Mining, is it even worth it?

[juanml82]

I think mining in Minmus and setting a refueling station in LKO is useful, at least for a gameplay value, either for emergency SSTO refueling or to refuel heavy missions. That way, you can send the upper stage without fuel, so you don't need that many boosters (which, depending on the payload size, might complicate the gravity turn by turning over the ship) - launching the upper stages dry can reduce a lot of mass in the lower stages if the ships are big enough

[Mister Dilsby]

Really appreciate the shoutout from @KSK, thanks  

And yeah, it really is useful to me in the Jool system. Assuming I can stick a carrier landing--that is, landing the carrier itself--in the one flat spot I found on Pol with decent ore concentration, I'll be able to fully fuel the ship and explore every moon in style. In addition I can turn the "mulch" generated by the crew on the way to Jool back into semi-edible foodstuff. 

Mining will also be the key to exploring Tylo and getting back to the ship in single stage... in fact I should point out that the craft for all the moons are single stage, although only the Tylo lander has its own mining capability. ISRU lets me play the game the way I want to play it; as a mature and futuristic space program with fully reusable "ships" rather than one-shot "capsules", but with sci-fi shenanigans kept to a reasonable minimum.  

Edited July 22, 2016 by Kuzzter

[Just Jim]

My bases on Minmus and (formerly) the Mun both have mining and converting capabilities.
But honestly, I never use them.

All my refueling for ships in Kerbin orbit is done on a large class-E asteroid (Emiko Asteroid).

I find it much, much easier than landing on Minmus and then trying to dock to the base, or using a fuel hauler rover.

[Alshain]

On 7/21/2016 at 3:09 AM, ag3nt108 said:

So my rant over, my question is this.  mining, do you even bother with it at all?

Nope, stock is to complicated and boring, that's why I use Kethane.  It has just enough setup and mission planning and execution to be fun without dragging on into incredibly tedious and boring like stock does.

[purpleivan]

I have a small mining operation on Minmus, composed of a single mining base, with a small tanker that transfers fuel to and from the mining base and the larger vehicles that transfer the fuel up to an orbiting fuel station.

With this I was deployed a similar fuel extraction and storage setup on Ike, without having to carry up anywhere near as much fuel from Kerbin as would normally be required. So far I've not made any further use of these facilities, but that's mainly due to me being busy with other things, both in KSP as was as outside of it.

I've had one weird issue with my Minmus mining base when part of it exploded when I detached the claw of the little tanker vehicle from it.

A bunch of fuel tanks as well as a couple of ore tanks decided they we bored of being part of a mining base and made a fairly short lived attempt to go into orbit. Fortunately the tanker had an ore tank on it, so I all was not lost.

BTW... the transfer vehicle in the background is a small early version before the obvious occurred to me, that I should be moving fuel into orbit in much larger quantities.

 

Here's the mining station I sent to Ike in orbit before I put it down on the surface.

My operation is pretty small scale test one, but is still capable of producing useful amounts of fuel to supply large interplanetary vehicles.

 

Edited July 22, 2016 by purpleivan

[MaxwellsDemon]

I think it's worth it because it opens up options that wouldn't be there otherwise; and anything that presents more options invites more creativity.

[magnemoe]

On 21.7.2016 at 10:48 PM, Geschosskopf said:

I bother with it all the time at other planets, but never within the Kerbin system.  It's OK once as you did to learn how it works, but after that, it's a waste of time and money to build up a refueling infrastructure inside Kerbin's SOI.  You'll never use it enough for it to pay off in fuel savings and all the time you spend messing with it reduced the amount of time you have to do stuff at other planets.  The only time mining is practical within Kerbin's SOI is if you have a self-refueling ship, like one of those "SSTO to Anywhere" things.  But then you're not building up an infrastructure.

Now at other planets, mining is great.  There, you're not doing it in a misguided attempt to save money, you're doing it so you can do more at the other planet.  If you don't need to send out fuel for use at the target and the return trip, then you can send out more and bigger payloads that can accomplish more things and see more sights.  And you can leave most of that out there to use on another trip.

However, bear in mind that surface bases have always been and probably always will be Kraken-bait.  Right now, it's especially bad if you use the bugged lander legs and wheels.  It's much better to just sit solid parts on the ground.

Depend a bit on your playstyle, if you send lots of huge bases outward to other bodies its worth it. at least in career as you can launch them dry and refuel in orbit. An huge tanker with long 3.75 m and MK3 tanks can bring back loads of fuel who last an long time. On the other hand I overbuild my capasity as I used orion pulse engines on all my large interplanetary ships so they don't use much normal fuel.
On the other hand my systemliner liner who brings kerbals from LKO to mun, minmus and just out of kerbin SOI for training refuels at the Minmus base and has done so perhaps 10 times but an 4 orange tank sized miner is overkill.

My mobile mun base on the other hand was an sucess it did lots of contracts on mun. 

On other bodies we agree, land one base who is paid by contract and jump around collect science. 
 

[ag3nt108]

I need to be clear this was never about efficiency, I was discussing mining operations in terms of within the limitations of the current game engine.  After several days of playing with it Im still not convinced its worth the hassle.  My rovers wheels explode on occasion launching the rover into space spinning and destroying solar panels.  The entire operation on occasion is flung meters into the air when it loads the physics again damaging modules and tearing off solar panels.  The docking ports i personally feel need a bit of a rework also as at the moment there are too finicky.  Ports that often seem to be perfectly aligned by eye (and indeed according to the docking GUI) fail to marry until multiple attempts have been made.  Over all as it stands surface bases and mining operations needs a great deal of work and remain my only real complaint within the game.

[juanml82]

11 minutes ago, ag3nt108 said:

I need to be clear this was never about efficiency, I was discussing mining operations in terms of within the limitations of the current game engine.  After several days of playing with it Im still not convinced its worth the hassle.  My rovers wheels explode on occasion launching the rover into space spinning and destroying solar panels.  The entire operation on occasion is flung meters into the air when it loads the physics again damaging modules and tearing off solar panels.  The docking ports i personally feel need a bit of a rework also as at the moment there are too finicky.  Ports that often seem to be perfectly aligned by eye (and indeed according to the docking GUI) fail to marry until multiple attempts have been made.  Over all as it stands surface bases and mining operations needs a great deal of work and remain my only real complaint within the game.

Oh, absolutely. I think it's best to pay a dV penalty and simplify operations: either you use a tanker/miner to get all the way from Minmus surface to LKO (aerobreaking at Kerbin) or you use a miner/tanker to ferry ore between Minmus' surface and low orbit and a tanker to go to LKO (which has the added advantage of being able to have a 10m heat shield on top and a docking port at the bottom).

And whatever lands at Minmus doesn't use landing legs, it lands directly on an MK3 fuel tank (50 m/s impact resistance, but prone to bouncing). Don't bother with rovers and docking on the surface.

[Tyko]

Just build your base to accomodate the limitations. Build your core mining facility as one lander including the drill, a storage tank and energy production. When you want to transfer fuel, just use a KAS pipe - connect it, do the fuel transfer, then disconnect it before you change scenes. It's not ideal, but it does work and it will let you try bases out.

[Tyko]

Okay..I tried mining this weekend and it wasn't all that successful.

I set up a lander with 4 mini-drills, a 1.5m ISRU and two .625m reactors, also added 8 Small TCS. According to the reference numbers available in the VAB.

• 1.5 ISRU: Required Cooling 100Kw, Max cooling 50KW = 2 x 50Kw TCS
  • Since the KSPedia has a lot of pretty pix, but doesn't actually explain the numbers, I just went with the higher of the two.
• 2 x .625 reactors: Max Cooling 25Kw (each) = 1 x 50Kw TCS
• 4 x Drill-o-matic Junior: Max Cooling 50Kw (each) = 4 x 50Kw TCS

This looks like I should need 7 Small TCS (50Kw each).

To my amazement it took 12 Small TCS to get it running steadily.

[Alshain]

On 7/22/2016 at 3:47 PM, MaxwellsDemon said:

I think it's worth it because it opens up options that wouldn't be there otherwise; and anything that presents more options invites more creativity.

What options does it open up?  Just curious, cause I was doing pretty much everything in the game before ISRU was implemented, without mods.

[MaxwellsDemon]

6 minutes ago, Alshain said:

What options does it open up?  Just curious, cause I was doing pretty much everything in the game before ISRU was implemented, without mods.

Well, for one, there's the possibility of setting up an automated refuelling station on, say, Duna, so you don't have to lug the propellant for the return journey along (a la some of the "Mars Direct" proposals).   It gives you additional options that you wouldn't have without any ability to utilize local resources.

[Tyko]

On 7/25/2016 at 0:49 PM, MaxwellsDemon said:

Well, for one, there's the possibility of setting up an automated refuelling station on, say, Duna, so you don't have to lug the propellant for the return journey along (a la some of the "Mars Direct" proposals).   It gives you additional options that you wouldn't have without any ability to utilize local resources.

I think you'd have to plan on reusing a ISRU multiple times to pay for itself. You're using a launch to send a complete ISRU system that has to land on Duna and then start processing. If it's just single use, you can just send a full tank of gas and have it waiting there.

[MaxwellsDemon]

I'm not really interested in it "paying" for itself.  It's an additional possible activity you can do in the game that people have talked about doing in space for real.

(Where's the "payback" in many of the far-out craft designs people come up with?  It's in fun, not Funds.)

[ag3nt108]

The issue isn't about cost of missions, or fuel or even if mining allows you to plan and complete missions that would otherwise be impossible or just plain different.  The problem is the physics model randomly destroys your base when you load it.  Rover tires randomly explode and launch vehicles spinning into space at xx m/s.  Docking nodes don't really work well on surface installations and users report problems with the claw causing random combustion events.  

 

Im proposing that the frustration of going to the trouble of setting all this up, with whatever design the game allows and pleases the player, only to have it fall to pieces, blow up or launch parts into orbit does not justify the time involved.  Bases in general need a hefty design overhaul, and some of the more destructive lander and wheel bugs need to be worked out before I personally will be going to the trouble of setting up another mining operation.  Until then ill continue to run missions as I have in the past.

[KerikBalm]

On 7/22/2016 at 10:23 PM, Alshain said:

Nope, stock is to complicated and boring, that's why I use Kethane.  It has just enough setup and mission planning and execution to be fun without dragging on into incredibly tedious and boring like stock does.

How is stock complicated?

Land, deploy drill, convert into fuel. Must have: ISRU, drill, ore tank, energy supply.

Its not that complicated.

Is it the scanning that you have an issue with? Yes, the wide band scanner or whatever they call it is terribly inaccurate, and they made it a bit more inaccurate recently (previously the dots were more accurate than the others, then they changed it so they are all equally bad). Doing surface scans improves it... somehow, still not sure how. Roving around with the surface scanner following ore gradients is tedious.

All you really need for it to work is >0 concentration. If you want to make sure of that, you use the narrow band scanner - it does give accurate readings, so just wait until you see ore underneath (doesn't take long at all), and you've found a place you can set down and mine.

Set down, deploy drills, deploy solar panels, turn on convertor. switch to something else and come back days later (or months later if no engineer)

 - my main complain is that hte narrow band scanner UI is horrible, and what we really need is what scansat does.... ie build a map of the accurate ore concentrations from the NBS - that click ot refresh the NBS display with the old display data being discarded is terrible.

If using the NBS is too tedious, then you can just edit 1 or two values in the .cfg file to make the wide band scanner overlay accurate.

[MaxwellsDemon]

10 hours ago, ag3nt108 said:

The issue isn't about cost of missions, or fuel or even if mining allows you to plan and complete missions that would otherwise be The problem is the physics model randomly destroys your base when you load it.  Rover tires randomly explode and launch vehicles spinning into space at xx m/s.  Docking nodes don't really work well on surface installations and users report problems with the claw causing random combustion events.

So this isn't really about mining; it's about frustration with bugs.

[magnemoe]

11 hours ago, ag3nt108 said:

The issue isn't about cost of missions, or fuel or even if mining allows you to plan and complete missions that would otherwise be impossible or just plain different.  The problem is the physics model randomly destroys your base when you load it.  Rover tires randomly explode and launch vehicles spinning into space at xx m/s.  Docking nodes don't really work well on surface installations and users report problems with the claw causing random combustion events.  

 

Im proposing that the frustration of going to the trouble of setting all this up, with whatever design the game allows and pleases the player, only to have it fall to pieces, blow up or launch parts into orbit does not justify the time involved.  Bases in general need a hefty design overhaul, and some of the more destructive lander and wheel bugs need to be worked out before I personally will be going to the trouble of setting up another mining operation.  Until then ill continue to run missions as I have in the past.

No real need for docking on ground, make an big lander with plenty of fuel capacity and go into orbit then full, you can now dock other crafts for refueling, have plenty of ore capasity too, for contracts and for different needs like how much liquid fuel you need over oxidizer.
Note that this also become an full base if you dock an science lab and some hitchhikers on top, the large fuel capacity will let you reach almost everywhere with it, you can jump around on planets with it and explore. 

[Alshain]

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

How is stock complicated?

Land, deploy drill, convert into fuel. Must have: ISRU, drill, ore tank, energy supply.

Its not that complicated.

Is it the scanning that you have an issue with? Yes, the wide band scanner or whatever they call it is terribly inaccurate, and they made it a bit more inaccurate recently (previously the dots were more accurate than the others, then they changed it so they are all equally bad). Doing surface scans improves it... somehow, still not sure how. Roving around with the surface scanner following ore gradients is tedious.

All you really need for it to work is >0 concentration. If you want to make sure of that, you use the narrow band scanner - it does give accurate readings, so just wait until you see ore underneath (doesn't take long at all), and you've found a place you can set down and mine.

Set down, deploy drills, deploy solar panels, turn on convertor. switch to something else and come back days later (or months later if no engineer)

 - my main complain is that hte narrow band scanner UI is horrible, and what we really need is what scansat does.... ie build a map of the accurate ore concentrations from the NBS - that click ot refresh the NBS display with the old display data being discarded is terrible.

If using the NBS is too tedious, then you can just edit 1 or two values in the .cfg file to make the wide band scanner overlay accurate.

You forgot "spend forever looking for a drilling site" and "timewarp for Kerbal weeks to gain resources".  The issue in my experience, I guess you could say it's the scanning, but the several times I tried it I spent a very long time looking for the highest resource concentration I could (using a combination of satellites and rovers) and that was still incredibly low.  So low I had to timewarp for a very long time to get one full load of ore, to make matters worse at the time it kept shutting down completely if it ran out of power rather than picking back up again when the sun came up. (I think that was a bug, not sure if it was ever fixed).

I'm sorry, but stock ISRU is like using a Ford F-150 to put a nail in a wall.

I like ScanSat, but really if Kethane had an option to scan while not focused on the scanning sattelite (like ScanSat does) it would simply be the perfect system.  Simple, easy to use, not ridiculously complicated.

Edited July 27, 2016 by Alshain

[KerikBalm]

"the several times I tried it I spent a very long time looking for the highest resource concentration I could (using a combination of satellites and rovers) and that was still incredibly low."

Well, if you want to look for the extreme highest concentration, of course it will take longer than just finding any ore.

"So low I had to timewarp for a very long time to get one full load of ore, to make matters worse at the time it kept shutting down completely if it ran out of power rather than picking back up again when the sun came up. (I think that was a bug, not sure if it was ever fixed). "

Define a very long time? Also note that it continues mining even if its not the active vessel. So just turn on your drills, and go back to the space center and time warp there or run other missions, and come back to it later.

*Although you should also keep in mind the heating of the drill to their optimal temperature, the use of radiators to prevent OHing, etc etc. I personally didn't like those changes.

It should also be changed because its a bit confusing. 15% or readout on the ground is 100% or readout in mapview, because 15% ore is for some reasion the highest ore concentration, and map view displays over concentration/15 *100%. So sombody may see 80% ore from orbit and go in a fruitless search for something over 12%

Also note that the difference between 3% ore and 15% ore is the difference between a new engineer and a lvl5 engineer.

Personally I just changed the overlay values in the text file that I mentioned, and I just land in an area where the overlay from orbit showed a lot of ore, and have no problems getting 0.1 ore/second out of 8 drills.... so an orange tank in 8.9 hours of in game time.

[suicidejunkie]

That's perhaps the biggest thing; if you are watching your mining rig in timewarp, you're doing it wrong.

Set a KAC alarm if the mining process is the lynchpin holding up a time-critical mission, or you need to launch the ore up to orbit for processing on a regular basis. But for a surface refinery, just leave it.  Fly another mission, and by the time you want fuel, the base will have it.

[Alshain]

4 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

"the several times I tried it I spent a very long time looking for the highest resource concentration I could (using a combination of satellites and rovers) and that was still incredibly low."

Well, if you want to look for the extreme highest concentration, of course it will take longer than just finding any ore.

"So low I had to timewarp for a very long time to get one full load of ore, to make matters worse at the time it kept shutting down completely if it ran out of power rather than picking back up again when the sun came up. (I think that was a bug, not sure if it was ever fixed). "

Define a very long time? Also note that it continues mining even if its not the active vessel. So just turn on your drills, and go back to the space center and time warp there or run other missions, and come back to it later.

*Although you should also keep in mind the heating of the drill to their optimal temperature, the use of radiators to prevent OHing, etc etc. I personally didn't like those changes.

It should also be changed because its a bit confusing. 15% or readout on the ground is 100% or readout in mapview, because 15% ore is for some reasion the highest ore concentration, and map view displays over concentration/15 *100%. So sombody may see 80% ore from orbit and go in a fruitless search for something over 12%

Also note that the difference between 3% ore and 15% ore is the difference between a new engineer and a lvl5 engineer.

Personally I just changed the overlay values in the text file that I mentioned, and I just land in an area where the overlay from orbit showed a lot of ore, and have no problems getting 0.1 ore/second out of 8 drills.... so an orange tank in 8.9 hours of in game time.

That latter part of your post explains a few things I saw but it still doesn't account for how long it takes to mine (the maximum I found was 11%).  It took me "weeks" of timewarp to get one large tank full of ore with 2 large drills.  And no at that time it did not mine ore while you were not on the craft.  Again, don't know if that was a bug, but it kept shutting off and it had plenty of radiator.  I was using an unmanned mining vessel, if I have to have an engineer to get a decent amount of ore, the whole system is fault IMO, and I will not use it regardless of what other problems or advantages it has.  That's an unnecessary complication right there.

Edited July 27, 2016 by Alshain

[suicidejunkie]

Just now, Alshain said:

That latter part of your post explains a few things I saw but it still doesn't account for how long it takes to mine (the maximum I found was 11%).  It took me "weeks" of timewarp to get one large tank full of ore with 2 large drills.  And no at that time it did not mine ore while you were not on the craft.  Again, don't know if that was a bug, but it kept shutting off and it had plenty of radiator.  I was using an unmanned mining vessel, if I have to have an engineer to get a decent amount of ore, the whole system is fault IMO.

If you timewarp above 100x, then the thermal system starts to break down. I found that after suffering some overheats and engineers in external seats melting.  Switching away from the vehicle is best as of 1.0.5 or possibly earlier.

The arrangement of panels may also matter.  The fixed panels are supposed to only pull heat from components attached to the component the radiator is attached to, and anything further than that could suffer.

[Tyko]

6 minutes ago, Alshain said:

That latter part of your post explains a few things I saw but it still doesn't account for how long it takes to mine (the maximum I found was 11%).  It took me "weeks" of timewarp to get one large tank full of ore with 2 large drills.  And no at that time it did not mine ore while you were not on the craft.  Again, don't know if that was a bug, but it kept shutting off and it had plenty of radiator.  I was using an unmanned mining vessel, if I have to have an engineer to get a decent amount of ore, the whole system is fault IMO.

I'm struggling through this too, but have a few insights.

To the question of how many drills. @KerikBalm mentions 8 drills, you talk about 2. Maybe it's just about expectations as to how big your drilling expedition has to be? 2 drills might be great for a Mars Direct style "park the drill out here and let it sit for months and months" style mission. My first rig had 4 small drills and was hideously slow - I almost gave up until I realized I just needed moar drills.

On the heating question. Are you accounting for daytime solar heating of your rig? I was having the same problem with my rig shutting down despite having "enough radiators" based on my VAB calculations. Then I watched the rig run (in time acceleration) for a full day and discovered that when the sun rose in the morning there was a sudden heat spike that took my radiators some time to compensate for. THIS was shutting down my rig. Once I added enough radiators to overcome that morning heat spike my rig ran just fine.