[TC] MDS of any use??

[crimson522]

as far as i can see the mobile drilling system is just a waste of money. i still get the same result if i use a run of the mill laser on astroids so whats the point in investing an one?

[StormMagi]

You should be able to tell ships to remotely mine if they have one. I know I have that command option available for my MMBSs once they had that installed.

[UnderLord]

Plus it only takes one shot with the MDS were if you use a laser or a missle it might take more then one i usually fire it, turn on seta, for the long recharge time and then fire again. I find it some what useful.

[Solomon Short]

as far as i can see the mobile drilling system is just a waste of money. i still get the same result if i use a run of the mill laser on astroids so whats the point in investing an one?

There are 2 classes of Minable body, "Asteroids" & "Rocks".

Asteroids show on the sector map & can have mining stations on them, Rocks don't & can't.

Rocks can be mobile mined by a ship with an Ore Collector, Asteroids can't.

Unless... you use an MDS or Missile (that does over 200k Damage I believe, Hornet is recommended in the FAQs) to break it up into "Rocks".

Rocks that are too big to be collected can be broken down further by Any laser (including MDS), but if shot too often will just disappear, they also be mined by Ramming them at slow speed in a ship with sufficient shielding (I understand anything too big to be collected breaks up for the next round).

Asteroids destroyed by MDS or Missile should, eventually, respawn at a random location in the sector with a random yeild. Rocks... umm... don't (AFAIK).

Also, I believe use of the MDS for Automated Mobile Mining only applies if you're using Lucikes Prospector script, the vanilla "collect rocks" command reportedly uses the ramming method (which is interesting as ramming shouldn't work OOS, again AFAIK).