when scooting through an asteroid field, going rather fast, one hits b to target an asteroid ahead, the distance shrinks, 1k, 700m, 500m, 300m, and no reading. 150m, 30m, and you fly by, still no reading. 50m, 150m, 300m, 500m, still no reading. and now you are out of range, having passed by the entire asteroid, the whole time targeted, and yet never receiving a reading.

is the scanner designed to be so slow sometimes, or is this a bug?

I have experienced this as well in my prospecting missions. Does not always happen, seems to be random, as I've tried all different types of approaches, such as high speed, slow speed, stopping completely.

now that you mention it seems to happen more often in crowded asteroid fields where lots are close together. but maybe thats my imagination playing tricks on me.

The scanner cycles every five seconds. If you are in range at the time interval, it displays the info. If not... you figure it out.

Only workaround is to slow down or switch targets momentarily.

The scanner scans once every 5 seconds after you target an asteroid. If you're moving fast, 5 seconds is a long time.
Try selecting the asteroid when you are already less than 500m from it (it'll take a bit of practice to determine that when you don't have it selected) and then it will scan the asteroid immediately.

You guys should make it so that "firing" the scanner is the only way to scan a roid. I prefered that to our new insta-scanner.

Rogue's got a point. If the scanner is gonna be the way it currently is now, it might as well be a builtin feature or in a totally separate type of slot so as not to waste space.

Personally, I see the scanner as having two nearly identical functions, the use of one automatically makes the use of the other pretty much useless. It has an automatic update that apparently occurs every 5 seconds, but it also has a manual scan feature that other than using power, is pretty much useless because if you're moving at reasonable speeds, the scanner will have picked up the asteroid anyway. The manual scan with the cool green probe has no range advantage over the automatic scanner, so I never use it other than to entertain myself.

If there's going to be both an automatic and manual function, the manual function has to have some sort of advantage like increased range or something. Otherwise I'd advocate removing the automatic scan completely and forcing players to have to hit the scan button for each asteroid (which automatically makes mining more dangerous because it alerts other players - ie. "claimjumpers" - to your location)

Crippled, I really like that idea.

I agree as well, Crippled... {bump}