salt-e-mike reacts:
The changes to mining in Star Citizen 3.19 have been met with varying opinions from players. Some believe that the Prospector has been made obsolete while others think it is in a better place than ever before. This review discusses the various changes made to mining in 3.19, including an update to the mining mode UI, the addition of a new minable, the distributions of minables, a rebalance of mining equipment, a rebalance of sale prices of minerals, the addition of a stability bonus for the Mole when multiple lasers are mining the same minable, and the introduction of some rare minerals appearing only in certain locations.
The main goal of the changes was to encourage multi-crew gameplay, and to some extent this has been achieved. Although Prospectors will not be able to successfully mine every minable, they are still very useful when used with a Mole and even when used solo. The rebalance of the sale prices of minerals also had some effect on the Continuum meta. However, due to the resource pool being too small, refineries are still overloaded and a more effective solution needs to be implemented.
Lastly, mining bags are now able to be detached, with the bags for the Mole being slightly bigger than those for the Prospector. This creates an interesting opportunity for cargo ship runs, however, it is still a bit impractical due to a lack of designated drop-off points for the bags and the bags being unable to be purchased in stores. Nevertheless, all in all it appears that these changes have generally been well received by the community and are an improvement overall.