Mining - Most Common Mining Mineral?

TITUS MCCLOUD

T
I have it in my head to get all my INARA badges. The Miner badge requires 5,000 tons of minerals refined. I have 3,077 tons already. I'm not interested in money with this particular question.

What is the easiest and most common mineral to mine that is available in great quantities? How do you mine said mineral? Surface, core, or sub-surface?

I'm not interested in money.....in fact if it costs me money, I don't really care.

I know it's probably a stupid questions, but I thought I'd ask.

Fly safe..o7
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
If you just want raw tonnage:
- at least two medium mining lasers, three if your distributor can handle them, forget the fancy stuff
- drop into a pristine rocky, metal-rich or metallic ring (don't worry about hotspots, anywhere will do)
- 4A refinery, A-rated prospector controller (though size 1 is fine for this), at least 3 collector limpets per medium mining laser, hold about half full of limpets

Systematically shoot a prospector into a rock, strip it with the lasers, wait for your collectors to finish, move on to the next rock and repeat until you run out of limpets. If you sit fairly close to the rock along its axis of spin, your collectors should finish quickly and not run into the rock in the process, so you can do several rocks on the same batch of collectors. Helps to have a consistent direction of travel - towards the planet is easiest - so you don't end up going back to rocks you've already done.

A 4A refinery has ten buckets, and the rings have more than ten types of mineral, so you may need to empty a bucket or two occasionally as you switch rocks ... or just set a couple of the mineral types on "ignore" and don't worry about the micromanagement.
 

TITUS MCCLOUD

T
Ian Doncaster said:
If you just want raw tonnage:
  • at least two medium mining lasers, three if your distributor can handle them, forget the fancy stuff
  • drop into a pristine rocky, metal-rich or metallic ring (don't worry about hotspots, anywhere will do)
  • 4A refinery, A-rated prospector controller (though size 1 is fine for this), at least 3 collector limpets per medium mining laser, hold about half full of limpets

Systematically shoot a prospector into a rock, strip it with the lasers, wait for your collectors to finish, move on to the next rock and repeat until you run out of limpets. If you sit fairly close to the rock along its axis of spin, your collectors should finish quickly and not run into the rock in the process, so you can do several rocks on the same batch of collectors. Helps to have a consistent direction of travel - towards the planet is easiest - so you don't end up going back to rocks you've already done.

A 4A refinery has ten buckets, and the rings have more than ten types of mineral, so you may need to empty a bucket or two occasionally as you switch rocks ... or just set a couple of the mineral types on "ignore" and don't worry about the micromanagement.
Click to expand...
WOW! I'll try this out and report back. I realize it was an odd questions. Thanks so much for the time and thought invested in your reply! Very much appreciated.
 
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