Open Discussion About Elite Mining (post 2.3)

[Trader38]

I'd like to ask for opinions on the best way to become Elite...... {drum roll please}..... via mining.
I know, i know but i just ran a small test (after 2.3 update) and i see that selling mined metals does contibute towards the profit made under the trading column of your statistics, it is therefor adding to the required 'profit made' figure that calculates your trading rank.

I'm currently at 54% Tycoon having made approx 500,000,000cr via trading and rather than just doing A-B-A trade loops i thought it would be fun to try doing some via mining.
Given that Elite rank is achieved by making 1,014,000,000cr profit it occurred to me that if i concentrated on metals that averaged 20,000cr per ton i would *only* need 25,000 tones.

The question then is what is the best way to mine 25,000 tons of metals. Should i go for an optimum equipment fit at the expense of cargo space or vice-versa.
The Type-9 seems to have the best cargo space but like all ships once you start fitting decent collector limpets etc that diminishes quickly. Less cargo space means more runs-to-sell and therefore less time actually mining. Better equipment means making the most of time spent mining but less places to store the stuff.

Winged mining makes sense, using a dedicated 'strip miner' and perhaps Anaconda's to ferry to market but... how to share the proceeds and with more mouths to feed even more mining is needed to accomplish the goal.

Multi-crew does not really help as slf's take up valuable space and could only possibly help in a defensive roll which, let's be honest, isn't really a problem if you know what you're doing.

So anyone got any inivative solutions ? Is there anyone out there even interested ?

 

[SciTrekker]

Mine in Pristine Metallic rings (inner most ring). Painite has a higher chance to drop. Drop into a RES and go 20km from its beacon/waypoint and they're slightly better (or so they say). You'll get lots of other metals too, such as Platinum, Pallonium, Gold, Osmium, Presodymium, Samarium, and Silver. I usually only mine for the 3 P's and Gold but it's all profit so your choice of more or less trips between the rings and the station you sell to. Osmium gives higher profits if you can get the mining missions for it and I'm fairly certain that counts toward Trade Rank.

For help finding a system near you that contains Pristine Metallic ringed world: http://edtools.ddns.net/

Painite can vary in price drastically and the only way to find out the price at any given station is to go there. EDDB.io, Inara.cz, and other sites don't track it - nor does the GalMap's trade routes. If you find a place that'll buy a ton of Painite from you for 60k CRs, that's pretty good. however, I've seen it at or above 74k CRs. Once you find that place, hurry. It won't stay that high forever. Someone else may know a way to find the highest paying places, but I don't.

Wing mining is definitely a plus, but you all need to sell your goods together so wingmates are in the same instance as the seller in order to get the trade dividends. Every little bit helps (although I don't know that the trade divs give you additional rank).

I've helped several fiends and newer players how things work in ED, including showing them how mining tools work. I've even dropped them some commodities to sell - and teach them how to scoop them manually first, then I show them collector limpets. I have a system I like to use for that for many reasons, including Gold being above average all the time. I play on XBone so if you are too, look me up (same GT as name here).

Hope that helps. Fly and mine safe, Cmdr. o7

 

[Trader38]

Thanks SciTrekker, very useful info. Wall of text incoming {sorry}.

I perhaps could have mentioned that i'm not new to mining but my previous attempts were always somewhat half-hearted, limited by budget or limited by (previous versions) equipment.
On this attempt i wanted to build the ultimate strip-miner setup. I figured as money was no object i'd try find out what the ultimate was.

Sadly i have to say i'm dissappointed It seems like anything else that's not shooty stuff, there has been no developement in the other careers.

Having spent close to 200mil cr on a Type-9 (spec here) it suffers from significant limitations. Before i go into detail, please remember this is supposed to be (currently) the top-of-the-range of a miners career path so it's a little surprising that that career path terminates so early (Fdev take note ??).

I started out with a size 3 prospector controller in order to be able to 'see' a path through the 'roid belt by having a leap-frog of limpets to follow. I also guessed that a size 5 collector controller (3 limpets) would not be enough so also fitted a size 3 collector controller making a total of 5 collectors. With 3 size two mining lasers however it was quickly apparent that i needed more.
I then swapped my prospecter to a size 1 and fitted two more size 3 collector controllers to allow me a total of 9 collector limpets at a time, unfortunately this also is not enough. The chunks fly off the 'roid much quicker than the limpets can collect them thus you end up sitting stationary while waiting for the collection.

So i figured i could use this time to prospect for the next decent 'roid. You can see a few from where you are and the prospector limpets have a 7km range but to see more you need to move. The collectors have a pretty pathetic range of 1.3km and a 'roid can easily be 1km long so if you move pretty much at all you'll lose your collectors !
Unfortunately there's another problem. The largest refinery currently available is a 4A giving 10 bins but, if you are essentially strip-mining there are more than 10 types of ore so you continuously need to monitor the refinery and eject the rubbish. Also the 'roids occassionally chuck out materials which appear to stall the collection process if like me your materials bay is 1000/1000, you therefore have to start throwing out the more common materials to make room for the new ones which you almost certainly don't even want.

This afternoon i ran a couple of tests, being a tiny bit selective about the roids in a Pristine Metalic non-res ring and selling to an Industrial starport with a boom economy.
The first test i mined 108 tons in a little over an hour being quite selective and achieved 25700cr per ton. The second test was nearly 2.5 hours being less selective i mined 239 tons and achieved 21450cr per ton.
So by start or middle game standards i would think the results were pretty good but, this is supposed to be end-game no-holds-barred kinda stuff and for that it's rubbish.

So yes this is a tad bit negative and disappointing but the silly part is that it's fairly easy to fix. Where are the 6A & 8A Refineries ? Why does a prospector limpet have a 7km range when a collector only has 1.3km, surely they're the same thing ? Increase the number of limpets that a controller can control exponentially so if a size 1 contoller can have two limpets a size 3 (there are no size 2's but if there were they would have 3) should have 4. By the time we get to a size 5 it should control 7 or 8 and a size 7 contoller should control around 12. Bear in mind that to fit a size 7 limpet controller your are having to give up 128t of cargo space.

Now i know the obvious here is a Type-9 is not a mining ship, it's a ship we use for mining because there are no mining ships. But even as a trader it needs a significant buff to cargo space. I would dearly like for Fdev to give restricted slots to all the Type-x ships but those slots need to be specific to cargo space or defence in the same way as the shooters and passenger ships got restricted slots. Why is it that a passenger ship can fit a 'special' passenger bay (luxury) yet a trade ship cannot fit a special cargo bay (extra large or un-scannable perhaps).

So in summary i'm afraid my foray into mining to Elite was a bust, great way to kill some time or change the grind but honestly until there is some better equipment i feel there's no real money-no-object solution to a mining career.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

The best way to mine 25k tons of material.. let me think.. ah..

1. Outfit a Mining Ship
2. Pick a place to mine.
3. Deploy Prospector Limpets to find what you want to mine.
4. Deploy hardpoints.
5. Deploy Collector Limpets.
6. Fire Mining Lasers at rocks until depleted.
7. Repeat 3 - 6 until cargo hold is full.
8. Fly to station to sell cargo.
9. Repeat 2-8 until Elite or you succumb to birthday toxicity, whichever occurs first.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

I'm unsure how Mining Missions help towards Trade Rank, having a half-full cargo hold of the usual suspects might help that if they affect Rank.

When it comes to sheer mining, just make sure you sell into a Booming Economy (Industrial or HighTech). ~25% Bonus on all goods and Painite gets that extra treatment of selling for ~70k instead of ~40k per ton.
If you feel lucky, increase Mining speeds by mining at the edges (15-20km) of a HazRES or HiRES and hope you're left alone for a longer stretch of time - or can handle whatever is occasionally thrown at you there.

PS.
It's a long time ago, but I made a good chunk of my Trade Rank with Mining. Back in those days, progression with Mining seemed the fastest and outdid A>B Trading by a large margin.

 

[rally]

I just got into mining myself. Made a mining clipper (No reason, just really wanted to mine in the clipper). Kind of disappointed in my results, mine were far worse than yours...but I did enjoy mining so I'm going to keep on with it for a bit until it gets boring. Thinking i might convert my shieldless weaponless build to a shield...ful weapon...laden build and just pick up some bounties of what comes by to scan me while I'm mining instead of popping a heat sink and hiding behind a potato until they go away.

 

[Trader38]

I'm unsure how Mining Missions help towards Trade Rank, having a half-full cargo hold of the usual suspects might help that if they affect Rank.

<snip>

Nope mining specific missions actually hinder the trade rank increase because it's based on profit made by 'selling' commodities and handing goods in for missions would detract from the 'trade' profit made. I was just going for sheer profit.

Yes for those who are not so good at combat, mining can be a fun and lucrative career. What i was particularly interested in was taking to the extreme. With the introduction of what you might consider end-game ships (Corvette, Cutter and errr no i'm leaving out the Beluga !) you'd think there would be something for the other careers. IIRC the Type-9 *could* haul 532t of cargo and is a dedicated trade ship but the big two can haul much more cargo yet they're apparently combat ships. Given that you *could* set up a Cutter/Corvette for mining would achieve little more than a Type-9 given the restrictions of the limpet controllers and the measly 4A refinery which btw you cannot double up on ! Like shields, you can only have one refinery fitted

 

[Adept Geraden]

I used to enjoy mining. I gave it away as a bad joke when they took away the "finding Painite is a pain" missions. I think it was with 2.1. Only mining I've done since then, was the Osmium CG for Colonia, and the 10 tons of Painite for the engineer.

 

[YinYin]

So anyone got any inivative solutions ? Is there anyone out there even interested ?

https://np.reddit.com/r/EliteMiners/comments/5bckdc/make_2030_million_credits_per_hour_mining_join

Forget about the T9. A top of the line distributor and maneuvering speed far outweigh cargo space.

Also don't settle for 20k average per ton. Make it 60-80k.

edit: also larger refineries are mostly pointless - they eat tons of energy for tiny benefits. If you are just mining mostly painite anyway 3 bins (max resources per asteroid) are enough. Two clicks to purge after each.

And it sounds like you aren't positioning yourself for an optimal collection loop (as small as possible) if your collectors can't keep up. D grade (smallest range) actually helps with that (as well as jump range, agility and power).