Asteroid Mining

Mining is the processing of using Mining Lasers of Strip Miners to harvest Ores from Asteroids. These Ores can then be sold on the Market or Reprocessed into Minerals. Those minerals can be later used to craft a ship.

Ores can be compressed to 1% of the volume at the cost of fuel. Rich Ore (10% of normal volume) naturally exists in very low quantities; when they do exist they are highlighted in the local scanner as "condensed asteroid cluster/belts".

## Mining vs Strip Mining

Regular mining lasers can fire at any target locked asteroid in range to gather materials from that specific asteroid. They can be fit onto any vessel, however they are generally fit onto ships with large ore holds and bonuses to Mining Lasers, such as the Venture Trainer, Venture, Venture II and Venture III.

Strip miners don't need a target lock and gather higher volumes of ores from any Asteroids inside of their Optimal Range. However, they don't let you choose what you mine, and require specific Mining Barges, such as the Retriever, Procurer, and Covetor, which have a role bonus that allows fitting strip miners.

## Asteroid Types

Asteroids can be found inside of asteroid belts and asteroid clusters. Each Asteroid contains a single type of Ore, that can be mined.

The level of the belt or cluster determines which types of asteroids it might contain, and is indicated with a small number next to the name of the cluster in the Overview panel. This level depends on the security rating of the star system they are in. In general, the more rare (and often more valuable) ores are only found in systems with a lower system security. That means you'll have bigger chance of being attacked.

When choosing what to mine, it can be helpful to look at the mineral densities of each of these ores to determine which one requires the fewest trips. It is also important to figure out what risks are involved with mining the particular ore you're interested in.

When calculating the value of ores, it is also important note that the ores have different volumes. As a result, rarer ores are not necessarily more valuable per full ore hold. The mining lasers also work by volume.

### Belt mechanics

Each system has a maximum allowed number of belt or clusters, determined by the number of planets × 0.7. Similar to anomalies, the game periodically tries to spawn new belt/clusters when the number is not reached. Belts despawn when it's both mined out (or maybe just 70% out) and unoccupied.

Each time a new belt/cluster is spawned, there is a chance of creating a **intumescent condensed belt**. This belt is (believed to be) similar to base anomalies in that it will spawn other condensed belts and players are **strongly discouraged** from mining them. The other adjectives refer to the sized of the condensed belts.

## Mining safety

A lot of minerals can only be found in ores that are limited to lowsec and nullsec. Other minerals can simply be obtained more quickly there. But mining vessels don't have bonuses for combat, and wouldn't win in a fight with pirates even if they equipped any weapons, or fitted drones. Therefore it is important to learn how to avoid getting destroyed while mining.

### Private Security

Having help from combat ships can make the difference between a long mining run, and losing your ship with its ore, and not being able to mine in an area until the pirates leave. This is a good reason to join a Corporation.

### Safety in Numbers

The more mining ships there are around, the lower the chance your specific ship is target. The downside is that you might get a lower cut of the available resources, but if you lose everything you mine to a pirate, there is no point in a full cargo hold.

### Situational Awareness

Scouting ahead with a less valuable ship (such as your Capsule), or having a corporation member specialized in cloaked warping in a Covert Ops ship, can help you determine whether there are any hostile players in the area.

It can also be helpful to keep an eye on the list of local players to see if any of them are known hostiles. You can add pirates and/or miners to lists of known hostiles or neutral ships, so you can more quickly estimate intentions with the hostile and neutral/friendly icons. Keep in mind that it is still possible to fit mining ships for combat, so even if someone is flying a Venture, be sure to check they haven't fitted it with turrets or missile launchers, before marketing them as neutral/friendly (and they might still change their intentions later on).

It might be safer to just mine in a nullsec area than it is to mine in a lowsec area with higher traffic. The best safety is make sure you and your corporation members are the only players in the area.

### Avoiding Ambush

The more distance between you and an attacker, the higher the chance you can get away. So it can be good standard practice to make it harder to predict where you will come out of warp. You can do this by warping to a large distance away from an asteroid belt or cluser, or by coming from uncommon angles (by warping from a celestial body instead of from a jump gate for example).

#### Avoiding Cloaked Ships

If a ship is using a Covert Ops cloak, it can close the distance to you before uncloaking and locking you. At a distance of 2KM cloaked ships will automatically uncloak. By making clever use of other asteroids or cheap drones you can make it more difficult for a cloaked ship to get very close to you.

### Ready to Warp

In a mining ship your main survival mechanism is to escape. By setting an auto pilot destination, you only have to press one button to initiate warp. By making sure you are aligned with the first warp destination, you can reduce the time it takes to warp, by making sure your ship doesn't have to rotate before warping. In some cases it can be important to stop your ship so you stay nearby a particular asteroid, but doing this aligns your ship with an invisible horizontal plane. Therefore it is often better to simply reduce the speed to your ship to a few meters per second instead of stopping it entirely. That said, the closer your speed is to the minimum warp speed of 75% of your top speed, the less time it takes to achieve warp.

### Warp Stabilization

It is important to be aware of the weapons that might be used against you, such as Warp Jammers and Warp disruptors. All of the common mining ships have +1 Warp stability, which means that attackers need to apply warp jamming with a strength of 2. But even one higher level Warp Scramblers can easily exceed this. That is why it is often a good idea to increase warp stability of your ship further. This can be done with Low slot Warp Core Stabilizers, and Warp Core Optimizer rigs.

## Related Skills

* Mining
* Strip Mining
* Industrial Ship Command
* Industrial Ship Defense Upgrade
* Afterburner
* Microwarpdrives
* Engine Operation

## External Links

* VoxGen's Mining/Manufacturing Spreadsheet, which allows for calculating price per volume.
* u/JGeks on Reddit regularly reports on the raw material market.