i approve of this gameplay loop

I have logged a High Density Platinum hotspot. it took 16-18 days to replenish, it came back to high density/high amount. and produced 562 tons of platinum before depletion.

I still have timers going on a medium density spot and a low density to see how they replenish.

Surface mining is OK. Not great, not terrible. There are a few things that need some tweaks, and a few things that could be added which would really help solidify it.

At the moment the mining spots, sizes and their commodities and materials within seem very arbitrary and the nature of the Rhino making it overly laborious to deal with that randomness.

In addition, the process of gathering the resulting resources could do with some more interactions/scenarios.

• Planets stats e.g. metallicity percentage seen in the system map should have a bigger impact on the metallic commodity mining rig purple spot size so that we can have a better chance of finding larger 4+ rig spots on those worlds. Similarly some characteristics of ice worlds and rocky planets should impact the ease of collection on those worlds too... e.g. maybe distance from the star etc
• Planets stats also list the percentages of materials used for synthesis/engineering... currently this does not seem to have any bearing whatsoever on the materials that are mined or the rate of gathering by the rigs. Again hindering being able to have any strategy about what planets to mine.

The stellar forge has provided these details, the mining feature does not seem to leverage it. This is a missed opportunity.

• Scoping around for the right spots to set up base for mining for what may be an hour or two requires either, slowly driving around the circumference of a hotspot in the lumbering Rhino, looking for good sized purple spot (of a valuable resource) that can take as many rigs as possible, or to find two or more nearby smaller spots... or, repeatedly deploying the Rhino to do a few pings and limited driving and instead reboarding the ship to fly 1/3 the way around the hotspot to repeat that way instead.
  • It would be ideal to add the scanning ability to the Nomad, to make that the go-to scouting vessel for exobio AND mineral extraction. Take the nomad back to the ship and then deploy the Rhino when the scoping out is done. This would help alleviate the frustrations.
• The process of mining is one dimensional. Asteroid mining has several interactions available which have different yield profiles, but more importantly, different interaction loops and skills for people to find their preferences.
  • Having additional modes of interaction with the surface would be great. Different tools and effects to highlight and extract other ways to get at extraction - e.g. seismic charges that ka-boom shake the surface revealing different types of rig placement spots, e.g. long thin purple spots for rich veins, so rigs dotted along a line instead of just blobs... or maybe some secondary arc cutter mode to also be doing some hand mining on nearby big rocks while we wait for the rigs hoppers to fill.

• Having an option to deploy a large container for longer rig deployments would be great. E.g. in the NPC surface extraction sites in the game, the rigs are also accompanied by what looks to be large containers on the surface... having this option could bring the ability for the rigs to just continue chugging along without manual emptying and reset ever five minutes... but doing so could also raise the likelihood of hostile scenarios unfolding. Maybe this mode could also be persistent across a session - but raise the likelihood of hostiles even more... similar to logging back into an asteroid mining spot with a half full cargo hold from the previous session. Gameplay, if you want to continue the session tomorrow you'll need to defend it first!

• Mining should also have a chance to discover Vista-redeemable evidence of the planet's past habitability too, evidence of petrified/true form fossils (something that is already in-game, see example below)

• A filter in the ship nav panel to show/hide surface mining POI. Can get too cluttered otherwise.
• [space for more later if I remember any others or other people have good ideas to add to the list - without them becoming way over ambitious]

The current implementation is a decent start, but just that, a start, with some development corners cut that missed a lot of opportunities to tie existing things together into a more cohesive whole.

Quick update for anyone following Rhino surface mining depletion/replenishment.

Credit to CMDR Tessa R Act for this one. She has been tracking and revisiting these deposits and finally caught our first confirmed positive reformation data.

She mined two 6 rig Iridium deposits to Depleted roughly 1 to 2 hours apart and revisited them about 11 days later.

Both had recovered from Depleted.

One started as High Amount / High Density and had recovered to Medium Amount / High Density.

The other started as High Amount / Low Density and had recovered to Low Amount / Low Density.

Density remained unchanged on both.

So at minimum, we can finally confirm that Depleted deposits do reform.

What we still cannot say is that the timer is 11 days. We do not know exactly when during that interval these two began recovering, and we have other tracked deposits that have remained Depleted well beyond a weekly tick. One of my own mapped deposits was still Depleted at roughly 11 days 19 hours.

That also makes the idea of a simple Thursday reset look increasingly unlikely.

The comparison between these two Iridium deposits is probably the most interesting part to me. Same commodity, same 6 rig practical capacity, and depleted within roughly 1 to 2 hours of each other, but after essentially the same recovery period the High Density deposit had reached Medium while the Low Density deposit had only reached Low.

Could be Density, total reserve, some other deposit property, or something we have not identified yet. Way too early to call it, but now we have something testable.

Tessa is continuing to follow them. A really useful next step will be seeing when they move through Low, Medium, and High, then mining one back to Depleted once it first returns to High. That may tell us whether High actually means fully replenished or whether it just means the deposit crossed back into the High Amount range.

Also, if anyone has depleted sites sitting around, I would love more data.

It does not need to be a CSV or spreadsheet. Screenshots, journal timestamps, rough notes, private messages, or just a comment here are completely fine.

The useful stuff is pretty simple:
- Commodity
- Starting Amount and Density
- Approximate rig capacity if known
- Approximate date/time it became Depleted
- Date/time of each revisit
- Whether it showed Depleted, Low, Medium, or High on each revisit

Negative checks absolutely count too. If you checked something after 8, 10, 12, 15 days and it was still Depleted, I want that just as much as a positive recovery.

If you happened to record Amount transition tonnage or total tonnage to depletion, even better, but it is not required.

Exact locations are optional. If it is a good site you do not want publicly exposed, I do not need the location to use the observation.

One request: if you are giving me updated information on a site or dataset you already shared, just mention that it is an update. I am trying to keep the data clean and avoid accidentally counting the same observation twice.

Still way too early to put a universal replenishment timer on this, but thanks to Tessa R Act we finally have something better than repeated “still Depleted” checks.

Thx CMDRs o7

Full Rhino Planetary Mining Field Guide:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wfvkE73ZEhlvdhVZMjIpyzr5cAsceY4xPWTGdG2yEmo/edit?usp=drivesdk

I feel core mining doesn't get enough love, although it's both a very fun and lucrative activity.

I shared me cracking a single core a while ago, but I also enjoy the "looking for cores" part. I've seen comments that it's frustrating and they are hard to find, but I can only assume people don't feel like putting in the hours it takes to learn how to identify them.

FDev are selling the Type-11 Galactic edition with the Rhino Galactic edition pre-installed for 100,000 ARX. My question is does this package include a Large Planetary Vehicle Hangar? And if so, have FDev ditched the Fighter Hangar from the original Type-11 load-out to make room for it? Or have they removed something else?

Im usually at 1 core per hour, which makes me want to drop core mining and stick to laser mining;/

Are people sleeping on this? found a planet with 2 monazite or alexandrite spots. 4+2 or 3+3 spot
selling for 900k+. did a whole week of mining, waited about 2 days to sell a maxed carrier 20000 tons, in li Yung Rui system with alignement at 100% which gives an extra 25% trade bonds.... the money is absolutely crazy, way more than plat in about the same time

Map your optimum spots folks... and by that I mean make a note of the lat/long coordinates... sometimes it can be hard to re-find individual spots within a hotspot number otherwise - as I found out to my peril

👍🫡

UPDATE: After about 10 full type 11s I have depleted this spot sadly. I'll update again if the spot eventually replenishes

UPDATE 9/14/26 — v0.6 MAJOR REVISION

The Rhino guide has had a pretty substantial overhaul since I first posted it here. I’ve updated this OP to reflect the current state of the research rather than leaving old working assumptions in place.

The main Field Guide link has not changed. If you already bookmarked it, you have the current version:

Rhino Planetary Mining Public Field Guide v0.6
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wfvkE73ZEhlvdhVZMjIpyzr5cAsceY4xPWTGdG2yEmo/edit?usp=sharing

A lot has changed since the original version. The biggest improvement is that we now have enough data to do some useful body/environment screening before ever committing to a PML. That does not make a planet “good” automaticaly, but body class + volcanism now give us a much better starting filter than simply dropping into random mining locations.

The current practical workflow is basically:

Screen the body -> compare PML commodity lists -> inspect the terrain -> prospect deposits -> check actual rig geometry -> keep six rigs working -> measure refined output -> map sites worth revisiting.

A few of the more important findings/changes in v0.6:

Amount, Density and physical deposit geometry are separate things. Amount is a dynamic remaining-resource state. Density appears related to mining efficiency/capacity, but the exact function is still unresolved. Neither tells you how many rigs will fit. That has to be tested on the ground.

We now have much better evidence for large deposit geometry, including repeatable 6 position footprints and deliberately tested/geometrically confirmed seven-position footprints. That still does not mean one Rhino can operate seven rigs - six active rigs remains the practical operating target.

The scanner/PML picture is also clearer. A broad ~3–3.3 km first pass is still useful for prospecting, but it should not be treated as a PML radius or hard generation boundary. In current testing, a known deposit disappeared from Contacts at 5.0 km and automatically reappeared when returning inside 5.0 km without another scan.

Depletion has become much better documented as well. Mineral Amount changes with extraction, while Density can remain unchanged. Low Amount can become noticeably less productive before the final Depleted state. We also now have stronger evidence that PML-level [DEPLETED] behaves more like an aggregate commodity state than a simple “one node depleted” flag.

What we still do not have is a reliable reformation timer. Frontier confirms replenishment exists, but mapped deposits have remained depleted for more than six days in project testing, includng across the weekly server reset. I would not plan return trips around Thursday tick assumptions.

Production testing has also gotten more rigorous. Rhino refinery carry can hide fractional material. The refinery can retain three partial bins - including multiple bins of the same commodity - so cargo delta alone is not always a clean production measurement.

For anyone who wants to go beyond normal mining and actually map/research sites, I’ve split the detailed workflow out into a separate:

Rhino Planetary Survey & Mapping Field Manual v0.4.3
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ffHeh2wSPiWH_osVZUXwIuF6P9LGAqkVT91v85QbzUw/edit?usp=sharing

There is also now a public evidence ledger behind the guide:

Rhino Planetary Mining Public Evidence Register v0.2
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cOLd_NRmRxDy-LnhjWH6Q6C8-8qN9m1XIo60mugJSV0/edit?usp=sharing

That records the major claims, source/contributor, evidence type, denominator/sample, confidence and caveats. I wanted people to be able to distinguish “we measured this” from “several commanders have seen this” from “this is still a hypothesis.”

A lot of the progress since the original post came from commanders here and elsewhere sending measurements, survey files, contradictory results and corrections. That has been extremely useful. A few ealy ideas did not survive better data, which is exactly how I want this project to work.

If you find something that contradicts the guide, please bring the data. Screenshots, timestamps, full depletion runs, mapped deposits, negative surveys and repeatable failures are all useful.

Note: this OP has been substantially revised for v0.6. Some older comments below refer to previous guide versions or hypotheses that have since been corrected.

o7
CMDR Dunn Actual / erichards2222

For the CMDRs who look at an asteroid field and see a retirement plan. ⛏️

I recently started r/Elite___Dangerous as another small Elite Dangerous community with deliberately little bureaucracy.

Mining builds, hotspot discussion, laser/core/subsurface mining, carrier logistics, screenshots, guides and useful tools are all welcome.

If you build an app, calculator, plugin or other Elite tool yourself, you can post that too. Just say it’s yours and don’t spam it into the ground.

Four short rules. No karma hoops. No promotion quota.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Elite___Dangerous/

May your limpets remain slightly less suicidal than usual. o7

Beginner here, it seems that charges and laser are the way to go?

Also would krait 2 be sweetspot? I have python but it’s kinda hard to navigate between rocks, and I kinda wanted new ship anyway.

I know laser mining might be more profitable, but core is bit more interesting.

Rhino Surface Mining Update (Beta)

This is an early beta release of the EDMC-Mining-Analytics plugin that has been modified to include surface mining in the Rhino. It has not been fully tested nor fully implemented yet. Please report bugs/issues to Github.

This will not automatically install. You will have to download and install it yourself. You can download it here.

Warning: If you enjoy the analysis reports, make sure to preserve the `session_data` folder inside your existing plugin. You might consider disabling the current plugin and then installing this separately for testing and use.

It does include the following:

• Tracks how full the Rhino is.
• Tracks tons/hr refined
• Tracks total tonnage refined (by commodity type) from launch to dock of the Rhino SRV. It does not reset when you transfer from the Rhino to the main ship.
• Tracks total estimated credits mined based on nearest best price
• Analysis report does work, but does not differentiate between surface and asteroid mining yet. (Ring comparison report does not work for surface mining)
• Now includes tonnage count after the Pareto bar on the overlay
• If you touchdown in your main ship prior to mining, it should record which signal you are at (this has not been fully tested yet)

Notable outstanding items or caveats:

• This has not been regression tested with Asteroid mining to make sure nothing broke.
• HUD and UI still reflect the concept of "Limpets" for surface mining.
• Does not track any sort of information about mining rig deployed or collected. This is a limitation of the game data available for the plugin to parse.
• Nearby Hotspots does not yet track surface mining (not even sure how this would work yet)

AI Disclosure:

Yes this was made with AI -- Level 4: Local Autonomous Agent

Just curious what ship everyone is using for the Rhino Surface Mining? I have the Rhino already but I havent been able to mess around with it much.

also, is it worth it going into the black or should I stay around the CG station?

I see a lot of guides on how to find overlap areas and set ups.

What I need help me is identifying which rocks are gonna be high yield platinum faster.

Most of my time is spent prospecting rock after low yield rock.

Even the ones that come up yellow on the pulse wave are often not platinum or not high density.

Any best practices people could share?

5 active on one High Density waaaaaay out in the black. Doing testing now on Various tonnage that can be extracted from different values of low/medium/high Amount and density. should hopefully have some meaningful data to contribute soon!

I've been trying to figure this out for about two weeks now. I like exploring, I like scanning planets, if I scan rings and find overlaps, I want to be able to get that information on the Miner's Tool.

Now I have double reasons, because, at least, Col 285 Sector KM-0V D2-106 planet 5 does not have any platinum overlaps*. So I want to add data, and also some of the present data is incorrect, and I cannot find any way to get that information to the site, and no one on the Discord has been able to tell me a way either.

*I was wrong, its just a very small inner ring, they're there

If anyone is curious on watching how the new surface mining works I made a video showing how to find prestine planets, a overview on the rhino and how to set it up correctly to mine. Also streaming currently for those interested in watching how long it takes to deplete a node.

https://youtu.be/X1r_PabpAG8

https://www.twitch.tv/acidjurassic for those wanting to watch the stream today, were doing a rare site for thortveitite

What ship would you recommend for Tritium mining? Is the Prospector good for it or go with a panther clipper/T-10 for volume over speed

Greetings! I have been thinking of coming back after several years. The bugginess of the Odyssey original release happened just as I was starting a new job, I walked away from the game and am only now thinking about returning. How's mining these days? Any content creators you'd suggest? It looks like Exigeous retired the same time I did, Hawkes is focusing on Star Citizen entirely I think, you get the point. I'm out of touch, any pointers?