Going big in mining
08 Sep 2019Veladarius
We've all seen the vid's on going big in mining as in going with a large ship. I have used several medium ships for mining with the latest one I had set up specifically for mining being an Asp Explorer. The Asp was decked out with all the latest in mining gear and could hold 64t of cargo and I have come back with 4m cr worth of metals a number of times but never really hit the 'mother load' as I could never find a location that had a good amount of the high value stuff.Having recently gone to a large ship as my primary not long ago (an Imperial Cutter) and was able to pay for it and A rate everything within a week or two I looked at my little Asp and decided it was time to go big on mining myself since I could make more running cargo in the Clipper than I could mining in the Asp in the same amount of time. Now some pilots recommended a T-9 but I had one and if I ran into trouble it never ended well, thing is built like a tin shed (and is just as fast and maneuverable as one too). Liking the handling, speed and combat capabilities of the Clipper I decided to use one for mining. So I got to work and pulled in the credits to buy another Clipper and began upgrading it.
The first thing I decided was that other than a Surface Scanner I didn't need any of the other new mining equipment or sensors as I rarely ever found a need for them. I went with a pair of medium mining lasers and a pair of size 5 collector limpet controllers, I wouldn't mind another limpet controller but I would have to sacrifice a larger cargo rack for it. In a lot of vid's I saw from other miners they would not really add much of anything not required for mining but knowing that run in's with pirates were inevitable so the rest of the ship was outfitted the same as my primary ship (A-rated and engineered) so I could deal with any pirates in medium ships or smaller with no issues (large ships like Anaconda's would be a problem since I had reduced weaponry because of the mining lasers).
So once it was in usable condition (not completely A rated yet) I went to do a bit of mining and came back with little more than I did with the Asp. What was I doing wrong? So I consulted other miners and most recommended going for Painite but I needed a good hot spot (the one I was at didn't yield much of it) and if at all possible find overlapping painite hot spots. I went back to the pristine systems I had mapped again, no overlapping hot spots and only had one decent paininte hot spot that with some work I was able to come out with about 80m cr of painite and other various metals. Pretty good but it still took longer to mine than doing the cargo runs in my other Cutter so earning enough mining to pay for the ship would take time, time better spent running cargo. To make the big money I had to find overlapping painite hot spots.
After going through info from other miners I finally found a few locations of overlapping hot spots though the closest one to me was almost 200 ly away but I decided to give it a shot. Well, it paid off - big. 300m cr big with almost 390t of painite in just a few hours which was enough to pay for half the cost of the overall cost of the ship. It was another 150 ly to the closest station paying high prices for painite and had one run in with a pirate close to the station (a Fer-de-Lance) but I was still able to handle him with little issue. Looks like mining will be worth my time doing again, it is somewhat relaxing wandering through the asteroids. Of course it isn't always easy in a large ship, especially one as large as the Clipper, a 50m long ship is a lot easier to maneuver around the asteroids and get in between the big ones than a 200m ship is.
Asteroids don't seem as big anymore
Getting into position can be tricky
I plan to do another mining run before heading off to my home station content that building this wasn't a waste of credits.