Newcomer / Intro Cobra or Type-6 for mining?

[Eagle Eye]

Which one is more efficient / bring better income per hour?

Type-6 got more cargo so you can stay out longer but only have 2 C1 Mining Laser + No weapons (no idea how often NPC bug you while mining)

Cobra I can use twin C2 Mining Laser (2x the chunks?) Or single (around the same amount of chunks?), can put weapons in the remaining slots but smaller cargo hold.

 

[Surly_Badger]

I mine in my T-6 "Billerica Bessie" and she's perfect for it. Usually if you're mining, you're not going to want to be getting in lots of dogfights, so find a place that's not very busy and drop into the rings and belts away from the resource extraction points. My Bessie has good shields and drives so I can get away from almost anything that's chasing me, and I'm quick to leave if thugs show up. You can't be both a good miner and a good fighter; pick one.

Another option is a hauler with X-L cargo bays. You don't need a big frame-shift drive since you'll mostly be in-system, and you don't need much but a 4-6 bay refinery and a mining laser. So you can keep the insurance/replacement cost of your rig down and if you lose, well, that's just gonna teach you to be dodgier next time. I've been attacked maybe 10 times and nobody's ever done more than 50% damage to Bessie. That's why she looks a bit piebald; I stopped paying for new paintjobs on her.

Edit: multiple lasers don't help. Here's how to roll: blast off 3 chunks in a row and target the first one when it comes off. Then knock off two more. By the time you've popped off the 3rd the first will have mostly come to a stop and it's a lot easier to pick up.

A good mining spot is the innermost metallic ring of Atins 2. But don't tell anyone I told you that. What I usually do is set it as my destination (the "resource extraction point") then drive straight into the ring and hope my safety engine disengage safely disengages. Pirates and irritating people show up at the resource extraction spots. If your idea of mining is to drink coffee and listen to music and mine, like mine is, do your mining in your own spot. I like the sunny side of the ringed gas giants because it's hella loud when you find one of those great big rocks in the dark.

 

[Eagle Eye]

If you have done it in a cobra with a/twin C2 Laser before, do you miss the bigger chunks (as I understand it C2 produce up to twice the metal % per chunk vs. C1?)

 

[Surly_Badger]

If bigger lasers produce bigger chunks with more metal, then I've seriously been screwing up.

Right now I'm picking up the odd cash applying darwinian selection to wanted fliers, but next time I go mining I'll check.

My experience is that when you hit a mining spot you're likely to find 4 or 5 things, maybe 6, and at least one of them will be junk you won't mind venting. I run a 6 bin refiner and it's just fine. When I started out I had a one bin and with them you gotta go after whatever's most common. Do that until you can buy a 2 bin. Then maybe you can keep one bin for platinum and one bin for whatever's common, but you'll get really sick of venting stuff. Things don't get sweet until you've got 4 bins. I also make it a point to not bother with a chunk that's less than 15%, unless I'm bored or I need that little bit to finish off a ton. You're better off finding a good rock and clobbering it even if that means some flitting around, than spending an hour scooping 9% gold and then never getting enough to finish a ton. A typical rock will drop 8-9 chunks so if you're getting 5% platinum you're gonna need to find another platinum rock to finish the ton. Do you feel lucky?

Dunno about the C2 laser question. I just thought it knocked chunks off faster. Now, I am kicking myself for not measuring.

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Hey, if you've really got an anaconda, What are you asking us poor folks for advice for? Just go max out a T-6 and get walnut panelling for it, and go scrape rocks like the hoi polloi.

 

[Eagle Eye]

I got to a trading Anaconda so I can generate money at will with minimum time investment (as trading will get nerfed with time, best time to do it is now), now that I got a stash I am reequipping my mothball fleet. Type-6 and Cobra is pretty much equal on rare runs so I am equpping one for rares, the other for mining (rich guy can have fun with cheap ships too), but never did mining so I have no idea which ship fits best (So I consider myself newcomer on the profession so I post accordingly in newcomer forum)

On C2 mining lasers generate more % per chunks, that's what ppl mining in Asps said (meaning it's anecdotal), so just smtg I picked up while searching for info. Not gonna mine in my Asp, that one getting ressurected as a full blown explorer.

 

[Nebiroth]

I don't see how. A standard chunk is one ton, so if you get a two chunks that are 50% palladium, you get a ton of palladium in your cargo hold.

It migh tmake sense to have high class mining lasers produce better quality chunks - not bigger ones though.

 

[Space Time]

Cobra

Which one is more efficient / bring better income per hour?

Type-6 got more cargo so you can stay out longer but only have 2 C1 Mining Laser + No weapons (no idea how often NPC bug you while mining)

Cobra I can use twin C2 Mining Laser (2x the chunks?) Or single (around the same amount of chunks?), can put weapons in the remaining slots but smaller cargo hold.

I found that many of the asteroids would shoot off a chunk and that chunk would stay close to the tumbling asteroid's surface for a long time before I could grab it in deeper space. The Cobra was a fine craft for me to grab those chunks very close to the surface without any wait.

I'm not sure how easy that is in a Type-6, and I outfitted my Cobra back then with all top grade turrets to have immediate response to those "All I want is all you've got" NPCs.

Space Time

 

[Psen999]

the quality of mining laser just means it will blow off the chunks quicker, it has no effect on the percentage

 

[DiddleDum]

I've done mining in both. For me, the T6 was a bit bulky and sluggish, especially hovering close to a rock to scoop up the rocks. I also was purely defensive, so if someone came by, I was bugging out.

The Cobra was a fine fit - agile, and I could keep three hard points dedicated to weapons (the one L2 mining cannon can fire non-stop until the rock is drained). And no running at the sign of an incoming blip.

The best advice was given above - no parking at the extraction sites unless you're bounty hunting. Travel to a space between the extraction points. Smoothly slow down and descend into the rings. That drastically reduced the number of folks coming by to check me out - about one per hour.

I used a 7 hopper refinery, which seemed more than enough capacity. Very little venting.

 

[Raaya]

If you really want to mine, that means you have masochistic tendencies. So to fully enjoy the ride you should definitely give the sidewinder a try. Has much less cargo space, so you will suffer even more.

 

[DiddleDum]

If you really want to mine, that means you have masochistic tendencies. So to fully enjoy the ride you should definitely give the sidewinder a try. Has much less cargo space, so you will suffer even more.

+1 on that. And a Sidey it was the first time I tried it, with a single bin refinery. Grab rock, vent, grab rock, vent... I'm not entirely masochistic, but figured I'd give it a couple of days to become proficient at it, so that if the devs ever soup up the mining capabilities, I'll be ready to take advantage of it.

 

[Hythos]

Without knowing in advance, I thought 'what the hell', and equipped two class1 mining LASERs. Average "chunks" are anywhere from 15 to 35%; It does seem to be a fairly decent resource generation tool, though my current Refinery has only 3 bins - something I'm going to consider very soon, to upgrade.
As to the S&M about it - it's not that bad, and with my Cobra, and I'll often have decent pulls. I find it to be an enjoyable change of pace.

 

[Raaya]

The current system wouldn't actually be that bad if it weren't for the

• horrible
• tedious
• outdated
• dull
• exhausting
• uninteresting
• boring
• repetitive
• cumbersome
• fatiguing
• annoying
• .
• .
• .

(gotta stop here, I could go on for a few days)

SCOOPING MECHANISM!!!

Which is utterly fu!#$%^ [[insert several hours of heartfelt beeping]]

 

[Sabien]

re: scooping, I felt that way too at first. But it's amazing how good you get at it after about an hour of repetition or so. I'm now so efficient that I can literally flip my throttle direction switch between forward/reverse without even reducing throttle at all, so I'm continuously moving either forward or backward. I can hoover up those rocks in no time! And its actually more enjoyable because it requires this skill! If it was dumbed down and easy, it would be BORING imo.

 

[Snafu Manchu]

Two words... Mineral Scanner. I tried mining once and tired of it within 20 minutes, because one roid in a field had the minerals I was after and that was it some of them were dead and the rest didn't have what I was after. You cannot mark the one's you are finished with. It's a real drag for which you need some legendary patience, because unlike EvE you cannot put your feet up, you have to physically scoop up your measly (yes measly) space morsels and eject the other components you can't process if you happen to have a low end refinery that can only deal with one mineral at a time. I dunno, it just isn't fun!

edit...

There isn't a mineral scanner as far as I know. It would be an incredibly useful tool for miners though, if any Frontier guys are reading...