If you blast an asteroid without using a limpet, does it accurately give you what's inside the roid? How many times do you need to crack some rocks off it? I've been checking content this way so I can use a prospecting limpet once I've found a mineral I want to mine and get more minerals from the roid. Also, I've found a problem with deploying limpets. If I have a collector limpet outside and one dies, I go to replace that limpet. It closes the cargo door and the other limpet that's still alive dies. Is there some kind of workaround? I mash the open cargo door key and sometimes I get it open in time before the limpet crashes into the cargo door. Thanks for your help!
Checking asteroid mineral content without using a prospecting limpet
- Thread starter asquirrel
- Start date
I found that if you laser blast an asteriod, the content would be much lesser [depleted sooner] than you would if you begins with a limpet. However, I be interested to know if blast first, then limpet, will increase it's content.
It makes no sense to blast first if you still have limpets. Yes the amount of material you can obtain will go up once you fire off a limpet, however that first blast you put into the rock before firing the limpet, shaves off a LOT of material from the asteroid. Limpets are cheap. Carry lots. Don't hose yourself by trying to cheap out on the use of prospector limpets and end up hurting your harvest. When I go out mining in my Type 10, I usually fill my 256 ton cargo hold with a MINIMUM of around 220-240 limpets. Like I said....they are CHEAP.
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As others have said, manual prospecting is a bad idea, but let’s look at the numbers.
If you have found an asteroid with a high percentage content then it is very likely that a fragment spawned by it will contain the target mineral. However, the way things work, an A-rated prospector limpet multiplies the current number of available fragments by 3.5. This means that for every fragment you chip off before prospecting, you lose 2.5 compared to what you would get if you prospected first. Since the average number of fragments after prospecting (outside res sites) is 35, this is a loss of about 7% of the yield per fragment you extract before you prospect.
Since bringing enough limpets really should not be an issue, this is a completely avoidable loss.
Is the PWS fixed yet or are u working around it like this?
This. The ‘roid can contain one to four different minerals including the one(s) you are looking for. A chunk may have two of the four. What about the other two? Blind firing at an asteroid can also release element chunks (Iron, Copper etc) which tells you nothing about the mineral content. One prospector limpet (A rate for longest life) will immediately tell all and maximise yield. Blind fire as a last resort...
Also when you're mining you'll get plenty of Iron and Nickel (if you're not in an Ice Belt) so you can syn. them on the fly if you're short. 10/10 Fe/Ni
You dont use the PWS for Painite laser mining, and no its still being weird.
To be fair, any asteroid that you will want to mine will have a high percentage of the target material. This means that that target material will most likely be in the large majority of the fragments. The loss is more or less restricted to that described in my analysis in post #4.
Really? Obviously core deposits are either there or not at all. With laser mining the last Painite hotspot I mined showed 'roids with Painite deposits of between 4 and 31%. Often mixed with highish percentages of stuff I'm not chasing. Tend not to bother if the target deposits are below 20%... Ymmv...
Personally, I still use the "fire first see what comes out" technique to save limpets in a small or even medium sized ship. Obviously, if you only see a material (rather than refinable ore) on the first blast, fire again, then decide if it's worth increasing the haul with a prospector attached to the 'roid.
You can occasionally miss some small quantities of valuable content doing it this way, but I think it's infrequent and worth losing to save time and limpets.
You can occasionally miss some small quantities of valuable content doing it this way, but I think it's infrequent and worth losing to save time and limpets.
My situation right now is that I'm flying an asp explorer and I don't have much room for limpets (64 I think). I usually end up blowing though all my limpets if I don't test laser the roid first before I drop a prospecting limpet into it. It saves me from going back to the dock, buying more limpets and risk getting interdicted either to or from the mining spot usually if I test mine. Thanks everyone for your replies. My 2nd post on here and I'm glad everyone has been so helpful!
I advocate shoot and see.
Much faster than probing too, only probe if the rock is showing promise.
Much faster than probing too, only probe if the rock is showing promise.
As for limpets going bang - different ships react differently to limpet release. I think down to location of the cargo door and shape of the underside of the ship. It’s not a good idea to move down during release or be moving at high speed (150+) 
. Also, when collecting are you aware if you have a chunk targeted on release the limpet will collect and deliver and then auto destruct? With no target selected, a newly released collector limpet will retrieve available chunks or wait patiently near the cargo door for a new chunk to appear. The AspX is a good mining ship and I don’t recall it being harsh on its limpets...
. Also, when collecting are you aware if you have a chunk targeted on release the limpet will collect and deliver and then auto destruct? With no target selected, a newly released collector limpet will retrieve available chunks or wait patiently near the cargo door for a new chunk to appear. The AspX is a good mining ship and I don’t recall it being harsh on its limpets...
As for limpets going bang - different ships react differently to limpet release. I think down to location of the cargo door and shape of the underside of the ship. It’s not a good idea to move down during release or be moving at high speed (150+)
Yes. The T10 suuuuuucks for this. What’s otherwise a terrific miner is hamstrung by having to come to a complete stop before launching prospectors. Even at 30, they go ka-bang, tumble, die.
I just wished they would've halved the yield.
A lot of times I don't have time and to mine and mine and not come away with the anything but hours spent is disheartening.
It really kills the game for me. Who wants to return to that? So now it's back to laser mining which trivializes the reason it was upgraded in the first place. And why is there only a certain asteroid. All asteroids should have interaction and more separation types.
Splitting cores livens up the mining aspect but now frontier has came and kicked the sand castle over and kept walking...no one likes a bully!
A lot of times I don't have time and to mine and mine and not come away with the anything but hours spent is disheartening.
It really kills the game for me. Who wants to return to that? So now it's back to laser mining which trivializes the reason it was upgraded in the first place. And why is there only a certain asteroid. All asteroids should have interaction and more separation types.
Splitting cores livens up the mining aspect but now frontier has came and kicked the sand castle over and kept walking...no one likes a bully!
64 limpets should be plenty for rng to mostly cancel out. With a good build and technique you really should not be limpet starved. Can you link your build?
I feel your pain. I have a new mining Corvette which obviously went to the same limpet programming school... I also thought of trying a T10 when I went shopping!
I had problems with my Type 10 at first but I have gotten quite used to it. As long as I do not move faster than 26 meters per second, the limpets fire off perfectly fine. Where I usually mine, the density of the asteroids is such that moving significantly faster results in me overshooting rocks anyways. Slow and steady wins the race.
