The upcoming Catalyst Expansion brings to us “Mining Critical Hits”.
What are those?
Well, the test server was up, so I took a look.
(Also take a look at my other Catalyst thread about the yield of the new mining ships).
Crit skills
Currently all ore and ice mining equipment has a base 1% chance at obtaining 200% bonus crit yield. (Numbers subject to change).
This can be improved with two skills, Mining Bonanza Exploitation for 5% crit yield per skill level
and Mining Precision for 10% crit chance per skill level.
At max skills you get:
- 1.5% crit chance
- 250% bonus crit yield
How do mining crits work?
After every cycle you have a chance to get bonus crit yield in addition to your current yield that cycle.
Like this example where I had 200% crit yield and gained twice my regular yield extra:
And it gives a nice sound too! Now miners too can get addicted to dopamine.
“But with 250% bonus crit yield, how do I obtain two and ‘half an ice block’ while ice mining?” you may ask. I tested it, and it turns out you just sometimes get three blocks, sometimes two! No ice blocks were hurt in this patch.
But how much average yield do you get from these crits?
Random crits means you can get lucky or unlucky. But if you mine often and long enough the yield you expect to get from crits will average out over time.
So how much additional average yield do these crits count for?
You get crit chance times crit yield additional yield on average, so crits give an extra 3.75% average yield with max skills.
A yield buff for all ice and ore miners!
The Mining Sensor Array II adds another 20% crit chance and crit yield:
Which brings your crit chance and crit yield up to 1.8% chance and 300% crit yield.
This boosts your average yield from 3.75% to 5.4% average yield from crits. As this increases your average yield by a factor 1.054/1.0375 = 1.016, this means equipping the Mining Sensor Array II increases your average yield by 1.6%.
What about the Consortium Venture and Pioneer?
These two new faction mining ships have the same base yield as the base ship, but with a nice role bonus, 50% bonus critical hit chance:
How much is this bonus worth, you probably wonder.
With the current crit numbers (subject to change) this boosts the default 3.75% average yield from crits to 5.625% average yield from crits.
This means (with the current test server numbers!) you could almost replace this crit role bonus of the Consortium Venture or Pioneer with a
Role bonus:
- 1.8% to Mining yield
It’s not much, but every bit helps I guess?
I said ‘almost’, because mining crits are not entirely one-on-one translatable to one mining yield value. The role bonus on these ships makes other crit bonuses better like from skills or modules. For example it boosts the average yield you get from equipping the Mining Sensor Array II from 1.6% to 2.1%. Who would have thought that a crit-boost is stronger on a crit-based ship?
Future speculation
- Those crit numbers are on a test server and subject to change.
Currently it doesn’t seem very impactful to me yet, but yesterday hoboleaks showed 0.75% chance at 150% crit yield and today’s test server has 1% chance at 200% crit yield. Maybe CCP will buff it a little further until it seems impactful.
And while the numbers may change, I see no big reason for the underlying mechanics to change too. So now you know how crits work!
- Currently all ore and ice equipment has the same crit chance and crit yield.
It is possible we will see more variation in that and get “high crit chance” lasers that have less base yield, good for those Consortium ships. Or maybe this is what those ‘mining mutaplasmids’ are meant to do. I have not looked at those yet.
Questions, remarks, anything else? Discuss!
