Mining...Not Really Worth It These Days
01 Feb 2021Scubadog
After several months of doing...other things, I decided to do a bit of mining. A couple of days ago I decided I wanted to buff the bank account a little bit and called up the Bisley Landing dock manager to have my Python set up on a pad. 
It always feels a bit strange boarding one of my ships after having had it parked for so long. Even though I'd spent months at a time in The Ceti Zorro back in the mining heyday, I still spent several minutes on the bridge just looking it over. I shook myself out of the stupor and fired up the main electronics. Since the ship was now in an active hanger, instead of one of the many long-term storage ones, she was connected to an auxiliary power unit. On most ships you can't simply live off of batteries while in storage, so you shut everything completely down. Once you get the reactor going, of course, you can feed juice to the batteries and you're fine. If you're out in the black you're always going to have your reactor running, even if it's in extremely low power mode, to support basic life support, trickle-charging the batteries and generally be prepped to spin up to normal or full power. But if you ever do a complete reboot of the ship or, for various reasons, have to shut down the ship entirely (which you don't want to do for very long out in the black because space is a bitch) you'll need the batteries to run the ship's electronics and light a fire in the reactor.
Once Zorro's electronics came to life I let the AI synchronize up with everything that happened on The Ceti Fokse. I know some commanders prefer their "virtual crew" to have a totally unique and separate "existence", for lack of a better description, on each of their ships. Not me. I have the same solitary AI on all my ships, and by synchronizing them I have a contiguous flow of info, history and performance, regardless of the ship I'm piloting. Anyway, while that was going on I set off to prep the rest of the ship. Although all the ships have food dispensers in the quarters, I take a little pride in keeping a reasonable amount of real foodstuffs aboard. I'm totally okay with sacrificing a bit of storage capacity for a refrigeration system for that purpose. Even for day trips.
I filled the rest of the cargo space with limpets and ran a check on the prospector and collector controllers, making sure they had the latest software for programming the limpets. The modest refinery I had on board checked out as all green, so I moved on to mining modules. Although I do prefer core mining, the Zorro is outfitted for any type of mining. And, because it's not unusual for me to run across some baddies trying to take my hard-earned cargo, I have a reasonable level of defensive and offensive capability.
So, everything was good, so I set a course for an unexplored system a few hundred lightyears away, figuring I wouldn't be disturbed. That's funny, now that I look back. Oh, then there's the stupid thing I did. I waited until I was already in transit to actually pull up the going rates for commodities. It hit me smack in the face. The Colonia region is economically dead. Seriously. Pick any item, any mineral. Many of them fetch a shiny credit back in the bubble. But, what in hells? A half to one quarter of the price in the Colonia region! Void Opals--which helped me get up over a billion credits in the bank--are essentially worthless out here. I finally settled on Benetoite as my target mineral. Those at least were getting over 600k credits at one station nearby.
I dropped into the system, spent some time scanning everything so I could get a read on the seven planets with rings. Most of them seemed likely places to find Benetoite. I set course to the nearest one and, sure enough, a quick probe later and I was descending down to a Benetoite hot spot. I wasted no time securing from supercruise and activating all the mining equipment. Over eight hours later I was about three quarter full of refined materials and decided to hop over to another hot spot elsewhere in this ring. Don't you know, that was a mistake. Within seconds of dropping on the new site a lone Krait Mk II fell in behind me. I boosted away quickly and thought I'd lost my would-be pirate. I just about to configure for mining again, but sensors blasted the alarm at me that I was being targeted. Immediately I switched to red alert and split power between shields and weapons. I swung the Zorro around to go nose-to-nose with the Krait. His threat came over my comms. Thankfully, my only offensive weapon--a heavily engineered multi-cannon--turned out to be good enough to burn down his shields and ultimately score me some bounty credits and some rare materials.
Then I spent the next couple of hours trying to top off my storage with refined materials.
I never did quite get full before I finally gave up. I set course for an outpost in Saraswati, one that had reported to have the decent price for Benetoite. Here comes the final insult. As soon as I set down on the pad and pulled up the station services I began navigating to sell my cargo. Barely over 300k per ton! You've got to be kidding. But I was tired, I was waiting on repairs to be finished on the ship (while I won the battle with the Krait, it wasn't without a little cost to me) while the outpost folk unloaded my ship.
The bottom line for me is that mining just isn't worth it these days out in Colonia. And this makes no sense at all to me. As I finish up this log entry, I'm finishing up my supper. I'm going to bed. And I'm not setting an alarm.