A drone using its mining lasers to collect resources from an asteroid
Iron floating in space after mining
An Iron rich asteroid
A field of asteroids including an iron-rich asteroid
General Overview
Mining is the process of obtaining materials from asteroids.
This is done with a mining laser. To mine, the player needs a ship that has a mining laser equipped. If there is none, they can use the drone, as it has two mining lasers equipped.
To extract the resources, the ship must shoot the object with its laser. As seen in the above image, parts of the asteroid will be destroyed, dropping resources ready to be collected.
When the resources of an asteroid are depleted, it disappears. Some asteroids contain larger amounts of resources. They are noticeable even at some distance, as they have glowing veins of minerals on their outside. It is more profitable to search for these asteroids in each sector than it is to mine standard asteroids.
These are much bigger in size than standard asteroids, and have also a distinct shape.
Hidden Asteroids
Sometimes, certain asteroids have a large amount of resources hidden deep inside them, but are not distinguishable on the surface from normal, mineral poor asteroids. A Mining System will highlight these asteroids if it can detect that material on its own (so a mining system that detects up to Titanium will not detect hidden Naonite deposits). Mining systems can only detect a certain amount of asteroids at a time. all asteroids within the range of the mining system count toward its max detectable asteroids .
Raw Mining
Certain high-efficiency mining lasers will not produce pure resources, but rather, extract ore that will require cargo space, and will need to be refined at a Resource Depot into usable material. This refining process has a tax on this processed ore, with Allied factions tending closer to 2% tax and bad relations heading towards 10%. Although technically goods, no stations buy or sell any kind of material ore. The only use for raw ore is buying material knowledge at a resource depot, which varies depending on the knowledge type, but increases per material upgrade. If you skip a material knowledge, for example, skipping Naonite and buying Trinium knowledge, you will receive Naonite knowledge as well.
If using fighters with raw mining lasers, it's beneficial to have either working transporters that allow fighters to collect cargo, or upgrading the mining carrier's loot collection range.
All material ores take up a volume of 0.015 (displayed as 0.02) cargo space, and any Resource Depot can refine any ore.
it is worth noting that it takes time to process ores. There is a 5 second minimum to any refine process, with 1 second being added per 2000 ore/scrap, but only after 10,000 ore/scrap. T=(Amount+10000)/2000. For example, 13,001 ore/scrap is 7 seconds (time in s rounds up), but 13000 ore/scrap is 6 seconds. 8000 ore is 5 seconds and so is 1234 ore. 26980 scrap would take 13 seconds to refine.
Raw mining also increases the yield that a captain will obtain during mining operations.
Asteroid Field Respawn
Asteroid fields will respawn resource rich asteroids when the sector is loaded (either by a player or a player owned ship) if the number of rich asteroids comprises less than 1.5% of the number of asteroids in the field. This includes the hidden asteroids in the count of rich asteroids and they will often push the percentage over 1.5% so they will need to be cleared too in order for the asteroid field to respawn.
Mining Automation
Although each game begins with a drone that must mine on its own so that the first ships may be founded, as you progress into the game you will hire captains to drive and operate ships for you.
Doing this, you can have a ship mine all rich asteroids in a sector by itself. This will require a ship with the appropriate crew and at least one mining turret. Note that the ship will also require a mining upgrade to be able to see hidden asteroids if you want the asteroid fields to respawn.
Once your ship is properly set up you can have a constant flow of resources coming in.
Resource extraction equation
the materials gained is
(Amount of resources in the block)*(efficiency of turrets/100)
it is worth noting that if a turret has an efficiency higher than 100% the yield will be higher than asteroid blocks
however in vanilla it is uncommon to see Raw mining above 99.5 percent
the efficiency listed on the turrets is a percentage but is not represented as a decimal which is why its divided by 100