ROC Mining - impressions and thoughts

Mastersan

Space Marshal
Aug 14, 2017
356
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Mastersan
Hi All,

I've done some ROC mining and wanted to share some impressions an thoughts, as well as to see if you have anything to share on the subject.

Overall, I think it's much better than mining on foot, but you won't be able to reach the most difficult places,. where you can only get on foot.


On the positive side:
  • You can traverse quickly.
  • Breaks the rocks faster than with the manual tool.
  • You can pick lots of mineral pieces quickly, which is a pain point with hand mining.
  • The ROC has a scanner. While it's slow, it's much better than to have no scanner on foot.
  • Overall, you can earn a lot more than by hand mining. The only issue is to find rock minerals on planet surfaces. I believe these are concentrated in caves.
  • The internal storage is pretty large, about 800 mineral pieces.

Things than can be improved:
  • The display is too small and difficult to read, especially the energy gauge. Even the hand held tool's display reads much better. When you are in poor visibility conditions, e.g. snow blizzard on Calliope, the display becomes almost illegible and you have to guess how the energy is getting transferred into the stone and whether you are still in the green zone.
  • The main headlights/projector are facing forward-up direction. I understand this is for the caves, but I think that a player should be able to control the direction of the top projector, otherwise you almost can't see what's ahead, and your flashlight provides better lighting than ROC's headlights.
  • Vehicle size and wheel base - the vehicle is small, but its wheels stick out too much, so that it takes a lot more space than it could on your ship, as well as it could go through a more narrow cave. This is probably arguable, as the vehicle will loose stability with a smaller wheel base, so there is a trade off. With the caves, I haven't found one were the ROC could enter - so likely this hasn't been implemented yet.
  • No functionality to empty the internal storage. If you are in a long duration expedition, you would want to transfer the contents of the ROC's storage compartment into a container, which you can keep in your ship's cargo hold, and keep mining. Maybe this functionality will be added later.

Some screenshots and numbers:

Most of the time I found minerals in a form of 2 rocks. Sometimes you can find patches like this:

ScreenShot7364.jpg




See how difficult it is to tell where the energy level is? And that's not the worst visibility conditions:

ScreenShot7366.jpg




Cargo capacity 45.36%, - enough for the day.

ScreenShot7368.jpg





45.36% is 364 minerals of 800 max storage capacity (empty space of 436). How long would it take me to manually pick up 364 minerals? - Very long. And to bring all to the ship would require multiple trips to leave bit by bit on the cargo grid.

ScreenShot7374.jpg





80 units of Hadanite for 22,000 aUEC and 284 units of Dolivine for 36,920 aUEC, total Commodity Cargo Value of 58,920 aUEC. You can see how much Hadanite is more valuable, more than twice. To earn 36,920 aUEC (Dolivine amount) in Hadanite, I only need to mine 135 minerals, not 284. Considering the time it takes to find minerals, if I had to mine manually, I may skip cheaper minerals, but with ROC it's quick, so I harvest it all.


ScreenShot7375.jpg


ScreenShot7376.jpg




What experience have you had with the ROC and what do you think about it? 🍻
 

Cugino83

Space Marshal
Apr 25, 2019
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Cugino
Well nice review and consideration, haven't play in 3.10.1 myself yet and I dont' own a ROC, but our final consideration is exactly what I've expeted this veichles to be.

The ROC is defenetly be a go to starter for grinding money: is small, with a much more affordable inn-game price compare to the Prospector (or at least I hope for...) and it could be carry around in different ship that doesn0t require to be dedicated mining ship, this mean you don't need to invest in a limited capable ship just for mining.
And finally, but most important, it allow you to mine and to grind a considrable amount of credit by staying away from that flying crap that is the Prospector and use a proper ship...
 

Grimbli

Space Marshal
Jan 27, 2016
4,032
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Grimbli
I had much the same experience. Finding minerals with the ROC is a bit slow and even driving 2km is a bit tedious after a while. I've been loading mine into a Carrack or Starfarer since they'll fit it nicely, although you must drive slowly into the Starfarer as the vertical clearance will hit the top if you're not careful.

The Starfarer could fit 3 to 4 of these inside its hold so you could make some good money if you brought friends or were able to buy them in game to have more storage space. (At least until they allow cargo transfer, but then a Carrack would be better as the cargo hold is separate from the garage.) Carrack is nice for the med bay in case something goes wrong, but it takes longer to get from pilot seat to garage and it's bigger so landing on a flat surface is harder.

I'm loving the little ROC as it's the ship mining experience with the hand minable ease. I scan for nodes and find something worth mining every time! With a Mole/Prospector I find myself flying around for 10 minutes to find a node worth mining. Hadanite is obviously the best, but even Dolivine will work if I just want to finish out my cargo. But with a ship flying it around to scan it's very easy to find Hadanite when you only want it.

Personally I'm going to melt it once it becomes buyable in game. While it definitely is the most valuable ground vehicle in game, I'm not sure it's entirely worth the ~$50. I may change my mind (After all, it does get you several hundred thousand creds in a short time), but I can't imagine the buggy costs more than 150k UEC to buy in game.
 
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