
The remaining order is: Crystalline Clusters, drop from the G3 'pool', crystalline fragments from the G2 pool and Piceous cobble from the G1s.
In contrast to the new USS system, the prospecting system is now rewarding, effective and calculable.
P.S. You only have to map a planet once.
P.P.S. When you farm one field, you will not get new nodes any time soon, we are tryingt o work out the refresh, but it's definitely more than a day and relogging has no effect, so assuming one or two weeks, as previous POI persistence (data nodes).
P.P.P.S. Some fields are way richer than others, try to note the number of the particularly good fields (one had 5 needle crystals all in sight of each other), and they should remain the ones to farm when you need again.