Mining Guide please?

[CyberBatty7]

Can someone make a mining guide for the beta update to help me/others please?

[Timerlane]

If I read things right, the new mining lasers deal a new/special kind of damage to asteroids that may increase the amount of material 'dropped' when the asteroid blows up.

The Sunder is a new, decently-cheap little ship designed to show off the new equipment; the mining lasers, and the Tractor Beam turret, plus it comes with two drone slots, to allow you to bring along a pair of the new Mining Drones(which kind of look a bit to me like an ES-ified Exocomp), and 80t of cargo space. The Sunder also comes with an Asteroid Scanner by default, which allows you to directly target mineable asteroids(default 'V' key for closest asteroid), and lets the auto-aim of the ship do a lot of the work for you. You still have to press 'TAB'(default) to fire the weapons on your ship at the Asteroids, though.

The Tractor Beam turret is completely automatic, like an anti-missile turret, and tries to suck close-by asteroid 'flotsam' toward your ship.

If you have Mining Drones(deploy/recall with 'D' by default; they have no hyperdrives, so they rely on the Sunder 'mothership' to carry them in or out of a system) or other armed escorts with you, you can order them to attack targeted asteroids with the 'F' key(default; also technically applies to anything that can be targeted, not just asteroids). The Mining Drones have no internal cargo space, so you have to pick up the asteroid flotsam with the Sunder.

If you want to try things out in safety(i.e. no pirates), try the Caph system; there's loads of Tungsten Asteroids there, and Tungsten sells for 4500 credits per ton. A Sunder cargo hold full of Tungsten can sell for >350k a day.

[Drascalicus]

Everything looks the same for mining. There's just the addition of a tractor beam as a cheap human equivalent and and dedicated mining gun and turrets that are a less effective and lower requirement than a heavy laser system.

[Aperankityal - Levana]

Yeah, Timerlane is basically exactly correct. Caph also has some uranium, which may get you a slightly better bang for your buck.

The Sunder is a fun ship for an early-game player. Its price class, with drones included, means it's a sidegrade for the second or maybe third ship you buy- it's a lot like the Clipper, but more specialized towards mining. It's unfortunate that there's not a larger ship with drone bays to use, but by that point an extra couple mining lasers may not be necessary.

[Saugia]

Originally posted by Drascalicus:

Everything looks the same for mining. There's just the addition of a tractor beam as a cheap human equivalent and and dedicated mining gun and turrets that are a less effective and lower requirement than a heavy laser system.

As Timerlane has mentioned above, there are a decent amount of new mechanics that come with mining. It may look and play the same at a glance, but there's more under the hood going on than just "buy strong beam laser".

The Tractor Beam isn't a cheap human equivalent of something (not sure what you're comparing it to), it is a brand new type of weapon that pulls flotsams to your ship so you don't have to directly fly over to them. It's not the same thing as the Heliarch Attractor as it is automated like AM and only targets flotsams - it's not for ship combat.

The dedicated mining laser and turrets, while in the general sense do less damage than the heavy laser, increase the drop yield of minables, whereas heavy lasers do not, so they are *more* efficient at specifically mining. They, along with other mining weapons in the game, all now have a prospecting attribute that is what is increasing your payload per asteroid, which you would not get from weapons that do not have this attribute. In some cases, it may be faster to mine with non-mining weapons, however the difference will show over time.

[Drascalicus]

Originally posted by Saugia:

The Tractor Beam isn't a cheap human equivalent of something (not sure what you're comparing it to), it is a brand new type of weapon that pulls flotsams to your ship so you don't have to directly fly over to them. It's not the same thing as the Heliarch Attractor as it is automated like AM and only targets flotsams - it's not for ship combat.

The dedicated mining laser and turrets, while in the general sense do less damage than the heavy laser, increase the drop yield of minables, whereas heavy lasers do not, so they are *more* efficient at specifically mining. They, along with other mining weapons in the game, all now have a prospecting attribute that is what is increasing your payload per asteroid, which you would not get from weapons that do not have this attribute. In some cases, it may be faster to mine with non-mining weapons, however the difference will show over time.

I admit, I didn't realize the Tractor Beam was automated AM turret, I though it would act more like a grab-strike and pull asteroids, not floatsam.

However, I just dug through the files. Mining Lasers have a prospecting value of 1, the MCS extractor has a value of 9. Either the math in the game will work as (Prospecting*Mineral Amount) = Ore Provided or (Prospecting+1)*Mineral Amount. Some ingame testing will be needed.

Either way, mining has still not changed all that much. It is the same loop with a few new ships and outfits that are now dedicated to the act. The only new item is the tractor beam that works you as described.

[Grathagis]

Originally posted by Drascalicus:

However, I just dug through the files. Mining Lasers have a prospecting value of 1, the MCS extractor has a value of 9. Either the math in the game will work as (Prospecting*Mineral Amount) = Ore Provided or (Prospecting+1)*Mineral Amount. Some ingame testing will be needed.

I don't think the prospecting variable is a multiplier. I set the variable for the mining laser to 10000 and I only received 2-3 times more materials. I didn't notice a worthwhile difference between using a standard laser and the mining laser when it has a prospecting value of 1.
MCS is a bit harder to test as escorts using it have a hard time mining any asteroid. They tend to overshoot the asteroid and don't stay in contact long enough.
Using the digger beam which has a prospecting value of 3.7 I noticed I get way more materials when mining lower end materials like silicon than I do mining higher end materials like tungsten.
I was thinking the value might refer to a chance of getting more materials: 1%, 3,7% or 9% depending on the mining weapons, but I cannot confirm that either.

[Amazinite]

Weapons with prospecting apply that prospecting value to minable asteroids whenever they're hit. The more prospecting a minable has when it's destroyed, the higher its average yield is. Minables also have a "toughness" value that increases the amount of prospecting that needs done to the asteroid for the same increase in yield. Asteroids that are worth more have higher toughness values, and so you'll receive less of a yield increase when mining them with prospecting weapons.

This means that just because a weapon has a higher prospecting value doesn't necessarily mean that it will increase the yield of the asteroid more, because if it also has much higher hull or minable damage, it will destroy the asteroid much quicker, therefore reducing the amount of prospecting done to the asteroid. The progression in terms of which mining weapons are the best for increasing yields right now goes Mining Laser < Korath Digger < Coalition MCS < Gegno Excavator < Gegno Burrower.

The default drop rate of all minables right now is 25% of their max value on average. If you mine using only mining lasers, you'll increase the average yield of silicon asteroids to about 32%, platinum to about 26%, and all other (normal) minables being somewhere in between.

[Grathagis]

I never expected it to be an accumulative effect, but it does make sense. Thank you for the explanation.