Asteroid mining and mass loss

[Laie]

I was a bit disappointed when a Class E Asteroid (~2100t, 85%) barely provided enough ore to fill up one 50t tank. Total vessel mass went from ~2200t to 600t while doing this.

After some experimenting, it seems that the drill operates at a fixed rate. It won't slow down just because your ore bunker is full. Any excess ore mined this way will be wasted.

Is that right or did I miss something? (not looking forward to micromanaging my drill.)

Edited June 12, 2015 by Laie

[n0xiety]

Drill doesn't waste anything. It just stops when there is no place to store the ore. As for vessel mass it stays the same for me as i mine and convert to fuel at the same time.

[Geschosskopf]

I was a bit disappointed when a Class E Asteroid (~2100t, 85%) barely provided enough ore to fill up one 50t tank. Total vessel mass went from ~2200t to 600t while doing this.

After some experimenting, it seems that the drill operates at a fixed rate. It won't slow down just because your ore bunker is full. Any excess ore mined this way will be wasted.

Is that right or did I miss something? (not looking forward to micromanaging my drill.)

You'll have to ask Roverdude to be sure but IIRC, he said the drills stop producing when the ore tanks fill up.

HOWEVER, there is a known bug with asteroid mining that if you warp, the asteroids deflate despite there being no place to put the ore. It's kinda the opposite of how ships don't use electricity at high warp.

[Laie]

It seems that you have to run the refinery at the same time as the drill. (a little more testing) Yes, that's it. If you have a full tank and a running converter that can't keep up with the drill, you will lose mass.

I think it happens thus:

a) converter takes 0.5 units

drill sees free space

c) drill produces some ore (more than 0.5 units)

d) only 0.5 fit into the tank, the remainder spills over

Edited June 12, 2015 by Laie

[n0xiety]

I always run the drill at the same time with refinary. Frankly 1 drill can't catch up with the ISRU conversion rate as long as you don't have an engineer onboard. If you are taking more than 1 drill its wasted mass on an asteroid.

[Laie]

I brought along a three-star engineer. On the current rock, one drill provides 8.5u/second, enough to keep 17 converters occupied. As long as I don't let the ore tanks overflow, there will be zero mass loss -- resources are turned into ore at a 1:1 ratio, and ore becomes fuel at 1:1 as well. If I don't run the converter, the drill will stop once the ore bunker is full. If I do run the converter at the same time as the drill, I will lose 8 units of ore per second once the bunker is full.

My current testbed happens to be a tiny A-class: it's sucked dry so quickly that I can't do timewarp testing atm. But IIRC, the spillage on the E-class was on the order of 1400t lost, while 50t of fuel and 15t of ore have been produced. That would be ~96% losses. Not quite 16:17, but close enough.

[Geschosskopf]

If I don't run the converter, the drill will stop once the ore bunker is full. If I do run the converter at the same time as the drill, I will lose 8 units of ore per second once the bunker is full.

Hmm, I wonder why that is when you get no overflow running the drills alone?

Anyway, to avoid this problem, it seems advisable to have more refinery consumption than drill production so ore overflow never happens. But what happens when your fuel tanks fill up? Does that also cause ore loss?

[Laie]

Hmm, I wonder why that is when you get no overflow running the drills alone?

The drill runs for at least one time unit, producing a certain amount of ore. If that amount exceeds the free space in your tanks, you get spillage. Strictly speaking, every time you fill up the tank to 100% you may lose some ore. If you run the converter and the drill at the same time, this overstuffing happens several times per second, leading to considerable mass loss.

What happens when the fuel tanks fill up? The converter stops, allowing the ore tank to fill up as well, thus stopping the drill.

However, if you run the converter while consuming the output (e.g. fuel cells), you may also get spillage. Haven't tried that, though.

Edited June 13, 2015 by Laie

[Geschosskopf]

Ah, thanks for the explanation.