Noob miner looking for some help

[JohnLuke]

Good to know, TorTorden! I had heard that somewhere else recently too.

Not funny FD.

[James Hussar]

I think I've got a good handle on asteroid mining, but haven't built up the credits to outfit a ship to do it "at scale" yet. Currently doing some trading and general RES policing to build up the funds for a proper mining vessel. I've worked with an Asp and a Cobra mkIV, limpets and up to 64 tons of cargo so far.

If you go solo, you need to go armed and armored - the better your luck with mining, the worse your luck with pirates. Having to arm and armor up means you'll be using hardpoints and internal bays for things other than mining equipment - wing up with a few fighters, let them get the bounties for covering your back, while you focus on finding those tasty P's (Painite, Platinum, Palladium).

High Intensity RES seem to have the best quality ores, but are rife with pirates. You can mine anywhere, but your wingmen may get bored well away from a RES.

Get the Medium mining laser, provided you have the power plant to feed it. Limpets are a game changer. I've been packing 16 limpets per 64 tons of cargo and it seems to work out well, with some caveats. I pack a prospector and a collector controller (two internal bays). A multi-bay refinery is a must, the more the merrier.

Here's my approach - assuming no pirates. Find nice metallic rings. Major reserves or better seem preferable for limpet work. I tend to pick a point in the ring that looks dense, but is close to the planet. Not sure if this is consistent but I find better metals closer to the planet than farther out. Over time, I work my way toward the planet so I don't get lost and revisit spent and worthless rocks.

I blast ONE fragment off the asteroid and target it. If the fragment is crap, I move on. If it looks "decent", i.e. the valuable ore fraction is in the upper teens or twenties, I deselect it, file a prospector limpet at the asteroid and target that. You don't have o target the prospector for collection, but it will tell you what the asteroid is made of and how much more value remains in it. Using prospector limpets doubles the extractable ore quantity once attached to the rock, hence the ONE test fragment at the start.

Once you've got a good rock tagged with a prospector, blast away at it - do not target any of the fragments - and fire off a collector limpet. The thing with collectors i that they will either go after the targeted fragment, then die (useful for grabbing that special piece of salvage cargo), or they will scurry back and forth grabbing fragments and bringing them back to your cargo bay. They live longer than it takes to pick up all the fragments you can blast off of one asteroid. If you're in a rich environment, the challenge becomes juggling multiple asteroids and prospector limpets.

Depending on the limpet controllers you have, you can use one of more limpets of that type. I will sometimes find a cluster of asteroids all worth mining - and here it becomes a race against time because ore fragments degrade with time.

I've heard that it's a good idea to orient yourself along the axis of rotation of the asteroid, since this will keep the fragments you blast off from getting knocked about and flung off in random directions. This makes a lot more sense without collector limpets since it's much faster to manually scoop up fragments that are floating in a line than it is to go chasing them. Collectors are so quick it hardly matters where you shoot if you have them, I think.

Consider three reasonably good asteroids. Blast a chunk off of each to make sure, prospect one, blast all the possible bits off it (dual 2-class lasers speed this up but eat up power), fire a collector, prospect the next, blast all the chunks off, prospect the next, blast chunks off...

Once a collector limpet picks up all it can, it will follow you to the next asteroid for as long as it lasts. If you have your cargo bay closed when the limpet retrieves a fragment, you'll get a warning and the collector will wait for you to open the scoop. I've seen my collectors fail, often, in this scenario, so be advised. Not being able to boost with the cargo bay open gives you one extra thing to remember - close the bay, boost, open the bay before the collector comes back with a fragment.

It's easy to get a ton, sometimes two, of a valuable ore from a single asteroid. I've found asteroids containing Platinum an Palladium in the 25% fraction per fragment - that's 25% of a ton of each per fragment - easy money, and I wasn't even in a Pristine ring. The multi-bay refinery will soak up any other less useful ores, and you can either vent or keep whatever that is.

Hope this is helpful, and if you're interested in winging up some time, give me shout.

[TorTorden]

Combat backup is unnecessary.

Just stay out of RES site and you might have one solo pirate to deal with for the entire instance and that is a maybe.
I have mostly only spent a few days mining but the amount of times I encountered a pirate in site was maybe thrice in total, and they where pushovers.

Rotation on the rocks matter a lot.
Not just where the ore pieces will go, but limpets are stupid, really stupid.
They will fly In to grab a piece only to be often clobbered by a more protruding section of the rock, go poof, the next limpet will try for the same piece and poof as well.

Suddenly your half dozen limpets go poof after 30 seconds and not seven minutes.

[Loriath]

Im lazy and dumb. Any videos on how to mine?

[JohnLuke]

My friend Google says that there are some here.

After viewing some videos, let me know if you have questions!

[Loriath]

Decided to try this out so I Built a Python Miner. I headed to a Metalic Ring to try it out.

Here are my thoughts.

This is relaxing, and I can see that this could be a good way to pass some time. No idea how much I could make doing this, but I am willing to try it more.

When I first dropped into the ring, I had to dispatch a couple of ships that tried to rob me of my limpets Once that was done it was quiet. (That's the reason the Python has 3 turreted Large Pulses)

The prospector limpets make it easy to find what to mine. Collectors work well but are slow to collect. After figuring out exactly what I had to do, I spent an hour or so and was not particular about what I was mining. Made about 500K in about an hour and a half which is not much and could be a lot better in a better area and being more picky about which rocks I mined.

With 4 pips to Weapons, those 2 medium mining lasers fire continuously with no issues, and I can drain an asteroid in about 50 seconds.

The only real issue is that with the Python firing 2 medium mining lasers, 2 limpets for collecting is not enough. I will have to either swap out my Fuel Scoop for the ability to use more collector limpets or change my loadout and drop some cargo. Will depend on where I am going for the mining.

I am going to play with the loadout and try again tonight.

Thanks for all the help posted here. Made me want to try this and I enjoy it.

[charlie2alpha]

And this is the main reason I want to buy again a Python. It's the best mining ship in my opinion. I could retrofit my anaconda to be a miner but it wouldn't be so good, larger and heavier doesn't maneuver so well in an asteroid field.

[JohnLuke]

Glad you had some fun mining, Loriath. I've been getting a bit bored lately, and may put a mining ship together soon to blow up some rocks.

A few ideas on your build.... you could drop down to a 5 for shields, and replace your fuel scoop with a collector controller. I found the NPC's to act the same way that you mentioned.... you get 1 or 2 when you first drop in, then it's all quiet.

http://coriolis.io/outfit/python/07D6D5 ... on%20Miner

I didn't run a scoop on my mining python because I was in range of Jura on a tank. I'd rather top off at a station instead of giving up the cargo space. It must have taken forever to collect rocks with just one limpet controller! You'll enjoy it more, I expect, with two.

If you seek out the P rocks you'll make a lot more money as well.

[Loriath]

Thanks JohnLuke. I played with the build a little this morning and came to the same conclusion.

As far as the P's, I need to find a better location. Yesterday was a test to see if I liked it and how it worked. Expensive experiment considering what it cost, but i will be changing it later today.

Got an idea for where to go near Azrael to get some P's?

[charlie2alpha]

Mm, I usually go to Bhare for mining, not so far I think.