Newcomer / Intro best in "inexpensive" ship for mining

heman86

H
hi,

after having played for 120h and only done bounty hunting i want to go for a little bit of mining because i need stuff for the engineers.
i currently have a cobra 3, eagle and vulture and i dont think any of these ships are good for mining.
what good value ships would you recommend for solely mining? i would also be nice if i could put a "moonbuggy" in it if thats possible.
 
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Tyres O'Flaherty

Tyres O'Flaherty
Depends what sort of mining you're planning on. For lasering painite for the engineer (Selene Jean), you could get away with a lot of ships - your Cobra would be fine. If you are going after core mining, you might need more space for your mining tools and hardpoints so my preference would be a Krait 2 or Python. However, that all depends on your cashflow.
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
Depends on what you want to mine (cores or laser) and how long you want to go at it per session. My current core mining ship is a DBX, which will usually get me three cores in a one hour session, worth ~60 MCr. Upside of the DBX is the insane total range, which means I can go without a scoop and still always reach a high sell station (if there is one available at all in Colonia).
I'm playing with the outfit for a Keelback, but during the last days I was more occupied with my explorer account, making a little more headway towards BP (and collecting mats on the way).
 

heman86

H
thanks. a python is way out of my range sadly. :(
what the difference between laser or core? core is blowing up asteroids?
should i also put guns on the ship or just mining stuff?
 

aRJay

aRJay
heman86 said:
thanks. a python is way out of my range sadly. :(
what the difference between laser or core? core is blowing up asteroids?
should i also put guns on the ship or just mining stuff?
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Unless you go for a ship with lots of hard points weapons are a bit of a waste of space, with proper care and attention you shouldn't have troubles with NPCs in the ring so the only risk would be a random interdiction.

Note I don't fly in Open because I don't want to, but your risk from players should be minimal outside of the popular systems.
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
Ok, now I'm at the PC where I have my core mining builds stored.
This is a prospective (semi-finished) build for a Cobra. Not really worth going into full detail or juggling around with the two unused internal slots - one run in that, and you'll be able to afford either of the two others as an upgrade.
This is my current core miner in Colonia - the DBX. Built, outfitted and engineered in Colonia with what I had available at the time - therefore only a C grade pulse wave analyzer and not enough power to use anything larger unless I stint somewhere else. The total cargo (2*16 tons + 4 tons + 6 tons in the refinery) is enough for >60 MCr. when shipping Void Opals into a high sell station, and with >300 ly operational range, every station in Colonia is in range.
And finally, a theorycrafted Keelback - slightly cheaper than the DBX (mainly due to the FSD), much higher cargo capacity - but only half the range.
Depending on where you want to mine (and what kind of Engineering access you have), you might want to swap one of the internals (in either ship) for a fuel scoop, which on the other hand will definitely hurt your cargo capacity, and therefore your profits.
 

heman86

H
thanks for all the help.
i will go with my cobra 3 and go for core mining.
Ashnak said:
Ok, now I'm at the PC where I have my core mining builds stored.
This is a prospective (semi-finished) build for a Cobra. Not really worth going into full detail or juggling around with the two unused internal slots - one run in that, and you'll be able to afford either of the two others as an upgrade.
This is my current core miner in Colonia - the DBX. Built, outfitted and engineered in Colonia with what I had available at the time - therefore only a C grade pulse wave analyzer and not enough power to use anything larger unless I stint somewhere else. The total cargo (2*16 tons + 4 tons + 6 tons in the refinery) is enough for >60 MCr. when shipping Void Opals into a high sell station, and with >300 ly operational range, every station in Colonia is in range.
And finally, a theorycrafted Keelback - slightly cheaper than the DBX (mainly due to the FSD), much higher cargo capacity - but only half the range.
Depending on where you want to mine (and what kind of Engineering access you have), you might want to swap one of the internals (in either ship) for a fuel scoop, which on the other hand will definitely hurt your cargo capacity, and therefore your profits.
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i was going to do something similar built for the cobra except for a shield generator i will go with 2x 4e cargo racks and without the mining laser and the point defence.

edit: maybe i will also add the mining laser and the point defence because i have the free slots.
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
I would advise against leaving out the shield generator - not because of the NPCs, but because of the rocks and the blastwave. If you want to take two cargo racks, you can juggle around the smaller internals; essentially swap the size 3 collector controller for two size 1 controllers in the smaller slots, and stuff the second cargo rack in the now empty size 4 slot.
The mining laser was just to fill up the empty HP.
 

SiriusStrider

SiriusStrider
For starting off, I used this Cobra III. Her first run should make you enough to get an AspX for Painite mining. If you are not in Open, a shield generator is not needed. The blast wave from an exploding core is less than a km, and these small ships are easily fast enough to get out range. Your hull is robust enough to endure a few small bumps.
 

heman86

H
Ashnak said:
I would advise against leaving out the shield generator - not because of the NPCs, but because of the rocks and the blastwave. If you want to take two cargo racks, you can juggle around the smaller internals; essentially swap the size 3 collector controller for two size 1 controllers in the smaller slots, and stuff the second cargo rack in the now empty size 4 slot.
The mining laser was just to fill up the empty HP.
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i will have to think about it.
how many collector and prospector limpets do you take on a mining tour when you have one 16x cargo rack?? 4+4?
 

KRU BARANKI

KRU BARANKI
Mining in a Cobra MkIII to earn for Asp Explorer, mine in AspX to earn for a T-9, mine in T-9 to get T-10.
I like mining in T9/10, it's a challenge and not so easy like in small ships, especially due to medium mining lasers positioned in a middle of large hull. Approaching rocks to 100-200 meters from cockpit and mining those turning with irregular shapes, that's a challenge :).

For small cargo racks a single prospector and max double collectors would be enough.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Its all about the number of internals. The CM4 is the best small ship for mining. But newbies might not have access to that.

Beyond that, the Federal Dropship is good, but that's locked behing a (relatively small) rank grind.
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
heman86 said:
how many collector and prospector limpets do you take on a mining tour when you have one 16x cargo rack?? 4+4?
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Limpets are cheap - and the limpet type is determined by the limpet controller, the limpets themselves are useable with any controller. With a small ship, there's not much to lose if you just fill her up with limpets - 16 in that case. You can always drop a few limpets, worth 100 Ct./ton, in order to fill up with mined materials for 500 k...1.6 MCr./ton. Once you get over ~200 tons of cargo space, you can think about optimizing your limpet load. But by that time, you'll have developed a feeling for it by yourself.
In my DBX (42 tons total capacity), I usually bring ~20 limpets. But I also carry materials to synthesize a few. In the best world, I would need 9 limpets - 3 prospectors to check out the three core asteroids I need to fill my hold (which of course would all be Void Opals) and 3x2 collectors to pick up the stuff. In the real game world, not all core asteroids are VOs, I may fire off a prospector onto what isn't a core at all, and I will lose collectors to collisions with asteroid chunks or trying to collect ore fragments that have materialized inside an asteroid chunk. I usually dump ~5 limpets at the end of mining trip.
 

NorthernDevo

NorthernDevo
heman86 said:
hi,

after having played for 120h and only done bounty hunting i want to go for a little bit of mining because i need stuff for the engineers.
i currently have a cobra 3, eagle and vulture and i dont think any of these ships are good for mining.
what good value ships would you recommend for solely mining? i would also be nice if i could put a "moonbuggy" in it if thats possible.
Click to expand...
For my vote, I'd say you can't go wrong with the Keelback for mining - both laser and core.
The Keelback is chunky, solid and dependable; she has the slots to allow VO mining. She'll fit a decent scoop to fly to a high-selling station, and she looks like a miner: plain, no frills, construction-grade design.
The Keelback is a joy to fly in the rings - while slow she is responsive, has superb visibility and is relatively compact. She's cheap at about 3 mil - say 5 for a decent mining build. At 65 tons capacity she can load up on painite or VO's in a reasonable time frame then jog to the high-selling systems in time for tea. She is easily manoeuverable enough to avoid any interdiction on the way. Overall, the Keelback is a cheap, cheerful and quite dependable miner; though I nowadays mine strictly with a Corvette, I still have my Keelback for a little relaxation.

Cheers!
 
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