Misfortune in Mining for Money ?

[OPUS]

The money you make from mining and selling ore seems to need adjusting.

I have mined for 1 hour and made less than 20k. The most I made on one trip was a little under 6k by ejecting low value ore.

I looked at cargo upgrades, but 15k for only 19 more storage will only result in about a 10% increase in money from ore sales. (I'm still in my starting ship with a cargo hold of 200.)

So I looked at upgrading to a merchant ship and found a few with a 3500 cargo hold (now that's more like it!), but the prices are ~4 million. So even if I make 20k / hour, it will take 200 hours before I can get a ship with a decent cargo hold. "That's a long wait for a train that don't come."

So obviously, Mining in this game is NOT a profitable way to spend your time, which is a shame as I was looking forward to it. So am I missing something in regards to mining? Is it just not intended to be a profit making choice for players?

I've continued running missions and such to try and make money, but 4 million is such a long way off...

[Neneley]

The Startingship is more combatfocused ...its an interceptor so not suited for mining at all. I never did mining at all unless you count the miningdrones but it was mentioned that it gets a lot better once you gain some miningskills and different ship.

The cargoexpansions are different from ship to ship ...a wild guess (not really looked deep into it except for my exetor) it seems they are percentbased on your ships base cargohold.

Excample:
My Exetor has base 700 Cargohold
>basic (white) Cargoholds can give anything from 0-10% bonus on that (up to 770)
>exceptional (green) Cargoholds can give anything from 10-15% bonus on that (up to 805)
>rare (blue) Cargoholds can give anything from 15-20% bonus on that (up to 840)
>legendary (gold) Cargoholds can give anything from 20-25% bonus on that (up to 875)

So a higher base cargohold like the traderships have does give an all the better bonusgain from their respective cargoholdexpansions.

Mining will get a lot better later ...ive read about gaining 5mio once a hour or so but thats in the high end regions with the large cargohaulers and good mininglasers and probably some skillpoints in mining.

In the beginning the best advise i could give is save up for the miningdrones ...you can have up to 20 of them and then you go out scan planets and set the drones on those miningnodes letting them mine and sell on their own until depleted then relocate them afterwards to the next node. It a onetime invest and then they will give you a steady income if you keep them busy.

Gaining money in the beginning is a little harder if you just go for mining but once you have a little its getting easier and easier.

[OPUS]

Hi Celsia. Thanks, that's good to know and makes sense. I have yet to see a ship for sale with a cargo hold of 700 like your Exetor. I know what's for sale resets so I guess I can keep resetting until one shows up...kinda lame. Plus, if one shows up for sale and I'm short of funds, it may not be there when I come back with enough money, so the randomness of what's for sale can be frustrating.

[Neneley]

Originally posted by OPUS:

Hi Celsia. Thanks, that's good to know and makes sense. I have yet to see a ship for sale with a cargo hold of 700 like your Exetor. I know what's for sale resets so I guess I can keep resetting until one shows up...kinda lame. Plus, if one shows up for sale and I'm short of funds, it may not be there when I come back with enough money, so the randomness of what's for sale can be frustrating.

No it wont be there anymore but yes everytime you load a save or leave and reenter the station vendor inventory will be reset so its not really a problem finding that ship again. But ships are expensive ...so youll probably not be in a position to buy one now as you get a lot less tradin value for your current ships.

Excample
-Base price of a Ship is 10mio (100%)
-with 0 charisma and no factionreputation you will have to pay 200% so 20mio for the ship
-with 0 charisma and no factionreputation you will only get 50% of the worth of your old ship back/trade in

As said try to go for miningdrones and then upgrade your ships combatability by trying to find in shipcombat or buy better weapons (try to find good equipment ...if you have luck or money go for blue/rare equipment ...the legendary/gold will come later)

Especially in the beginning for me the spacecombat paid out a lot better ...just look at your map and go to the nearest red system (well unless you aim to get into smuggling later) and fight some raiders/scavvers and take their drops.

[OPUS]

Thanks for the suggestions Celsia. I'll look into using drones and will focus on space combat for now.

Each game is different, of course. EVE was the opposite of this one. It was very easy to make good money mining in EVE, but destroying enemy ships and scavenging them, while fun, was not profitable at all compared to mining.

[Neneley]

Ah yes i know eve ...i always found mining boring ...while doing agent missions was quiet profitable too once you got a good enough ship ...but nevermind this here i like more.

Maybe youll get some of the more dedicated miners to give some hints too but yes ...the interceptor you have you should use to get some money from drops of enemy ships which will pay a lot more than what you could earn mining in it.

[SpiralRazor]

Mining in any ship with less then say 5000 cargo cap is kinda pointless...Reason?

Refineries. To refine most raw ores you need large cargo holds...25 raw ore = 1 refined ore...so you will need a LOT of space to hold enough raw ore to refine a reasonable sized amount of refined goods.

you will also need to spend some *very* boring hours doing nothing but sloosh mining, even with 3 or 4 mining lasers going i could only tolerate getting it to 30....zzzz..snoozefest.

Use your starter ship or get a cheap fast trader with decent cargo space, get your illegal wares contact mission done and start working the trade net by setting up lots of beacons.. Very much faster start then trying to go the mining route, at least currently.

I think its quite funny you can get rare refineries for the starter fighter lol...you will quickly realize its useless. the ship is meant for combat and carrying 20 drones.

[ScorpioDog]

I wouldn't say it's pointless. I'm flying an Arden light merchant with two light mining lasers, 5 drones and a cargo hold of 3991 capacity. With a level 23 mining-weapons officer and 76% efficiency refinery, I can make over 450,000 credits per haul. You can swap out your mining perks depending on what you're doing. If you're out running missions, choose the +5% ore quality for your drones. When actively mining, choose the ore quality perk for that, and when your hold is stuffed, use the [ion?] shower perk to reduce waste.

And... at a certain angle the Arden kinda looks like a Retriever. ;)

I bought my Arden with the profits from mining with my starter ship. I would haul raw ore back to the station storage and just start dumping it there. Every other haul, I'd withdraw every ore over 30 and refine. Then I'd take the refined ores and rare earth minerals and sell them to the nearest merchant. I'd put my drones on auto and let them sell everything because you certainly can't collect with such a small cargo hold. It took me about 12 hours of gameplay time to trade-in for the Arden. I regret that I traded it. I wish I had waited to buy the Arden and keep my interceptor for space combat.

Ninja looting is also a good money maker. Set your incursions to high, and let the NPCs battle it out amongst themselves - then swoop in and collect the loot.

[AtmaDarkwolf]

hint: If you have no cargo space, put whoever u want to learn mining in weapon spot, launch all 20 drones, and let them do their thing(pick a system with high 'quality' ore and a station, seems to work even in hostile systems)

The drones will mine till full, then sell the ore at stations. With only 5 drones out I am making around 300-400k every few minutes while I do other things, the drones automatically sell for me.