I've always found it odd that basically the only things worth mining are the precious minerals. We actively bring in hundreds of thousands of tons of jewels, while leaving all the metals needed for industry behind.
The Trailblazer Update has really shown how mining is just not a viable way to get minerals in bulk. IN THEORY, one could mine Haematite and convert that to Steel at a 2:1 ratio, and use that to construct a station - but in practice, you're looking at maybe 400 tons of Haematite per hour, which translates to 200 Steel per hour, which means instead of getting ~10 loads of Steel per hour by trading, you're getting 0.25.
Mining just isn't fast enough.
There are two basic problems with mining these cheap minerals.
To solve this, I've got a few suggestions for how mining could be refined(heh).
It's long past time for this. We shouldn't be able to make mining lasers outright better, but we should be able to specialize them.
The goal here is not that mining should be outright FASTER than trade, merely that it should at least be in the same ballpark, so that if you need to make a few jumps to get a commodity, it might be worth considering. While at the same time, expanding opportunities for mining across the board.
The next problem is cargo capacity. It doesn't matter if you can even mine cheap minerals INSTANTLY, if you have to run back and forth to the station constantly. Not to mention, it's kinda odd to think about showing up and mining for 60 seconds before leaving.
Ore is not very dense in minerals. What is considered high grade gold ore irl, for instance, is something like 20 grams per ton - or something like 1 ton per 30000 tons of ore.
What if refineries could significantly condense minerals down from even their initial compression rate? You could transform 2 tons of Bauxite into 1 ton of Refined Bauxite, and 2 tons of Refined Bauxite into 1 tone of Purified Bauxite, and even 2 tons of Purified Bauxite into 1 ton of Enriched Bauxite. This could behave exactly like 8 tons of Bauxite, only it would take 1/8th the space. The assumption would be that was is described as 'gold' or whatever is actually just the raw ore that still needs to be refined.
If this raises questions about odd tonnages, consider that a single Imperial Slave weighs 1 ton, as well. Presumably, a significant amount of the mass is dedicated to the cargo canister, not the contents. Basically, don't worry about it.
Now, this would mean that you'd be spending a lot more time doubly-refining things, which would be made even worse by the dramatically increased tonnages introduced with the new engineering. To compensate for this, we would introduce new Refineries, from grades 5 to 8. These would, of course, take up more and more cargo space, so you'd have to decide how big of a refinery you wanted to carry. You might need to sacrifice some speed for the sake of refining.
But this, in turn, opens the door to WING mining! You could have one player with a class 8 refinery, who has their limpets set to collect the grade 1 refined minerals. Other players in the wing would collect fragments and refine them to the first level, then eject them to be collected by the Refiner's limpets. They would then refine them to Grade 2 or Grade 3, and eject them for the others to re-collect, or even eject them to a dedicated hauler who would focus purely on hauling from the ring directly to the construction site!
Because you could compress things up to 8x, this means a hauler could potentially haul as much as EIGHT traders, potentially justifying some really enjoyable wing mining action.
The net result of this would be that mining for bulk minerals could be, in some cases, more effective than hauling! If there is an adjacent station where minerals could be purchased it'd be better to buy them and haul them, but the increased hauling efficiency via concentrated minerals, combined with the new mining laser engineering, could make this a viable way to do bulk construction in some cases!
The Trailblazer Update has really shown how mining is just not a viable way to get minerals in bulk. IN THEORY, one could mine Haematite and convert that to Steel at a 2:1 ratio, and use that to construct a station - but in practice, you're looking at maybe 400 tons of Haematite per hour, which translates to 200 Steel per hour, which means instead of getting ~10 loads of Steel per hour by trading, you're getting 0.25.
Mining just isn't fast enough.
There are two basic problems with mining these cheap minerals.
- You mine too slow. Why mine 300t/hour when you can buy 10000t/hour?
- You can't carry enough. Even if you COULD mine 10000t/hour, you'd end up spending 9/10ths of your time just hauling it back!
To solve this, I've got a few suggestions for how mining could be refined(heh).
1: Add Mining Laser Engineering
It's long past time for this. We shouldn't be able to make mining lasers outright better, but we should be able to specialize them.
- Bulk Mining Engineering - Increase the tonnage per fragment of cheap minerals(under 20k/ton) by up to 10x.
- Tritium Mining - Increases tonnage of Tritium by up to 5x
The goal here is not that mining should be outright FASTER than trade, merely that it should at least be in the same ballpark, so that if you need to make a few jumps to get a commodity, it might be worth considering. While at the same time, expanding opportunities for mining across the board.
2: Enhanced Refineries
The next problem is cargo capacity. It doesn't matter if you can even mine cheap minerals INSTANTLY, if you have to run back and forth to the station constantly. Not to mention, it's kinda odd to think about showing up and mining for 60 seconds before leaving.
Ore is not very dense in minerals. What is considered high grade gold ore irl, for instance, is something like 20 grams per ton - or something like 1 ton per 30000 tons of ore.
What if refineries could significantly condense minerals down from even their initial compression rate? You could transform 2 tons of Bauxite into 1 ton of Refined Bauxite, and 2 tons of Refined Bauxite into 1 tone of Purified Bauxite, and even 2 tons of Purified Bauxite into 1 ton of Enriched Bauxite. This could behave exactly like 8 tons of Bauxite, only it would take 1/8th the space. The assumption would be that was is described as 'gold' or whatever is actually just the raw ore that still needs to be refined.
If this raises questions about odd tonnages, consider that a single Imperial Slave weighs 1 ton, as well. Presumably, a significant amount of the mass is dedicated to the cargo canister, not the contents. Basically, don't worry about it.
Wing Mining
Now, this would mean that you'd be spending a lot more time doubly-refining things, which would be made even worse by the dramatically increased tonnages introduced with the new engineering. To compensate for this, we would introduce new Refineries, from grades 5 to 8. These would, of course, take up more and more cargo space, so you'd have to decide how big of a refinery you wanted to carry. You might need to sacrifice some speed for the sake of refining.
But this, in turn, opens the door to WING mining! You could have one player with a class 8 refinery, who has their limpets set to collect the grade 1 refined minerals. Other players in the wing would collect fragments and refine them to the first level, then eject them to be collected by the Refiner's limpets. They would then refine them to Grade 2 or Grade 3, and eject them for the others to re-collect, or even eject them to a dedicated hauler who would focus purely on hauling from the ring directly to the construction site!
Because you could compress things up to 8x, this means a hauler could potentially haul as much as EIGHT traders, potentially justifying some really enjoyable wing mining action.
