Finding mining material in hotspots (please help)

[Regent]

Greetings, Commanders! Please help )
I have not been mining for at least 3 or 4 years in ED. I am forced back into it by the need to quickly acquire merits in Powerplay. As far as I understood the guides and tutorials I need to mine and sell within the systems controlled by my power. I tried finding hotspots by using EDTools and EDMining but neither turned up any hotspots within my powers systems.
So I tried meritminer.cc, this one does show that there are hotspots within my powers systems, when I go there and scan the rings, the hotspots do show up, but when I go in those hotspots I do not find the material there. For example yesterday I hunted for platinum, went into 4 hotspots, scanned 100+ asteroids and did not find even ONE with platinum in it. I do not recall mining being so difficult. Am I doing something very wrong?

[Agony_Aunt]

They were definitely platinum hotspots? There again, even in platinum hotspots ive found tons of other high valued stuff as well.

If you're in the right type of hotspot though, you should be finding plenty.

I've been doing platinum hotspot mining for a couple of weeks and earning tons. It is combined with a RES though, which boosts the amounts. Mine around 20-25 km from the RES and normally you can avoid the pirates while getting loads of stuff.

[Jeebs]

Mining's not really my thing, so correct me if I'm wrong, but if I'm not mistaken hotspots only apply to core mining, no? If you're laser mining, I don't think the hotspots make a difference so much as the composition of the ring itself. Hotspots just mean that you'll find more crackable asteroids with platinum or whatever it is... or so I thought, anyways.

[XG99]

Platinum destinations have to be in METALLIC rings for laser mining. In Metal Rich it's core only.

And you don't need a hotspot at all for laser mining. They're just for cores.

[veracsthane]

the problem is you need it. i was looking for ore in an icy spot and after the 10th system i washed my hands of the misson. it would have been easier to just mine randomly then try and find one.