They should make a better tutorial for each career, because the current one looks like this:
1) start and dock (roofles)
2) how to target (roofles)
3) how to hyperjump and supercruise (just press the button duhhh, but we won't explain the intricasies of supercruising)
4-5-6-7-8) different variations for combat, some of them are unbeatable for new players because they put you up against superior firepower.
Tutorials were added before exploration/trading/mining was implemented. That's why they're all combat-related. They will (probably) add those at a later date. It's not really a priority during beta/gamma. Better to spend their time adding features and fixing bugs.
Lots of people complaining on the official forums about their trade routes being wrecked. It seems our gold disappearing has to do with FD tweaking the numbers on trade goods to put trading credits/min more in line with bounty hunting/mining/exploration.
At this rate it will take me 10 years to buy that imperial clipper i just found.So much cash and a prince reputation in empire to boot....I tried mining a bit but scooping all those lillte fragments drive me crazy quickly, its not for me.Apparently people making money are the on mining pure metal roids.
There are 3 things to be aware of for mining.
1:
You can mine from "clusters" or "rings". Clusters are belts around a star, which contain a small number (10 or so, scattered far) of asteroids to mine. Belts are around gas giants. They contain an "infinite" number of asteroids, fairly close together. You'll have to go to an "extraction site" to get at them, which becomes visible when you're ~5-10 Ls away from the gas giant. Extraction sites have mining npcs, police ships and pirates flying around as well, so you may end up in the crossfire.
2:
Type of minerals you get value icy>rocky>metal rich>metallic.
You generally don't want to bother with icy or rocky rings. You'll be lucky to get some cheapass bauxite out of that. Metallic is way, way better than metal rich, but also rarer. Once you've (surface?) scanned a planet or cluster, the system map will tell you what type of ring it is.
3:
The system map will also - much more importantly - tell you what level of reserves an asteroid belt or gas giant with rings has. Ratings go from "Depleted" (don't bother) through common (meh), abundant/high (acceptable) to pristine (yes plz!). The reserves define how much you can mine from a single asteroid. But - and here's the kicker - the amount of "chunks" you can mine from an asteroid is more or less constant across all types. If an area has good reserves, chunks will have a higher metal content and you'll need fewer chunks to gain a unit of metal. Hence you'll be spending less time scooping and your hold will fill faster.
It's generally not worth your time to go for anything less than metal-rich/common reserves. Ideally you want metallic/pristine. You'll have to either do some scanning of your own or buy survey data though. The pre-explored systems (nearly) always have depleted reserves.
They haven't implemented scanning of asteroids for mineral hot spots yet. (Even though Braben & co said they would). You can shoot anywhere on the asteroid and it won't make a difference as to what it yields. That said, if you can keep your laser pointed at the same spot while the asteroid rotates, the chunks will line up in a neat row that's easy to scoop up. If you move the beam over the surface, the chunks will scatter
If you aren't looking to mine, extraction sites can still be a source of income. If there are NPC miners, odds are pirates will show up. It's generally not worth being the first agressor, as NPCs may turn on you if you are. But if you keep a lookout for orange flashes (mining lasers are purple), you can usually find some bounty hunters/police ships fighting a pirate. You can farm the pirates for bounties with relatively little risk to yourself.
I don't get myself how is difficult for anyone, yet there are always people who complain about it being hard on the frontier forums.
