Okay. Let's try another step. I'm not so sure about this one.

It seems to me that, if a particular type of rock is cleared. that type will regen as small the next day.

For instance, suppose I mine all of the Veldspar out of a belt, but nothing else, and no one else mines there, the Veldspar will regen as small the next day, but the rest will regen as large. (Assuming that the belt hadn't been mined out for at least three days.)

Does that seem reasonable?

Nope. The Veld roids will respawn as a random (weighted) assortment of each rock available in the belt.

Before Hidden belts, people would occasionally try to "breed" their belts in Nullsec to be closer to pure ABC by popping Low end roids, but only mining ABC roids until they were at a low level (avoiding popping them).

Not sure I understand. That seems to disagree with my recent research.

For instance, I tried 10 different betls and counted every rock in those belts by type and by concentrate level. After the DT respawn, I counted them again. Exact same of number of rocks of each type and concentrate level in the belt. FWIW, they were actually all in the exact same places too. Bookmarks from the day before would take me right to certain rocks that were easily identifiable to me.

So I had a friendly mining corp come in and wipe out a few of them, then counted again after respawn. Same as above. The numbers were exactly the same, only the sizes were different.

It's possible that CCP's stopped randomizing new rock spawns. Might have been part of why they've been able to amputate DT length (1hr-15min is amputation, not shortening).

Test it on SISI.

Any competent belt miner has their belts bookmarked for optimal extraction: it is not worth harvesting Massive Scordite in Bawilan with strip miners since you will get less than a full cycle of T2 crystal + orca boosted yield. So you bookmark an optimal position in range of the rocks which respawn the greatest volume each cycle.

Some belts are more than 50km diameter. I do the same as you for the smaller belts, though I try to get out of small blaster range of the belt warp in :)

I would suggest you lock up the asteroids and screen shot with the survey scanner results open. Then you can compare results from day to day by blinking between photos. You need to control for camera position and angle, and maybe post process to do fine adjustment. Have the camera zoomed out far to minimise the fish eye lens distortion of the scene (pincushion?).

Edit: 17 fiery kernite rocks in one belt?

It seems to me that a lot of knowledge fron the 'old days' is still circulating.

No offense, but what I am looking for is experimental data from the period since the last upgrade.

And how does my suggestion not get you that data?

It will get him the data, but NPC appears to be hoping that someone already has this data, collected since Retribution was released.

No link, just stating the obvious that collecting the data yourself will end up with you having the data you were looking for :)

If it helps I will post my scan results from the belts that I frequent.

No link, just stating the obvious that collecting the data yourself will end up with you having the data you were looking for :)

If it helps I will post my scan results from the belts that I frequent.

Not sure I understand. That seems to disagree with my recent research.

"Why are so many people. experienced or not, and corps. experienced or not, interested in clearing belts, knowing that the next day they will have small rocks to mine?"

Go ahead. Go right ahead and discount 10 years of data and experience from other players WHOM YOU ASKED.

Sheesh.

My next question was going to be, "Why are so many people. experienced or not, and corps. experienced or not, interested in clearing belts, knowing that the next day they will have small rocks to mine?"

My experience over the last few years has been that the rocks come back exactly the same ore and location when they respawn.

Ruby Porto claims otherwise.

You entering this thread with your disagreeable attitude is not going to help anyone.

Sort of in general........but documented Veldspar regenerating as something else says otherwise.

Documented where? Be helpful.

Go ahead. Go right ahead and discount 10 years of data and experience from other players WHOM YOU ASKED.

Sheesh.

I mine a lot, and watch what I am doing.

It appears to me that, if I completely clear a belt, the next day it regens with all small rocks. 2 days later the rocks are back at full size.

Has anyone else seen this happen?

You also seem to be suggesting that YOU would rather believe what someone has told you than do the research yourself?

I have my belts bookmarked, but my Orca gives a 48 km wingspan. There are few occasions when I have to move in-belt. If that happens, the Orca is slaved to the primary miner. It actually seems to be faster than warping out, then in again. I realize that all miners don't have the advantages I do, but my real questions is about re-spawning.

There are a lot of variables in mining. I'm really having a lot of trouble controlling the ones that impact on the re-spawn of a particular type of ore in a particular belt.

I started another experiment today where I mined all of the Kernite out of one of my favorite belts.

When I got there it had 17 Firey Kernite, 2 Luminous Kernite and 1 Plain Kernite, but there was another miner there because I got up late. I'll mine it out again tomorrow. The number of units won't tell me much, but better than nothing.

Rocks stay in the same locations in a belt and stay the same type. For example if you completely mine a Veldspar rock it will come back at that exact same location as a Veldspar rock . It won't respawn as a different type or sub-type of ore. Regarding recovery rates I haven't studied that aspect that much.
We used to set up lines of GSC's approximately 5km apart within range of the best rocks. About fifteen GSC per belt. That worked quite well until they started 'disappearing' well before the thirty day limit and even though they were anchored & passwords set. It seemed to be a CCP problem/bug but they wouldn't have it so we stopped using that method a long time ago. Good times though.

Next I'm going to try scanning a particular rock, in a particular belt, to see if leaving it alone makes it larger.

Yes, it will get larger, by the same amount of ore that would have spawned in that satge of the respawn cycle.

That may be true, but I have the time to find out for myself. I feel better when I do that.

In high sec if a astreroid is not popped it will respawn the next day larger, if it is popped it will respawn at a random base size, usually very small. By mining a belt carefully, so you do not pop any rocks each down time the rocks will get bigger.

It has long been the practice of some miners to farm belts in this way. After several weeks they end up with these farmed belts having far larger rocks that an unfarmed belt. This is also the case in back water systems where there are no miners, the rocks are relatively untouched so are much bigger.

It`s a universal mechanic, you have started on the observation and data collection over time, you have noted it has a repeatable pattern so you continue to observe until the mechanic is revealed.

Most intelligent/educated miners knew it after 1 week of the new mechanic being introduced and have used it to their commercial advantage. It pays to have lots of uninformed miners out there (who are acting just like bots when all is said and done) as they waste cycles and self harm their potential returns which keeps prices for competent miners higher.

When you get an understanding, keep it to your self, it is so easy to work out that those who don-¦t, don-¦t really deserve to know.

Rocks only have 3 sizes: Small, Medium, and Large. That is why there is a 3 day cycle.

In hi sec belts that are heavily mined, I've noticed ALOT of higher-grade ore, e.g. concentrated veldspar, dense veldspar.

Out in low sec, 90% of ore is plain vanilla ore. e.g. veldspar.

If asteroids respawn exactly the same, why is low sec ore so crap?