Asteroid Mining Ore

[Driger]

Ive run into a curious issue with my asteroid mining endevours. I latched onto a class c with 161 tons of resources. Deployed my drillomatic jr ensured my full sized isru was turned off then watched as i only filled my empty ore tank to 634 units. Where did all those resources go? How do I not waste so much? I only mined 6 tons of ore from a 161 ton resource asteroid. Whats up with that?

[FancyMouse]

I observe the asteroid loses the mass as long as the drill is running, even though Ore is full.

[bewing]

This is something most people don't understand about the Jr. Drill. It throws away most of the ore it mines. How to not make it happen is by using the big drill instead.

[Streetwind]

5 hours ago, bewing said:

This is something most people don't understand about the Jr. Drill. It throws away most of the ore it mines. How to not make it happen is by using the big drill instead.

Well, considering that neither the ingame part description nor the official wiki entry mentions anything to that effect, those most people could be forgiven for not knowing that fact...

[bewing]

21 minutes ago, Streetwind said:

Well, considering that neither the ingame part description nor the official wiki entry mentions anything to that effect, those most people could be forgiven for not knowing that fact...

Yeah, I was looking at that. There should definitely be something about that added somewhere. I was thinking of verifying the exact number, and then writing it into the wiki.

[Plusck]

1 hour ago, bewing said:

Yeah, I was looking at that. There should definitely be something about that added somewhere. I was thinking of verifying the exact number, and then writing it into the wiki.

Good idea - the wiki entries don't give all the relevant facts.

The numbers given in the wiki for production on a CB are exact (I checked this for a thread recently - "ISRU is less more" - with a ton of small drills on a good patch on Minmus). So it's definitely 1/5th the production of the larger drills.

And a large drill (with no engineer) will produce 0.25 ore/sec on an asteroid. It will not lose mass if the drills are at 100% efficiency, but will lose mass if they aren't. I'd guess that the small drills produce a fifth of that, chucking the rest of the mass away.

So yes, there are three things to write into the wiki:

• ore output from an asteroid, for both the large and small drills (definitely 0.25/sec for the large, probably 0.05/sec for the small);
• mass loss (meaning ore loss) using the small drill at 100% efficiency (which i suspect will be 0.20/sec x 5kg = 1kg/sec);
• mass loss (meaning ore loss) using either drill at less than 100% efficiency.

 

[Driger]

6 hours ago, Plusck said:

Good idea - the wiki entries don't give all the relevant facts.

The numbers given in the wiki for production on a CB are exact (I checked this for a thread recently - "ISRU is less more" - with a ton of small drills on a good patch on Minmus). So it's definitely 1/5th the production of the larger drills.

And a large drill (with no engineer) will produce 0.25 ore/sec on an asteroid. It will not lose mass if the drills are at 100% efficiency, but will lose mass if they aren't. I'd guess that the small drills produce a fifth of that, chucking the rest of the mass away.

So yes, there are three things to write into the wiki:

• ore output from an asteroid, for both the large and small drills (definitely 0.25/sec for the large, probably 0.05/sec for the small);
• mass loss (meaning ore loss) using the small drill at 100% efficiency (which i suspect will be 0.20/sec x 5kg = 1kg/sec);
• mass loss (meaning ore loss) using either drill at less than 100% efficiency.

 

Thank you, I didn't realize having the drill at 100% efficiency had an impact on mass loss. Originally I thought that efficiency only mattered for the speed of extraction. I guess I will put some radiators on my asteroid miner 

[Plusck]

56 minutes ago, Driger said:

Thank you, I didn't realize having the drill at 100% efficiency had an impact on mass loss. Originally I thought that efficiency only mattered for the speed of extraction. I guess I will put some radiators on my asteroid miner 

Yes, to be really careful not to lose mass, lock your ore tanks while the drills are dialling up to their optimal heat.

[Tyko]

1 hour ago, Plusck said:

Yes, to be really careful not to lose mass, lock your ore tanks while the drills are dialling up to their optimal heat.

I thought that drills will reduce asteroid mass even if your ore tanks are full or locked? Is the drill smart enough to stop extraction when there's no place to put the ore?

[Plusck]

Just now, tjt said:

I thought that drills will reduce asteroid mass even if your ore tanks are full or locked? Is the drill smart enough to stop extraction when there's no place to put the ore?

If there is nowhere to put ore, the drills mine nothing, they just spool up.

At least... this was the case in the last few versions. To be honest I can't remember whether I was testing this in 1.1.3 or 1.2 the last time

[Tyko]

4 minutes ago, Plusck said:

If there is nowhere to put ore, the drills mine nothing, they just spool up.

At least... this was the case in the last few versions. To be honest I can't remember whether I was testing this in 1.1.3 or 1.2 the last time

I'll want to verify, but that would be good news. I was really worried about time warping and coming back to an asteroid that had been sucked dry as the drill merrily dumped ore into space.

[Plusck]

2 minutes ago, tjt said:

I'll want to verify, but that would be good news. I was really worried about time warping and coming back to an asteroid that had been sucked dry as the drill merrily dumped ore into space.

It would be a hugely important (and possibly devastating) change, so you should be safe. I suspect we'd have seen screams of discontent on the forums if it were otherwise).

[bewing]

IIRC, that was one of the bugs that was fixed in 1.2.0.

[FancyMouse]

Fixed? I mentioned that in my first reply exactly because I just came across that several days ago with 1.2.1 - drill running, Ore full, ISRU not running -> asteroid still losing mass. I wasn't in time warp, though - just at 1x staring at the asteroid's right click menu. Maybe the fix you're talking about only applies to time warp, not when physics loaded? I'll give it a try this weekend.

[Plusck]

35 minutes ago, FancyMouse said:

Fixed? I mentioned that in my first reply exactly because I just came across that several days ago with 1.2.1 - drill running, Ore full, ISRU not running -> asteroid still losing mass. I wasn't in time warp, though - just at 1x staring at the asteroid's right click menu. Maybe the fix you're talking about only applies to time warp, not when physics loaded? I'll give it a try this weekend.

Um, sorry I didn't properly read your reply earlier.

So yes, this is a hugely important change and I'm getting ready to scream about it...

1 hour ago, bewing said:

IIRC, that was one of the bugs that was fixed in 1.2.0.

"Bug"? What?

This isn't a bug. It was perfectly reasonable. The drills start running but there is nowhere to put the ore, so they do nothing.

There is no mechanism whereby you can spool up the drills before they start pulling up resources. It's perfectly reasonable to consider that the drill has a sensor on the "output" pipe that determines whether it turns idly or digs into the rock. It would be an extremely stupid system that didn't.

So if this has changed, consider me to be screaming ; )

 

3 hours ago, tjt said:

...as the drill merrily dumped ore into space...

My apologies, if bewing is right then someone has messed this up, and I was wrong about it not changing. Aarghh.

[OHara]

On 11/11/2016 at 2:34 AM, Plusck said:

• ore output from an asteroid, for both the large and small drills (definitely 0.25/sec for the large, probably 0.05/sec for the small);
• mass loss (meaning ore loss) using the small drill at 100% efficiency (which i suspect will be 0.20/sec x 5kg = 1kg/sec);
• mass loss (meaning ore loss) using either drill at less than 100% efficiency.

 

• I do get 0.05 ore/sec from an asteroid with the small drill (0.85/sec with a 3-star engineer, 0.05 when he goes on EVA)
• [edit] Half the mass taken from asteroid appears as mass of ore.
  Mass is conserved by the small drill (as opposed to the small ISRU) when it is at operating temperature.  The decrease in asteroid mass matches the increase in mass of ore in the tank (10 kg/ore).  Even with simultaneous conversion to liquid fuel using the big ISRU, total mass is conserved.
  - But, there is a bug with the small drill under time warp.  The loss of asteroid mass is double what it should be, when using any speed speed of physical or on-rails time-warp.
  That is, to fill a 300-unit tank of ore to its 3-ton capacity, the asteroid loses 6 tons of mass, but only under time-warp.  
• The small drill at xx% fractional 'thermal efficiency' removes mass from the asteroid as quickly as it would at 100% 'thermal efficiency' but only stores xx% of that mass as ore, losing the rest to space.
  As Plusck says, closing all ore tanks while the drills warm up will avoid this loss.
  Amusingly, having any on-board engineer go on EVA during the warm-up period reduces the rate of mass extraction during this period and thus the loss.
   

Edited November 13, 2016 by OHara
correction after reports below

[TheDestroyer111]

Just using the big drill will NOT make you acceptably efficient, but using an engineer with a five star rating WILL. An engineer with five stars makes the process give 25 times more fuel output with the same electricity/ore usage than no engineer (the effect goes up with engineer star rating in career, and in sandbox all engineers work like five stars. but even in sandbox, having no engineer DOES push back the efficiency back to standard no-engineer efficiency.). A big drill does nothing aside from higher mining speed, and the ability to mine in low ore concentrations. What really matters (aside from engineer) is the ISRU unit - the big one is much more efficient.

Edited November 12, 2016 by TheDestroyer111

[Plusck]

1 hour ago, OHara said:

• I do get 0.05 ore/sec from an asteroid with the small drill (0.85/sec with a 3-star engineer, 0.05 when he goes on EVA)
• Mass is conserved by the small drill (as opposed to the small ISRU) when it is at operating temperature.  The decrease in asteroid mass matches the increase in mass of ore in the tank (10 kg/ore).  Even with simultaneous conversion to liquid fuel using the big ISRU, total mass is conserved.
  - But, there is a bug with the small drill under time warp.  The loss of asteroid mass is double what it should be, when using any speed speed of physical or on-rails time-warp.  That is, to fill a 300-unit tank of ore to its 3-ton capacity, the asteroid loses 6 tons of mass, but only under time-warp.  
• The small drill at xx% fractional 'thermal efficiency' removes mass from the asteroid as quickly as it would at 100% 'thermal efficiency' but only stores xx% of that mass as ore, losing the rest to space.
  As Plusck says, closing all ore tanks while the drills warm up will avoid this loss.
  Amusingly, having any on-board engineer go on EVA during the warm-up period reduces the rate of mass extraction during this period and thus the loss.
   

Ahh. Excellent info, thank you.

OK so I was premature in screaming earlier (my 1.2 career save has taken second place to playing with a bunch of other things, so I'm far from mining asteroids yet).

So the bug that @bewing was talking about must have been what you said - losing mass under time warp with the small drill - and not what I misunderstood it to mean. Oops. Reading the thread again makes it look like we were talking at cross purposes. This is something I've never experienced because I've simply never tried a small drill on an asteroid.

So at the end of the day, it is the small ISRU which effectively throws ore away, not the drill (which is just slower). That is good to know.

Edited November 12, 2016 by Plusck

[magnemoe]

On 11.11.2016 at 4:01 AM, FancyMouse said:

I observe the asteroid loses the mass as long as the drill is running, even though Ore is full.

This was an serious issue back in 1.13, has not mined asteroids in 1.2
My solution was simply to shut down the drills once the tanks was full and be careful running drill then away from craft, only do this for short periods like doing an burn for another ship.
 

[bewing]

4 hours ago, OHara said:

• Mass is conserved by the small drill (as opposed to the small ISRU) when it is at operating temperature.  The decrease in asteroid mass matches the increase in mass of ore in the tank (10 kg/ore).
  - But, there is a bug with the small drill under time warp.  The loss of asteroid mass is double what it should be, when using any speed speed of physical or on-rails time-warp.  That is, to fill a 300-unit tank of ore to its 3-ton capacity, the asteroid loses 6 tons of mass, but only under time-warp. 

This isn't what I'm seeing. I see both drills reduce the resource mass and total mass of the asteroid by 6 tonnes when filling a single 3 tonne ore container -- whether or not it's done under timewarp. (Assuming each drill is preheated before use.)

The total ship mass in the info tab (which includes the klawed asteroid mass) in map view drops by 3 tonnes while filling the container.

Quote

• Any drill at xx% fractional 'thermal efficiency' removes mass from the asteroid as quickly as it would at 100% 'thermal efficiency' but only stores xx% of that mass as ore, losing the rest to space.
  As @Plusck says, closing all ore tanks while the drills warm up will avoid this loss.
   

I will chat with RoverDude and see if this effect is intended or is a bug. The devs usually take weekends off, so it may be a couple days for a response from him.

 

Edited November 13, 2016 by bewing

[bewing]

On 11/10/2016 at 7:01 PM, FancyMouse said:

I observe the asteroid loses the mass as long as the drill is running, even though Ore is full.

I cannot reproduce this. My drills stop ("no storage space" status) and the asteroid mass remains unchanged if I switch focus away from the craft.

If I keep the focus, the drills also stop when the containers are full.

Edited November 13, 2016 by bewing

[OHara]

21 hours ago, bewing said:

This isn't what I'm seeing. I see both drills reduce the resource mass and total mass of the asteroid by 6 tonnes when filling a single 3 tonne ore container -- whether or not it's done under timewarp. (Assuming each drill is preheated before use.)

The total ship mass in the info tab (which includes the klawed asteroid mass) in map view drops by 3 tonnes while filling the container.

Confirmed. In a freshly started 1.2.1 game (191-kB savefile) all drills (both big and junior) remove 2 tonnes asteroid per 1 tonne ore.  

I rechecked my original test (save-file started in 1.05, converted through versions to 1.2.1).  The rock I use for refueling is one of the rare kind with the glowing cracks (because of course that was the one I brought into Kerbin orbit) and my drills on that rock give a 1:1 conversion ratio to ore, so long as I don't time-warp.

When ore tanks fill up, the mass-loss stops.  So Plusck's answer to the original question (close the tanks while drills warm up) stands.

Edited November 13, 2016 by OHara
original test was also ver1.2.1, with a save started in 1.0.5

[bewing]

3 hours ago, OHara said:

Confirmed. In a freshly started 1.2.1 game (191-kB savefile) all drills (both big and junior) remove 2 tonnes asteroid per 1 tonne ore.  

I rechecked my original test.  The rock I use for refueling is one of the rare kind with the glowing cracks (because of course that was the one I brought into Kerbin orbit) and my drills on that rock give a 1:1 conversion ratio to ore, so long as I don't time-warp.

Went and caught my own Glimmeroid (the official name with the Devs) in a fresh 1.2.1 game to verify if they behave differently from a regular asteroid. It has the same 2:1 mass loss behavior in my test.

 

 

Edited November 14, 2016 by bewing

[OHara]

I don't know why, but all my drills in my original save file (2MB) conserve mass when converting asteroid to ore at normal speed, eat 2× asteroid mass when on any time-warp.  I went into the persistent.sfs, made my glittery asteroid boring and grey, checked that the settings in ModuleResourceHarvester and ModuleAsteroidDrill are identical to those in new saves, and still the drills in this save behave as I first reported.

Anything in a new game acts more simply: drills remove 2 tons asteroid per 1 ton ore when at ideal temperature, 
2-tons asteroid per (xx/100) tons ore when at xx% thermal efficiency.
(It would be simpler, of course, if was 1 ton per xx/100 tons in agreement with the wiki)

Edited November 14, 2016 by OHara

[Driger]

On 11/14/2016 at 4:18 AM, OHara said:

 drills remove 2 tons asteroid per 1 ton ore when at ideal temperature, 
 

I can recreate this with various sized asteroids. The highest efficiency I have been able to achieve is 1 ton of ore per 2 tons of asteroid resources.