Mining, worth it?

[Starman Jones]

I've seen little to know chatter about mining. I know have a decent Cobra and enough cash to fit a 6 slot refinery on it. Has anyone taken mining to heart? How is the mining in the rings? Best place to sell your minerals and metals would be industrial stations?

[Flip]

I've done some mining, but only in belts, not in planetary rings. Also, rather than taking everything I found, I concentrated on one valuable thing, like Palladium. It tried the different asteroids until I found the one with Palladium and mined it to depletion. Then I dropped the Gallite (or whatever it was) that came with it, and repeated in a different belt (or in the same one after going to SC and back).

Also when my cargo hold was full, I continued mining until all the refinery bins were full too, as that's that many extra tons you can carry. Those extra tons don't appear in the cargo column of the commodity market, but when you sold what was in your cargo hold, leave the market and reopen it. What was in your refinery bins will then have moved into your cargo and you'll be able to sell it too. IIRC, I could carry 22 tons of stuff at once in a Cobra and still had shields and weapons to protect my cargo.

Oh, and rather than mining 8 or 10 fragment before going after them, I caught each one immediately. This way they don't disappear before you get them, and you don't get far away enough from the asteroid you're mining to lose it.

Finally, I didn't sell my Palladium at the nearest station that would buy it, but found one where the demand was high, possibly 10 to 15 jumps from where I mined it. The difference between high demand and medium one was more than 1000 cr per ton. All in all, I made about 300 000 cr per run.

[Naruby]

I've mined today 2 hours at a pristine metal ring (brown rocks, not gray) in my new cobra with a 3 bin refinery and 26 cargo slots. Result 65.000 credits.
Is this a typical result? It seams low but as a starter every credit is welcome

[Flip]

Depends on what you mine. Some stuff are very profitable (Platinum or Palladium sell between 12 and 19k cr per ton) and others are barely worth picking up (like Copper or Bauxite that sell for less than 500 cr per ton).

[MarrV]

I've mined today 2 hours at a pristine metal ring (brown rocks, not gray) in my new cobra with a 3 bin refinery and 26 cargo slots. Result 65.000 credits.
Is this a typical result? It seams low but as a starter every credit is welcome

I was doing that (well in a hauler) ages ago; it got better when I started;

Only going for the big 3/4 Platinum, Palladium, Gold & Silver
Getting a 4/5 slot refinery (if going for big 3 get a 4, big 4 get a 5 - so you can vent the "extra" metal they come with)
Mine one rock, target the chunk. If the %'s are not X of one of the big 3/4 above move on.
I used 10%+ for platinum, 15%+ for Palladium & Gold 30%+ for silver.
Some people have used 25%+ for Platinum & 30% for all else.

Use something (like the planet) as an orientation point.