Is this efficient?

[Xannari Ferrows]

I'm trying to build a self sustaining Ore miner/refinery. I need it for Liquid Hydrogen. Since I've disabled Ore being tweakable, the Hydrogen has become a challenge. I need something that can regularly send in a supply to fuel my NERVAs, and I was wondering if the contraption I built can do the job.

[i've hacked in some Ore for testing purposes, in case you were gonna ask]

This is my atrocity. Please, contain your enthusiasm.

This is a prototype, and I want your opinion on it. Here's some pros and cons to the current design.

Pros:

Fuel cells are fed by the refinery's excess, which makes the cycle self sufficient.

Holds up to 6.2 tons of Liquid Hydrogen in total.

Cells can power both drills at once.

Holds a total of 118.1 tons in Ore.

Can drive over slopes under decent gravity.

Brings it's own pepperoni to-go.

Cons:

Low power storage.

Power production is insufficient for multitasking.

Above 88.57 tons of Ore, the tanker can no longer drive safely, and becomes stationary.

Docking port required for non-specialized craft.

May require maintenance, but holds no crew.

Liquid Hydrogen and LFO storage unit is a little floppy.

Hates large slopes.

Required near constant supply of pizza.

Do you think this is an efficient design, or the worst you've seen yet? What could it use?

DISCLOSURE: The LFO is purely for the fuel cells. It's not for transfer.

Edited April 16, 2016 by Xannari Ferrows

[Ferdoni]

Not efficient in the way of storage, you have a gigantic volume of ore but only 450 'slots' for LF. Dependable of how much fuel the NERV's need, but I would only use 1 small ore tank because you directly change the ore into LF.

But very nice design tough!

[Xannari Ferrows]

But I also need to Ore for the Liquid Hydrogen. The fuel is for the cells. That statement is a little hard to read.

"very nice design" It is? I think you're seeing the Mcdonalds it ate that one time...

[Ferdoni]

But than you have an enormous amount of storage for the LH. So the ore storage is still not neccesary. And if time is not an problem, you can timewarp through te mining and converting so than you even need even less storage for everything (exept LF for electricity of course).

And if you delete at least one stack of ore containers, you can allign the ore storage, converter and LF storage on only one set of wheels instead of two wich you have now.

[Xannari Ferrows]

I'll go ahead and build something of this specification and see how it goes.

[Ferdoni]

Good luck

[Prepper-Jack]

Hard to say, as much depends on where you're doing your mining. In very low gravity areas like Minmus, a rocket based platform can be far more mobile and maneuverable. It's easy enough to build a mining rig that delivers ore to orbit, and makes its own fuel to make the run. If, however, you're in a more significant gravity area such as Mun or Duna, and are fueling a ground station, this kind of platform would work well.

Fuel cells would work better for the outlying worlds I would imagine - where solar arrays aren't available (though it should be noted that max speed doesn't currently drain power anyway). I would definitely supplement with a couple gigantor solar arrays.

As for the wheels buckling on the target planet - well, can only test it out I suppose.

Anyway, like the design - got an industrial look to it.

[Xannari Ferrows]

Hard to say, as much depends on where you're doing your mining. In very low gravity areas like Minmus, a rocket based platform can be far more mobile and maneuverable. It's easy enough to build a mining rig that delivers ore to orbit, and makes its own fuel to make the run. If, however, you're in a more significant gravity area such as Mun or Duna, and are fueling a ground station, this kind of platform would work well.

Fuel cells would work better for the outlying worlds I would imagine - where solar arrays aren't available (though it should be noted that max speed doesn't currently drain power anyway). I would definitely supplement with a couple gigantor solar arrays.

As for the wheels buckling on the target planet - well, can only test it out I suppose.

Anyway, like the design - got an industrial look to it.

I took it to Laythe [Don't ask how], because I can use jet engines, as well as my 2.7 modified micro-Laythe lander. I shall put solar arrays on a Mk 3 installment [Mk 2 was unsuccessful] and see how it fares on Vall.

The fuel cells, yes. Not only would solar arrays destroy themselves in atmospheres at 3 picometers per second, but I had the space to begin with, and the base can run continuously for almost 8 days. Wow. The Mk 3 that I'll make shall be exclusive for moons. Yeah, that sounds good.

Maybe I should think about releasing my Liquid Hydrogen modifications...

[Streetwind]

Definitely, at all costs, squeeze a manned capsule in there somewhere. The mining output bonus from an engineer is enormous, very noticable even at just 2-3 stars.

With more ore coming in at the same power draw, your LH2 production greatly increases because the fraction of ore you lose to keep the cycle self-sustaining is much smaller. You can also add more fuel cells to allow "multitasking" that way, and still be net positive.

For the lulz, just stick a radial attachment port on top of an ore tank and mount a mk1 capsule.

[Xannari Ferrows]

I've decided to stick with a slightly improved Mk I design. I've become too attached to it at this point, not to mention I've changed around the Liquid Hydrogen settings.

[FancyMouse]

The impact of keeping an engineer is like more than double the total improvement you can possibly achieve to unmanned mining solution. Basically after I did a test where I put an engineer on board (and it was my career save when it's just 1 or 2 stars), I immediately give up any unmanned mining attempt completely.

[SanderB]

You can get up to 25x the ore/s with a lv 5 engineer. A lv 4 engineer gets 21x the ore/s compared to an unmanned mining outpost. The only reason not to have an engineer is if you're mining an asteroid because one drill is enough to power one ISRU.

Edited June 17, 2015 by SanderB