Mining and Exploration. The big question

[Veljex]

I traded my Eagle for an Adder on Wednesday and outfitted it for exploration and mining and I'm unsure if I should continue or not. I love the exploration and I've come across a lot of great sites. For example, have a screenshot of a dying star orbiting a blue-white dwarf star. Beautiful.

Spoiler

I'm not sure if it is paying off though or if I'm just doing it wrong. When I have the time and feel up to it I do explore a few systems to get the Cartographic's and see what there is to be found. I can also see where the money comes into this but it feels too risky in my ship with my little fuel and jump range. But mining. I've spent around 4 hours mining in an extraction field and managed to produce 2 Indite, 1 Bertrandite, 1 Silver and 1 Cobalt. The silver asteroid I found depleted around 60% which was rather annoying. Towards the end I ended up turning to a bounty hunter as I kept getting attacked by NPC Cobras. (7k worth of bountys and I didn't even have a shield or decent guns yey).

Has anybody else had any luck with making a large profit with mining as I claimed the same amount of credits from my bounty's as I did mining. I also filled the rest of my cargo with commodities from the system before flying to a refinery system to cash up. Again I made the same amount in profit from trading then I did selling the minerals I mined. And the bounty's were only 30mins worth of work. I've noticed that the asteroids do deplete rather fast so I do need to move on a lot and rarely find another valuable mineral asteroid to mine. Also I can't figure out how to 'purity' of the minerals works. It seems to get higher in purity in certain sweet spots on asteroids but then suddenly jump back down to 3% at times.

Anybody have any tips with this? It may be worth noting as well that I don't have the bottom set extractors or refinery but they're not the best either. Should I keep mining and upgrade my ship to be more efficient or just trade in for an exploration/fighting/trading ship?

Adder Review
As a bonus for reading I thought I would share my views on the Adder. It's great. It's a beast. I love it. Except for the fact it is a two seated ship. The cockpit of the ship is rounded and you sit on the right handed side of the cockpit (thank you Frontier for sticking to true British standards) and when flying around and looking around I often get disorientated as the left half of the cockpit is further than the right. Very confusing. However this aside. As mentioned above I took the shields of and left the default 2 loaned pulse lasers on and the ship is a tank. The lasers are as expected but the ship can take such a beating it is unbelievable. I really would like to see one of these outfitted for bounty hunting and I think it could give an Anaconda a run for its money.

Thanks for reading!

 

[Veljex]

Well... This isn't as great of a response that I was hoping for

 

[Suul Vellumcore]

...I've spent around 4 hours mining in an extraction field and managed to produce 2 Indite, 1 Bertrandite, 1 Silver and 1 Cobalt...

This is a problem indeed. I don't know what you're doing wrong, but you should have WAY MORE tonnage than that in 4hrs of mining. I'm not nagging you or making fun, I'm just pointing out that there is something you're doing wrong, as most miners will agree that 4hrs mining surely must, and does, produce more than 5 tons. Maybe if you describe your procedure, we can help you get on track.

 

[Veljex]

I've been reading into this and i didn't notice that the system map showed the quantity and metal types available. I headed towards Sol without noticing so no doubt this will have been the reason. I'll head further a-field and try find myself a better spot.

 

[carazvan]

Ok so lets break it down into the 2 aspects you asked about mining and exploration.

Mining is relatively simpler to explain so lets start with that.
The quality of a resource can be seen from the system map and the options go from *depleted to *pristine (not sure of the exact names but they're fairly self explanatory)... you obviously want a pristine resource. What this influences is the average % that chunks will give out.

The type of resource also tells you something about what you can expect in return:
* ice - no resources
* rocky - low ite's
* metal rich - higher ite's + silver as highest
* metallic - indite, bertrandite, collite, silver, gold, palladium, platinum

Your ship setup doesn't influence too much the equation but
*level of mining lasers - how fast chunks move off roids (not seen this to influence % resources of chunks but havent mined since Gamma)
*refinery - the best you need is to have 7 slots to allow for collecting all the different types of resources at once from metallic

Planetary Rings vs Asteroid Belts
* asteroid belts - metallic ones are easier to find but only offer a limited number of rocks to mine that are dispersed into 4-8 different locations
* planetary rings - good resource ones are harder to find (will cover in exploration next) but you can stop anywhere along the rings not just at the resource extraction zones to mine resources so they're for most practical purposes limitless.

Best Setup
Have a ship with max mining lasers lvl (1/2) and with a 7 capacity refinery and mine a pristine metallic planetary ring as this will yield you mainly high value high percentage chunks.
My experience was that since there's so many rocks to mine in a ring the bets thing to do is to mine for the 4 higher metals (silver, gold, palladium, platinum) and just ignore chunks that have the lower metals as they will accumulate anyway when mining combined chunks for the higher metals. (that said I usually did mine bertrandite if I saw 75%+ chunks flying away)

 

[carazvan]

next comes Exploration

The basics are straightforward explore and turn in data for profit but lets cover the ship components and what stellar bodies to explore:

The Components you need for exploring are fairly simple
*Discovery scanner is what shows up the 'unknown' planets in your radar -basic has 500LY range -intermediate has 1000LY range -advanced discovers all planets and stars in a system
*Advanced Surface Scanner is the part that gives more information on the characteristics of stellar and planetary bodies and is a must for any explorer
*Fuel Scoop - absolutely necessary for deep space missions; any class and size will work but the higher ones will lower the time you need to sit around a star refueling
*FSD - if you want to do real exploring out in empty space an A class FSD is a must as there are many places that have large gaps between stars
An advanced surface discovery scanner is really the basic requirement for exploration as you can use your eyeball to find the stars and planets but you should explore only closeby until you get your advanced discovery scanner.

Theres a few things that pay out particularly well when scanning or at least they did (haven't sold data since gamma 2.05 since I'm far away exploring)
* metal rich planets - these are high temperature but average sized (under 15earth masses) planets usually found in the first planets that orbit a star. Usually if you've found the 3rd planet to be metal rich this means the first 2 are also metal rich. These are usually found around higher temperature stars (O, B, A, F)
* terraformable planets - these are usually "water worlds" but not exclusively (found a high metal content world that was terraformable also). The water worlds are fairly easy to spot from the system map as they look either like earth or like a water planet with ice caps and clouds. Found in all systems but at very different distances from star; mainly found near star in lower temp systems (F, G, K).
* ammonia planets - have not found enough to really figure out a rule; the two I've found seem to have a 'dense looking' atmosphere around the planets but that's about the only commonality.

The best way to go about exploring is to, once you have the setup (advanced discovery scanner, detailed surface scanner, fuel scoop, A-class FSD), set yourself a goal 200-2000Ly away and go towards that system and then back. Scan only systems that can have one of the planets types listed above or that look interesting. And as with any exploration journey ... have fun and take screenshots to record the journey.

The final question you asked .. which should you do? ... neither is the best way to make credits so from a pure CR/Hour look at the problem sell all get a hauler and get to trading.
That being said we usually dont play these games just for the CR/hour but for the fun you have in them. I'd say try all parts with mining and exploration, trading etc. and decide which is most fun and stick with that.

 

[Veljex]

Wow. I could not have asked for a better answer. Thank you so much for the detail, I was looking into this however a lot of the mining tutorials are from Gamma and have changed slightly. It does appear that I was mining in an asteroid field that only had low grade supply's. I think I will have to spend the rest of my reserves and outfit my ship a little bit better.

MY problem is now finding a planet. My Adder has the default FSD at the moment which is limiting me to stay inside the populated section of the galaxy. I haven't been able to find any decent belts so far, would you suggest sticking to trading until I have an A class FSD and then move further out or are there good mining locations within the known area.

Also.. If I do go mining outside of the known Galaxy I would presume this has more of a chance to find a better spot, if so, how is it best to get the resources back to the nearest port that will pay a good price?

Thanks again. Yet another example of how great this community is.

 

[Caymen]

Well, what i did was sell my eagle upgrade my sidewinder,and headed off into the unknown roughly on a straight patn away from my starting system..

Im now approx 90 jumps from where i started, using only the basic scanner i got quite a few credits from the sale of the systems on route.

I have now got a hauler ,scrapped the shields mining laser and 2 bin refinery and get collect 12 tons of stuff.
Found a little system with 2 stars one outpost, and 3 pristine belts.

3 days of mining within 2 of the belts...i get plat plad, and gold...dont bother with silver. So far got 950k just doing a few hours mining a day...
Btw this system has had in the last 48 hours 3 players,probably doing exploration...nothing much to scan down so they move on!

Lucky for me, as i got a fed system within jump range which also has a bloody good shipyard, so the cobra is the my next target...and fingers crossed with these belts wont take me long to fit it out the way i want to fly it!.

So with patience from exploring you can find some nice " mining systems with in my case an outpost close by"

 

[Veljex]

I owe you.. I've spent a while hopping between systems and all I could find were M (Red Dwarf) suns.. Until I came across an already explored Federation mining system. This had a few Metallic clusters with Major reserves. I stopped off to see the types of resources I could get and this was the turn out. From about an hours mining (I miss the cargo hatch a lot...):
-4 Gold
-9 Palladium
-2 Silver
-1 Bertandite
I even had to dump 3 Bertandite after I found an asteroid giving out 40%+ Palladium chunks before leaving. This brought in about 130k. I now have a better FSD and an extra 4 cargo slots. I think I may do a bit more mining tomorrow evening and then go on another exploration run in search of better locations.

I also forgot to mention about the Credits per hour comment. I'm not a player that wants to get to top level ASAP. I like to explore however don't feel safe doing so in a lower level ship so I was just looking for the best method to kick-start getting a better ship. Turns out upgrading the FSD did the trick instead.

This being said, what are the recommended ships for mining/exploration? I love the Adder, not sure if you can tell, but it is a rather small ship with a weak jump range even with an almost top of the range FSD. The Cobra always seems like a good choice but I'm not sure if it is worth swapping or just waiting until I can afford a Lakon..