Gain funds from mining.

[Turf]

I see that no one have actually used this to gain advantage in career AFAIK (As Far As I Know). I actually used them to gain money.

It is possible to place your miner in Launchpad, activate it, wait for it, and recover to gain money from mined/converted resources from your miner.

Alternatively, one may let engineer crew to make miners way more efficient and/or add ISRU converter to convert the ore into something worthy (MonoPropellant is the most worthy, which is 1.2 Funds/Unit)

Is it really cheaty to make a miner? It does not look cheaty cheaty IMO (In My Opinion).

I also even have a challenge for it.

[otblock]

There was a guy who made an SSTO that went to the Mun, mined there, and profited. It all depends on what you think is cheaty.

[KerbMav]

Use a mod to create even more valuable stuff to mine for on far away planets and while you try to figure out how to do this you will automatically stop pondering the cheat question. Win win.

[KerikBalm]

3 hours ago, Anbang11 said:

I see that no one have actually used this to gain advantage in career AFAIK (As Far As I Know). I actually used them to gain money.

It is possible to place your miner in Launchpad, activate it, wait for it, and recover to gain money from mined/converted resources from your miner.

Alternatively, one may let engineer crew to make miners way more efficient and/or add ISRU converter to convert the ore into something worthy (MonoPropellant is the most worthy, which is 1.2 Funds/Unit)

And shortly after 1.0, I posted about doing something like this. The thing is... you don't even need to mine the ore.

1 unit of ore converts to: 2 units of monoprop or 2 units of LF

LF unit cost: 0.8

Monoprop unit cost: 1.2

Ore Unit cost: 0.01

You can launch a ship with full ore tanks (you pay 0.01 funds per unit ore). With 3000 ore, you can make 6000 monoprop.

You spend 3000*.01 = 30 funds, and recover 6000*1.2 = 7200 funds, for a 7170 fund profit.

Why bother spending the time to mine? just launch a bunch of full ore tanks, and a bunch of ISRU convertors... make it KSP refinery program...

 

[max_creative]

You still need to get lots of science and decent funds for the drills, ore tanks, and converters. Plus the fuel tanks that will hold the fuel. And something that makes people do things reusable but is to your disadvantage here, fuel is cheap, parts are expensive. You would get a 100% recovery though. But yes. There are some things to work out, but it works. PROFIT!!!

[suicidejunkie]

I had an "8k GIC" design that I'd leave on the runway while launching rockets from the pad.

Really wasn't worth the hassle of launching, setting a KAC timer and then recovering it 3 hours later, for some piddling amount of funds even on hard settings.

[Kosmognome]

3 hours ago, Anbang11 said:

I see that no one have actually used this to gain advantage in career AFAIK (As Far As I Know). I actually used them to gain money.

It is possible to place your miner in Launchpad, activate it, wait for it, and recover to gain money from mined/converted resources from your miner.

Alternatively, one may let engineer crew to make miners way more efficient and/or add ISRU converter to convert the ore into something worthy (MonoPropellant is the most worthy, which is 1.2 Funds/Unit)

Is it really cheaty to make a miner? It does not look cheaty cheaty IMO (In My Opinion).

I also even have a challenge for it.

It has been done since mining was introduced.

 

But its horrible funds/time. You get more funds/real-time with other activities, and a lot more funds/in-game-time with other activities. So all in all, yes it works, but its horrible from am economic point of view.

[Skorpychan]

I just play science mode instead to avoid the funds issue entirely. Why finagle your way around something when you can just disable it?

[nosirrbro]

Putting the meaning of an abbreviation in parentheses next to the abbreviation nullifies the point of said abbreviation, just use the real words and abolish the abbreviations altogether if your just typing them anyway.

[KerikBalm]

14 hours ago, suicidejunkie said:

Really wasn't worth the hassle of launching, setting a KAC timer and then recovering it 3 hours later, for some piddling amount of funds even on hard settings.

Well, it seems more usefull than using mobile labs and using the science to funds strategy... No need for KAC... just launch something with 12 full or tanks, turn on monoprop production, and recover it whenever you feel like for a gain of about 50,000 funds.

[Kosmognome]

The science labs produce much more funds when you convert it, and work more passive. They don't clutter up the launch pad.

 

The game seriously needs to penalize time warping more. Maybe by adding salaries for all kerbals after the initial four. That would completely put an end to this. (Maybe buff long-running contracts payout in return).

 

 

[KerikBalm]

well, you have two launch facilities, the runway and launch pad... and anyway, they'll get autmoatically recovered if you need to launch something.

I'm rarely launching anything new in my current career, I've got plenty of stuff in orbit, and mainly I'm just managing missions in progress, course corrections, ISRU on distant worlds, orbital rendevous, etc.

From time to time coming back to the KSC and picking up an extra 50k funds wouldn't be hard, but I'm not doing it, I'm mainly getting funds from the asteroid day sentinel contracts, science ot funds, and worlds first stuff. Plus, with >12 million funds, I don't so much care about funds anymore, particularly as I'm not really launching much anymore.

-Though I did install OPM, and I'm considering launching a lot of stuff for a Sarnus mission (every such distant kerballled mission gets a large ship with lots of habiations space arranged so it could be rotated for artificial gravity, a similarly large surface habitat, rovers if suitable, aircraft if the destination is suitable, and 2x ISRU)

[Mastikator]

The most profitable way to earn money by drilling ore is to get contracts to drill for ore. Everything else is just self flagellation.

[Levelord]

If gaining funds the normal way is so annoying that you'd be willing to do menial repetitive tasks in order to bypass it, then why not play in Science mode?

 

I don't see the shame in playing Science mode.

[Wjolcz]

I'd rather have Xenon as an alternative to the contracts and strategies.

[KerikBalm]

I made a Xenon ISRU mod that only works on planets with atmospheres. Running that thing on kerbin would be so OPd for farming funds... Xenon is really really expensive

[SR]

You could do it with Extraplanetry launch pads. You can set up a launcpad on minmus cheaply, and launch vessels full of fuel back to kerbin

Edited April 21, 2016 by SR