Crystal mining is bugged

[FatalKeks]

Argh, this is bad news for ppl like me who did not yet grab the rare crystal achievement.. it's one of the last ones I need (besides Xtreme trade/fight..), but it seems like this is close to impossible to achieve now.

I guess the way to get this achievement now is to search for the rare one without shooting any others. So the rare one has to be the first you shoot. It's silly, but I don't see any other way besides extreme luck.

[foxxbl]

Don't do crystal mining. Find two of the abandoned ships, sell them and buy/sell advanced satellites. That way you earn cash alot faster then the old boring crystal mining. I wonder why Egosoft nerfed it anyways

Yup, crystal hunting was legitimate way to gain fast cash, without resorting to use exploits/spoilers.
This nerf is totally unbalanced in terms of the common sense. There are 5 types of crystals and in 99% of chances encountered is 1 type?
Then let's then throw crystals out of the game and lets forget them.. Who with right mind would want to mine crystals, if you need to spend 1 hour to get 250k ??!?!
I think this nerf was supposed to be better announced.. I am now furious as I spent lots of time in vain (thinking I had just s**** luck), and found now this thread..

[Midnitewolf]

Don't do crystal mining. Find two of the abandoned ships, sell them and buy/sell advanced satellites. That way you earn cash alot faster then the old boring crystal mining. I wonder why Egosoft nerfed it anyways

Yup, crystal hunting was legitimate way to gain fast cash, without resorting to use exploits/spoilers.
This nerf is totally unbalanced in terms of the common sense. There are 5 types of crystals and in 99% of chances encountered is 1 type?
Then let's then throw crystals out of the game and lets forget them.. Who with right mind would want to mine crystals, if you need to spend 1 hour to get 250k ??!?!
I think this nerf was supposed to be better announced.. I am now furious as I spent lots of time in vain (thinking I had just s**** luck), and found now this thread..

Yep. I honestly felt that hunting crystals was very tedious and boring before but the payout was JUST ENOUGH that it was worth doing......BARELY, and I only did it long enough to get my Corvette and a few miners. Now, no way in hell am I going to do it. Guess I will just "cheat" myself a couple million when I start a new playthrough. Sad when the game makes the mechanics so painful that you feel cheating is the only way to play it.

[Slashman]

Don't do crystal mining. Find two of the abandoned ships, sell them and buy/sell advanced satellites. That way you earn cash alot faster then the old boring crystal mining. I wonder why Egosoft nerfed it anyways

Yup, crystal hunting was legitimate way to gain fast cash, without resorting to use exploits/spoilers.
This nerf is totally unbalanced in terms of the common sense. There are 5 types of crystals and in 99% of chances encountered is 1 type?
Then let's then throw crystals out of the game and lets forget them.. Who with right mind would want to mine crystals, if you need to spend 1 hour to get 250k ??!?!
I think this nerf was supposed to be better announced.. I am now furious as I spent lots of time in vain (thinking I had just s**** luck), and found now this thread..

Yep. I honestly felt that hunting crystals was very tedious and boring before but the payout was JUST ENOUGH that it was worth doing......BARELY, and I only did it long enough to get my Corvette and a few miners. Now, no way in hell am I going to do it. Guess I will just "cheat" myself a couple million when I start a new playthrough. Sad when the game makes the mechanics so painful that you feel cheating is the only way to play it.

I'm constantly amazed by people saying they need to cheat to make money, just because their go to unbalanced money printer dried up. There is a wealth of things to do in the game that all result in money. Hell they GIVE you a free trader from one of the earliest and easiest plot missions. How is it that you think you are owed a corvette and mining ships by default?

I mean sure you can cheat your way to millions and billions...but how does that affect the developers exactly?

[grapedog]

Don't do crystal mining. Find two of the abandoned ships, sell them and buy/sell advanced satellites. That way you earn cash alot faster then the old boring crystal mining. I wonder why Egosoft nerfed it anyways

Yup, crystal hunting was legitimate way to gain fast cash, without resorting to use exploits/spoilers.
This nerf is totally unbalanced in terms of the common sense. There are 5 types of crystals and in 99% of chances encountered is 1 type?
Then let's then throw crystals out of the game and lets forget them.. Who with right mind would want to mine crystals, if you need to spend 1 hour to get 250k ??!?!
I think this nerf was supposed to be better announced.. I am now furious as I spent lots of time in vain (thinking I had just s**** luck), and found now this thread..

Yep. I honestly felt that hunting crystals was very tedious and boring before but the payout was JUST ENOUGH that it was worth doing......BARELY, and I only did it long enough to get my Corvette and a few miners. Now, no way in hell am I going to do it. Guess I will just "cheat" myself a couple million when I start a new playthrough. Sad when the game makes the mechanics so painful that you feel cheating is the only way to play it.

Or you could cap S/M ships, do missions, trade, scour battlegrounds for leftovers, fight xenon.... there are tons of ways to make money. Granted, none are as easy, broken, mind numbingly boring, vapid, and safe as crystal hunting.... but plenty of ways to make better cash.

[al_dude]

I do inject myself some millions when I begin new games as well.

Now, I did everything when I was just starting out but, after many restarts, the first initial steps are just boring chores.

Nothing wrong with the game itself. Crystal mining was one of legit ways to start. Another way is patrol sector missions where you don't have to do anything to gain like 100k to 200k but does require 15 minutes of sitting still. Yet another way is looting stuff from battles you pass by. A programming array sells for like 150k each.

I personally don't see a big deal with crystal mining being nerfed. It was one of the ways to start out. Other ways still work.

[solarie99]

I dont understannd the need to nerf everything this hard in a singelplayer game. if it was a multiplayer /mmo yes but singelplayer some money loops are ok to not only sit left with a grinding game "erlygame". Mid and late game you get filthyrich any how.
ALSO to any one reading this there is a mod that fix crystals back to before 4.0 so you can farm it as old times.

[grapedog]

I dont understannd the need to nerf everything this hard in a singelplayer game. if it was a multiplayer /mmo yes but singelplayer some money loops are ok to not only sit left with a grinding game "erlygame". Mid and late game you get filthyrich any how.
ALSO to any one reading this there is a mod that fix crystals back to before 4.0 so you can farm it as old times.

There is also a mod that just adds millions of credits when you press a button, pretty much the same thing,

[solarie99]

I dont understannd the need to nerf everything this hard in a singelplayer game. if it was a multiplayer /mmo yes but singelplayer some money loops are ok to not only sit left with a grinding game "erlygame". Mid and late game you get filthyrich any how.
ALSO to any one reading this there is a mod that fix crystals back to before 4.0 so you can farm it as old times.

There is also a mod that just adds millions of credits when you press a button, pretty much the same thing,

And you miss my point 100% lol crystals wah not a cheat it was legit in game, what you say is plain cheat and are so far off topic that is hits your naighbor in te eye.

[Slashman]

I dont understannd the need to nerf everything this hard in a singelplayer game. if it was a multiplayer /mmo yes but singelplayer some money loops are ok to not only sit left with a grinding game "erlygame". Mid and late game you get filthyrich any how.
ALSO to any one reading this there is a mod that fix crystals back to before 4.0 so you can farm it as old times.

There is also a mod that just adds millions of credits when you press a button, pretty much the same thing,

And you miss my point 100% lol crystals wah not a cheat it was legit in game, what you say is plain cheat and are so far off topic that is hits your naighbor in te eye.

It was unbalanced with other ways of making money. I actually mined crystals after the nerf and still made about 400k in short order. That's enough to get you a mining ship. You're now off the ground.

[grapedog]

I dont understannd the need to nerf everything this hard in a singelplayer game. if it was a multiplayer /mmo yes but singelplayer some money loops are ok to not only sit left with a grinding game "erlygame". Mid and late game you get filthyrich any how.
ALSO to any one reading this there is a mod that fix crystals back to before 4.0 so you can farm it as old times.

There is also a mod that just adds millions of credits when you press a button, pretty much the same thing,

And you miss my point 100% lol crystals wah not a cheat it was legit in game, what you say is plain cheat and are so far off topic that is hits your naighbor in te eye.

It is a single player game, so it doesn't really matter. I was fine with crystals the way they were... i just *HATED* seeing recommendations for new players to go mine crystals. If the goal is to bring fans to the game and keep em here, mining crystals as their first experience for making cash is terrible. It was also incorrect, there were and still are other good ways to make money, unless you're using all the crystal mining mods...

which also, why not just use an add credits button. crystal mining is legit!(installs mods for making more crystals spawn, makes them super bright and easily spotted, changes rarities of the spawned crystals}... why bother with all the window dressing, just add the credits.

[Submarine]

Just want to add my voice to the many expressing dislike for the strange magical balance mechanic which reduces all crystals to purple the moment you find a good one.

Even in the middle of a battle it would seem... and apparently as a result of a good drop from the vanquished vessel.
viewtopic.php?f=146&t=438987

This is anti emergent and anti internal consistency of the physical universe. It really does not feel like the right direction for X games to be going in.

[Submarine]

I will tell you something else as well, this kind of antiplayer attitude reminds me of the kill mission I have just been doing where I was tasked to kill 7x N and all of a sudden, in the places where until that moment mixed Xenon raiding parties had been falling like rain, the river of red suddenly dried up.

All of a sudden no Ns were entering Argon or paranid space and I had to go kill them in Xenon sectors. When raiding parties did arrive they contained no Ns when before taking the mission they always had a couple of Ns in the mix.

IMHO this was too clear cut to be a coincidence and suggests anti-emergent ploys again where the design is trying to trick the player and move the goal posts on missions.

This is not fun gameplay, this means you soon learn that the mission design intends to cause embuggerance and is not worth engaging with.

Offering players motivating challenges is not the same as teasing them and being nasty to them.

[Alan Phipps]

No, that last topic probably just means that you and/or NPCs were killing Xenon until wherever they were coming from ran out of capability or resources for a while. Usually that happens when the Xenon are losing their e-cell carriers/mineral miners too. The kill mission was just random coincidence and the scarcity may have resulted from your own previous actions - no great conspiracy there, I think.

If you want common Xenon ships without moving sector then just move well away from the sector centre and fly about looking for random encounter spawns (race miners and prospectors, Xenon, Kha'ak, and/or SCA patrols).

BTW: please don't derail an established topic thread onto a totally different topic.

[Submarine]

No, that last topic probably just means that you and/or NPCs were killing Xenon until wherever they were coming from ran out of capability or resources for a while. Usually that happens when the Xenon are losing their e-cell carriers/mineral miners too. The kill mission was just random coincidence and the scarcity may have resulted from your own previous actions - no great conspiracy there, I think.

If you want common Xenon ships without moving sector then just move well away from the sector centre and fly about looking for random encounter spawns (race miners and prospectors, Xenon, Kha'ak, and/or SCA patrols).

BTW: please don't derail an established topic thread onto a totally different topic.

Thanks for your helpful suggestion, I did actually try patrolling the periphery of Holy Vision and encountered nothing which added to my sense of being under a temporary curse due to having accepted the mission. (I also went to The Void and Frontier Edge and there were squads of M + P but Ns were conspicuous by their absence and I still think it was rigged.)

It was not my intention to derail the discussion of crystal spawn mechanics, rather to engage with the more abstract principle involved in the negative impact of moving goal posts during the flow of play where the sim is altered without internal consistency. The discussion of the kill mission was intended to be another example of the same kind of mechanic though at this juncture I concede I cannot prove it.

The reason why this is bad is that it means you cannot use knowledge you have learned about the sim to solve problems because as with crystals conditions change arbitrarily on the fly, if you spot a good crystal and another one, mining one of the crystals can change the colour and value of the other one so it is not worth remembering its location and the game universe decoheres into a series of mini games, each with their own rules which change between minigames. You might as well be playing Mario > Tetris > Angry Birds.

You may be right about my being paranoid and mistaken about the kill mission but I still currently think maybe not, since the game has changed in 4.0 and you may not have tried a kill mission yourself since and even if you are correct, my reaction indicates how toxic the crystal issue is and how it undermines faith in the rest of the sim, since you cannot trust it to remain consistent if the crystal mechanics are such that there is no "reality" to crystal placement and they change colour before your very eyes due to other unrelated events.

To describe how this affects me as a player its worth telling the story about how I started a new play through for 4.0 and to raise capital began crystal mining which was one of my favourite occupations in SV, because I like shiney stuff and you never know what you might find and I like nice surprises. I even developed an asteroid inspection script in autohotkey for the purpose of selecting asteroids and remote inspecting them using the F3 camera and camera controls. Other people like building factories, I like(d) hunting crystals.
viewtopic.php?f=181&t=424228&p=4928682#p4928682

So when I started the new playthrough I went mining and my first three crystals were a purple, a blue and a yellow which was very gratifying but thereafter I continued unaware of the change in mechanics believing I was in a good spot for mining and mined a further 500 purple Bandanite crystals before I got fed up and thought something was up with the sim. That is about 40 deposits.

Previously the good crystals were really there and would stay there until you found them. Now you will find two good crystals and then all the others in the area actually change to purple. With these changes perseverence has become pointless and counterproductive and the crystal miner specialist has nowhere to go to find better because everywhere they go will be couple of nice crystals followed by an endless supply of purple. There are no nice surprises, there is no reward for persistence there is no hope for something better.

This is the antithesis of a good foraging mechanic.

[Jeraal]

They might as well just remove crystal mining it's been nerfed so hard. I only do it now to get the occasional unstable crystal before I unlock a black market dealer that will sell them to me. I used to enjoy crystal mining. It was rather therapeutic as well as a bit of a money maker. Now, what's the point?

[RodentofDoom]

You could CHOOSE to waste your time doing something else, but it was a waste.

It certainly was wasteful to mine crystals, yes. You could/can EASILY make more money being a pirate and getting captains to bail and selling ships. A single minotaur raider can net almost 3 million depending on how it's geared out, 1 million minimum, for 3-5 minutes worth of flying around. And you can do that in your starting kestrel.... you can make dragon raider pirates bail while in a kestral. And a dragon raider sells for a good bit more...

You may believe the activity to be a waste of time but that does not invalidate someone elses enjoyment of it.
People play the X games for a variety of reasons.
Some enjoy the combat.
Some enjoy the trading.
Some enjoy complex planning & construction.
Some enjoy the exploration.

Finding crystals falls under the exploration category.
Now there is 1 reason less to explore.

But lets analyse your own sentiment.
Obviously earning credits from capping and selling ships is far too easy.
Time to nerf bailing rates and resale values for 'sustainability' ......

[grapedog]

You could CHOOSE to waste your time doing something else, but it was a waste.

It certainly was wasteful to mine crystals, yes. You could/can EASILY make more money being a pirate and getting captains to bail and selling ships. A single minotaur raider can net almost 3 million depending on how it's geared out, 1 million minimum, for 3-5 minutes worth of flying around. And you can do that in your starting kestrel.... you can make dragon raider pirates bail while in a kestral. And a dragon raider sells for a good bit more...

You may believe the activity to be a waste of time but that does not invalidate someone elses enjoyment of it.
People play the X games for a variety of reasons.
Some enjoy the combat.
Some enjoy the trading.
Some enjoy complex planning & construction.
Some enjoy the exploration.

Finding crystals falls under the exploration category.
Now there is 1 reason less to explore.

But lets analyse your own sentiment.
Obviously earning credits from capping and selling ships is far too easy.
Time to nerf bailing rates and resale values for 'sustainability' ......

Are people still going on about crystals...

[Submarine]

Are people still going on about crystals...

I object to this pointless and unsympathetic post about other peoples posts, if this kind of post is permitted then it is permissible to say that the quoted post adds nothing to the conversation and its only action is to aggravate and ridicule people who feel passionately about the changes to the crystal mining mechanic in X4 and one cannot escape the impression it is written precisely because the discussion is passionate and is therefore trolling.

---

It seems to me the new crystal mechanics are either not as intended or not thought through as they destroy the mechanic and damage the integrity of the sim in the way crystal colour/value can change arbitrarily even within LOS. I really do hope egosoft have taken note of the impact of these changes and will revisit the design because this is disappointing me as a player.

[Jeraal]

Are people still going on about crystals...

I object to this pointless and unsympathetic post about other peoples posts, if this kind of post is permitted then it is permissible to say that the quoted post adds nothing to the conversation and its only action is to aggravate and ridicule people who feel passionately about the changes to the crystal mining mechanic in X4 and one cannot escape the impression it is written precisely because the discussion is passionate and is therefore trolling.

---

It seems to me the new crystal mechanics are either not as intended or not thought through as they destroy the mechanic and damage the integrity of the sim in the way crystal colour/value can change arbitrarily even within LOS. I really do hope egosoft have taken note of the impact of these changes and will revisit the design because this is disappointing me as a player.

Well said.