Ore mining and the Survey Scanner

[ray.mcdonough]

What is the purpose of the Survey Scanner? I've done a good deal of mining, and wherever I plop down, the drill finds ore.

There might be a slight bit of diminishing return after awhile, I noticed that turning ore into fuel and oxidizer for a good while on Duna.

[Astronaut]

It's supposed to scan for ore and where you can find the most of it in one area. However, the ore is pretty much anywhere. The mod orbital survey plus lets you use the scanner to create a biome scan. It's basically like scansat but it doesn't have all the features. And the mod introduces taking time to map the surface, but that's entirely configurable if you don't want it.

[ray.mcdonough]

Well, there is an area for expansion for the devs.

[andylaugel]

The smaller drill won't function in an area with less than 2.5% ore concentration. A ship that lands which relies on that for refueling could get stranded.

There are three parts that scan for resources, and each have/had their own uses in an unmodded game:

• M700 Survey Scanner--provides an overlay that shows which general areas/biomes are rich in ore.
  
• Surface Scanning Module--provides the only means to scan a biome more precisely for ore concentrations (will refine the overlay of the part above), and reports the exact ore concentration at your location.
  
• M4435 Narrow-Band Scanner--shows a map of ore concentrations in the surrounding area--if the world has been surveyed from orbit first.

The first two items still function more or less as they have since I've been playing--version 1.05. The last item though...

Before Kerbnet, only the Narrow-Band Scanner could bring up a mini-map of the immediate area on the world's surface. Biomes and ore concentrations were available at once, allowing you to plan a suitable landing location, best route to drive your science rover to the next biome, or helping you find the best place to put your mining base. The area/angle shown was fixed, but nicely sized to be useful.

Since KerbNet, I see the whole hemisphere in the Narrow-Band Scanner map, instead of the immediate useful area I could drive to in a rover. Maps are how part of KerbNet, which several parts can access--each with their own confusing restrictions and map sizes.

[XLjedi]

There can be a pretty decent boost to the ore recovery rate if you plop down on higher concentration areas. ...however, if you're not too concerned over whether it takes 2 days or 2 weeks it doesn't really impact gameplay too much.

I'd probably opt for the nice flat areas of Minmus to plop down and just avoid the headache of the inclined areas that might process a little faster.

[ray.mcdonough]

Thanks, guys.

So, you can have different ore recovery rates for different areas.

How about deminished return? Does it slow down after awhile at the same spot?

[andylaugel]

While ore concentrations for worlds may vary between saves, I don't believe they change due to drilling--at least for planets and moons. Asteroids on the other hand do run out of ore eventually..

You can find the equations that explains how quickly you'll extract ore on the wiki[wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com], but it is directly proportional to the location's ore concentration. Having an engineer with as many stars as possible also plays a large role.

[ray.mcdonough]

Roger that.