Newcomer / Intro Vanishing Asteroid Belts

[Newt Loranas]

I got 25k or so credits together from "helping" the feds out (basically I let them do all the work and then sniped the kill once the hull was down to 10% or so ) so I thought I'd have a go at this mining lark.

I took my Sidewinder to the outfitters and traded the loaned basis scanner for a refinery, replaced one pulse laser with a mining laser and replaced the shield generator with an extra 2 slots for my cargo bay.

Trundled off to the asteroid belts and after a few minutes came home with 20k worth of gold.

So, now I thought I want to find a better belt. I've been to 2 different systems now where the cartography data said there were rich metal asteroid belts. But when I get there the belts are nowhere to be found. They're not showing up on the local navigation lists.

I do see lots of "check point" and "seeking goods" - I visited a "seeking goods" and got interdicted and had to run away very fast lol.. but that's not for this post.

Can asteroid fields just vanish? or is it something I've done to my ship that means I can't navigate to them any more? ( I wasn't using the basic scanner anyway but does it have some passive abilities? )

 

[Rhonda]

If you found gold after a few minutes it seems you already had a good belt. Generally you want to look for planetary rings instead of asteroid cluster, roids are packed dense and you can easily hop from one to another. Rings (and cluster) should be "pristine metallic" otherwise the composition of your roids is quite meager and it takes ages to refine enough chunks to a ton of ingots.

To your question: if you haven't scanned a system yet, you might not have found all celestial objects or asteroid cluster. If it's a pre-descovered system all objects should be listed in your left hand pannel NavTab.

Also have a look at Obsidian Ant's Mining Guide: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=109990

 

[Newt Loranas]

It was a pre-discovered system and I bought the cartography data from the universal cartographics. But when I got there, there were no asteroid clusters listed in the NavTab.

 

[azdour]

How about rings around any of the planets rather than the usual cluster belts?

 

[willowfan]

If you do decide to investigate planetary rings for mining, drop into them at anywhere other than a Resource Extraction Site (RES), which will be crawling with pirates and other undesirables.

 

[azdour]

If you do decide to investigate planetary rings for mining, drop into them at anywhere other than a Resource Extraction Site (RES), which will be crawling with pirates and other undesirables.

I've also been told to go to the ring nearest the planet as the heaviest content gets drawn to the main body - not sure if this is actually true or not.

 

[willowfan]

It should be, as gravity should attract the heavier elements, plus at the same time centrifugal force of the planet's spin should throw the lighter elements outwards towards the rim.

 

[Surly_Badger]

I've also been told to go to the ring nearest the planet as the heaviest content gets drawn to the main body - not sure if this is actually true or not.

Yes, you want the innermost ring. It doesn't appear that the metal density changes within the inner ring (inner inner ring versus outer inner ring) but it's definitely modelled that the innermost ring is where the heavy metals are.

To avoid pirates I just aim myself at a spot on the inner inner ring, on the sunward side of the target, then let my safety stop keep my from turning into a squirt of plasma. That way I am not near the resource extraction sites and all the spawning pirates. I mine in peace with Mozart's requiem playing, usually.

Atins 2's A ring is sweet and full of delicious metal like gold, silver, platinum, and palladium.

 

[Newt Loranas]

I only started last night and so I barely know a handful of systems and still very much getting to grips with the game - I still couldn't find my missing asteroid belts but I went back to my starting system LHS 3447 and found - almost straight away - another few asteroids containing palladium, but more importantly the secondary resource was platinum at a higher % than the palladium.

Question - once a roid is mined out, will it "refill" over time?

 

[Surly_Badger]

Question - once a roid is mined out, will it "refill" over time?

I don't think so. I believe they spawn and despawn and whenever you sample one it re-rolls its composition. That's how it seems to work for me. I've tried (out of curiousity) zapping the same rock a couple times over the course of 2 hours and it appeared to remain depleted.

If you get inside a big planetary ring it's hard not to get lost among all the rocks full of delicious good stuff to mine.

If you can do 12ly jumps Atins is 169ly (20 jumps) from LHS 3447.

There used to be a thread on reddit where someone posted a list of places with pristine metallic rings. Lucky me, I saved a copy as a PDF because it got taken down. PM me if you want me to upload it someplace for you.

 

[CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE]

Can asteroid fields just vanish? or is it something I've done to my ship that means I can't navigate to them any more? ( I wasn't using the basic scanner anyway but does it have some passive abilities? )

No they can't just vanish. If it's on the system map but not listed as a navigation point then the data is wrong and needs a ticket so that FD can correct it. I have seen this too.

 

[the100thmonkey]

I think it's because you took off the basic discovery scanner.

For instance, if I jump into a system I haven't explored with no BDS, I can't even see the system star on the scanner, even though it's right in front of me.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

-- Deleted --

 

[Newt Loranas]

Be aware the purchasable exploration data is often.... well... incomplete at best.
Universal Cartographics is acting like they keep having bad server crashes. Often enough their data isn't worth buying even for 50Cr.
They're basically geared at allowing Traders to add the most rudimental Data they need to have these Systems show up in their Trading lists and permit the purchase of Trade data. Sometimes not even that works.

So when you see a System with a highly incomplete System Map and don't see Resource Belt Clusters in your NAV panel when being in them - you'll need a Discovery Scanner and locate them yourself.
Depending on the type of Scanner you can afford - you'll likely not to find i.e. B-Belt clusters (those are often scattered far outside the 500Ls all around the the sun - well outside of your Basic Scanner Range - you'll certainly find some popping around ever 500Ls, but likely to miss many).
A-Belt clusters (right next to the sun) are AFAIK always no more than ~5-7Ls away from the sun - a single pop with a Basic Scanner should easily reveal them all.

That's really useful thank you.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Be aware the purchasable exploration data is often.... well... incomplete at best.
Universal Cartographics is acting like they keep having bad server crashes. Often enough their data isn't worth buying even for 50Cr.
They're basically geared at allowing Traders to add the most rudimental Data they need to have these Systems show up in their Trading lists and permit the purchase of Trade data. Sometimes not even that works.

So when you see a System with a highly incomplete System Map and don't see Resource Belt Clusters in your NAV panel when being in them - you'll need a Discovery Scanner and locate them yourself.
Depending on the type of Scanner you can afford - you'll likely not to find i.e. B-Belt clusters (those are often scattered far outside the 500Ls all around the the sun - well outside of your Basic Scanner Range - you'll certainly find some popping around ever 500Ls, but likely to miss many).
A-Belt clusters (right next to the sun) are AFAIK always no more than ~5-7Ls away from the sun - a single pop with a Basic Scanner should easily reveal them all.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to FalconFly again.

Humph. This will have to do instead.

 

[Surly_Badger]

Universal Cartographics is acting like they keep having bad server crashes. Often enough their data isn't worth buying even for 50Cr.

A little bird told me that Universal Cartographic's database got hacked. It was a pretty sophisticated attack using a piece of bioengineered malware that stuck to the sole of one of the data center workers' shoes, then assembled into a software penetrator when tracked inside. The hackers were able to copy a few petabytes of the data onto a USB stick an employee was using, then they mugged the guy when he was heading home that night. Killed the poor sod and made it look like street crime. On the way out, the malware crashed the servers hard, and the UC team restored their data from backups. But it's no surprise the data's a bit dodgy sometimes!

I sure woulda loved to get my mitts on that USB stick. All that trade data! OMG!