[TL;DR] Mining

[Napper198]

The original post is actually well laid out, but still about 20 mins of read, so here's the TL;DR version 

Lots of money or materials to build something, on contract reputation

Pirates, Vanduul, asteroid exploding in your face (seismic or thermal), wandering asteroids hitting your ship, falling ore/mineral prices, failing contract and loosing reputation, having hired dumb NPCs/players, getting screwed by information broker

 

Mining in SC is not going to be an easy task, with players getting busy piloting the ship, scanning for valuable and dangerous asteroids, cutting of asteroid chunks for your ship to process while trying not to blow up either of them, pulling in the good stuff and trowing away the crap and if your ships is equipped with a refinery and/or drones operating these without breaking either.

 

You can do it as freelancer, mining what you want and sell it for the best price/stock-pile it, but carrying all risks yourself (damage to ship, prices going down) or

You can do it as part of a contract, which is less lucrative and may hurt your reputation upon failure but gives safety in regards of ore value and gains you reputation with this particular group upon success and you can keep what you scooped up while mining for the stuff they wanted.

 

You can mine in public fields (probably already very depleted) or discovered hidden fields which you found yourself or bought the position of from an information broker (information might not be correct). Also, if you're on contract an discover an asteroid field yourself the location gets broadcast to the org you're contracted with so it probably won't stay secret.

 

 

Following are the occupations you'll need to fill in (yourself, friends, NPCs) in order to mine:

 

Pilot: Don't crash, m'kay? And while you're at it, maybe give the beam operators a good view on the asteroid?

Scan operator: Pick a good looking asteroid, scan it to find a good spot to deploy a remote material analysis package (RAMP) so it gets near the center of mass and then guide the RAMP equipped missile manually to the right spot. You can either scan longer for a better place and do a mediocre job on landing the RAMP or rush the scan and perfectly nail the landing, the outcome stays the same, you just have to do one thing very good.

Beam operator: Here is where the magic happens. Try to cut off small parts from the asteroid in order for the cargo operator to collect them, but beware: too much power on the beam can cause valuable ore to simply burn away and produce some rock shards which will damage your ship and watch out for seismic activity on the Rock you're cutting as tremble can ignite volatile material which will result in loss of the whole asteroid or even your life. Fortunately, if your scan operator done a good job exothermic reaction (burn out), seismic activity (explosions) and value of ore gets displayed so you don't have to do it by feeling.

Cargo operator: you're going to hate the physics model. With your granular controllable attractor and repulsor beam you have to attract the valuable chunks to your input port and push away the pieces which are not valuable enough to be processed/stored, all while hitting the center of mass, otherwise the chunks are going to rotate and possibly damage your ship. You also see the ore ratio, like the beam operator does.

Refinery operator: If your ship has a refinery you'll need an operator for that, too. His/Her job is it to guide the right materials into the right processing stations so you can eject the crap out an just keep the much smaller, purified minerals. A screw up would result in lost minerals, jams, reduced efficiency or even total break down of a processing station.

Drone operator: If you're really lucky your ship has some drones to do stuff for you, but, you guessed it, you'll need another operator for them, too. Much details didn't get released, but they will probably take care of your ship and maybe haul some rocks to your input port, we will see.

 

You can do all of this stuff alone but it'll be hell to run back and forth from each station. Luckily if you don't feel like dealing with real people you can hire NPCs which can do stuff well or not so well depending on how much they want to get paid.

Edited February 21, 2015 by Napper198

[rucdoc]

nice tldr

 

and yeah the cargo guy is gonna be important, unless they release a ship that is litteraly fly into field of crap scoop everything in front and hope.

[drewjn]

Was considering if I want it or not. Didn't want to go into mining originally, since it is so boring, but the multi role aspect and newer system make this worth considering. Still wanting to look into the science ships first.

[DtrollMC]

Yea I'm looking for a mining group to hire!

[drewjn]

Yea I'm looking for a mining group to hire!

I would have definitely considered it, but I wish to hold off for production and research based ships. That or repair. Sad thing is that there will be a good long week of temptation to keep me second guessing.

[Napper198]

and yeah the cargo guy is gonna be important, unless they release a ship that is litteraly fly into field of crap scoop everything in front and hope.

 

Sorted descending the importance of the jobs are probably going to be beam operator, cargo operator, scanner, refinery, pilot, drone operator (which I need to add btw)

 

I would have definitely considered it, but I wish to hold off for production and research based ships. That or repair. Sad thing is that there will be a good long week of temptation to keep me second guessing.

 

Well, you do have 9 days left to buy it, so you can hold off until next week and decide then and technically you could buy one and gift it later to someone who accidentally gifted you some money before. 

 

Yea I'm looking for a mining group to hire!

 

What type of people are you not looking for?

[DtrollMC]

What type of people are you not looking for?

I was looking for Mercs and Miners, but now I have a ton of Mercs available to me. I have yet to find any serious miners.

[Creiger]

I imagine the drones are gonna be multi-purpose or have several varieties avilable with specialized purposes. Ones off the top of my head would be rock retrieval like ya said, but I'm also thinking there'd be ones that have small scanners and can be set to zip around and find a specific type of material before telling the Scan Operator to RAMP a specific rock for everyone else to go after. Other than that I see maintenace ones to help with maintaining/fixing the refinery and repairing any hull damage.

 

They talk up the asteroid calamities as apocalypse-level events, but it makes me wonder what the heck we have shields for in that case. I mean, yea I can see that if it's as big as or bigger than the ship mining it, but a smaller one shouldn't cause obscene damage unless you're like staring at it.

[Napper198]

I imagine the drones are gonna be multi-purpose or have several varieties avilable with specialized purposes. Ones off the top of my head would be rock retrieval like ya said, but I'm also thinking there'd be ones that have small scanners and can be set to zip around and find a specific type of material before telling the Scan Operator to RAMP a specific rock for everyone else to go after. Other than that I see maintenace ones to help with maintaining/fixing the refinery and repairing any hull damage.

 

They talk up the asteroid calamities as apocalypse-level events, but it makes me wonder what the heck we have shields for in that case. I mean, yea I can see that if it's as big as or bigger than the ship mining it, but a smaller one shouldn't cause obscene damage unless you're like staring at it.

 

CIG was only talking briefly about drones in the concept sale page of the orion, not even on the design post itself; I just included it here, since it made sense for me. Fact is that they probably still thinking about this and we'll see a dedicated design post for them and I expect drones to be much more useful overall.

If I read this right the rough mineral density will be displayed by the ship scanners (either explorer or dedicated mining), but we may also see a RAMP drone, the possibilities are endless 

 

Debris is already pretty deadly in AC. Parts as big as your Ship will easily kill you, but in the end the inherent energy dictates the damage taken. You can survive a crash with a much bigger asteroid, but depending on how fast and with which part of your ship you hit it you'll take damage accordingly.

[drewjn]

I decided to not purchase an orion, but will be available if anyone needs crew.

[CatCloud]

Nice read, getting an Orion by midnight, the pricing is a B thanks to the 25% VAT but such is life...

 

I´m glad its not an easy task like in ELITE or EVE....well..Elite´s implementation is annoying.. oh look minerals ! aaaand its floating away and you have to stop mining and fly after it...=_=

Give me something that sucks in the Ore!!!

[Napper198]

Nice read, getting an Orion by midnight, the pricing is a B thanks to the 25% VAT but such is life...

 

I´m glad its not an easy task like in ELITE or EVE....well..Elite´s implementation is annoying.. oh look minerals ! aaaand its floating away and you have to stop mining and fly after it...=_=

Give me something that sucks in the Ore!!!

 

Yeah, import tax sucks, but not much you can do about it and at least ED has some action. EVE Online ice mining: klick, klick, klick, wait 7 minutes, repeat. Seriously, one person could handle 20 accounts without getting stressed. The most stressful part is when NPC pirates showed up, but with enough ships in the belt you could get rid of them with just drones set to aggressive, so they attack automatically.

[rentaspoon]

I'm just hoping we can slice and dice ships with the laser.

[CommanderFett]

I'm just hoping we can slice and dice ships with the laser.

Operation Monarch V2, now with Orion "bombers"!

[Krml]

We have an Orion in the afiliated org. There is only 2of us for now (lol) and we will look for a crew for it soon. How many Orions do we have in Uoltt?

@rentaspoon yeah hold it in the tractor beams and slash slash i would like to see it hehe

[Wauthar]

We have an Orion in the afiliated org. There is only 2of us for now (lol) and we will look for a crew for it soon. How many Orions do we have in Uoltt?

@rentaspoon yeah hold it in the tractor beams and slash slash i would like to see it hehe

Which affiliated org are you talking about?

[Krml]

@Wauthar - Afiliated to me that is not uoltt. Its called EWB. You would like to mine with us?

There is only 2 of us there for now and will need crew. Id preferably offer positions to my friends from thusted Uoltt.

[Wauthar]

@Wauthar - Afiliated to me that is not uoltt. Its called EWB. You would like to mine with us?

I'm fighter, not a miner (I remember this quote being different...)

 

But, no, I am not equipped for that kind of work. If you do need hauling (which I can't imagine with an Orion) or escorting, I'm your man!

[Krml]

Yeah @Wauthar escorting would be great

Im an explorer/miner/fighter lol it will be a stretch

I cannot help it and want to do all these things.