Asteroid Mining

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Mining.jpg

There are currently two systems with asteroids fields orbiting a planet in the Inner9 systems, Vulcan and Veritas. Many outer systems have asteroid fields which contain some or all of the asteroid types (see Maps for gated outer systems and belts).

Asteroid mining can be very productive. When mining minerals it is a good idea to dock at the local space station, and offload your cargo into the item warehouse. This will allow you to mine with little interruptions, and once you have enough materials stored up, you can fly them around to contracts or sell them on the Galactic market. *Note, 100,000 tons of total materials can be stored in a NPC space station’s Item hanger.

Mining is more useful once you have a ship that can hold enough minerals to mine several asteroids in one trip. A Falcon (160 base cargo) or bigger is recommended for mining. *It is common practice to remove higher class armor from ships above class 1, and replace it with class 1 armor. Downgrading the armor class will create more cargo space on the ship and not affect ship function outside of combat.

In order to mine an asteroid a player must fly to a distance of 1,000m or closer, and maintain that proximity. Turning the gravity anchor on and off to slow down or speed up will help maintain a proper speed. It is best to try and match the speed and direction of the asteroid. *Note, only named asteroids can be mined.

When targeting the asteroid, use the left mouse button or B key to activate your mining beam. Continue holding until the asteroid reaches the proper temperature for mining. An ideal temperature for asteroid mining is 2200K. Temperature is judged by the color that the mining beam creates on the asteroid and the color the beam changes as temperature raises on the rock. The color for an ideal mining temperature is Blue. Once the asteroid is heated to the desired temperature, release the mouse button to mine it. The video below shows what it should look like when you release the mouse button.

Your ship comes with a class 1 mining beam; a larger one may be built at your star base shipyard or purchased from other players to get a higher yield from mining. Each mining beam produces yields of its class times 1. So a class 3 mining beam will produce 3 times as much as a class 1, and a class 4 will produce 4 times as much as a class 1.

As you mine Asteroids, your 'Asteroid Mining Skill' will go up and increase your yield also.

Several minerals are available for use in research on your star base or sale at the contract boards.

  • Silicon - needed for your Electronics Factory or sold on the contracts board.
  • Magnesium - ship yard item construction and can be sold on the contracts board.
  • Uranium - land and ship based reactors, can be sold on the contracts board.
  • Tin - Used in ship yard item construction and can be sold on contracts board.
  • Niobium - Used in ship yard item construction and can be sold on contracts board.
    • It is recommended to sell Tin and Niobium to other players, they will pay significantly more than contracts.


Other minerals such as Iron, Carbon, Titanium and Aluminum are harvested from various asteroids as well. Mineable asteroids and their content (+/- 2%) are....

Name Aluminium Carbon Cerium Iron Magnesium Niobium Promethium Silicon Tin Titanium Uranium Yttrium Neurorystals Notes
Kamacite 100%
Siderolite 33% 67%
Ureilite 7% 23.4% 23% 46.6%
Angrite 22.8% 15.2% 18% 24.3% 3% 16.7%
Chrondrite 12% 9.5% 24% 6.5% 48%
Autunite 80% 20%
Colombite 5.9% 5.9% 88.2%
Promethicite 10% 80% 10% Is a rare spawn, found in fields where Colombite, Angrite, or Autunite are present.
Bastnaesite 69% 13.9% 17.1% Extra rare spawn of Angrite and Chrondrite.
Neurocrystallite 100% Used to make Neurostimulators.

Asteroid mining.jpg

Mining Skill Bonus

Each time you successfully mine an asteroid, You gain a chance to level up. The formula to level up is 1 in Skill level. This means if you have a mining skill of 1, you have a 1 in 1 chance to gain a level. If you have a mining skill of 10, you have a 1 in 10 chance to gain a level. The higher your level, the less chance you will gain a level. There are no caps to levels, but it does get difficult as you increase. This means if you have a mining skill of 100, you have a 1 in 100 chance, or will have to mine an average of 100 rocks before you will gain a level. Each time a random number is generated, so you can level up to times in a row and go a long time without leveling. It is random, not broken. It will average out over time.


The mining skill gives you a bonus to the yield of the asteroid. The mining skill bonus is figured this way:

Mining skill bonus = mining skill/(mining skill + 100).

This means a mining skill of 5 will equal .05. This means it will give you a 5% bonus. A mining skill of 100 will give a mining skill bonus of .5. The equals a 50% bonus. A mining skill of 200 will give a mining skill bonus of .66 which is a 66% bonus.

The total asteroid maximum yield formula is as follows:

Max Yield = (mining beam class + asteroid age in days) × base yield × (1 + mining level bonus)

Max yield is achieved at 2138 - 2250K(Kelvin). If you stop mining at a lower temperature, your yield will go down. We do not have the formula of how that is calculated at this time.

Mining by Aerinite

For what it's worth, the max yield of any asteroid can be calculated as follows:

Max yield = (mining beam class + asteroid age in days) × base yield × mining level bonus

  • The base yield is the yield you would get from mining a 0 day old asteroid with a class 1 mining beam and 0 mining level.
  • Maximum yield assumes a mining temperature of 2137.5 K - 2250 K. Mining at 2000 K only gives around half of the maximum yield.


Notice how the mining beam class and asteroid age are added together. The net result is that allowing an asteroid to age one day is equivalent to upclassing a mining beam by one.

Example:

Let's say we have a class 14 mining beam, asteroid mining level 100 and mining a 6 day old Promethicite asteroid.

The base yield of a Promethicite is 80 silicon, 10 uranium and 10 promethium.

So:

  • Mining beam class = 14
  • Asteroid age = 6
  • Base yield = 10
  • Mining level bonus = 1.5 (50% bonus)


Promethium yield = (14 + 6) × 10 × 1.5 = 300 tonnes.

Disclaimer: I haven't done much testing on this so I could be completely wrong. It did predict my 428 tonne promethium yield to within 1%, though.


Miscellaneous

The process of "growing asteroids" is known as accelerated asteroid accretion.

A growing, searchable database of outer asteroid fields within 3 sectors of Apollo can be found at charts.AscentExtras.com

Videos

To find other asteroid belts, see Waervyn's Where to Mine Video

Waervyn's Mining Efficiency Video - Part 1

Waervyn's Mining Efficiency Video - Part 2

Gerugon's Asteroid Mining Video (German)

Waervyn's Ejecting Cargo Video


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