So, what's the point of asteroid mining now?

[norrisjpackard]

According to multiple reports from people I've spoken to, Moon Mining seems to have practically every single resource. Including those out in Zone 5.

This makes me wonder what precisely the point of asteroid mining is then.

 

[Oobfiche]

serves as the first place to go until the other ores are introduced. there will be belt only and moon only ores. and for moon only ores there will be ores only spesific to that moon. so moon A will always be special to itself than Moon B C or D. as moon A only has that material founded over there.

as for current PTU ore distribution. some of the moon ores now wont be there and will return to the eos and elysium belt. and some of the moon only terrestrial ores will be found deeper

 

[Distuth]

There's quantity. If I can either dig up a bit of everything or go mine the specific resource I need in an area full of it, I know which I'm choosing.

Not to mention there's going to be a lot less people looking to shoot you in a random spot of a belt than there will be on the moon.

 

[Rili]

With the current setup, you will never gain more ore by mining the Moon as in share Quantity.
You will gain more different ores, but the amount you get is so random that you do it for the rare types which are not abundant.

 

[LauriFB]

Current PTU setup is just a random first setup; we'll do a lot of adjusting and balancing before hitting live.

The plan is to have all mining zones worth for something (moons and belts), with proper hotspots and sometimes also hotspots with unique ores (like craters now on first moon). Moon mining has both area and depth-based veins, and in the future version also the "shell" ore will be based on location and/or depth. (like ice on poles, or ajatite layer at 2 km depth etc.)

Belts will get much larger and much more single-ore focused hotspot setups than what the current setups are.