TC: Mobile Mining Guide and Discussion

[ashtong16]

So I'm not sure if this is covered ground or not but after nearly an entire day spent shooting rocks, destroying expensive software and equipment, countless reloads and even a few "I'm going to snap" breaks I've decided I would share my now extensive Mobile Mining experience with the community. There is a lot of credits out there just floating around, waiting for someone with a rock shooter to come and scoop 'em up!

So first you'll need a Mining Ship. The Commonwealth ships usually have a Miner variant of their TS class ships but it's not a requirement to actually get started. Any TS class ship will do, as long as it can mount the Rock Shooter (or Mobile Drilling System if you hate brevity). be warned that if this is your first time operating a Rock Shooter it tracks very slowly! You can use your SETA to speed up the whole aiming process as the Rock Shooter actually tracks slow enough that it won't interrupt the SETA. Also you'll notice that the Rock Shooter eats up a lot of power, making Time Acceleration even more handy!

Anyways bare minimum you'll need a TS, a Rock Shooter, a Mineral Scanner and the Ore Collector. Niceties such as Special Command, Best Sells Software and Scanners can be purchased after you get your first shipment done. The one thing I will recommend is that you make sure you have decent shields because bumping asteroids can be expensive and if you lose your Rock Shooter you'll be stuck boffing E-cells around till you can scrape up another 70k to replace it! Now that you've got a TS all ready for Mobile Mining it's time to shoot some rocks!

For beginners it is highly recommended that you pick a nice empty sector without too many asteroids or rocks floating about, this will make it easier for you to spot which rocks can be picked up and which need more blasting. Believe me, you don't want to scoot into an unbroken asteroid and with too much stuff in the scenery it can be very hard to differentiate between a small rock 50m away and a big one 200m away.

To scan you must be within 10k of an asteroid. Scanning is simple, just target, hit "i" and select scan. This will tell you what's in an asteroid and how much. The higher the number the better the yield, 20 is average. Also it worth it to note that your scanner will not tell you if an asteroid can be collected yet, but it will tell you which ones have minerals in them and which are debris. I myself don't bother to scan an asteroid more than once because any debris you do pick up will simply be ejected automatically. Once you have a nice solitary goody filled asteroid picked out get to within 5k of it and turn so that your rear turret faces the asteroid. Hit F1 to jump into the turret and then fire away! It may take a few seconds for the asteroid to break up or it may take several shots, depending on the size and yield of the asteroid. Once it does break up pick ONE section of rock to work on at a time. When asteroids break up they'll make a huge mess so it's really best to start small and keep things tidy. You may need to reposition your ship so as to get a better shot at your targeted section. Break up your targeted section, it will most likely break into 5 or 6 smaller chunks. Again move if needed. Continue to break up the chunks until they look like pebbles. Eventually you'll notice that when you shoot some small chunks they will actually destroy some of the pebbles around them, take careful notice next time you shoot because these tiny pebbles are what you're after. Typically you will wind up with 3 or 4 chunks and several pebbles scattered around them. Stop shooting when you see this. Now it's time for the real tricky part. Picking up the pebbles!

I suggest you take it slow at first, running at about 13k, if you hit those small chunks with your ship they will break up into pebbles and quite possibly damage vital components. If you take a step back from your work you will immediately be able to see which rocks are too big and which can be scooped up. Simply fly around a scoop up as many pebbles as you can and then get back into firing position. Most likely the bigger rocks will be close together and you may only need to break up one or two, as the force of the rocks breaking apart from the laser will actually cause nearby rocks to break up as well. Once you've got those bigger pieces broken up it's time to scoop 'em up and move onto the next section of asteroid! Think of yourself as a Intergalactic Housemaid sweeping up trash!

Once you've gotten the hang of Mobile Mining, and made a tidy sum in the process, you can look at alternative ways of mining. One way to get the job done quicker is to have another Ship you can jump into once the Rock Shooting is done, then you can use Special Commands to get your Mining Ship to do it's own gathering. I highly recommend that you let the Mining Ship do this OOS because Autopillock likes to get wonky when you're IS. This method is also useful if you don't have the satellite network to make use of a Best Sells Software because you can go looking for a good deal while the Mining Ship does it's collecting. If you wanna get really posh you can even set up another TS as a second Miner-Hauler and use it strictly for collecting. You can also do it like how the manual describes, shooting with an M6 and using a TL for storage. But if you can afford a fully shielded TL then there is an even BETTER way to mine! Simply use your Rock Shooter to break an asteroid up into small pieces and drive right through the ensuing rock pile! The smaller sections will burst on the TLs huge shields, any pebbles will be automatically collected! The ample girth of your TL will make short work of this task and you'll find yourself eating up asteroids like a fat kid horkin' smarties!

Mobile Mining is an awesome way to make money but starting out can be a truly daunting task, especially if you've never done it before! But the fortunes to be made are well worth the time it takes to learn and don't ever doubt that either! Mobile Mining is a skill that is learned, you can't just read this guide and expect that you now know how to mine, it will take a few tries for you to learn how to differentiate between an asteroid that is small enough to be collected safely and an asteroid that needs just one more shot. Be patient and the rewards will be piled upon you.

Hopefully I've saved some people the frustration and agony of learning how to mine by pointing out a few of the dangers and basic precautions. I urge all players to discuss and perhaps offer their own experiences with Mobile Mining, or if I have missed or misrepresented something please feel free to debate as well!

Thanks for Reading! Remember to Vote in the Poll! This will help me in writing future articles.

[Sinxar]

You can tell if they are collectable by the color. Gold looking are collectable, grey needs to be broken down more.

[Nanook]

While finding things out for yourself is always cool, there are already a number of guides, including ones for X2, X3R and X3TC (scroll down to the Mobile Mining Guides). Good job, though.

[DrBullwinkle]

One thing that I have never seen in any of these guides is how to find Nividium rocks without scripts or looking up their locations.

I can, of course, *make* a rock cluster out of a Nividium asteroid. Doing that in Undefined Space works great.

I can Scan Debris to find a sector that *has* Nividium. But how do I locate the one rock cluster of Nividium out of dozens or hundreds of candidates?

Prospector can do it, but the otherwise similar vanilla mining scripts cannot, as far as I can tell.

What am I missing? How does the game intend for us to find Nividium rock clusters?

[Maxumous]

While finding things out for yourself is always cool, there are already a number of guides, including ones for X2, X3R and X3TC (scroll down to the Mobile Mining Guides). Good job, though.

I followed the guide on Mine Minerals finding out if you are in the same Sector the Miners Ts ships when they are Mining they get damaged and blown up. I don't know if anyone else as had this issue in [AP].

[Triaxx2]

If you're having problems with mining, I find using an M2 to collect the minerals works. Just drive through the rocks at 5 m/s.

Of course, for the breaking part, I find an Ore Mine towed through the field, at around 2 m/s will easily shred the large rocks, and whatever survives is collectable. If you go slow enough, you won't end up with a blown mine either.