Mining assistance

[Scarecrow]

I've played KSP for ages now, and have visited all the planets/moons. so thought it was time to try something new.  Whilst mining has been part of the game for a while now, I've never really given it a go, so thought I would set up an operation on Mun and see what I can do with it.

Needless to say, I'm getting nowhere.  The rate of ore extraction is abominably slow, and it doesn't seem to do anything if I leave it to it's own devices and go and do something else.  If it's meant to be as slow as this, then I will give it up as a bad job, as I don't have the patience to monitor it whilst it takes several minutes to extract a single unit of ore.  Having said that, I can't believe it's meant to be this slow, which would suggest that I am probably doing something wrong.

I understand that if you have an engineer present, it will improve the efficiency of the operation, but I understand the process can also be automated.

This is the rig I landed on the Mun :

It consists of 4 x large drill-o-matics, a large ore tank, 2 x convert-o-tron 250 processors, fuel and monoprop tanks and several radiators.  The readout says the highlighted drill is producing ore at the rate of 0.135267/sec.  On that basis, with 4 drills, I should be seeing almost 5 1/2 units of ore every 10 secs, but as already stated I'm seeing nothing like that.

I used a scanner from polar orbit so as far as I know I'm in a reasonable site for ore, and I also have a surface scanner on the mining rig, though I activated it but have no idea how to see the results.

Am I using the wrong sort of probe on the rig or does it need to be manned?  Any other suggestions as to what I might be doing wrong?

 

ETA:  I left this running for 40 minutes while I went to see what tutorial videos might be available on Youtube, and when I came back it had harvested 6 1/2 units of ore.  At that rate it would take 152 hours to fill the ore tank!  That can't be right.

Edited May 9, 2017 by Scarecrow

[Reactordrone]

Your drill is overheating a lot so I'd check that the radiators are turned on. The fixed ones don't automatically start like the retractable ones.

[Scarecrow]

Yep, all 8 radiators are on.  Would it make a difference if I turned a couple of the drills off?

 

[bewing]

19 minutes ago, Scarecrow said:

Yep, all 8 radiators are on.  Would it make a difference if I turned a couple of the drills off?

 

No, core heat is not passed between drills, so that wouldn't help. Reactordrone is right that you have a major overheating problem. Since your radiators are on, that must mean that they are not placed correctly to cool your drills. The overheating you are seeing is typical for a drill that is not being cooled at all.

The "ore rate" is the maximum rate at 100% efficiency -- which happens at a core temp of 500K. So you have to multiply by the efficiency level, which means you are getting 1/8th of that rate, IIRC.

One tip -- one converter-250 can convert much faster than 4 drills can mine, so you only need one converter.

And yes, it's supposed to be abysmally slow without an engineer. It's still pretty slow with an engineer. It's meant to take several hours (at least) to get enough ore to fill a fuel tank. Mining operations are meant to be left running continuously for weeks to fill a nice big tank ready for launch to orbit and use. As you found (ignoring old KSP versions) the drills and converters can run in the background, unattended.

 

[Superfluous J]

Also, it most assuredly does work on rails while you're away flying other missions. I land miners all the time, then go away for in-game days, weeks, or months and when I come back, they're always full.

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

Used to do a ton of mining, so I can tell you from experience; the thermal control systems are much better than the radiators. They work better, and can be placed anywhere on the ship. They don't need to be near the drills. One medium thermal control per large drill will prevent overheating. And having an engineer on board is not a bonus, it's absolutely essential. My first trip to another planet was an unmanned mining ship I sent to Duna. It took about a year and a half to refuel. I've never had an unmanned mining vessel since. A three, four, or five-star engineer will change everything. As long as you have power, with those large drills, you can refuel a gigantic fuel shuttle in just a few hours (or a few days, depending how large, and what your ore concentration is). 

Edited May 10, 2017 by Cpt Kerbalkrunch

[OHara]

Heat: If you are using version 1.2.2, there is bug #13403 preventing core heat from leaving the drills (which makes them overheat outside of the atmosphere).  

In case you haven't signed yourself up to read the bugtracker, the fix posted there is to edit GameData/Squad/Parts/Resources/*Drill/*.Drill.cfg to make UseSpecialistBonus = false (being sure to change at least the /final/ of the redundant definitions of UseSpecialistBonus in those files).

Given the name UseSpecialistBonus, you might worry that this change would prevent engineers from helping the drilling process, but in fact the change seems to have no side effects.

While you are in there, you might want to change AutoShutdown =false,  because the drills shutdown upon lack of electricity (not just upon overheating) and require manual restart.  (The usual solution to this problem is to switch away from any solar powered drilling operation only during the day.)

Throughput: I have also noticed that "Ore rate = 0.13 units/s" is not the current rate of drilling ore; "ore rate" × "load" is the current rate of drilling ore.

The "load" is at best 5% in the absence of any engineer, further multiplied by 12% from being away from the optimum temperature in the case you showed us.  So you have 0.13 units/s × 0.6% = 0.0008 units/s = 2.8 units/hour from each drill.

Edited June 4, 2017 by OHara
I was wrong about 'autoShutdown' on drills; that option does not affect their need for a manual restart if they temporarily lose power.

[Scarecrow]

Thanks for the info guys - very helpful.  Think I'll go back to shuttling fuel around to where required, mining is too much of a faff.

[Ncog Nito]

On this topic I would also like to pose a question.  The holding tanks do not mention a weight when the containers are full.  So, how much does the ore weigh per unit?  I have a contract to extract ore, but it doesn't say anything about having to process it.  Is it feasible to extract say 1500 units of ore and return it to Kerbin?  Her is a picture of my intended mining craft:

[Blaarkies]

27 minutes ago, Ncog Nito said:

On this topic I would also like to pose a question.  The holding tanks do not mention a weight when the containers are full.  So, how much does the ore weigh per unit?  I have a contract to extract ore, but it doesn't say anything about having to process it.  Is it feasible to extract say 1500 units of ore and return it to Kerbin?  

Create a new craft in the editor, consisting of ONLY an Ore tank. Now note the craft mass in the engineer report (bottom right-hand side of the screen). Right-click the Ore tank, drag the ore amount slider to full, and check the mass again. Calculate the difference in those numbers, that should be the mass of all the added Ore

* Launching like that would pre-fill the ore tanks...remember to empty them
* If memory serves, 100 Ore has a mass of 1ton
* If the engineer report is not precise enough for you, then use 10 ore tanks to fill/empty. It should add another decimal place of precision for you
* Ore tanks have the same full/empty mass ratios as LFO fuel tanks, so you can calculate the tank empty mass the same way:
    -      empty_tank_mass == fuel_mass * ((9/8)-1)
                                         == fuel_mass * 0.125

Edited May 11, 2017 by Blaarkies