Mining (Fuel Cells use as much as I produce)?

[wisnoskij]

I just sent a small miner to the Mun. From what I have heard there is 70320 seconds of consecutive darkness on the mun (apparently a Kerbin eclipse adds a few minutes).

A drill takes 15/s, and the converter takes 30/s. With 4 drills, that is 90/s.

So 4 gigantic solar panels cover it during the day, but I would need about 6400 1K batteries to hold it over night......

Or 60 of the first level fuel cells. OK, slightly more doable. They have the same conversion ratio as the big ones 0.0016875/s+0.0020625/s=>1.5/s or 0.10125/s+0.12375/s=>90/s

With a lvl 2 engineer, on the richest deposit I could find (most of the surface seems to be covered with an identicle %), if I know what I am doing (it is entirely possible I do not) I am getting 0.034/s*4 = 0.136. So something like 95% would be used to run the machine....

Another strange thing

I am using ScanSat. And have been running the narrow band scanner. And really only saw a few numbers. Half the surface was 6.xx%. Now That I have landed, and turned on that surface one there seems to be a more diverse array of numbers. Only up to 10%, as far as I can tell. Is there a way to search for high numbers? So presumably, I could get up to 50-45% efficiency, if I move over to the 10% vein. but then, those were invisible before I landed.

Also, how do these fuel cells work? They will automatically turn on when I run out of power and the ship is inactive? They would be pretty useless otherwise, but it doesn't say.

Edited June 13, 2015 by wisnoskij

[Streetwind]

I don't know enough about the details of mining to comment on most of this, but:

Fuel cells throttle themselves when the vessel is reaches 95% energy storage. They will either produce only as much power as needed to keep that status quo, or they will turn off completely if the power keeps rising even without them.

[Sharpy]

Does your mining operation need to run day and night?

Also, a five-star engineer will double your current mining output while not increasing the battery usage.

[wisnoskij]

Thanks Streetwind. I noticed it seemed to be something like that. What would be nice is a way to set the cutoff, so if I had enough storage to last half the night I could say only charge when below 5%, and half as much fuel would be used. As it stands I only have enough storage for like 1% of the nighttime, so it does't make much difference either way. But they do need to be turned on to do that, I really hate how it costs 1,000,000 to unlock custom action groups, that was tedious.

OK, some imperial evidence. I did manage a tiny hop to a vein 1% higher, so the numbers should be a little off, but I seem to be generating ore many times faster than I use up fuel. I don't know if the wiki is off, or I just screwed up a decimal place somewhere. But the fuel cells do no seem to use a significant amount of the generated fuel, and a single night time seems long enough to completely fill the miner and then some.

- - - Updated - - -

A good point Sharpy. At this point, sort of, if at all possible, as I am trying to fuel an expedition of the Mun. So a suborbital hop of two and then back to the refueling station. But that is something to think of. Are the weight of fuel cells worth the difference.

Edited June 13, 2015 by wisnoskij

[Snark]

A few ideas:

- Some would consider this an exploit, but... If you leave focus from your miner (i.e. go back to KSC or whatever), then the resource harvesting goes on in the background, but electricity consumption does not. So you can keep running through the night if you're just careful not to look at it during the night.

- Consider moving the operation to Minmus. Much shorter night, plus there are other benefits too, such as lower gravity.

- Follow the sun. Have a few good mining spots scouted out around the globe. Whenever sunset approaches, just hop a few hundred kilometers to the west.

- Reduce power consumption at night, for example add lots of ore tanks and just shut down ISRU conversion while you keep mining, and maybe shut down some of your drills.

- Leave the refinery in orbit, where there's more sunshine. You ship ore up. Maybe even put a lot of batteries on the ore tanker and bring electric charge down.

[Laie]

Another strange thing

I am using ScanSat. And have been running the narrow band scanner. And really only saw a few numbers. Half the surface was 6.xx%. Now That I have landed, and turned on that surface one there seems to be a more diverse array of numbers. Only up to 10%, as far as I can tell. Is there a way to search for high numbers? So presumably, I could get up to 50-45% efficiency, if I move over to the 10% vein. but then, those were invisible before I landed.

Scansat and resources works like this:

a) you need to run the big scanner once in order to see anything at all.

until you hit the ground and run that surface thingy, you will only see a very rough guess. Every biome has an average density and that's just what you will see at first: entire biomes in the same hue. After you have run the surface scanning module in a biome, the picture will become much clearer. In principle, you need to do this in every biome -- in practice, you will soon figure out which ones you may as well skip.

c) your vessel needs a narrow-band scanner in order to see resource data when zoomed in. Without the lollipop thingy, resources will only be displayed on the main map.

[Zephram Kerman]

So 4 gigantic solar panels cover it during the day, but I would need about 6400 1K batteries to hold it over night......

I've never found one on Mun, but Minmus has at least one spot on the south pole with full-time sunlight.

From a spot like this, you could mine continually with no batteries or fuel cells at all. The trouble with Munar poles is, of course, the extremely rugged terrain makes it hard to land safely. If you happen to have a good deposit at a polar location, consider that a very lucky break! Otherwise, the poles are great for the MPL.

A simpler solution would be simply to let the drills stop at night.

Edited June 13, 2015 by Zephram Kerman

[wisnoskij]

I've never found one on Mun, but Minmus has at least one spot on the south pole with full-time sunlight.

Wow, I always wondered if we got any strange seasonal/polar sunlight. I guess it only makes sense. The planets all rotate perfectly on their poles and seem to have fairly flat orbital planes. SO the very top/botton of a planet should be pretty static. That said, I think the poles in my game have by way the lowest concentrations. Not sure exacly how averages work tho. Can a 1% biome contain 99% 0% and 1% 100% ore levels?