Bluespace Smelting Module

[LNGLY]

I've played mining a lot and my findings on the optimal ways to mine don't ever involve ripleys, which are supposed to be the ultimate mining tool. The best mining strategies right now all involve hand-mining with kinetic accelerators. The main reason is that it takes a long time for ripleys to transport ore to the station since they are so slow in pressurized areas. They are also significantly slower at shortcutting their way to valuable ores.

Add a bluespace smelting module that can smelt ore onboard the ripley and teleport it to any teleport beacon. This would make ripleys actually good for mining.

[Takeguru]

Ripleys are good for bulk mining.

If for some reason you need to mine more than 200 metal sheets or something I'd take a Ripley over doing it by hand

[Davidchan]

Ripleys are not Optimal, but they are pretty decent in the early game for mining when RnD isn't being done for some dumb reason.

They do good bulk mining, clearing out iron ore patches, and can hold a lot, more still if you swap out the scanner for an energy relay.

But, you'll never out do a plasma cutter without a diamond drill, and anyone with a jackhammer will probably speed through the small crap ahead of you. Ripleys just need drills that do more than a 1x3 hit at a time, being able to blast out 2x3 or 3x3 chunks would make them very useful, as well.