Efficient way to gather materials on planets?

SirTheo

SirTheo
Is there an efficient way to gather raw materials on a planet?

I don't really want to do the fast G5 mat gathering task yet as I want to more organically explore and fight rather than grind the meta. Yet I don't WANT to spend hours trying to find a pittance of mats on a planet.

So,besides descending to a random area and looking for blue POI zones at 2km, is there a more efficient method of seeing if a planet has mats worth gathering on?

Btw, I'm already making full use of both FSS and DSS. And I'm fine with using a material trader, but finding enough mats to trade is the issue. I can easily scout out enough encoded and manufactured materials for trading what I need, but it's the raw ones giving me fits. Especially tungsten and arsenic.
 

SirTheo

SirTheo
Ashnak said:
1) land at geological sites (i.e. on planets with volcanism)
2) find Crystalline Shards (they count as bio sites), fill up with G5 (ok, 4) mats and visit a mat trader.
Click to expand...
I'm hoping to not have to travel far outside the bubble for that. Or is that just a fact of life?
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
Crystalline Shards: the closest are described in this thread

Guide / Tutorial - How to fill all of your Raw Materials bins using Crystalline Shards.

How to fill your boots with Raw Mats using Crystalline Shards Some of us have discovered a new form of materials gathering that can, with a little effort, be used to gather every material needed to compeletely fill all of your raw materials bins. I have decided to share that knowlege here with...
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk
(spoilered, since you said you wanted to explore yourself)
For geo sites, you can use EDDB. Select which material you want, enter your current location, select "Volcanism" as "extra column". For example, the Sol system has 30 landable bodies with volcanism :).
 

SirTheo

SirTheo
Ashnak said:
Crystalline Shards: the closest are described in this thread

Guide / Tutorial - How to fill all of your Raw Materials bins using Crystalline Shards.

How to fill your boots with Raw Mats using Crystalline Shards Some of us have discovered a new form of materials gathering that can, with a little effort, be used to gather every material needed to compeletely fill all of your raw materials bins. I have decided to share that knowlege here with...
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk
(spoilered, since you said you wanted to explore yourself)
For geo sites, you can use EDDB. Select which material you want, enter your current location, select "Volcanism" as "extra column". For example, the Sol system has 30 landable bodies with volcanism :).
Click to expand...

Right, but my problem is that how do I efficiently find the mats instead of wandering around trying to find POIs? Unless I'm specifically looking for biological sites under "points of interest" in my ship's navigation tab
 

Deleted member 121570

D
SirTheo said:
I've got a DBX for mat collecting and exploration, an ASX for mining, and I'm working on engineering my Chieftain.
Click to expand...

Mat collecting with this technique works best in a Sidey, for info tho. Damn ship's nearly all scoop, and if you throw G5 dirty drag enhanced thrusters on one, it's really great fun. Zipping about at high speed, acting like a mat-locust over geological sites is awesome, and much faster than the SRV.
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
SirTheo said:
Right, but my problem is that how do I efficiently find the mats instead of wandering around trying to find POIs? Unless I'm specifically looking for biological sites under "points of interest" in my ship's navigation tab
Click to expand...
Geological sites are also indicated after scanning from orbit with a DSS - and much more abundant than bio sites. Usually, any system with gas giants also has geo sites (on the inner moons), and any body with geo sites has 1-3 dozen sites.
Assuming you're in a system that's not listed in EDDB (otherwise just continue at 3) below):
1) honk
2) scan the planets with the FSS. Any planets with Geo sites (and bio sites) will be indicated while scanning with the FSS. I get most success with the inner moons of gas giants.
3) Fly out to the planet and scan with the DSS. Any Bio/Geo sites will pop up as surface locations, both on the planet in your HUD as well as on your nav screen (left side)
4) Land at any bio/geo site - I prefer flat sites in daylight
5) There are various kinds of mineral clusters on the vents (on geo sites) or growths on the plants (on bio sites). Shoot them off and collect them.

The usual bio/geo sites will have all the minerals that are available on that body, Crystalline Shard sites only the rarest.
 

Red Anders

Red Anders
For arsenic I usually find a planet with polonium and drive round to find some metallic meteorites, which are fairly distinctive on the SRV scanner (two thickish lines, right at the very bottom of the display. Don't confuse them with metallic outcrops which are positioned slightly higher on the SRV 'radar' display and have thinner lines.

When you find some, grab the polonium and then trade down for Arsenic at a mat trader - you'll never need to look for arsenic again. Arsenic is only a G2 material so you get loads for G4 polonium.
 

SirTheo

SirTheo
Ashnak said:
Geological sites are also indicated after scanning from orbit with a DSS - and much more abundant than bio sites. Usually, any system with gas giants also has geo sites (on the inner moons), and any body with geo sites has 1-3 dozen sites.
Assuming you're in a system that's not listed in EDDB (otherwise just continue at 3) below):
1) honk
2) scan the planets with the FSS. Any planets with Geo sites (and bio sites) will be indicated while scanning with the FSS. I get most success with the inner moons of gas giants.
3) Fly out to the planet and scan with the DSS. Any Bio/Geo sites will pop up as surface locations, both on the planet in your HUD as well as on your nav screen (left side)
4) Land at any bio/geo site - I prefer flat sites in daylight
5) There are various kinds of mineral clusters on the vents (on geo sites) or growths on the plants (on bio sites). Shoot them off and collect them.

The usual bio/geo sites will have all the minerals that are available on that body, Crystalline Shard sites only the rarest.
Click to expand...

Awesome! I didn't know those sites would be indicated as present when identified on the FSS.
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
SirTheo said:
And I'm fine with using a material trader, but finding enough mats to trade is the issue. I can easily scout out enough encoded and manufactured materials for trading what I need, but it's the raw ones giving me fits. Especially tungsten and arsenic.
Click to expand...
I prefer mining asteroids for mats and trade up rather than down. Driving all over a planet in a bumpy SRV to shoot little rocks just doesn't do it for me. I can also make some good coin while mining asteroids.

Disclaimer - I only G5 engineer certain critical systems (often G4 and even G3 is more than enough IMO).
 
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