Drill power consumption

[Randazzo]

This might be better suited for discussion, but it is a question...

I had my first foray into the ISRU system last night, sending up an unmanned vessel to catch a class D asteroid. It was much smaller than I'd usually send, the idea being that I would use a pair of drills and an ISRU converter to mine ore out of the asteroid and convert that to fuel to replenish the vessel as necessary. This took longer that I had hoped, but ultimately it did work.

Today I sent another vessel to the surface of Minmus to gather some ore, and I was surprised to discover that the pair of drills appeared to be consuming power at a much higher rate than they did while drilling the asteroid, draining all power in a matter of seconds compared to being able to run them indefinitely at the asteroid. This unit used the same solar panel set up (4 * 1 x 6) as the asteroid vehicle.

Would being on the surface of Minmus reduce the panel effectiveness enough to cause this? The asteroid is now in orbit of the Mun, per contract requirements, but I can still run the drills indefinitely.

I checked the cfg files and there is a difference in the modules for asteroid mining and surface mining in the form of the Efficiency variable, with asteroid being at 10 and surface being at 1, but I would assume that has to do with how much ore it pulls out.

Edited May 15, 2015 by Randazzo

[n0xiety]

Asteroid has like %90 ore and its limited. While surface does have infinite ore, you need to find the red spots to be able to dig efficiently and i think it doesn't pass %10 since my best find was %9 ore. So what im trying to say is, the less ore there is the more energy drills use and they get overheated alot more. Tho there is a current bug that if you have just a small ammount of electric gain and some batteries then you can just fast forward with 7x or 8x and the power levels will bug which will let you drill infinitely even tho you might have 1e/s this will still work.

Edited May 15, 2015 by n0xiety

[Streetwind]

What n0xiety means is:

Usually you'd think that drills consume a steady amount of power but produce a variable amount of ore depending on the concentration. But in KSP, it's the other way around: drills always produce the same amount of ore, but the power consumption depends on the ore concentration. Don't ask me why, but that's how it works...

Another way to increase drilling efficiency (=reducing power draw) is having an engineer onboard the drilling craft. The higher level, the better.

[Randazzo]

What n0xiety means is:

Usually you'd think that drills consume a steady amount of power but produce a variable amount of ore depending on the concentration. But in KSP, it's the other way around: drills always produce the same amount of ore, but the power consumption depends on the ore concentration. Don't ask me why, but that's how it works...

Another way to increase drilling efficiency (=reducing power draw) is having an engineer onboard the drilling craft. The higher level, the better.

That's quite silly.

Thanks for the answer!

[kulkan1]

That's quite silly.

Thanks for the answer!

Actually it makes sense.

The drills aren't just drilling ore, it is also refining said ore and throwing waste away. That's how you can get 1/1 ratio between ore mass and fuel mass. So the higher concentration of ore you have, the less power is needed to "clean" the ore, and you use more power on simply drilling. If that made any sense.