Ships Minerconda - tips please!

[Nighteyes]

I'm looking to unlock Selene Jean for her armour mods. So I need to get mining. I have a lovely Anaconda - https://eddp.co/u/q3Afrivl - that's a slightly earlier build, but more or less the same as my current.

What should I be looking for when kitting her out for mining? Also, somewhat related, where's best for mining Painite and gold?

 

[CMDR Stealthy]

I'm looking to unlock Selene Jean for her armour mods. So I need to get mining. I have a lovely Anaconda - https://eddp.co/u/q3Afrivl - that's a slightly earlier build, but more or less the same as my current.

Ahoy Captain! Shaping up to be quite a build there, and just soo happens I myself have been attempting to complete that same task however it may take a few days of mining to accomplish this as mining is a bit of a slow process.

What should I be looking for when kitting her out for mining? Also, somewhat related, where's best for mining Painite and gold?

So the main thing you're going to want to kit out with is a
Refinery (Preferably max Class 4A or 4B)
Cargo Racks (Anaconda should have that covered)
Mining lasers (The front 2 Medium Hardpoints should do nicely)
and then lastly 2 sets of Collection Drones (I have just 2 class 3C controllers for 4 drones set at a time)
Prospector Drones optional but I do recommend.

Painite and gold are best found in rings or belts that are Metallic, best bet is to go to ones that have pristine reserves.

I do highly advise checking out Spacecat's popular guide to mining if you're unfamiliar with the set-up and way around mining.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/244228-The-popular-guide-to-mining/page6?highlight=Mining+Guide

Best of luck out there CMDR.

 

[Nighteyes]

Excellent! have some rep, Stealthy.

 

[YinYin]

I'm looking to unlock Selene Jean for her armour mods. So I need to get mining.
[...]
What should I be looking for when kitting her out for mining?

You need to refine a lot and probably don't want to spend too much time with it. So the most important thing is refining speed.

You do not need the largest refinery. That's just convenience. 3 bins are actually enough to simply match them to the asteroid you are currently mining.
In fact, larger refineries provide less bins than cargo racks of the same size offer slots and they don't make you any faster either.

Get a class 1 prospector. A grade will provide the most fragments per asteroid. You will most likely encounter the 10 tons of Painite among 500, but in case you don't - you can fit a larger one later to actually use it for finding asteroids as well (allows you to fire multiple prospectors = faster prospecting rate).

Medium mining lasers are the fastest fragment generators.
Your current distributor can sustain 2 of them, but you can add a 3rd and let the capacitor drain.
Unless you have a better distributor around you can stick to it, since it's already slightly better than an 8A.

Collectors can be D grade since fragments are generated within 500 m (laser range).
You'll want at least 3 active per sustained medium laser (or one per WEP MW). Preferably a little more so you don't have to position yourself perfectly.

Also, somewhat related, where's best for mining Painite and gold?

You'll need a metallic ring with high reserves (belts don't contain Painite).

 

[Nighteyes]

Thanks for the tips, YinYin. But I'm in a pristine reserve metallic ring. Every asteroid is Low, or sometimes medium, And all evening,all sodding evening, I've encountered one, just one singular asteroid with painite in it.

This is all horribly tedious. Locking Selene Jean behind this is a joke. It's putting me off the whole game.

 

[CMDR Stealthy]

Thanks for the tips, YinYin. But I'm in a pristine reserve metallic ring. Every asteroid is Low, or sometimes medium, And all evening,all sodding evening, I've encountered one, just one singular asteroid with painite in it.

You'll get that quite a lot, frustrating to say the least but it was a good time to experiment in other roles, I built myself a Mining Fed Dropship and I love it despite the lack of jump range and fuel consumption.

This is all horribly tedious. Locking Selene Jean behind this is a joke. It's putting me off the whole game.

It's really is a mess, I'm hoping that in 2.4 and Beyond when FDev rework core gameplay and mechanics they improve roles such as mining and trading. Sadly that is only a pipedream and will have to see when they start dropping patch notes.

But anyways I do hope you'll persevere through it and see it through!

 

[JetsonRING]

I'm looking to unlock Selene Jean for her armour mods. So I need to get mining. I have a lovely Anaconda - https://eddp.co/u/q3Afrivl - that's a slightly earlier build, but more or less the same as my current.
What should I be looking for when kitting her out for mining? Also, somewhat related, where's best for mining Painite and gold?

I found the Selene Jean invite mission to be fairly easy.

eddb.io is your friend for locating resources to mine, a little practice will have you finding anything you need. I use my Corvette for mining but the principles are the same. I use TWO mining lasers and the largest refinery that will fit, TWO collector limpet controllers (speeds things up) and a prospector limpet controller that can operate 2 prospector limpets at once. Strip out everything else and install cargo racks. Two lasers gets all the collector limpets moving and once they are all involved, one laser can sustain the mining rate without mining out the ore too fast to be collected (watch for that). You will be constantly be releasing new limpets as old ones expire so FILL YOUR HOLDS WITH LIMPETS! I would rather toss a dozen limpets over the side to make room for ores than have to make a trip to buy more limpets.

Prospector limpets DOUBLE THE YIELD of any rock, etc. they are attached to, so use them to save a lot of time and work. Keep an eye on the collector limpets as they have a tendency to run into things and die. I find a system with a high % of desired ores, just fly a course between the rocks, etc. while shooting off prospector limpets (2 at a time), switching targeting between the 2 prospector limpets. When they attach to their target they report back the composition of the rocks. No ore in that rock? Pick another rock and fire off another prospector limpet, the first PL will expire. Found some ore? Release the hounds! (collector limpets) and start lasing away!

TIP: NEVER EVER carry cargo or mined ores into a mining area or gangs of NPC pirates will attack you for it (they ignore "materials"). Always empty your holds of any cargo first and if your holds are nearly full of ores and there are no more to collect, drop them off with Selene before heading over to another mining area or you will be sorry. o7

Pro Tip: DON'T FORGET TO BUY LIMPETS BEFORE HEADING OUT! The stories I have read . . .

 

[CapitanAceRimmer]

Try Mesarthim:
http://elitedangerous.hozbase.co.uk/Screenshots/PMRs/MESARTHIM_A1A_MAIN.JPG

It has a single ring so you can drop in anywhere which makes it easier for beginners. I got my Painite here but it is all RNG. It is uninhabited

 

[YinYin]

Thanks for the tips, YinYin. But I'm in a pristine reserve metallic ring. Every asteroid is Low, or sometimes medium

That is normal and irrelevant to your cause. You don't care about the micro material content. If you ever want to go mining for materials you should go into a metal rich ring.

And all evening,all sodding evening, I've encountered one, just one singular asteroid with painite in it.

Good Painite asteroids are about one in 30. You will most likely find the 10 tons among the 500 you have to refine (1-2 asteroids should be enough). So don't worry about that for now. Just refine everything in your path until you've hit 500 tons.

If you really do not run across enough Painite in the end, you've got two options.

Increase your prospecting rate with more active prospectors and ignore everything that isn't >20% Painite. At ~7 asteroids per minute it'll only take you 5 minutes to find your 10 tons.

Or hit up some miners on the mining sub reddit. They've got Painite asteroids mapped and will happily lead you to them.

This is all horribly tedious. Locking Selene Jean behind this is a joke. It's putting me off the whole game.

This really isn't that tedious or taking that long. Care to share the exact build and process you are using right now? Maybe we can improve it.

 

[Martind Forlon]

Thanks for the tips, YinYin. But I'm in a pristine reserve metallic ring. Every asteroid is Low, or sometimes medium, And all evening,all sodding evening, I've encountered one, just one singular asteroid with painite in it.

This is all horribly tedious. Locking Selene Jean behind this is a joke. It's putting me off the whole game.

Mining as also many other ED aspects needs knowledge, skills/experience and properly prepared ship. Mining was vastly improved during upgrades, use prospector limpets (means you may find higher lvl prospectors rly time saving) for find good rocks (while ignore poor ones) and go to right location, i.e. you can find much more richer rocks near RES, but you need to know how close you can go before some pirate decide look on you. If is mining going bad for you, then it mean you do it bad way. ED is not easy game and sometimes you may need more time to learn how do things effectively/smoothly. You also may not go mine alone, in wing you can be much more effective if you know how things works (i.e. one ship use more prospectors for scan big area quickly, other do mining, each wing member can mine the same rock found by prospector).

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

Mining as also many other ED aspects needs knowledge, skills/experience and properly prepared ship. Mining was vastly improved during upgrades, use prospector limpets (means you may find higher lvl prospectors rly time saving) for find good rocks (while ignore poor ones) and go to right location, i.e. you can find much more richer rocks near RES, but you need to know how close you can go before some pirate decide look on you. If is mining going bad for you, then it mean you do it bad way. ED is not easy game and sometimes you may need more time to learn how do things effectively/smoothly. You also may not go mine alone, in wing you can be much more effective if you know how things works (i.e. one ship use more prospectors for scan big area quickly, other do mining, each wing member can mine the same rock found by prospector).

I was mining bromellite for Bill Turner for a week or so, and it was quite enjoyable in High RES sites. The fighter crew earned a lot of money without me doing anything, though in some sessions I was chased away by a gang of Gunships.

 

[Nighteyes]

This really isn't that tedious or taking that long. Care to share the exact build and process you are using right now? Maybe we can improve it.

Thanks, I copied the build that's in the guide Stealthy posted, just with one 6E Cargo hold swapped out for a Fuel Scoop. Here's the link: https://eddp.co/u/sjDn9yoM - I think it's a decent build for the purpose.

I managed to refine about 150 tonnes last night, so I've done about a third of what Selene needs. But here's the kicker, and you will all laugh. I thought I was in for a long and horrid grind, because I got Lei Cheung and Selene Jean's second requirements mixed up. I thought Selene Jean needed 200 tonnes of painite delivered on top of the 500 refined. [redface] That's why I was grumbling in my post last night. Now I know it's only 10 tonnes, I know that's reasonably attainable with just a bit of effort.

So thanks everyone for the extra tips. I'm in Delkar at present. Maybe I'll switch to a metal-rich ring for the remainder of the 500 before going back to metallic for the 10 Painite.

 

[YinYin]

That build is missing a refinery, but I'm sure you have that with you

 

[Nighteyes]

Whoops! Yes, I have a refinery. I cobbled that together just now from memory. Here's the actual build with the 9 Bin Refinery.

https://eddp.co/u/cGTFT46V

 

[YinYin]

Now you might want at least two more active collectors to keep up with the lasers.

 

[Nighteyes]

Yeah, I noticed I was having to sit and wait while the limpets collected everything before moving on to the next asteroid. Also, I don't need the discovery scanner for this job, so...

https://eddp.co/u/bzEz4TTN

How about that? I don't think the loss of 32t cargo space will be an issue when efficiency is more important than total tonnage.

 

[YinYin]

More than enough

 

[Nighteyes]

Will get cracking tonight and see how I get on.

 

[Nighteyes]

Well...

I got everything I need this evening. It really wasn't that bad. Though I did go through nearly 40 prospector limpets when I actually started searching for painite. But yeah, all done. Thanks for the help, everyone.

 

[Nighteyes]

Was worth it:

Looks like a pretty decent roll to me.