Making Money Mining

[Paxroy]

Mining can be, contrary to first impressions, fun and rewarding. However, once you've made your first 500 000 credits, say, there's really no more progression. Sure, you can upgrade to a bigger ship and add a power plant with more juice and an additional mining laser, but that doesn't really help the situation. You're still stuck gathering metals and minerals like a beginner, the only difference being it takes 10 hours to fill your cargo instead of 1 hour.

Profit from mining should scale somewhat with other professions. Like with trading, getting a bigger and better ship will increase your profits greatly; in the same amount of time you ship a lot more merchandise. With mining however, upgrading your equipment, while allowing you to ship a lot more merchandise, does very little to descrease the time it takes to acquire said merchandise. In fact, it takes heaps of time. I read somewhere that mining drones were in development. Regerdless of that being true or not, the concept is sound, since it would decrease "acquisition time". Another option would be some kind of magnetic/attractive mining laser that sends ore straight to your cargo scoop. That way mining would be as quick as your ship and equipment allows, as it is with every other profession.

 

[SoulTechnology]

solution?

while we have onboard refineries, i think for (not much less) we should be able to sell the unrefined materials to refinery stations and sectors. (basically, the refinery option should be available on all ships, you just cant refine materials without a refinery, and all this option does is allows you to 'combine' materials into chunks that fit comfortably into your cargo hold.

in addition to this, along the lines of 'there should be a point to upgrading' larger cargo scoops should give you MUCH more 'lee-way' in grabbing materials.. maybe add utility hardpoints which magnetise or 'suck' materials towards the scoop (to help out those hefty type 9's).

larger mining lasers should break off large chunks (filling up more of your refinery at once and/or adding more tonnage) and more lasers will break off chunks more often. maybe make mining sub-automation when you have the cash to overhaul by adding mining laser TURRETS to keep shooting at the targeted asteroid while you pick up the bits. admittedly this could lead to people sitting there with auto-scoop and auto-turret and watching some TV or podcasts while there type 9 fills up for an hour.. but not only do some people enjoy that style of gameplay (eve mining?) they are also vulnerable to attacks, or the asteroid drying up and them sitting idle.

if these features get added then mining could easily fit alongside hauling, combat, and exploration along ways to make lots of cash in any stage of your progression.

 

[Assa]

what i really would like to see is if you could get a Scoop camara which sees all bits at once and stays open that you can just Scoop in multiple bits in a short time, im useing a asp with 6 minig lasers so i just cut of a bunch a pieces which normaly Comes then out in a straight line. the main Problem i have then i Scoop the first but then i get Problems, because I have to find the the "next" bit which normaly is like 5-10m away from the one i scooped bevor i miss it. also that Thing which blooks the munitor and telling you that you successfully scooped sometthing very annyoing ... i want to see the camara to quickly Scoop up the next bit so would be nice if that could be somewhere else on the hud ^^

 

[pelmel]

I have only had limited success mining. The rich metal ring gave me nothing but minerals and the occasional silver ore. What is the best strike you have had mining?

When I went out I had visions of holds full of palladium and gold but I come back with Indite and silver.

 

[Assa]

did the metal rich had pristine resrves? and did you hit the correct ring often their are 2 rings and one of them is only metal rich the other one is rocky or so ^^
then you normaly just probe the asteriods shoot one bit out look whats in it if ist crap next ateriode, that way i got a cobra(36T) full with Gold paladium and Platin and some extra cash from some nice pirats ^^

 

[pelmel]

I have never seen in the description of a planetary ring what quality of reserves it had. I see that clearly on the system asteroid belts but not on rings.

Since that last trip out I have found a Metallic ring which has proven to be much better than the metal rich rings I have been looking at so far.
This ring gives four metals and three minerals
Platinum 19k
Palladium 14k
Gold 10k
Silver 5k
Bertrandite 3k
Indite 2k
Gallite 2k

 

[Seedling]

I have never seen in the description of a planetary ring what quality of reserves it had. I see that clearly on the system asteroid belts but not on rings.

Since that last trip out I have found a Metallic ring which has proven to be much better than the metal rich rings I have been looking at so far.

Planetary rings have quality reserves description; all planets with rings have them, even if the rings are rocky or icy. Regular asteroid rings do not show reserves if they are rocky or icy, only metal rich (mostly minerals) or metallic (mostly metals).
For planets it's listed right before the first ring information (as it counts for ALL the rings for that planet), while for asteroid belts it's listed on the first line of the belt information (if metal rich or metallic).

 

[pelmel]

I see it now. This ring is listed as Major Reserves....
Maybe I should look for a pristine.

 

[Psycho Romeo]

I think you bring up a valid point about mining, but for now I think we should all wait till powerplay.

 

[Seedling]

I don't think proper mining will be in 1.3, but I hope it will be before 2.0...

What we most likely will need is:
* A dedicated mining ship
* Automated collection of ore fragments. Manual cargo scooping reserved for containers. Perhaps an upgradable cargo hatch internal module, to increase range from 5m (F) to 500m (A).
* Automated Refinery, and improved refinery menu. The current menu is poorly designed and it's childishly easy to dump a 96% paladium bin because that's the freaking default and only button to press when the refinery input is empty.
* Mineral Sensors, to put asteroids on the targets list. You can see remaining minable chunks as well as subtargets of high concentration nodes. Drawback is scanning ships takes twice as long.
* Icy and Rocky belts/rings should be minable, for things like water, chemicals and certain ores.
* Make low-value minerals and metals appear is much higher concentrations, so you can choose fill up 530% lepidolite (5T + 30%) on a single asteroid, or 53% bertrandite.
* Perhaps a manufacturing module to produce trade goods from cargo, perhaps even certain types of ammo.

 

[Assa]

I don't think proper mining will be in 1.3, but I hope it will be before 2.0...

What we most likely will need is:
* A dedicated mining ship
* Automated collection of ore fragments. Manual cargo scooping reserved for containers. Perhaps an upgradable cargo hatch internal module, to increase range from 5m (F) to 500m (A).
* Automated Refinery, and improved refinery menu. The current menu is poorly designed and it's childishly easy to dump a 96% paladium bin because that's the freaking default and only button to press when the refinery input is empty.
* Mineral Sensors, to put asteroids on the targets list. You can see remaining minable chunks as well as subtargets of high concentration nodes. Drawback is scanning ships takes twice as long.
* Icy and Rocky belts/rings should be minable, for things like water, chemicals and certain ores.
* Make low-value minerals and metals appear is much higher concentrations, so you can choose fill up 530% lepidolite (5T + 30%) on a single asteroid, or 53% bertrandite.
* Perhaps a manufacturing module to produce trade goods from cargo, perhaps even certain types of ammo.

I agree witht he better Refinery Manegment and the icy Rocky belts

but you already can have a Dedicated Mining ship for examaple ASP extremly good mining ship with the 6 lasers i can empty an asteriode in 20-30 sec (with the confimred mining collecting drones i see it will be very viable mining ship)
How I mentioned they already announce collecting drones which will pickup target things or grab all in an area till they run out of Energie

I dont get the drawback on Mineral sensors, i would make it an complett independed modul like kill warrent or cargo scanner and then you could scann asteriods with them ^^

so you want asteriod fragments which are are made out of 530% lepidolite ? so far i remember it involves calculating with % that 100% is the Maximum amount is something you can have, but it would be nice if the more common and cheap asteriod had a higher Chance to be like 80-90% out of it

so for the manufacturing module you mean like you have chemicals with you to make out of for example Bertrandit Berrilium ? like you buy 250T chemicals and mine 250T bertandit on a t9 and then i get 125T Berryilium like that