5.2.1 - patch notes

[Haste]

And not to mention that you have to watch all the time so that you don't break the jettisoned ore.

This is valid criticism. I may well have forgotten to bump up the HP on Platinum Ore & Heavy Water. Gold Ore has more HP than normal commodities so you can accidentally hit it and not destroy it. Plus it could take a little more.

Other than that, it's fully intended that mining time is a little longer than before. With a standard-issue 3.0 bonus mining time itself (ignoring travel time) -- for a solo Hegemon -- is still around the 7-8 minute mark. Platinum in my experience is actually a little faster as you can get a full Hegemon hold in one single radiation pocket. The base price on refined Gold, Platinum and Deuterium is higher, and so is the yield from PoB recipes, to offset the increased mining time.

I've been part of a good few Galway mining ops and I'd say one of the most successful and enjoyable combinations is a Hegemon with a single fighter, bomber or freighter (bombers don't have mining lasers which makes it a little clunkier, admittedly, as the Hegemon has to "deshield" the rocks) and two 5ks or Serenity-tier transports (since they'll be cruising, Serenities are technically very good at this, and a little better than 5ks). This both saves the Hegemon a lot of the pain involved in strafing around rocks to get all the nodes and speeds up mining in general, as small ships have a higher bonus on nodes than the Hegemon itself. The Hegemon then finishes the rock off as it has a large bonus on that step of the mining process. You can comfortably keep both transports going this way (assuming a ~40k distance to the PoB you're delivering to), and I think there were times we nearly managed three.

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