Surface Prospecting? Or Asteroid Mining?

CMDR_Vyse · Mar 4, 2018

I'm getting ready to do a farm of engineering mats; not for any particular purpose, but to just gather them. I have a planet or two I want to surface prospect, and I know how to do it. I'm a bit sucky at driving the land rover, but it's fun and I've not done much exploring on the new planets.

But at the same time, I've never mined before. I have the perfect ship to mine in, and I can find some places TO mine at. Selene Jean of course, is one I may need to unlock (Though I favor shields to armor on my ships). But I've never done it.

Where should I focus?

Stealthie · Mar 4, 2018

There's no short-cut to high-tier mat's so if that's why you're thinking about trying mining, don't bother.

Having said that, although it's not for everybody, it's kind of fun to get a mining ship working well, make some credits and snag some mat's at the same time.

If you're looking for specific mat's, though, it's probably quickest to go somewhere that spawns high-tier mat's on the surface (or at barnacle sites) and grab them there and then trade-down.

SkyB · Mar 5, 2018

If you want to mine for matetials do not use a refinery.
You can mine at hazrez without being attacked and your limpets will only collect crafting mats.

If you look for special materials use planetary sides. E.g. I have a planet for Selenium that has a 4.9 chance which means plenty for me. Use eddb to find what you need.

insanephoton · Mar 5, 2018

Mining is a decent way of getting low grade mats and maybe you might get lucky and find some better grade stuff. If you have something pretty robust you could go to a high res site and probably pick up a few manufactured mats from all the pirates you have to deal with.

Limoncello Lizard · Mar 5, 2018

SkyB said:
If you want to mine for matetials do not use a refinery.

While this used to be good advice, it's no longer necessary. If you ignore all the minerals, your limpets will collect nothing but materials. This also gives you the advantage that if you do find a painite motherlode, you can actually mine it.
But metal-rich is a better place to go than metallic for materials. I did a run on the weekend ignoring everything except osmium. Got plenty of mats and a reasonable haul of osmium.

N0speed · Mar 5, 2018

In 3.0, surface prospecting is way better for collecting mats than mining.
This is appropiate for both low and high tier mats.
I guess the time factor is between 5x to 10x.

Spacemanz · Mar 5, 2018

Yes, my experience in 3.0 is that surface prospecting is way better for materials.

Mugur · Mar 5, 2018

Mining may be good for bulk materials, although from my experience, I wouldn't call it farming... But barnacle sites (or the barnacle forest - I never been there so far) are better. And since they spawn the same materials as the planet, you can check to see what you're going to get.

And, of course, there are crash sites (Orrere 2 B at 43.8214, -173.9800 for example; I was there this weekend), that spawn rare materials from their cargo racks. There were a few others, I have no idea if they are all still active.

I always prefer a nice shortcut if I can find one for repetitive stuff, since my playing time is limited. From my personal experience (I'm playing since November 2015), the worst time investment for material collection is SRV+Wave scanner, followed by mining (unless you are also mining and the materials are just an extra - same with missions). Barnacles + crash sites + geysers/fumaroles/etc. are better sites for material collection.

I am too on a material gathering crusade (my 11 ships are already modded mostly with grade 5 + some grade 4) that will be followed by a mass modification to everything (I don't have any god rolls to keep, I never rolled more than 2-3 grade 5 rolls) but I don't want to do it "Frontier style" ("a long term investment", "a process, while doing your stuff", bla, bla, bla). So I want to get 100 of everything mostly (more for low grade materials, but there may still be bugs in >100 storage) and do the mods afterwards. I don't want to stop in the middle of an experiment (I see some mods as basic QoL, but others are just experiments) to start looking for some material.