"Nothing to harvest", really?

[Mitchz95]

I'm trying to mine ore on Moho, but every single spot I land at is apparently devoid of any ore whatsoever despite being right in the middle of the pink zone derived from orbital scans. I know the surface scanner is technically more accurate, but still, you'd think I would have found something by now in my fifteen attempts at surface hopping. Am I missing something super-obvious? Three Kerbal lives are at stake.

[Rithsom]

If you're using the smaller drill size, it needs a minimum ore concentration of 2.0% to work, IIRC. Try increasing the cutoff value of the orbital scan to find a more concentrated area. 

Edited January 11, 2016 by Rthsom

[Mitchz95]

I'm still playing in 1.0.4, so there's just the one size of drills. And the spot I'm at is supposedly an 80% concentration.

EDIT: Finally lucked out on a spot on my seventeenth try, 40 minutes before the Kerbals would have starved to death. Whew.

Edited January 11, 2016 by Mitchz95

[fourfa]

What life support mod can be fed by ore?

[Streetwind]

3 hours ago, Mitchz95 said:

I'm still playing in 1.0.4, so there's just the one size of drills. And the spot I'm at is supposedly an 80% concentration.

EDIT: Finally lucked out on a spot on my seventeenth try, 40 minutes before the Kerbals would have starved to death. Whew.

Note that there's a difference in the way the orbital scanner reports ore concentration. When it says "80%", it means "80% of this planet's maximum value". The actual concentration value on the surface can and will be significantly different. If the planet's maximum concentration is 0.5%, then the orbital scanner will still report "80%" for an area that averages 0.4%.

Only the narrowband scanner and the surface scanner report actual concentration.

 

54 minutes ago, fourfa said:

What life support mod can be fed by ore?

It's possible that he only needed fuel to launch back to a mothership in orbit, which had supplies.

[Mitchz95]

10 hours ago, fourfa said:

What life support mod can be fed by ore?

I'm using a mod that lets you turn ore into food, water, and oxygen for TAC Life Support. Cheating, maybe, but there's no way I could afford the mission otherwise.

[RoverDude]

16 hours ago, Streetwind said:

Note that there's a difference in the way the orbital scanner reports ore concentration. When it says "80%", it means "80% of this planet's maximum value". The actual concentration value on the surface can and will be significantly different. If the planet's maximum concentration is 0.5%, then the orbital scanner will still report "80%" for an area that averages 0.4%.

Only the narrowband scanner and the surface scanner report actual concentration.

For clarity - the only time we do planet-wide comparisonsis with cutoff.  If you look at the orbital display, you will see the planetary actual average for each resource.  You also get this same average when you use the M700's context menu.

An orbital NBS without ground truthing will give you an average for the biome as you hover over it (still an average, but at least lets you know which biomes have the best hot spots).  Also, biome unlocking actually affects your orbital survey - just remember you have a very limited set of data points, so it's still a generalization.

Edited January 12, 2016 by RoverDude