Ore concentration

[natsirt721]

What does everyone consider a 'good enough' ore concentration?  I just ran a surface analysis on my base and got 9.2%. Should I bother looking elsewhere? Is searching for high value ore concentrations really worth it?

[Speeding Mullet]

I've heard of higher Ore concentrations, but you've basically struck ore there sir.  Dig in and drill!!

SM

[Blaarkies]

12%
Legends tells of some miners finding ore concentrations of up to 15%

[Ripper2900]

Depends hugely upon which body you mine - and on chance. 

Some moons or planets have quite even distributed ore deposits, and finding hotspots that are much above the average is hard. Others has large areas of "sweet-spots". Land, surface- scan, and do some narrow and scanning to find good spots. 6-15% are what I go for. 

[Terwin]

Generally I consider ~5% to be the minimum for a useful refuel location.

In my 1.2-pre game I had multiple locations on Minmus with 12-14%(some of the highest I have seen)

When feasible, I try to make my first and last landings on a body for a given visit in higher ore areas, while the other stops can usually get by with little or no refueling, making the ore concentration unimportant.

For a fuel base, I will generally look for the highest concentration I can find near the equator.

For bases looking at other resources, it is just wherever I can find useful levels of the most important resources under consideration.

 

[TerminalV]

I have a mining operation running on Minmus that is ~14.5%.  Version 1.2 normal difficulty.

[Snark]

Barring other considerations (details below), I've found that in practical terms, it doesn't really matter all that much what the concentration is, as long as it's non-zero:  since it's a time-based mechanic, you can just warp ahead farther to make up for lower concentrations.  I mean, in most cases, does it really matter whether it takes 1 day or 2 days to fill up your tanks?  For me the answer is generally "no, it doesn't matter."

Exceptions to the above, i.e. cases in which the ore concentration may actually matter:

• 2.5% is a magic number, if you're using the small drill, since it can't harvest below that percentage.  (I never, ever use it myself, so this never comes up for me.)
• If you have a ship that's got drills + ISRU, and if you're relying on fuel cells to power the operation:  there will be a certain minimum "break-even" concentration, below which mining is impractical because the fuel cells will eat up fuel faster than the drills + ISRU can produce it.  Exactly what that break-even point is will depend on what level engineer you have running the show (higher level engineer = lower break-even point for concentration).
• If you're running a life-support mod, then you have time constraints involved, so you may care more about "does it take 1 day or 2 days to fill up the tanks."

In practice, I've found that anything above 5% is fine.  9% is, in my experience, really high.  As long as the concentration is above 5%, I find that practicality considerations (e.g. bumpiness of terrain, convenient equatorial location, hassle of doing lots of exploration to find just the right spot, etc.) tend to outweigh the actual ore concentration values.

So my prospecting algorithm goes like this:

1. Do an orbital scan to identify likely-looking spots
2. Pick whichever reasonably bright spot looks the most convenient (in terms of "flat" + "close to equator")
3. Land there
4. Make sure it's at least 5% (it usually is)
5. Drill!

 

[Azimech]

I started a game once with ore concentrated in the deep sea floor ... only. So I decided to edit the persistence file.

[Tyko]

11 minutes ago, Azimech said:

I started a game once with ore concentrated in the deep sea floor ... only. So I decided to edit the persistence file.

What changes did you make to the Persistence file?

[Azimech]

3 minutes ago, tjt said:

What changes did you make to the Persistence file?

Uh ... I read somewhere how to do it but I forgot.

[Lunar Sea]

3 hours ago, Snark said:

 

• 2.5% is a magic number, if you're using the small drill, since it can't harvest below that percentage.  (I never, ever use it myself, so this never comes up for me.)

How come you never use the small drills? Last time I looked they produced at the same rate. Plus weight savings, right? 

[Terwin]

6 minutes ago, Lunar Sea said:

How come you never use the small drills? Last time I looked they produced at the same rate. Plus weight savings, right? 

I thought that the small drills(much like the small ISRU) produced substantially less than the large drills, on top of having a lower limit beyond which they are non-functional.

[magnemoe]

39 minutes ago, Lunar Sea said:

How come you never use the small drills? Last time I looked they produced at the same rate. Plus weight savings, right? 

Smaller drills produces less for ton drill and have an 2.5% ore concentration cutoff. The small ISRU is worse as it have an efficiency of 1/10 of the large.
In short they are only relevant if you want and small lander who can refill it self, for any sort of base you go for big isru and drills. 

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

3 hours ago, Azimech said:

I started a game once with ore concentrated in the deep sea floor ... only. So I decided to edit the persistence file.

I would have taken that as a challenge to make a deep sea mining rig lol

 

On Topic: I find anything above 5% to be acceptable, but if I can find better I go for it.

Edited October 31, 2016 by EpicSpaceTroll139

[magnemoe]

4 minutes ago, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

I would have taken that as a challenge to make a deep sea mining rig lol

 

On Topic: I find anything above 5% to be acceptable, but if I can find better I go for it.

Nice, also as I work in offshore oil I could then play KSP at work claiming it was work relevant
 

[FancyMouse]

7 hours ago, Lunar Sea said:

How come you never use the small drills? Last time I looked they produced at the same rate. Plus weight savings, right? 

There's another problem that those drills are short enough to cause "no surface impact" much more often. It has made me salty quite a few times when drilling asteroids, and eventually my asteroid miner no longer uses small drills.

[Lunar Sea]

12 hours ago, FancyMouse said:

There's another problem that those drills are short enough to cause "no surface impact" much more often. It has made me salty quite a few times when drilling asteroids, and eventually my asteroid miner no longer uses small drills.

True they don't have much clearance. I guess size matters sometimes 

[Sharpy]

You'll be hard-pressed to find more than 9% of ore on a planet surface. Generally 9% is very good, 6-7% is acceptable, 3-4% is poor, below 2.5% drills stop working at all.

The case is much different on asteroids. An asteroid with less than 75% ore is considered exceptionally poor.

 

----

Small drills have very similar parameters to big "per ton". That is, five small drills are about equivalent to one large drill in about all respects - heat production, energy consumption, ore production... total drill length All in all, short drill aside, they aren't really bad.

Small ISRU, on the other hand, is awful, especially in relation to asteroids. It has nearly the same ore consumption as large, but only a small percent of its fuel output.

 

Edited November 3, 2016 by Sharpy

[Terwin]

3 hours ago, Sharpy said:

Small drills have very similar parameters to big "per ton". That is, five small drills are about equivalent to one large drill in about all respects - heat production, energy consumption, ore production... total drill length All in all, short drill aside, they aren't really bad.

Small ISRU, on the other hand, is awful, especially in relation to asteroids. It has nearly the same ore consumption as large, but only a small percent of its fuel output.

 

Small drills give off half the heat per drill, so 5 small drills will put off 250% of the heat of a large drill.

They are also limited to 2.5% or higher concentrations, while large drills are not.

I experimented with small drills and small ISRU when the first came out, since then I have not used small drills or a small ISRU for fuel(small ISRU can be used for Fertilizer with USI-LS, so I will use them for that, but not for fuel)

As I am usually more considering if 4 large drills are enough than if less than 1 will work, so not that interested in small drills.(with tweak-scale, I have had the equivalent of hundreds of large drills on some fuel bases)

[RoboRay]

My personal best is this island on Laythe...  14.67% ore concentration, and it's even right on the equator.

Edited November 6, 2016 by RoboRay

[The-MathMog]

14.67% is the highest I've found too. Did a few orbital surveys of the moon, and just landed a rover on the "hottest" spot, which was the twin-crater for me.