There is zero point to Strip Mining/Artifact Hunter right now. They could be so much better.

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

Excavators don't seem to reward you with anything even though they should 100% give cryotic.  The rotation rewards are mods you'll need once and endo that you get easier from arbitration.  Oh, and about 1,000 amber stars.  I ran for about an hour with a pub squad and we only got 200 mother tokens, which isn't even a day's worth of standing for me.  The XP is even trash.  There is literally no reason for this bounty to exist aside from the running it for mods you'll need once, and they aren't even "must have" mods.  It provides nothing important you can't get faster elsewhere.  The rewards for the endless bounties are completely pointless.

You could let the excavators give cryotic, increase token gain and move the mods to a standing purchase, and then make most of the rewards from this be Deimos resources (like scintillant I still only have 2 of.) and evergreens like kuva and endo and it would suddenly turn into a great farm.  As it stands, it's pretty garbage for trying to gain anything, which is a shame because it's actually pretty fun.  Fun is always welcome, but in a game everyone is quick to remind me is about grinding, fun without progress feels pretty hollow.

As an added bonus to letting them drop the standard amount of cryotic, it would be a faster cryotic farm because you're running 2-3 extractors at a time.  Given the insane cost of Sibear, the Freezing Step Ephemera, a few frames and now feeding the Helminth, a better cryotic farm would be a great move.  Letting them drop cryotic and changing rotation rewards to resources and evergreen items turns it from a content island no one visits once they're done (unless they have to for NW or something.) into a popular farm.  We have so few nodes that are reliably populated.  It would be nice to have another that's also something that helps decrease grind which you said you'd do in the past and seem to have gone back on.

[xombob89]

Agree on most parts. I wanted to do this mode myself as well but after a while felt like theres no point and left. Endless modes like this should have way more endo/credits/kuva etc rewards than mods imo, because after you get one mod of each type its just gonna be useless trash after that unless its a rare one thats worth some plat. And seems like most people have a good supply of ayatan stars already so Id rather see the statues as reward instead of those stars. Or a mix of both so you actually have something to use those millions of stars on. 

[Rookie808]

Yeah they are kinda useless. Kind of wish we got Demios mining resources from it. 

[matazalka]

Nice to know that these mods can really drop. Never got one even after 45min runs. But yeah, so far no reason to do it ever again.

[VarrickDTT]

Artifact Hunter might not be so bad if that miserable Latrox Une sample collection bounty wasn't part of the rotation, although I guess then it would probably deemed too fast a way of getting Mother tokens unless it got slowed down by another time sink bounty like area defence.

I also find it quite grating how the endless rotation needs to include the prattling dialogue from NPCs in every single stage - it's bad enough hearing Latrox Une drone on about how much he hates Deimos for a full minute before his slow ass samples can start dropping in the normal bounties, let alone having it on spin cycle every 5-10 minutes.