Newcomer / Intro Trying to understand what I'm doing wrong with mining

[Donaldi]

Trying to figure out mining as an viable alternative to bounty hunting.

Just not having much luck at it.

You do not really need a hotspot in my experience. That HS only indicates the majority of the material you find in the cores. Pick pristine.
And yes, core mining is a good alternative to bounty hunting for me. Perhaps because I regularily fail at bounty hunting.

Pick a spot in the shadow of the planet. Do not use night vision. Fly a bit above the plane of asteroids. Ping the Pulse Wave.

Those asteroids which are yellow and far away are usually the cores and get brighter, the nearer you get to them. (Others will also become yellow as you approach, remember those intially far away asteroids. Here we have two, lucky find).
If you are not in the dark, e.g. not in the shadow of the planet, those far yellow asteroids are almost impossible to see. Night vision can also be too bright for distinguishing them. You need to be almost upon them then when the sun shines.

And watch all around (use headlock) when pinging, you have maybe 3 seconds after each ping to spot one, sometimes only one second.
The cockpit of the T10 is ideal, the keelback is fine too. The Anaconda and Python are useless IMO in that regard, the DBX too, their cockpit blocks the lower view (flying them upside down helps).

And maybe pick a (pristine) Ice Ring. The only less valuable material in cores in an Ice ring is bromelite and even that can be asked for in missions.

 

[Codger]

Today's mining haul -- this represents about 1 hour of actual mining, plus another 40 minutes or so flying about to get situated, and then sell afterwards. Today I was doing laser mining of Platinum. No cores involved here.

I only post this to show you that it's do-able once you have the knowledge.

 

[DanielKT]

try to ask more specific questions.

you say you don't find core rocks. are you looking in the appropriate places? hotspots have no effect on number of cores, only types. do you know the shapes of rocks you need to look for? are you using a pulse wave scanner? all this information is in the links people have given you, but you don't tell us what your specific problem is. if you can't find any cores then it's not much use to talk about how to farm them or what ship is more efficient.

core mining is actually quite enjoyable, but like everything the mechanic gets old fast and nowadays laser mining is simpler and more efficient. any case for me the best part is the beauty of places you get to spend time in.

also keep in mind that if you were stacking massacre missions that's just broken, it's a legal exploit and there is no equivalent in mining atm, so no way you would make anywhere near those insane amounts of money with any form of mining.

I'm aware that it is unlikely to get the same cash as stacking kill missions. I'm more referring to running a few missions or sitting at a nav beacon or Res site as point of reference. The amount of cash isn't even close.

Example:
Last mining run I ended up with maybe 5m after a hour or two of effort of looking for core rocks and laser mining pretty much every rock along my path in a Pristine ring within a LTD hotspot.

ice chunk after ice chunk was the almost worthless frozen crystals (something like 1k per ton). And didn't find a single core along the entire path. After awhile I was checking nearly every decently bright ice block along the path. Nothing.

I was using the gas giant in the background as point of reference to reorient myself to a rough progress path.

As for the asteroid shapes; I thought I knew but I keep second guessing myself plus I have memory issues that are compounding the problem. I'm almost up to printing the examples out and taping them to my monitor

You do not really need a hotspot in my experience. That HS only indicates the majority of the material you find in the cores. Pick pristine.
And yes, core mining is a good alternative to bounty hunting for me. Perhaps because I regularily fail at bounty hunting.

Pick a spot in the shadow of the planet. Do not use night vision. Fly a bit above the plane of asteroids. Ping the Pulse Wave.
View attachment 226111
Those asteroids which are yellow and far away are usually the cores and get brighter, the nearer you get to them. (Others will also become yellow as you approach, remember those intially far away asteroids. Here we have two, lucky find).
If you are not in the dark, e.g. not in the shadow of the planet, those far yellow asteroids are almost impossible to see. Night vision can also be too bright for distinguishing them. You need to be almost upon them then when the sun shines.
View attachment 226112
And watch all around (use headlock) when pinging, you have maybe 3 seconds after each ping to spot one, sometimes only one second.
The cockpit of the T10 is ideal, the keelback is fine too. The Anaconda and Python are useless IMO in that regard, the DBX too, their cockpit blocks the lower view (flying them upside down helps).

And maybe pick a (pristine) Ice Ring. The only less valuable material in cores in an Ice ring is bromelite and even that can be asked for in missions.

I'm actually using the external camera zoomed out and looking at the field as a fly inverted over it and pulse the scanner. So the cockpit is irrelevant in this case since I'm not using it

I'm also using the drone camera to go visually check out rocks within the 3 km range since I can alter it's speed to be much faster than a ship and nearly on par with a fighter.

 

[metatheurgist]

You don't mention using prospectors. Hotspots for some type or materials and rings don't work. And currently hotspots just don't seem to work for core at all. You are better off just going to a random part of the ring.

 

[DanielKT]

You don't mention using prospectors. Hotspots for some type or materials and rings don't work. And currently hotspots just don't seem to work for core at all. You are better off just going to a random part of the ring.

I'm using them on the brighter rocks. Half the cargo hold of the T10 is full of limpets at the start.

Basically, I'm picking a rough path when I start and following that. Typically I will fly towards the planet the rings are around till I give up or run out of time.
I will pulse the scanner while checking lit up rocks and laser mine most or all of the non-lit rocks along the path there to each lit rock.

 

[varonica]

I'm using them on the brighter rocks. Half the cargo hold of the T10 is full of limpets at the start.

Basically, I'm picking a rough path when I start and following that. Typically I will fly towards the planet the rings are around till I give up or run out of time.
I will pulse the scanner while checking lit up rocks and laser mine most or all of the non-lit rocks along the path there to each lit rock.

Prospector limpets increase the yield of all rocks!

 

[Donaldi]

I'm actually using the external camera zoomed out and looking at the field as a fly inverted over it and pulse the scanner. ...

Nice idea, never thought about that (darn).
I now I regret being in Delphi picking some complaining passengers from a burning station with the Krait instead of piloting my T10 in an ice ring trying that.

The core ice asteroids have all a distinguished "popcorn" shape and are generally smaller and never elongated and never smooth, they are segmented like a clover.


The second one in the background to the right was sadly a false positive. One needs to check for fissures close up like in the second picture or use a prospector drone. I prefer using prospectors, visual check only when I am low on drones and have no 4t free cargo space for synthing more



BTW, perhaps I oversaw it, it help to have two points of reference. The target to fly to (the planet) is one and the other to determine which site is "up".

Contrary to collector limpets, the class B prospector limpets do not have the most range, Go with A for prospectors.

 

[Para Handy]

I'm using them on the brighter rocks. ........

Remember, the determinant of it being core-bearing is shape - brightness indicates the presence of all types of features (surface and sub-surface deposits as well as fissures). So popcorn shape in icy rings, teardrop in metallic (and rocky / metal rich? - not sure).

Not my pics:

 

[Frags]

Another problem with selling mined minerals is landing pads, most best price stations don't have large pads. So if you mine with a large ship you
can build 256t Python to swap something like this https://s.orbis.zone/ert6.

 

[Donaldi]

Nice idea, never thought about that (darn).
<...>

Just wanted to say thank you, DanielKT.
During the current CG I tried this (certainly obvious for others) method and it worked like a charm to discover core asterdoids even behind the ship (ironically, I wasn't even looking for cores, but hey, free Alexandrite).
Only had to unbind R1 for the Pulsewave scanner to work during the free flight cam mode. Takes a little bit of using to since you cannot hear the ping that far way from the ship.
Was initially afraid that the yellow color indication would only work for the direct line of view from the cockpit (as other displays like the sensor information don't work when the cockpit window is shot away) but that wasn't the case, as anyone can see.