The Mining discussion thread.

[Saliddry]

Mining not profitable enough first steps how to and why compared to delivery runs - M

Tested mining now ..

got an good refinary with 4 component slots..... i mean i can mark 4 mineral componants i want to extract from the roids..

say uranit titan bauxit and whatever... uran


each pice of asteroid lets say has one of it at 20+ % you need to collect at least 6 pices to get it to 100% and form 1 tonn of cargo

but they dont split the 100% material to the component you can use... so i can be that each pice has only 35% yield shared to all sorts of minerals


so think about how long you sit there mining.. following the pices to collect them and FIND YOUR ROID AGAIN .. yeah you cant mark them

so in dense fields once you start collecting good luck to find the right roid again

other roids have other minerals so ya end up with dozen of minerals you have to dumb cause the best refinery i could find can only work on 4 at the same time


compare that to the easy work 3-5 minuts 10-26k 1 jump delivery missions and you see what an waste of time that is right now

 

[Chinwiskers]

You need to buy a refiner and lasers? Then you go to a resource extraction site and shoot roids until they pop, then scoop them and see what you got? Is that the gist?

Is it easy to find the lasers & refiner?

Chu Hub in Styx has everything you need atm and yeh thats the basics =) but there is a little bit of jiggery pokery with the Refinery that's a bit different.

You scoop a rock that you've mined and it goes into a "Hopper" from there it lists what's IN the rock you just scooped, you select which deposits from the rock you are interested in (Bertrandite and Indium in my case) then those go into the "Bins".

The bins are where the small deposits from each rock are stored until you reach the 1 ton mark and then the mineral / metal is packaged into your cargo hold and the bin is emptied for you to pick another sample to fill it with.

Refineries atm list how many Bins they have to them, the more bins a Refinery has the more variety of different Mineral/Metals you can collect up to the 1 ton mark where it empties into your cargo hold for you to start afresh with the next batch.

 

[Colonel Kenney]

I've ben hitting a roid now for minutes with nothing coming off I have refinery too

 

[Dezgard]

Did you goto any asteroid field, or a resource extraction site? And also, did you have to scan the asteroid first?

there are new roid fields you'll see, tested ringworlds can't mine the roids there,

 

[Chinwiskers]

Chu Hub in Styx has everything you need atm, shoot lasers rocks fall out and scoop em thats the basics, but! there is a little bit of jiggery pokery with the Refinery that's a bit different.

You scoop a rock that you've mined and it goes into a "Hopper" from there it lists what's IN the rock you just scooped, you select which deposits from the rock you are interested in (Bertrandite and Indium in my case) then those go into the "Bins".

The bins are where the small deposits from each rock are stored until you reach the 1 ton mark and then the mineral / metal is packaged into your cargo hold and the bin is emptied for you to pick another sample to fill it with.

Refineries atm list how many Bins they have to them, the more bins a Refinery has the more variety of different Mineral/Metals you can collect up to the 1 ton mark where it empties into your cargo hold for you to start afresh with the next batch.

 

[Artip]

This all sounds terribly unfun with an abysmal cr/hour rate. :/

 

[Colonel Kenney]

I'm using the Cobra to mine atm I just equipped the Refinery in a spare Internal Compartment slot I had.

There is a detailed scanner at Styx - Chu Hub atm for me so you could try there, but is that what you need to scan Asteroids?

Thanks.. I'm giving up on mining for now Wonder if you can get the detaild scanner on other ships now

 

[GeordieMarv]

I've ben hitting a roid now for minutes with nothing coming off I have refinery too

Yeah this is why I just asked Dezgard. I've been sitting at an asteroid for 10 minutes. Hitting it with mining laser. I sold my basic scanner to put the refiner into a slot.
Got all my power to weapons, and sitting blasting the rock. Depleted my weapons power about 20 times already. Nothing happening at all. I can see the laser hitting the roid and shards coming off it. But after about 10 minutes I'm beginning to wonder if I've made a mistake selling the scanner. Maybe you HAVE to scan it first!?

 

[Chinwiskers]

I think the ability to scan asteroids may make mining more efficient but if not then I think some numbers need moving around in a spreadsheet somewhere to balance out the grind =)

 

[Dezgard]

Yeah this is why I just asked Dezgard. I've been sitting at an asteroid for 10 minutes. Hitting it with mining laser. I sold my basic scanner to put the refiner into a slot.
Got all my power to weapons, and sitting blasting the rock. Depleted my weapons power about 20 times already. Nothing happening at all. I can see the laser hitting the roid and shards coming off it. But after about 10 minutes I'm beginning to wonder if I've made a mistake selling the scanner. Maybe you HAVE to scan it first!?

Nope, where are you mining resource extraction site?

when mining small roids with fly away from the place your mining you have to chase them.

 

[Chinwiskers]

Yeah this is why I just asked Dezgard. I've been sitting at an asteroid for 10 minutes. Hitting it with mining laser. I sold my basic scanner to put the refiner into a slot.
Got all my power to weapons, and sitting blasting the rock. Depleted my weapons power about 20 times already. Nothing happening at all. I can see the laser hitting the roid and shards coming off it. But after about 10 minutes I'm beginning to wonder if I've made a mistake selling the scanner. Maybe you HAVE to scan it first!?

A white icon will appear on your scanner as well as a rock with the main deposit on it as its "name".

If this doesn't happen when using lasers on an asteroid you may need to find a better spot, I've been mining at one of the Ring Clusters in Styx.

 

[ZaphodBeeble]

My Bro and I have been mining in Styx (Styx A Ring Cluster 2) for a little while now. We're getting Indite, Bertrandite and Gallite which are about 2.5-3k each per ton. It appears that you can only get a total of 1 tonne's worth of mineral/ore from each 'roid but I may be mistaken. You have to scoop each fragment that you blast off and it's best to blast it all in one go then scoop. After each scoop you may have to 'vent' the bits you don't want. That only happens if you only have 1 refinery bin (some refinery modules have more than one bin). With multiple bins you can collect more than one type of mineral/ore at a time. Some 'roids have multiple types of minerals/ores in each scoopable nugget, hence needing to make a choice. This choice will be based upon percentage availability in each nugget and the value of the mineral/ore.

The best nuggets I got had about 20% of a tonne. That was for Indite. Gallite and Bertrandite were in the same nuggets together at about 5-10% each.

 

[GeordieMarv]

ok thanks guys, on the way to styx to check it out. You don't need a scanner though right?

 

[skyline385]

FD, this is the year 3000; consider the option of Tractor-beams/drones fr mining pls

I mean we already have autonomous drones in our age. Right now, mining is not lucrative even in the slightest manner. Scooping numerous pieces of rocks to combine into a single unit Ton of the mineral is insanely cumbersome. The amount of credits gained against the time and effort required is very poor right now. If you are worried about balancing or easy credits available early game through mining, make the tractor-beam or drones available only in the Medium Hardpoint slot or a Class 2 (or higher) Slot respectively so that access is limited and you have to sacrifice something to accommodate it. But please consider providing a solution to manual scooping as right now, mining is far from a profitable activity.

 

[Chinwiskers]

The right Asteroid may yield close to a ton of any given Mineral or Metal so it may end up not being so bad.

And no scanner is required thats right =)

 

[Dezgard]

ok thanks guys, on the way to styx to check it out. You don't need a scanner though right?

nope you do not

 

[Dezgard]

OR.

Have it so you launch the refinery and it sticks to the roid and refines the ores spitting out ore containers as it collects enough once done it unhooks and drifts until you scoop it or something.....i hate mining lasers...its just not efficient.

 

[Rhaedas]

I'm enjoying the challenge, but I'm concerned after filling my tiny 4 cargo spots in my hauler and cashing the ore in, I'm going to be disappointed in the time vs. reward. Should processed ore be more valuable than a cannister? After all, for the cannister you're getting paid for the transport of a premade product.

In short, if mining some Indite is not a bit more valuable in the end than if you just bought and traded some, mining is going to have very few enthusiasts. I like the system and complexity of it all, but it needs to have a profit for that effort as well. ESPECIALLY if there's always a threat of piracy...can't even imagine the rants of someone spending a few hours going through this, all to lose it in an interdiction.

Also, would like to see a way to set up a default processing method...if you're gathering Indite and Coltan, and there's a few other things you run into that are only a few percent, it would be nice to have the refinery dump those, instead of having to always go into the cargo menu and do it yourself. Don't want to automate it too much, but if an ore is below a threshold, it needs to be dumped. Maybe if you don't allocate it and grab more, it automatically dumps? And can the "Resources Unallocated" message fade away in that case, so you can target more?

 

[Colonel Kenney]

NO white icons for me. Probably because it was just an asteroid ring ..

Now if i could find a detailed scanner.. styx has only the 250,000 version and I can't see the smaller one for my cobra. I hope I dont need to pay 250k for one.

 

[Rhaedas]

One minor solution, asteroids in a field near each other should have similar ores, so you don't get a huge variety and have to pick and chose, or at least the other ones should be very small percentages, and it's obvious what the major ore is. But totally agree, processed ores need to be highly valued, otherwise mining will become a rarity. I don't mind the complexity, but I want something out of it in the end too.