What's a good cheap mining ship?

Stealthie

Stealthie
My knee-jerk response is "Type 6" but I'm open to alternatives because I'm starting to think I'm obsessed with Lakon ships. :eek:

I currently have a T9 which is a complete monster for mining but it's a PITA flying it around the bubble from site to site so I was thinking of building 3 or 4 identical, cheap, mining ships and then just leaving them parked-up in systems with different types of pristine rings so I can stop by and use them whenever I need to.

I'd like to be able to mine up to, say, 20t of stuff at a time so (with limpets) I'd probably be looking for something with a cargo capacity of around 30t or more if possible.
Don't really care about things like jump-range, armour, agility or weapons. It's just going to be packed out with cargo racks and mining kit.
I'll have 'em transferred to their working systems and just leave 'em there forever.

Anything up to, say, Cr15m for the basic ship would be ideal, although I'll spend more if there's a good reason to.
I definitely WON'T be buying a bunch of Pythons for this though, no matter how good it is.
 
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Fishy

Fishy
If you have access to it, the Cobra IV. Its top speed doesn't matter anymore (and can be engineered to be decent if you feel so inclined), it's small, it's cheap, and it's full of internals.

Here's a quick spec. The second mining laser is probably overkill (distributor won't hold, and not enough collectors anyway), as is the FSD, so the 7.2m price is probably an overestimate. 36t cargo, a class 4 slot for shields that you might decide to repurpose, and a 4A refinery that could also be downgraded to save more space/money.
 
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Thalion Solarstorm

Thalion Solarstorm
AspX is a decent Miner. 30 Tons 2 small mining beams , refinery and enough limpets.

The Jumprange is good if you need to move them and it turns fast enough to evade sneaking Rocks :D

Cheers!
 

goemon

goemon
20t?

- shieldless cobra mkIII

- cobra mkIV

- Keelback, if you insist of getting cheaper than an AspS/AspE. has medium hardpoint over the t6.

- AspS makes a good mission miner with the new compartement size now

- AspE. Obvious choice for your task.

- dropship and clipper. you got into the field of maxed out mining ships.

i have a AspE mission miner, a mining clipper, and a mining corvette, all very nice.
 

Thetele

T
Pretty much anything that has 2 medium hard points. So pretty much cobra mk III and every ship that is bigger than that. Then the question is how much cargo space you want and what other toys you want to have.

But aspE is nice if you want to travel around a lot.
 

goemon

goemon
Thetele said:
Pretty much anything that has 2 medium hard points.
Click to expand...

and a powerdistributor to sustain them.

and enough iternals for 4-5 collectors per medium mining laser, assuming you are not cherry picking (where you might go for more limpets for prospecting, and less collectors).

AspE/AspS have both a class 4 PD, which allows you 1 medium and one small mining laser, or two medium if engineered.
 

CMDR CODY

CMDR CODY
Went with an AspX for mining. 2 medium mining lasers, 4 small mine racks. 2 3A collector limpets and 96 cargo.
Carrying 90 limpets, I can fill with painite and platinum in a little less than an hour. T-6 cant do that.
The AspX is surprisingly agile inside the roid belts/rings, not so the T6.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Thanks for the suggestions. [up]

Spent a bit of time running them through coriolis.io and I'm probably going to go with the AspX.
I can build a T6 and an AspX with identical mining configurations, with the T6 costing Cr7m and the AspX costing Cr13m.
For the extra cash, however, I can also fit a #3 shield to the AspX, just to soak up nudges against rocks, and fit some weapons to fend off baddies in Sidewinders etc.

Looks like I'm going to end up with a whole bloody fleet of AspX's. :eek:
 
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Stealthie

Stealthie
So, about these mining Asps...

I've currently got them set up with the #6 and #5 slots as cargo bays and I've got a 3A shield and 2 x 3A collector controllers in the #3 slots.
The question is, do I bin the shield and fit another 3A collector controller?

The 3A shield is really only there to absorb impacts while rock-eating. It's not like it's going to be much use in a fight.
I figure that upgrading to a military hull is going to make the ship just as survivable as a light alloy hull + 3A shield.
Okay, it'll cost money to repair hull-damage but that's not a big deal compared to having collection go 33% faster.

And, as I say, it's not like these ships will ever be going looking for trouble.
They'll get used for mining, fly back to a local home-base, I'll sell what I don't want and then transfer to a different ship to deliver the important cargo.

Thoughts?
 

Red Anders

Red Anders
Stealthie said:
Thanks for the suggestions. [up]

Spent a bit of time running them through coriolis.io and I'm probably going to go with the AspX.
I can build a T6 and an AspX with identical mining configurations, with the T6 costing Cr7m and the AspX costing Cr13m.
For the extra cash, however, I can also fit a #3 shield to the AspX, just to soak up nudges against rocks, and fit some weapons to fend off baddies in Sidewinders etc.

Looks like I'm going to end up with a whole bloody fleet of AspX's. :eek:
Click to expand...

You say identical builds so I assume you're using two class 1 mining lasers on the Asp? Class 1s are so slow it's not even funny, go for class 2s. Assuming you are putting halfway decent thrusters on it, you don't need to worry about weapons.

As for your collectors, I'd bin the shield and go for the third 3A.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Red Anders said:
You say identical builds so I assume you're using two class 1 mining lasers on the Asp? Class 1s are so slow it's not even funny, go for class 2s. Assuming you are putting halfway decent thrusters on it, you don't need to worry about weapons.
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I'd love to see a video of somebody making full use of #2 mining lasers.

I fitted 2x #2 lasers on the Asp and all that happened was it generated a huge pile of rubble which 4 x collectors took about 60 seconds to sweep up.
And, besides, even with 4 pips to weapons the 4A power distributor on an Asp can't keep #2 mining lasers running.
They last long enough to deplete a low-yield rock, but not medium or high yield rocks.

The only way to keep one laser running constantly was to disable the other one... which means it's only doing the same work as 2 x #1 mining lasers.

Ended up swapping them for 2 x #1 mining lasers and stuck a couple of #2 multicannons on the ship just in case they are ever useful.
 

TERMINATRIXXX

Banned
T
If you go for really cheap, i would suggest the T6 or the Keelback. If you want some comfort and capable of selfdefense i would go for the Python.
 

GreenDemon

GreenDemon
Since the T7 received a buff, it makes a great mining ship if you can stretch that far in dosh.
Chaos Wulff has a great video on outfitting one. I based my mining build on that, really works well.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
GreenDemon said:
Since the T7 received a buff, it makes a great mining ship if you can stretch that far in dosh.
Chaos Wulff has a great video on outfitting one. I based my mining build on that, really works well.
Click to expand...

TBH, the T7 was at the top-end of my budget for this anyway but then I scouted around some of the systems where I plan to operate these ships and realised that a LOT of them seem to consist mostly of platforms and maybe 1 surface outpost and no proper stations.
That being the case, it means ANY large-pad ship is going to be limited in it's ability to dock to repair, resupply and sell cargo.

My T9 miner earns me a fortune in HIP 16607 but that's not a common scenario.
For ultimate flexibility and capability, the Python is probably the best choice.
For what I'm doing (building several cheap ships and leaving them where they operate), I can't really justify the cost of Pythons so I went with the AspX.
 

Red Anders

Red Anders
Stealthie said:
I'd love to see a video of somebody making full use of #2 mining lasers.

I fitted 2x #2 lasers on the Asp and all that happened was it generated a huge pile of rubble which 4 x collectors took about 60 seconds to sweep up.
And, besides, even with 4 pips to weapons the 4A power distributor on an Asp can't keep #2 mining lasers running.
They last long enough to deplete a low-yield rock, but not medium or high yield rocks.

The only way to keep one laser running constantly was to disable the other one... which means it's only doing the same work as 2 x #1 mining lasers.

Ended up swapping them for 2 x #1 mining lasers and stuck a couple of #2 multicannons on the ship just in case they are ever useful.
Click to expand...

Regarding the fact that you mine the rock faster than your collectors can collect, that's not a bad thing in itself since as long as you're well-positioned with relation to the stream of chunks it just guarantees your collectors are working at maximum efficiency, i.e the rate at which you can collect is the limiting factor not the rate at which you can strip chunks.

Regarding the distributor issue yes you can't fire a pair of class 2s indefinitely but you don't need to for them to still be faster than a pair of class 1s. Unless your limpets are still working constantly when you only use the class 1s it's still a time saving overall. Your choice though, if I was mining in an Asp I would't even think about sticking regular weapons on it so for me there wouldn't be any opportunity cost in using class 2 mining lasers. Each to their own.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Red Anders said:
Regarding the fact that you mine the rock faster than your collectors can collect, that's not a bad thing in itself since as long as you're well-positioned with relation to the stream of chunks it just guarantees your collectors are working at maximum efficiency, i.e the rate at which you can collect is the limiting factor not the rate at which you can strip chunks.
Click to expand...

I didn't mean my comment in a hostile way BTW.

I genuinely would love to see what sort of techniques can make full use of the amount of damage a pair of #2 lasers make.
In my T9 miner I have 6 collectors running and a pair of #1 lasers can comfortably outpace them, and I still have time to pick out my next target while they were sweeping up.
Seems like you'd need more collectors than any ship has slots for.

Alternatively, I'd be interested to see how well "fleet mining" might work.
Fit, say, a Vulture with a prospector and a couple of #2 lasers and then follow it around with 2 or 3 T7s loaded out with collectors and cargo racks.
The Vulture zips around looking for the best rocks, finds one, blasts it and then one of the T7s moves in to do the collection while the Vulture moves on.
I bet that could make a heap of credits.
the only problem would be paying the Vulture jockey his cut.
 
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