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No Mining Penalty

Removes the hidden yet crippling 50% mining penalty.

Resource probes are still required for you to see the density, but with this mod you only require one resource probe per sector to avoid the penalty.

Vanilla has a hidden mechanic which checks if your mining ships are within 40km of a resource probe owned by you and silently applies a 50% penalty to mining efficiency if they are not. Thus, players are unknowingly hamstrung by this mechanic as there is literally no way to learn it exists in-game.

This mechanic is particularly troubling because vanilla has no automatic method to deploy resource probes, so it's extremely tedious to avoid the penalty without mods. If you know the penalty exists, there is no indication if or when it is applied to your ships.

Even when using a mod like Satellite Service to automatically blanket the entire sector with probes, it is still possible to receive this penalty because the probes are deployed on one plane. Therefore, you would receive the penalty if the ship moves >40km above or below the probes. Covering the entire sector with probes also reduces performance and visually clutters the UI.

The mod KUDA AI Tweaks also provides a configuration option to remove this penalty. My mod functions as a standalone alternative but does not use his code.

Proof of the mechanic: developer confirmation on their official forum[forum.egosoft.com].
He refers to it as a bonus, but it is actually a penalty since the end result of the calculation is multiplied by 0.5.