This guide was originally posted on Reddit by cmdr LocNor, and all credit for this guide goes to him.

 

The two schools of Mining:

Actually before we start, let's talk a little about the two schools of mining. Both are valid and both have their place.

• School 1-Quality: More time in ring, bring out only the most valuable of cargo.
• School 2-Quantity: Be selective, but not too selective, load up and leave, return.

I'll refer to these regularly as your choice of equipment and your method of mining revolves around what school is best for your situation. These represent the 2 extremes, you'll probably borrow a little from both schools to develop your own style.

 

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Tools of the trade:

Let's talk equipment, we'll get to ships later.

• Mining lasers: These blast the chunks from the rock. They come in two sizes, small and medium. Generally speaking the more the better, but there is a serious plateau at two mediums. Aim for 2-3 mediums and then be happy, you're done here. (4 if you can manage a 8a Distributor). You may have heard or seen the Torval Mining Lances, you can see my opinions on that here.

• Refinery: This device stores the chunks in "bins" and once a full ton is available, converts it to cargo. A bin can only contain 1 type of material at a time. So if a rock is giving you 3 materials and you only have 2 bins, you'll have to manage the thing. More bins the better.

  • School 1: You're only after choice materials so you'll be managing your bins anyway so you can get a much smaller number of bins. Let's call it, the number of different rock you're after plus 2. So if you're going in looking for just Painite and Platinum, you only really need 4 bins. More is always better.
  • School 2: . Take the most bins you can carry.

• Limpets: Limpets are a universal little buddy that can be programmed to do different things. They take up cargo space and are effectively ammo (don’t leave a station without going to restock and loading up. Generally take 50 to 75% of your hold in limpets. Adjust as needed) Going up in rank on limpet controllers generally controls either operational distance or time active. In all cases, A rated is generally not wildly more expensive than lower grades so just get A.

  • Prospector: What this does is shoots out in a straight line, hits a rock and tells you its makeup. I'll go into what you should be looking for here later. It will also tell you when the thing is out of goods and you should stop firing. Most importantly... once a prospector has hit a rock, the total number of chunks you can get out of it increases. Dramatically. Like, "you would be a complete masochist to leave a station without one of these" dramatically. There are different sizes of these, bigger is better but 3A is largely sufficient for all builds, 1A works if you can't fit a 3. If you are following a different guide and it tells you to forgo this. It's an old guide and you should stop using it. These were buffed late 2015. If there is a guide, my old one included, that is telling you that 1A is all you need, that bug is fixed.
  • Collectors: These guys hover around and fetch the chunks and bring them to your hold. Here again, if the other guide you're reading says these are broken or diabolically is telling you to scoop chunks, those are old. While these DO function a lot better than they did, they are still dumb as bricks. They will go from your ship, to the chunk, and back to your ship and deposit the cargo. If any of those lines happens to be through a rock... time to deploy a new one (AFTER you move away from or back around the corner to the chunk, the new one would be just as happy to suicide as the last one.) These things can control a number of limpets each, and you can stack them. More is generally better, in all cases your aim is to have them picking up chunks about as fast as they come off the rock.
    • School 1: You're maximizing the value of any given cargo space. So you need just enough to fetch the chunks in space before they time out. For cargo under 100, 2-4 should be sufficient. For holds over that, 3-5 will be slow but functional.
    • School 2: You want to get the chunks out of the rock, and move on. 6 is a target number. For hulls under a 100, 4 will serve. For the big boys, 8-10+.
  • Collectors: target or no target. If you have something collectible targeted when you deploy a limpet that limpet will die the second that target is collected. So if you off hand target a single fragment and deploy 12 limpets, you'll see them all go out, collect that ONE fragment and then all die. This is handy to snag that 1 Chemical manipulator out of a field of focus crystals, but not for mining. To avoid this ensure that you have nothing targeted when you deploy them, then they will stay till they expire.

• Cargo space: And here we all at the great debate between the 2 schools. Generally, the more the better. However, this should not be taken over other valuable equipment.

  • School 1: You can get away with fewer collectors, but RESIST the temptation to just take two and stock up. You will be out there FOREVER waiting on those poor bastards.
  • School 2: More limpets is better. You want these things picking up the chunks as fast as they are coming off the rock. If that’s not the case in your build and you're using this school, go back and get another controller.

So as you can probably deduce, which school is best has a lot to do with the size of your ship. While both schools are valid for any size, for profit per hour: Smaller ships favor school 1 and the bigger boys do better overall with school 2. BOTH ARE OK!

 

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Where to mine:

You almost always want pristine, either metallic or ice. Metallic for everything, Ice for missions, engineers, and because it's pretty.

Metallic rings are almost always going to be the thinner silver ring closest to the planet. You can drop in anywhere or use one the RES beacons. If you use the RES beacon, just boost to out of radar range and you should be largely, but not completely, left alone.

• School 2: Special note here if you are speed mining, just blitz right into the ring from super cruise, take your 2 percent hull damage and save several minutes off your run. (Perform at your own risk)

 

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What to mine?

Time is money. My time is valuable, so is yours. So while you may have heard that metal rich is ok, it is, it's just that, ok. So for the purposes of this guide we are going to just talk about Pristine Metallic Rings (with a side jaunt at the end of this section.) I could cover how to find these and what you're looking for, but instead, here: EDDB Otherwise, know you need a Detailed Surface Scanner to find them.

 

Pristine Metallic Rings contain 11 materials. 1 more than the current largest refinery availible (4a, 10 bins) In order of worth (approx in Asling Space):

1. Painite(70k)
2. Platinum(25k)
3. Palladium(15k)
4. Osmium(12k)
5. Gold(11k)
6. Praseodymium “Praseo” (9.2k)
7. Samarium (8.3k)
8. Silver(5.8)
9. Bertrandite "Berty" (3.5)
10. Indite(3k)
11. Gallite(2k)

 

From there we can break those down into a few groups we can deal with:

• Top 3(5): Painite/Platinum/Palladium/(Gold/Osmium)
• Missions: Osmium/Praseo/Samarium/Bromellite (Ice only)/Methanol Monohydrate (Ice Only)
• Engineers: Painite/Platinum/Osmium/Praseo/Samarium/Bromellite (Ice only)
• Trash: Berty, Indite, Gallite

 

• School 1: You'll want to favor either the Top 3 and/or Missions. If you stacked missions, you can tailor your load to just enough to pay the missions then load the rest with the Top 3. Actively vent any undesirables before they become cargo, if a few sneak through that’s ok, we'll handle them later.
• School 2: Prospect a rock. Mine it if it has a) Any amount of Painite, b) 10%+ of Top 3, c) 20% of Top 5, c) 20% of mission/engi until you get enough to serve. Don’t bother looking at your refinery, unless you have a jam. Your job is to get as close to the rock as is safe to speed your limpets up.

Sample rocks:

• 45% Indite, 15% Berty = PASS
• 20% Silver, 5% Gold = Your choice, silver is better than most trade routes pay per ton but you could do better.
• 35% Berty, 16% Platinum, 4% Painite = Take
• 45% Painite = Dance!

 

Side note on Ice Mining and Material Mining:

Ice Mining: It is fun but unless you have stacked missions, it won’t be as profitable as Metallics. It is needed for Missions and Engineers though. If you are mining for money, then you are looking for “Low Bro, Lit on Meth” or Low Temp Diamonds (LTD), Bromellite, Lithium Hydroxide, and Methanol Monohydrate (only enough for missions).

 

Material Mining: This is the one case you could use all rings types. If you are looking for just materials (iron, arsenic, etc) then you can mine any ring. There is some compelling evidence that suggests that the different type yield different materials. You’ll still need a refinery and the whole setup but instead of the composition of a rock, you’re looking for “Materials: Low/medium/high” when looking at your prospector.

• If you are strictly material mining, you don't need a refinery. In fact, if you forego the Refinery, your collector limpets will strategically ignore all mining fragments and only pick up material fragments, saving a lot of time per asteroid. You can also bring along a much smaller cargo rack as a result. Prospectors do still increase material yield.

 

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Approach:

HOW you mine is largely school based, but you may want to tweak for how large/slow your ship is.

 

General rules of engagement, favor slower or still rocks, the rounder the better. If you must mine a faster rock, try to find its axis of rotation and mine from there. This isn't always possible. In those cases, try to mine only from the ends of the swinging sides so any chunks are thrown clear of "THE HAMMER". You will lose limpets, it happens. If the rock is particularly difficult, unless it's that glorious 45% pure Painite, consider just leaving it. Work toward the planet so you don't double back on yourself. If you get the bug where you have a chunk inside a rock… just leave. Trust me, take whatever limpet will follow and walk away.

• School 1: Prospect a rock, if it's good, get as close as is safe. Since you're going to be futzing with the refinery a lot and not flying (texting while driving). Favor being safe over limpet efficiency. Once depleted, continue managing the refinery. If the next rock is within sight, fire off another prospector, but mostly just keep on top of that refinery.

• School 2: Speed! Only target slower rocks that you can almost kiss or slight faster ones you can manage, closer you are the faster your limpets work. Once a prospector hits a good rock, make your way over, however fire the prospector at the next rock. Once prospected, the additional chucks are unlocked so you don’t need it active out your current rock, set yourself up for the next one. Use your time to manage your ship and its relation to the chunks so you limpets are never working too hard. You'll know it's depleted when it stops giving you chunks. If you did it right you shouldn’t have to wait long to move on.

 

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When the mining stops:

• Out of limpets, cargo not full: Note it, bring more next time. Now you have a choice, you can sight mine, blow a chunk off a rock and target it. You can use this method to top off. OR, you can just go home and sell and come back (this method will almost always be the better option)
• Cargo full, still tons of limpets: Note it, potentially bring less next time. However, unless you’ve been meticulous, you probably have some trash cargo you can ditch. If you just jettison them, your limpets will pick them up again, not helpful. There are a number of ways to deal with this but here is the ancient miner's secret that will take care of your trash cargo. Select the type and amount of cargo to jettison and do so. As they release thrust straight down and enjoy the soothing explosions of useless crap against your hull. Back to work.
• Out of limpets, cargo full: You win!

 

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Ships:

This comes down to personal preference. In the past I gave example builds but really the build theory is simple. In general you want a lot of internals, 5s and 3s are most efficient for collectors and 4 for the refinery.

 

Aim for:

• A rated Distributer
• Mining laser setup (Best stock arrangement: 2 Mediums / 6A, 3 Mediums / 7A, 4 Mediums / 8A)
• Favor limpets over cargo, you will make more if your per rock time is lower vs slow rock time and huge cargo.
• Largest reasonable refinery

 

Mining Ships:

Top Tier: Cobra IV, AspX, Python, Conda

Ok Tier: T6 (a bridge ship if you don't have access to the Cobra IV), Dropship, Clipper, Cutter/Vette

You can mine in almost anything and people will have personal preferences and that's OK. For me, the Python is the inflection point. It's the point where anything above it you are just adding limpets and cargo. Its has a 7a distributor, plenty of internals, and it can land on medium pads. I put the Conda above the Cutter/Vette because of the 8a distributor, the number of internals and the jump range. Yes, your cutter and vette are perfectly fine miners.

 

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RES sites.

RES's do boost the rarer (top 3 at least) spawn rates, but also spawn pirates that will attack you on a scan with anything in your hold (including just limpets). The small increase in quality is not sufficient to risk death. The most i could add about it, is to jump into a HazRES and boost to out of radar range where you should be safe... be careful where you wander.

 

Most of the time hanging around these places is just not worth it unless you have wing support. Even in a ship that can defend itself, the time lost fighting, with the bounty is likely break even, unless you go ham on the pirates, in which case you'd be better off in a fighter. Your limpets will not last long while you juke around. Sadly RES's are bounty hunting resources more than mining.

 

I guess, I could also add that if you go on a long tear of just crap rocks, if you log out and log back in again. It appears to relocate you closer to an existing RES, but not actually IN it. Should solve your bad streak, just watch that radar for the first few rocks.

 

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Wings

This is easy. Mining in wings is a good idea. Not only to you get the normal trade dividends (free money!), each rock is effectively instanced. So, if you find that cherished 45% Painite, your wing mates can come over and extract yet MORE out of it as their version of it has not been mined out. This is great for all parties. That said there are some things you should know.

Mine together, separately. It's more efficient if you all mine separately until someone finds a good rock vs rock to rock. Rock to rock messes up limpets, is slow as you wait for people etc. Its best to just do your own mining till… BOOM 45% painite, tell them, mine it out, leave your prospector so they can find it and move on.

 

Shark and Remora Mining

This is the method we’ve been working on in the Prismatic Imperium and it's worked great and allows everyone to participate.

 

The Shark: A cruiser class (cutter is ideal) full mining ship that has a truly stupid amount of limpets.
The Remoras: Literally any ship with at least one mining laser, some cargo, and a prospector (ideally a small collector for post game)

 

The way this works is it leverages the mechanic of adding more chucks to a rock per person. The Remoras help the Shark find the rocks, then when someone hits, everyone piles on to the rocks and the Shark does all the processing. Once depleted the Remoras head off again to hunt while the Shark finishes collecting. Once the shark is full, it kills its collectors and feeds its Remoras fully processed cargo. They head off to sell and the Shark continues mining. Repeat. This works out for the Shark as well as the additional chunks speeding things up immensely.

 

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Engineers

Unfortunately there isn't a ton to do for mining with the Engineers, save one. A Weapons Focused Distributer will help keep that mining laser firing and can allow you to support more medium lasers than the stock number noted above. Heat improvements can help as well (Low emission power, Enhanced, Low power shields)