How to start mining?

[Suchy]

ok....so how do I outfit the skunk for mining?...........I need a mining laser...I figured that out. lol

[Lupo]

And a ship that stores the mineral (bulk cargo mostly). And that ship will need the drones that pick up the mineral that you break up with the mining laser, surface miner drones if I remember correctly.

[Morgoth (C.Diff)]

once you have the correct ship in your squad ( AND have it fitted with mining drones ) - you can either instruct the captain to start mining - or you can enter mining mode and individually select the broken up asteriods by double clicking ( make sure the cursor looks like a rock and the asteroids are broken up enough to be selected for collection by the drones ) - the drones will automatically collect the material - doing it this way is faster than auto mining.

- also the mining ship will use its own mining laser to break up rocks automatically - to initiate this you need to use the skunks mining laser on the rock you want to bust up -
in other words once you hit an asteroid with the skunks mining laser it instructs the captain of the mining ship to use its laser on that rock -

You need to do missions untill you have enough money to buy the mining ship and the drones before you can start mining - you cant do it with the skunk alone .

[Suchy]

Thanks guys!

[Sussex]

mining ships range from small ones - 1 mil credits ish upto the larger ones, like the fedhelm that cost a little more, maybe 5 mil ish. I use a fedhelm as they`re all in one miners as opposed to being restricted to gas / ice mining

[Chew Ass and Kick Bubblegum]

You can also mine gas.
For that, you'll simply need a capship capable of carrying liquids, with a few Scoop collector drones.
Then you tell it to "gather resources here", and you choose the resource, it will send away the scoop drones to scoop in some liquids and gas.

[HOWI-FX]

i am thinking of comming back to this game after mastering Simcity 2013.. in simcity you get to mine and learn to sell for profit...but it takes awhile untill you can own a processor factory and sell chips for 100k... now i know X-Rebirth has similairities to that...i tried it once..but had problems trying to make enough profits and stuff... i had to gain most of the profits by shooting cargos in space and capturing mid cap ships...

[D_K]

Anyone figured out which different drones you need for an ore mining ship?
Of course surface mining drones. (I put 10 mk1 and 25 mk2) But I also put some builder-URVs in it for repairs (about 5) and some cargo lifter drones (10) for transporting the stuff to a station.

So is there a guideline for equipping such drones in amount and type? For example I could imagine my vessel unloading faster at a station with its own cargo lifter drones....

[Chew Ass and Kick Bubblegum]

More cargolifters = faster unloading, if you (or the station) doesn't have any of those, you cannot unload/load wares
More construction drones = faster repairs AND construction of station & upgrades for station

Scoop drones = they collect liquid resources, Ion, Plasma and Hydrogen.
Surface miners = those collect bulk resources, Crystals, Nvidium, Ore, Silicon, Ice.

But of course, there's a limit.
Having more collector drones than amount of resources the ship can carry is useless.
For example, If the ship can only carry 33000 units of ice, it's completly useless to have more than 30 collector drones.
For repairs, Iam not sure. But there's a limit too, of course your ship is not going to repair within two seconds when you install 150 construction drones. But I don't know what's the limit.
Cargolifters the same, there's an efficiency limit.

I just put 15 collectors where they are needed. Nothing more.
Then 5 construction drones for non-combat ships, and 15 construction for combat ships.
15 cargolifters for freighters, and 5 for non-freighters.



Also combat drones will only launch in-zone. So they are useless for ships that don't fight in the same zone as Skunk.

[D_K]

Ok cool thanks. I thought about an efficency limit but didnt find information on how much drones the ship can start at once and how long one unit takes to fill its cargo limit and deliver back to the ship.