Good day. I’m a returning pilot after a 2 year break. Seems a lot has changed since I last played. Logged in with my industrial/miner toon to see if I could figure things out. I remember getting back to highsec from null in my taranis with what little I could pack into it, my old corp was booted from our coalition and soon thereafter dissolved, which left me alone and in unfamiliar territory. Apparently I had purchased a venture and an astero prior to my break.
So here lies my confusion. I log back in trying to familiarize myself with the mechanics and head to the asteroid belt to get a bit of its while I figure out a plan. I’m in zemula and there are 5 belts. I go to each belt in order of name and none of them have any asteroids. Three are completely empty, one has sansha mining ships, and the last has neutral npc mining barges. I’ve checked a few times over the last couple days with no change I status.
So first question is where are the mineral rocks? Did they just get all mined and need to respawn? Are the npcs miming them all? Is there sponge actin required to clear the belts so the repopulate?
There is also a Sansha stronghold in three system if that has anything to do with it along with several minor resource war sites ans one critical rwsite as well.
I’m sure I’ll have other questions but those are the ones I can think of for the current scenario.
Depending on the time of day they can be mined out yes. Downtime (11am gametime every day) is when the belts refresh. If you are mining anywhere near that time, the belts should be relatively full. The further from that time you go, the less rocks you will find.
Could be. They spawn seemingly at random and several fleets of them can end up in the same system. I once counted 24 NPC mining ships in a single belt.
If that’s one of the new NPC Pirate FOBs (Forward Operating Bases) it shouldn’t have any effect on the belts.
Resource Wars sites are in their own deadspace pocket on the other side of an Acceleration Gate, so they shouldn’t have any effect on the belts either.
Thanks for the response. Seems like the npcs might just be stripping the belts or there is a heavier player presence mining during the day when I’m offline. Just kinda threw me for a loop going to 5 belts and seeing no rocks.
Not that I am aware of. When going in the belt there is no visual objects to mine in space nor are there any selectable objects for asteroids in the list. I even created a new tab with the generic mining preset with no change.
I did create an alt toon to go back through the tutorial and when going to a belt in the starter system I see physical rocks in space and selectable items in the list with the same overlay settings as my main.
OK, I got there, let’s have a look.
Maspah (neighbouring system): 13 belts, those I tested are full of juicy rocks.
Zemalu: 5 belts, full of nice rocks including Pyroxeres and Kernite. But also FOB zone, so you have to mine quite prudently (or jump to Maspah), some rats are rather nasty.
You have to enable asteroids in your overview, I admit I had to search a bit to see them floating in space, but they are definitely there. IN Overview settings, you can chose the preset “mining”, for a special mining tab.
The NPC’s will mine those belts 24/7. Normally it’s only a few small fleets of 3 to 5 ships but since there’s a Pirate Forward Operating Base in the system, that will send out a large fleet of about a dozen Retriever’s that basically strip’s those belts pretty quickly.
Just remember all NPC mining ships will spawn an attack fleet when engaged. However in the case of the FoB Retriever Fleet, just landing on grid with them will spawn an attack fleet.
