ISRU strategies?

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

Just starting to dabble with ISRU around the KSP.

First I was thinking about an ISRU rover(built one). Drill, tanks and ISRU converter (shouldn't that thing be called a refinery?) all in one and on wheels.

But the converter works faster than the drill, so now I'm thinking about several Drill-Rovers and one Refinery Lander than can land in an ore-field, Drill Rovers deliver ore, Refinery Lander processes the ore and leaves on rockets.

I'm thinking rovers because I assume that you use up all ore in an area and have to move on (like most build and conquer games) or is it more like underground water, a single permanent drill will suck it up forever?

How do you guys do it?

EDIT: How about some screen shots of your operations?

Edited August 30, 2015 by Brainlord Mesomorph

[Ripper2900]

Only on asteroids does the ore run out. Nowhere else, and even there you van just sit and drill.

[mhoram]

The stock resource system has an infinite supply of resources when you are on a planet or moon. Although the extraction speed changes with your location. So it would be advisable to search for a spot where the resource concentration is high.

The resource amount, an Asteroids has, is however finite.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

OK so once the drills are deployed, they stay there.

So a Converter Rover that drives up to a drill, takes its ore, and drives off with fuel?

[KerikBalm]

I just stick the converter and the drills on a lander big lander with lots of fuel tanks.

Its just so much simpler and easier.

It would technically be more efficient if there was 1 converter on the surface, and one in orbit, but I can't be bothered with that.

Land, deploy drills, start converter, time warp/go do something else.

Come back later when it is full, and fly it up to an orbital depot

[SanderB]

planetary mining vessels greatly benefit from engineers, which can boost their miners production rate by up to 25x at lv 5 or 20x or so at 4. At 20x and with a high concentration, you can even burn the fuel to produce your own electricity on far away planets too far away from kerbol to use solar panels. With a high level engineer and high ore concentration, mining/converter vessels using the big fuel cell can produce more fuel than they consume for their electricity. The same goes for asteroids, but there you only need 1 miner and 1 converter without an engineer because on asteroids the miner feeds the converter perfectly. On asteroids engineers are even inadviseable due to a glitch that causes ore to be wasted in the presence of an engineer.

[RoboRay]

I prefer to keep it all in one package. It's not as efficient, but you're not tied down to returning fuel-haulers to any particular landing site, either (which can save you some fuel, too, depending on the destination orbit, though not enough to offset the losses hauling the mining and refining gear with you).

Edited August 30, 2015 by RoboRay

[JTpopcorn]

I believe someone found that ore is more dense than fuel, which means the best way would be to mine on a low gravity moon, shuttle ore to station, and convert ore to fuel at the station. The drills should stay on the surface at all times and be able to continue mining while the ore shuttle is delivering its cargo. I generally put all my drills on a single lander, with a panel on top so I can land on it and take the ore.

[Starhawk]

Here's a look at my prototype mining operation. This was built fairly early in my current career to try out the ISRU system.

It has two drills, lots of tanks, and room for five engineers. Docking the tanker on the flats is a breeze.

Happy landings!

[jiminator]

This is my first ISRU build, it is for fulfilling some contracts (2650 ore, etc). It has two nukes buried in the tanks that you can't see. almost 5k delta-v although it is incredibly slow in getting off mun, so not sure what other places it can go. all repeatable science. Appears to work pretty well.

[Edax]

planetary mining vessels greatly benefit from engineers, which can boost their miners production rate by up to 25x at lv 5 or 20x or so at 4. At 20x and with a high concentration, you can even burn the fuel to produce your own electricity on far away planets too far away from kerbol to use solar panels. With a high level engineer and high ore concentration, mining/converter vessels using the big fuel cell can produce more fuel than they consume for their electricity. The same goes for asteroids, but there you only need 1 miner and 1 converter without an engineer because on asteroids the miner feeds the converter perfectly. On asteroids engineers are even inadviseable due to a glitch that causes ore to be wasted in the presence of an engineer.

Does anyone have the exact statistics on fuel cell vs mining and IRSU conversion? I'm planning a mission to Pol, I've got 6 giagantor solar panels, 3 Pb-Nuks, and 2 fuel cell arrays and plenty of batteries but I only have 2 star engineers and the lander can't move to exploit richer deposits of ore, it can only land in a general area of concentration, so I'm unsure if the fuel cells will actually power the drills for a net profit in fuel. I can use solar power to use the IRSU since that wont turn off when low on power but would I get more ore/fuel just using them to fill up the ore tanks?

[jiminator]

these are your numbers. (solar panels under ideal circumstances)

.75 / sec pb nuk

18 / sec fc array

1.5 / sec fuel cell

gigantor 24/sec

2x3 1x6 1.64/sec

1 panel .35/sec

drill 15/sec

isru 30/sec

the issue is really about time. you can just accelerate and let the days go by, no need for complex strategies. time does not really matter much in this game, unless you have too many contracts out, but you will want to resolve them before you go planet hopping as even the short trips will take years.

[Ripper2900]

Gigantor panes will only give you about 1 electricity each at the area around Jool, so you shouldn't rely solely on solar imho. I use a fuel cell array in addition to 4 Gigantors, but with a lvl-2 engineer, I'm not sure that you can mine enough ore to break-even, with the fuel cell.

[SanderB]

Does anyone have the exact statistics on fuel cell vs mining and IRSU conversion? I'm planning a mission to Pol, I've got 6 giagantor solar panels, 3 Pb-Nuks, and 2 fuel cell arrays and plenty of batteries but I only have 2 star engineers and the lander can't move to exploit richer deposits of ore, it can only land in a general area of concentration, so I'm unsure if the fuel cells will actually power the drills for a net profit in fuel. I can use solar power to use the IRSU since that wont turn off when low on power but would I get more ore/fuel just using them to fill up the ore tanks?

I don't remember the exact statistics, but a lv 4 engineer and 4% concentration should be enough. The wiki entry on the harvester drill is here.

The large array takes 0.04 units of LFO per 18 units of electricity, so it produces 450 units of charge for 1 unit of LFO. It takes 30 units of electrical charge to produce 1 LFO from Ore. So as long as your drill produces 0.05 or more units of ore a second (which would mean 300 units of electric charge per unit of ore plus 30 to convert it), you're okay and producing a more than you use. 0.036 units a second is the absolute minimum using a large fuel cell which means >4% concentration with a lv 4 engineer. To produce 0.05 units of ore a second from 1 harvester on a 4% site you'd need a lv 4 or 5 engineer and 2 fuel cell array's to feed 1 harvester.

1 Harvester feeding a converter at 0.05/s the would produce about 1.8t of fuel per hour of which 1.2t is used to keep the cycle going.

Edited August 31, 2015 by SanderB

[tbarcello]

Here's a look at my prototype mining operation. This was built fairly early in my current career to try out the ISRU system.

It has two drills, lots of tanks, and room for five engineers. Docking the tanker on the flats is a breeze.

http://i.imgur.com/GKJayto.jpg

Happy landings!

A thing of beauty!

- - - Updated - - -

Just starting to dabble with ISRU around the KSP.

First I was thinking about an ISRU rover(built one). Drill, tanks and ISRU converter (shouldn't that thing be called a refinery?) all in one and on wheels.

But the converter works faster than the drill, so now I'm thinking about several Drill-Rovers and one Refinery Lander than can land in an ore-field, Drill Rovers deliver ore, Refinery Lander processes the ore and leaves on rockets.

I'm thinking rovers because I assume that you use up all ore in an area and have to move on (like most build and conquer games) or is it more like underground water, a single permanent drill will suck it up forever?

How do you guys do it?

EDIT: How about some screen shots of your operations?

On my youtube series i have ore operation set up on mun and minmus. Minmus is the best, because the gravity is so low and lander can easily deliver wherever you need it. But im also using KIS. Check it out.

Edited August 31, 2015 by tbarcello

[bigcalm]

How about some screen shots of your operations?

Eternal Voyager V -- can land, mine for ore, refuel itself and then shunt 1500 ore into orbit to refuel something else. Tested on Moho, Gilly, Duna, Ike and should work on Dres, Vall, Bop, Pol and Eeloo as well (though you should throw away the solar panels and replace with nuclear isotopes beyond Duna). My Tylo lander is similar (bigger engine, more fuel)

Munbase3 -- can launch itself back into orbit with 6000 ore on board if required.

[Warzouz]

The main question hasn't been asked : "What do you want to use ISRU for ?"

- Do you want to use it to reduce the cost of your LKO stages ? Refuelling from minmus and bringing fuel to a space station / fuel depot at LKO

- Do you want to build bases for fun ?

- Do you want to make bodies exporations last much longer ?

I needed ISRU for the later.

In build a lot of space stations and I managed to bring refueling tank from Kerbin. in 1.0, I looked at Drill + ISRU.

After some testing in sandbox, I came with a station + miner solution. A space station is moslty a research and refuel facility. It has an ISRU on board. It stays around bodies. Science Landers visit and explore the body. A dedicated miner gathers Ore from the body and bring it back to the station. The 4*LVN miner is about 64tons went loaded with 3000 ore. It's able to drill from most worlds (except Eve, Tylo, Laythe and Kerbin)

As the Miner is LVN powered, I can't refine on ground and bring the fuel to the station. So I don't have oxydizer and I can't use fuel cells. So it is gigantor up to Duna and RTG outward.

The Miner's engines is also the engines of the station to get to it's location, so I can burn the reserve fuel during interplanetary flight.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/132464 (I'm simplifying it...)

[falloutaddict]

I prefer to keep it all in one package. It's not as efficient, but you're not tied down to returning fuel-haulers to any particular landing site, either (which can save you some fuel, too, depending on the destination orbit, though not enough to offset the losses hauling the mining and refining gear with you).

that is a REALLY sweet craft, throw a couple of the big fuel cells on there and you could run that thing even in the furthest reaches of the kerbin system. ive noticed the the solar panels pretty much become useless for running the drills and converter at jool and beyond

Edit: i seriously cant get over how cool that is, thats not a stock craft is it?

Eddit: Also, i agree with RoboRay, you can make a lander with an ISRU converter with a couple drills and plenty of space for ore and fuel. throw enough propulsion and fuel space to land on most moons and you planet hop your way out to jool easily. but just remember that solar panels lose about 90% efficiency by the time you are out to jool so bring lots of batteries and fuel cells.

Edited September 1, 2015 by falloutaddict

[RoboRay]

that is a REALLY sweet craft, throw a couple of the big fuel cells on there and you could run that thing even in the furthest reaches of the kerbin system. ive noticed the the solar panels pretty much become useless for running the drills and converter at jool and beyond

Edit: i seriously cant get over how cool that is, thats not a stock craft is it?

Thanks! Other than the boxy white crew cabins (which are truck cabs from Modular Multiwheels), it's all stock. I love using those truck cabs for their industrial look, and they've got a pretty good view from the IVA.

It's kind of hard to see in most of the pictures, but it does have one of the big fuel cells, tucked between the aft ore tanks...

Here's a .craft file, if you want to take a closer look: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bp0a07uh27k8hg3/Wildcat.craft?dl=0

You will need Modular Multiwheels installed, but you can delete everything but the truck cabs for this.

Edited September 1, 2015 by RoboRay

[ForScience6686]

I prefer the all in one package, this reduces ferrying fuel/ ore and leaves more time for the fun stuff. Since you are picking up free fuel anyways, why bother with being extremely efficient? I'd rather be building or exploring rather than tedious fuel runs.

[problemecium]

If it's true, then I'm glad to hear that carting Ore is more efficient, given the way I ended up constructing my Ore Bot and refining station:

[Dr.LoveJoy]

On 9/1/2015 at 3:53 PM, ForScience6686 said:

I prefer the all in one package, this reduces ferrying fuel/ ore and leaves more time for the fun stuff. Since you are picking up free fuel anyways, why bother with being extremely efficient? I'd rather be building or exploring rather than tedious fuel runs.

Well, you don't want to land a long range craft if you don't have to, and so you will have to ferry fuel up to orbit anyway, so you may as well, instead, ferry Ore and have a converter in orbit, with an enormous fuel depot. 

For Planetside you can have a seperate converter for local operations and a small fuel depot.

[Wcmille]

I believe it is slightly less efficient to haul ore over fuel + ox. Circular tanks holds 9 tons wet for 1 ton dry, ore (2.5m tanks) holds 8.5 wet for 1 ton dry. Significant amounts of just liquid fuel require hauling in MkIII tanks, which are not as good, 8 tons wet for 1 ton dry, worse for the adapters. Converting on the surface also has the benefit of powering fuel cells, which allows you to mine continuously.

Converting in space allows you to effortlessly refuel ships. You just turn on the converter, leave the station, come back, and everything is perfectly fueled. No fooling around with transfers, trying to fill each tank.

I think the implication is that early mining operations are better to convert on the surface, and export fuel. Later operations its better to export ore.

Building the largest possible lifter you think you can pilot effectively is the key to mining. This saves you the most play time, because you make the smallest number of fuel runs.

 

Edited January 8, 2016 by Wcmille