You are supposed to do it with scout ships, not COM ships. That is probably the main reason why the deposit value is only 3.8mil.
You haven't seen the cargo bay on this hybrid of mine. I designed this thing quite a while back for the purpose of mining and being able to defend my mines. I was just using it for COMs before cause it was a better way to make money and could handle it. This one has my best mines and harvesters too. Here is the facts about this crappy mission.
1. Picked up the mission near 4,0.
2. Had to pay Solars just to get the information I needed from the mission.
3. Had to travel all the way to 1,-3.
4. Had to search system after system to find exactly the right planet.
5. Then after all that effort I am forced to mine something with a crap reward anyways.
When you calculate fuel cost and time spent, COMs are just a lot better. Even the nest don't come off looking too bad compared to these piece of crap missions. In order for this mission to even be almost worth it, at the very least it needs too be made so that the quadrant we pick the nest up from is where we can find the stuff. It shouldn't require us to jump so many quadrants away. Also story wise it makes no sense. The npcs claims to have been attacked by pirates when they were around that planet and to have escaped an in an escape pod. Ok now assuming these somehow have a wormhole gen, they still wouldn't end up that far away.
I agree with the facts but SirEmi once mentioned that the new mission can't really be compared to COMs because of the bigger investment in COM ships vs mining ships and mining modules. Makes sense to me because the latest COM ship that I made cost
a billion solars (400mil for the modules and 600mil for the ship license). Not to mention the huge manufacturing hours and research points spent on the modules. I wouldn't want a cheap mining ship or cheap mining modules earning more than my COM ship. LOL This new mission is best for newbies, not for top ranked players.
As for the huge jump, it might be because of the future Blind Jump feature where ships can jump between 50-150 LY in any random direction. Their pilot just panicked and pressed the wrong button. LOL I do agree that the planet shouldn't be that far though.