Mining for all resources at once? Or just one?

[John uncguy43 Williams]

Since the last mining update, I have commented on how I have experienced very low hit rates planetside. Generally, my HR for ores and enmatter have hovered between 20-30%. That said, since tracking my runs I have cycled 2,693 PED unamped and have managed a 95.53% TT return because of the occasional global.

Before the update, my HR was almost always consistently above 30%. That being said, I’ve noticed an intriguing trend of late. Basically, most areas seem to have a predominance of either ore OR enmatter. In other words, if I drop a probe for both, I will have something like a 15% hit rate for one and a 40% hit rate for the other.

My natural thinking at that point (after 30 drops or so) on each run is to only mine for the one type that is predominant to get my overall hit rate up. However, when I switch to the single focus of mining, my HR inevitably goes down rapidly for that type. In other words, it seems like my only option of late has been to mine for both resource types if I’m going to get anything. Should this experience be expected? If so, why? If not, why?

Per Leeloo’s mining guide (which I take as canon), it is often best to mine for one type of resource in one area rather than another, but that has not been my experience since the last update. Has something changed?

 

[Hawks]

30 drops is extremely low sample imo, try again after 200-300 and see % then, or if you done few of thoes 30 drop runs check across all of them how % are atm you could get easly get 3 claims in a row and bump back to 30% HR on that 15% of yours

 

[John uncguy43 Williams]

My runs are typically 75 drops at a run. However, I use the central limit theorem to assume that n=30 is a large enough sample size to assume how the rest of a singular run should go by proxy.

In more simple terms, this aligns with Leeloo’s statement that you’ll begin to “know how a run should feel after a few drops when you’ve run an area many times.” Therefore, I don’t believe that 30 drops for both resource types is too small of a sample for determining what singular resource type you should be hunting for.

 

[Hawks]

for example

run 1 100p dropped 70% TT 25% HR
run 2 100p dropped 60% TT 16% HR
run 3 100p dropped 150% TT 42% HR
run 4 100p dropped 80% TT 37% HR

you just had run nr 2

which presents itself as garbage and you're upset

if you had run nr 3 you'd say everything is fine and theory works

if you look at all 4 runs tho, its stable 90% tt 30% HR

sample size doesnt magicly makes your loots better it just helps you get enough loot events to reach expected average, also the fact that you will wait few hours or a day doesnt change anything, and i think you misunderstand “know how a run should feel after a few drops when you’ve run an area many times.”,
cause its not about understanding that it will go well, but also about when it can go wrong

 

[John uncguy43 Williams]

for example

run 1 100p dropped 70% TT 25% HR
run 2 100p dropped 60% TT 16% HR
run 3 100p dropped 150% TT 42% HR
run 4 100p dropped 80% TT 37% HR

you just had run nr 2

which presents itself as garbage and you're upset

if you had run nr 3 you'd say everything is fine and theory works

if you look at all 4 runs tho, its stable 90% tt 30% HR

sample size doesnt magicly makes your loots better it just helps you get enough loot events to reach expected average, also the fact that you will wait few hours or a day doesnt change anything, and i think you misunderstand “know how a run should feel after a few drops when you’ve run an area many times.”,
cause its not about understanding that it will go well, but also about when it can go wrong

You’re not replying to my actual question, and you are making assumptions about how many/how often I am making runs/testing.

 

[Hawks]

I actually do, cause i take your testing in question, personally ive never seen connection of hit rate of ore/enmat on certain ground unless i didnt mine at a spot enough.

tl;dr

just because you dont seem to be getting HR of enmat on your spot, doesnt mean it's not there, correlation =/ causation.

 

[John uncguy43 Williams]

I will wait here until someone would like to address the original question. Thank you all for viewing!

 

[Hawks]

Why do i even bother, just wait till someone agrees with you and keep going, dont forget to turn right on perception checks

 

[John uncguy43 Williams]

I’m not waiting for someone to agree with me - I’m waiting for someone to read what I asked and respond to it with an agreement or denial along with supporting evidence for either view.

You self-professed above “TL;DR”...

 

[kingofaces]

My runs are typically 75 drops at a run. However, I use the central limit theorem to assume that n=30 is a large enough sample size to assume how the rest of a singular run should go by proxy.

In more simple terms, this aligns with Leeloo’s statement that you’ll begin to “know how a run should feel after a few drops when you’ve run an area many times.” Therefore, I don’t believe that 30 drops for both resource types is too small of a sample for determining what singular resource type you should be hunting for.

As a statistician, this isn’t really true to just assume a sample size of 30 is good enough with the central limit theorem. Correct sample size depends on variation of what you’re trying to measure. Part of that requires using actual statistical tests rather than raw averages if you’re going to invoke CLT, but there are other underlying assumptions that don’t really let you do that so easily.

There are a few different levels of variation in mining. Some within the scope of a run, and some that happens longer term or also by area. It’s really easy to see a trend when there is none, or even get false positives when you aren’t careful with statical tests.

The short of it though is that enmatter and ore HR have always been independent. You’re going to see some periods where they are similar, and others where they have a negative correlation. Especially if you look at a relatively narrow window of time, you’re apt to miss some of the variation going on in particular areas that will trick you into thinking you are seeing a trend.

 

[John uncguy43 Williams]

Awesome, thank you for the substantive reply! This is really helpful Kingofaces.

 

[Kerham]

Around 30% HR is normal. You decide wether you drop single or dual strictly per potential MU. "Getting a feeling for the area/run" is rather bollocks. Common sense says to stop when an area feels dry and surely you can play in such manner, also seems more correct lorewise, but in doesn't really matter. You can drop 10 probes a day or 500, has no importance. What has importance is to be disciplined over a sizable number of attempts. Meaning if you try to find for example alicenies, mine 500 ped (unamped enmatter, so 1k drops) in areas with alicenies. Then maybe switch for a deeper or shallower finder and repeat the run. Only after such lengths you can draw reasonable conclusions, and those will be along the lines "this finder gave me x% of finds alicenies, and the other finder gave y%". 95% sounds okay, but over say 100 drops you're seeing 30ish hits and that will be too low to hit consistently all common finds (say, "poor" to "abundant").

In regards to the apparent change in hitrate when switching dual to single is just our mind not coping very well with the reality of math. There is no one correct way, single or dual, but I must repeat, be consistent with your choices.

 

[Sirhc]

Mayhem put mining on hold for me over the past week but from what I can tell the fields seem to have remained the same while the resource composition has changed to some degree. Unless I am pressed for time I always run 200+ drops and usually have a good hit rate more than 30% but there are dead zones between fields which are really obvious. I've always mined both ore and enmatter even back in the day when they had separate tools and probes/bombs. Losing probes and bombs was so much fun and "unknowns" were a rush back then sorry just reminiscing. There was a time when I could find Dunkel quite routinely in one area and made a decent amount of PED until the next VU when MA changed up the resource fields and then it was back to square one. Change has always been a constant in PE/EU and I can't help but think MA now has more tools available to quickly make adjustments to the system instead of having to wait for the next VU to do so. I don't know if this helps you in any way but I've had enmatter globals bail me out of an ore hole by mining both resources in certain fields.

I've never really seen fields with equal measures of ore and enmatter but the ones that come close seem to be filled with lower MU resources. They are great for skilling in some regards. Since the last VU I am sure I will need to relearn compositions of the fields I frequent but if I am getting really low HR it could be that MA has gone back to how mining used to be where fields wouldn't respawn as quickly once mined. Needless to say if I wasn't getting the results I expected from certain area then I would move on or remove my amp to reduce loss or just hang up my finder for the day.

Skills (in game and real life) and tools do matter so its always good idea to look at where you are and where you want to be.

I can also see MA incentivizing mining both resources types or three if you are on Arkadia because it means more churn which generates more for them. They wouldn't create preloaded finders if it didn't benefit their bottom line in some way and add some excitement to the player as well. So it would make sense to me for them to want players to increase probe usage.

Since I mine and hunt I do know that some areas with really aggressive mobs tend to yield some interesting finds. I probably spend about 80% of my time mining in big mob spawns so that might have some bearing on my resource finds and HR as well. There is definitely less competition in those zones.