Guide to Mining

Introduction to Mining

For a job that is primarily out in the frigid, phoron-filled outdoors, mining is a relatively safe, even boring, occupation… depending entirely on where you mine. Still, the entire station is depending on you to bring back those all-important phoron crystals and other minerals. Just follow along with the guidelines given here to keep yourself from becoming lost to the mines.

Mining Operations, the place you will gear up and semi-frequently revisit, is just a short walk west and then north of the Tram Station.

The Workplace

Immediately entering from the Mining Lobby, you will find yourself in Mining Operations. A look to the west will reveal two locked lockers of mining gear, three equipment-laden racks, and a suit cycler while a mining equipment vendor will be located just off to the side.

The room to the east, Mining Storage, contains four ore boxes, an oxygen tank dispenser, and a single O2 canister for refilling tanks -even though one tank will last you for most of five to six hours easily.-

Straight north will be the Processing Room, which is where all your precious ore is converted into much-more-usable sheets to spoil the station with.

Heading through the airlocks to the west, you will find a third locked locker of gear, some washing machines for when if your voidsuit gets torn by an unfortunate accident and leaks phoron into your clothes, various bits of equipment for using the stationary drills, a mechanical toolbox and portable cooling units for synths, chargers for regular and heavy-duty cells, and a box of mining NiFsoft. Just outside of the airlocks leading outside, an Airlock NanoMed waits with a supply of anti-toxin airlock pills and a health analyzer in stock.

Pre-Preparation

First off, you are going to want to make sure you are well-fed. Depending on how you feel about it, overeating means you won’t have to worry about getting hungry out in the mines for a while. Before you ask, yes, co-workers count as pre-preparation rations in a pinch. Also something of note is that one can still eat Liqui-Food or Liqui-Protein rations while wearing a voidsuit helmet unlike most other comestibles, which would require shelter to remove your helmet. As such, picking one up from a SweatMAX vendor or from maintenance is somewhat recommended.

Ideally, you will want to set up the Processing Room’s material processor before you leave just to save you a few moments of button-pushing later on. For information on what ore you can expect to find and what should be done with it, refer to the relevant section of the guide found below.

Assuming you think you’re a bad enough dude to skip past surface mining and right into the Underdark, you might want to grab a backup implant from Medical so they can resleeve you, when something inevitably goes wrong. Even if you opt to play it safe on the surface initially, grabbing an implant before heading down into the Underdark is very strongly recommended!

The Equipment

• Mining Hardsuit and Helmet: Used so you can mine with impunity in the phoron-filled, freezing, resource-rich mountain and what lays below it. The helmet also has a built-in helmet light, useful for seeing more than a few inches in front of you. If you happen to be a species that cannot wear the default humanoid suit, simply feed both voidsuit and helmet through the suit cycler after choosing your species. Also worthy of note is that the Mining voidsuit will protect its wearer from any and all hail damage if fully worn; it will be rather loud, however, (as in, your message window WILL be spammed) so carrying an umbrella is also recommended. ((Editor note,
• Breath Mask and Oxygen Tank:So you can have oxygen when mining. Get an O2 tank from the dispenser, and wear it on your suit storage slot. The breath mask is technically optional, however, due to the voidsuit helmet doubling as a breath mask itself.
• Optical Material Scanners: Lets you see where the ore is through all that solid rock. Also allows you to see stray objects and structures like trees and airlocks that are out of your direct line of sight.
• Mining Tools: For tunneling through everything, such as rock or giant rats. The mining drill you start off with is very slow, yet you can get various upgraded drills from Science and high-tech “pickaxes” from the mining equipment vendor.
• Shovel: For gathering sand and striking the earth. You can stick this in your backpack, or just not bother with it and trust the drill technicians to bring in any sand the station may need. Other tools are also capable of digging up sand, such as advanced mining drills, diamond mining drills, and proto-kinetic accelerators.
• Lantern: For seeing in the dark. Despite serving as a decent light source, however, it is prone to running out of charge. For a more reliable static light source, consider using marker beacons.
• Marker Beacons: Little light sources that come in a variety of customizable colors that can be plugged down into the ground and will not run out of charge. In other words, futuristic prism stones.
• Analyzer: A device that can be pinged to scan for ore in the surrounding rock. Inferior in every way to optical material scanners, yet they are better than nothing if you cannot wear a pair.
• Ore Detector: Used to scan for ore resting in the sand underneath your feet, it is a priceless tool for a drill technician or a shaft miner armed with mining charges. You must stand still until the detector gives a reading, or else you have to scan again.
• Mining Satchel: A shaft miner’s best friend, them and every drill technician starts with one in their backpack. Used for a variety of ore-collecting needs, and can hold up to 50 ore nuggets before needing to be emptied. By default, the satchel will pick up as many ore nuggets as it can from a tile if you left-click on the ore with it in your active hand.
• Ore Box: A shaft miner’s best friend. Whereas the mining satchel can only carry up to 50 ore nuggets at a time, this bad boy can house an absurd amount of the stuff without breaking a sweat. Simply use ore nuggets on it to drop them in, or use a mining satchel on it to dump any ore held within into the box. To unload its contents, simply drag it over to the unloading machine’s input slot or unload it manually through right-clicking. Alas, not even the strongest of shaft miners can bear its massive weight; without a Ripley exosuit to lift it with its hydraulic clamp, one must simply drag it around.
• Crowbar: Every shaft miner and drill technician will start with one of these in their backpack. Used for maintaining and modifying certain equipment, like stationary drills and industrial hardsuits. Also useful for rescuing crew members from a powerless Tram Station.
• Wrench: To secure objects down, specifically the stationary drill.

Gear that will be very handy, but not included:

• Screwdriver: Needed to open the maintenance hatch on the drills. Also generally handy.
• Multitool: Used for cracking the code on the abandoned crates that are occasionally found buried out on the asteroid.
• Ripley: These mechs are awesome at mining. A Ripley equipped with a drill and with an ore box loaded up (using the Hydraulic Clamp) mines three squares at a time and automatically picks up any ore gained from the squares. Upgrading it with a diamond drill will let you drill through reinforced walls, etc., but will not actually speed up the mining time.

Old-school Mining

Before you embark on a mining adventure, it is highly advised that you obtain a proper mining hardsuit, Meson goggles, an ore satchel, and a mining pick. All you need to do is walk around and thanks to the goggles you will be able to see any ore within the walls. Click on the wall with the drill in your hand to start digging! When you have a gathering of ore beside you, click on your ore satchel to pick up any ore in an extended radius by you. Once full, stash the ores in a ore box by clicking on it with the satchel in your hand. If you are holding a pick in your inactive hand, you can bump into the rock wall to start mining it, and you can mine as many as three tiles at a time.

Mining Tools

Your major source for tools, other than your drill, will be Research & Development. The better you keep them supplied, the better their research goes and the more likely it is they'll be able to make you high-level tools. Occasionally you'll also find old mining sheds in the asteroid, which you can break into (by digging through or dismantling walls), and which may or may not contain something useful or interesting. Among the possibilities are better mining tools.

From slowest to fastest:

• Drill: Your basic drill. Slow, but you can get it right away.
• Advanced mining drill: Get this from Research. It can be made without any special materials from the asteroid, so if they're on the ball you may start out the shift with one.
• Silver pickaxe: Occasionally found on the asteroid. As fast as an advanced mining drill, and makes no metallurgic sense.
• Sonic Jackhammer: Get this from Research. Twice as fast as the basic drill, this jackhammer requires silver from the asteroid.
• Golden pickaxe: Occasionally found on the asteroid. As fast as a sonic jackhammer, and makes no metallurgic sense.
• Plasma cutter: Made at Research. As fast as the sonic jackhammer, but smaller and also cuts through walls.
• Borg drill: The drill you start off with if you're a mining cyborg. It's faster than a plasma cutter but not as fast as a diamond tool.
• Diamond pickaxe: Can occasionally be found on the asteroid. Twice as fast as the plasma cutter.
• Diamond Drill: The fastest digging tool out there. Research can make you one, but it takes diamond and high-level research.

Ripley APLU 101

If Robotics is kind (insert: functioning), odds are one of the first creations from their lab will be a Ripley APLU for Mining. The machine is typically outfitted with a drill and a hydraulic clamp. Although a good Roboticist will quickly explain the features when asked, the Ripley does offer external lighting, life support, and various user-control security measures. To access the APLU's menu, click on the "Exosuit Interface" tab followed by "View Stats." To select your active tool, click on the name under "Equipment." An underline means it is not active. To load a box into the Ripley, click on the box while facing it with your hydraulic clamp active. To mine, walk into the rock wall with your drill active.

Drill 101

For most drill functions, you will need a crowbar, wrench, and a screwdriver. At time of writing, the drill is found in three parts - A mining drill head and two mining drill braces. In order to set the drill up, drag all three pieces to the drill site. The mining station has two drills available for use.

To set up the drill, place the two braces beside the drill head, and if necessary, turn them so the arms face the drill. Click on the braces with a wrench in your hand to secure them in place. To turn the drill on, click on the drill.

As the drill is powered by a power cell, the occasional change is required. To change, click on the drill head with a screwdriver in your hand. Click on the drill afterwards to remove the power cell. Science can upgrade the drill with bigger power cells.

To empty the drill, place an ore box beside it. Click "Unload Drill" under the "Objects" tab.

Furnace 101

There are two points where the furnace can be loaded - One is on the port side of the furnace, immediately beside the belt lever inside the camp. The other is the conveyor belt found starboard, outside the camp. Although both can unload crates automatically, the outside belt is set to have any miner unload the crates themselves. The furnace is operated from inside the station. You can produce multiple products at once, but smelting or compressing something that has no corresponding product will produce useless slag.

The Ores

Wall	Raw Ore	Smelted	Compressed	Coin	Door	Name	Uses
		Iron	None	None		Hematite	For use in steelmaking.
				None		Impure silicates	For making glass, which has a plethora of station applications.
			None			Native gold	For making various electronics.
			None			Native silver	Making mechs and for material research.
		None				Phoron	The reason you're here.
		None				Diamond	For making mech parts, among other industrial uses.
			None			Pitchblende	For various radioactive tasks.
			None	None	None	Coal	For use in steelmaking and plastics.
			Osmium	None	None	Platinum	For making osmium or selling to Centcomm via Cargo.
None		Tritium		None	None	Hydrogen	For making tritium fuel or metallic hydrogen for R&D.

The Alloys

Raw Ores	Product	Name	Uses
		Steel	For use in all kinds of tasks around the station.
		Plasteel	An alloy of hematite, platinum and coal, for reinforced tables and reinforced walls, as well as Mech.
		Durasteel	Incredibly tough and also reflective. The inner walls of the AI core are made of this. Reflects Lasers
----------		Borosilicate glass	Used in engineering, for high strength windows in locations such as the super matter engine.

Shipping the Ores

One half of of the main reason why the NSB Adephagia exists is to mine phoron to send back to Central. Although phoron is always in demand with Medical and Science, by shipping phoron back to Central you receive an abundance of cargo points.