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Maurleur's Guide to Robust Mining


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Welcome!


So, you decided to take on the incredibly tedious and straining task of mining for the sake of your team? Congratulations on being a b̶i̶t̶c̶ a productive and important member of this station.

Let me preface this by saying, that I won't be talking much about the things you're going to do once you're done with your materials. A forum member called "Duck" wrote a decent tutorial about that, which can be found here http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=281 . All clear? Then let's begin!


Preparations


Being a robust miner manifests itself before the game even starts. I would suggest buying your character a simple webbing from the character creation menu. The reason for that will be explained later.


Round Start


So, if you selected miner and you got your selected role(which I wouldn't be surprised about), you will spawn in the mining quarters in the cargo office. First thing you need to do is gear up, by grabbing a drill and meson goggles from the mining closet(and a lantern if you want to wear a hard-suit). Next you need to go to the cargo office and get yourself the cargo tug. Either by begging the cargo tech/QM or asking the AI for one. The cargo tug is essential for robust mining. Grab the tug, and fly to the mining asteroid.


Selecting your Gear


Mining comes equipped with 3 standard Voidsuits and a single Rig suit. Both suits are a viable option. I prefer taking the Rig suit if I am a solo Miner and Voidsuit if there's someone mining with me. Let's assume you go with the Rig Suit option.


First things first, your Rig suit has an internal airtank built into it. So you don't need an external oxygen tank. Use a crowbar, and then a wrench on it. And the tank will pop out. Refill it to the max with an oxygen canister, and set the pressure to a breathable 101 and pop it back in, and crowbar it shut. Next, this is where your webbing comes in. With a hardsuit, you cannot hold a backpack. And you need somewhere to keep your three essential tools in: Crowbar, Wrench and Screwdriver. Luckily, the webbing has exactly 3 slots, and it can be accessed on the move. A toolbelt can be used as well, but I feel it's a bit too cumbersome. Grab a mining satchel, and wrap it around your belt, and put a lantern in your pocket.


On the asteroid


Once you are done with your gear preparation, you are ready to go into space. A small tip, take out the ore box in the right mining external access, before you try to park your cargo tug in there, will save you a lot of embarrassment. Cycle to the external airlock...and you're ready to go!


It's important to note. The asteroids on aurora station are incredibly poor in surface minerals, so most of the mining will be done using the drills. So make sure those are set up first!


First things first, you need to take your tug, and load a set of mining drills onto it: So the 2 drill braces, and the main Drill itself. Once that is done, start riding around the asteroid on your cargo tug, and scan the nearby minerals with your rig mounted or handheld RCD. For clarity sake, imagine the underground resources as nodes which spread across certain areas. You want to come across the juiciest of spots, obviously. Here's a simple approximation on how a mineral node works


http://imgur.com/a/OIigs


Just so you are aware:


Here is what each of the scanning readings mean:


Surface Minerals - Carbon, Hematite, Sand


Precious Metals - Gold, Silver, Platinum


Nuclear Fuel - Pitchblende, Hydrogen, Phoron


Exotic Matter - Usually Diamonds


Most of the asteroid has at least some surface minerals in it. So pick a location depending on what you need. Fuel if you need phoron/uranium, precious minerals if you need gold/silver/plat, exotic matter if you're hurting for diamonds. Once you found a decent spot. Unload the drill bits, and wrench them into place. Go back to the mining outpost, load up another drill and repeat the whole process..


Can I actually mine now, please?


Yes you can! Once you've set up the two mining drills. Put a mineral box in the front compartment of your tug, and start mining away with your exosuit drill. By this time, you may have noticed that the cargo tug completely counters your suit's slow moving speed, and you don't need to carry around a box with you. This is how awesome it is. Remember that you can mine several times at once(assuming you don't use the rig mining drill or plasma cutter). Keep mining until you have a decent haul, or until the drills are completely full.


Once you see a drill full(indicated by a red light). Unload a ore box next to it, and empty the contents in there.


Refining the metals


Unload the box into the ore loader, and get the smelter ready.


You have to activate the smelter, here are the options for each mineral:


Pitchblende: Smelt it for uranium

Hematite: Smelt it for useless Iron. Alloy it with carbon for steel and with carbon and platinum for platesteel.

Impure Silicates: Smelt it for glass, compress for sandstone

Gold: Smelt it

Silver: Smelt it

Phoron: Compress it for phoron sheets

Diamond: Compress for diamonds

Coal: Smelt for plastic, alloy with hematite for steel

Platinum: Smelt for platinum ignots, compress for useless osmium, alloy for platesteel

Hydrogen: Compress for wafers, smelt for useless tritium


Mining Endgame


Congratulations! if your order was shipped off successfully, you can now reap the fruits of your hard labour. You can either go to the bar and get drunk, or you can got and pester science for upgrades.


Here are some ways to improve your mining power:


Better mining equipment: Bug R&D for a better mining equipment


Drill Upgrades: just like any machine, drills can be upgraded. If you take apart a drill, it contains a capacitor, laser and matter bin.

Better capacitors means the drill is more energy efficient.

Better lasers increase mining speed.

Bigger matter bins mean the drill can run for a longer time.

Bigger batteries means longer running time.

You can bug R&D for those components.


Better mining vessel:


I mean you can always use the good old cargo tug. But there are several upgrades. First of all, you can order a hoverpod from cargo itself. It can hold 4 items simultaneously, it's space manoeuvrable and it has a passenger compartment for your buddy. It's my favourite.


You can ask robotics to build you a ripley. But to be perfectly honest, ripleys kind of suck. As mentioned previously, the asteroids are incredibly mineral poor, and it's not very effective at carrying around the drill bits since it's so slow.


Final Words


After reading this guide, I hope mining will be a bit easier for you to understand, and I will see less miners bringing back 5 bars of of iron and 10 plasma back to the base. And maybe people will stop asking why I need a goddamned cargo tug.

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