So scanners are pretty useless?

[Targa]

I'm starting to think that the surface scanner and narrow band scanner are pretty useless for ore mining. Here's what I tested: Put an M700 scanner in orbit over several planetary bodies. Scanned for ore, and adjusted the cutoff to the highest I could and still be able to see at least one spot of ore. Landed my mining ship in one of the bright pink spots and started mining. A bit later, I had enough science to get all the necessary parts to build a rover and mount a surface scanner on it. I landed the rover close to my mining ships and did a surface scan, then drove around all over the ore deposit area(s) to check for better concentrations. What I found on both planets is that there was no appreciable difference in ore concentration after narrowing it down with the M700's "cutoff". For example, at my mining ship, ore concentration was something like 4.78%. Driving the rover with the surface scanner all over that area revealed that the highest concentration was 4.79%. The same thing for the other planet. It only varied by .01%. Which leads me to believe that the narrow band scanner would be just as useless. Simply scan with the M700, adjust the cutoff as high as possible, and land in a bright pink spot.

So my question is, am I somehow missing something, or misinterpreting something? Or is it possible because of my high difficulty settings that there's very little variation in ore deposits?

[RoverDude]

Probably a combination of both.  Within a biome you can get 10%+ swings once you've unlocked the biome and go prospecting.   

[Tex_NL]

No you're not missing something. That's just the easiest, cheapest and most efficient way to do it.

[Snark]

1 hour ago, Targa said:

I'm starting to think that the surface scanner and narrow band scanner are pretty useless for ore mining.

That's been pretty much my own experience, as well.

That said, however, I do like the surface scanner's auxiliary function of telling you what biome you're over-- and that works at any altitude, even in high space.

Comes in handy when planning surface hops and the like for gathering science, or when deciding when to go EVA from my orbiting ship so I can grab a new EVA report.

It's not ore scanning per se, no.  But it does give me a reason to put the scanner on my ships.

[Foxster]

Does it really matter what the concentration is anyway? You can just timewarp to a full tank of ore at any concentration, though it will need to be over the absolute minimum for the small drill to work. 

[Kurld]

Maybe it would matter if a contract to deliver ore was super time-sensitive? Or if drills wore out over time/use? Mostly though, I think they added these parts to somehow make rovers seem less useless than they are.

[monstah]

21 hours ago, RoverDude said:

Probably a combination of both.  Within a biome you can get 10%+ swings once you've unlocked the biome and go prospecting.   

I think the question then is: are those 10% swings detectable exclusively with the Ground Scanner, or are they considered already on the M700's map overlay?

[Snark]

19 hours ago, Foxster said:

Does it really matter what the concentration is anyway? You can just timewarp to a full tank of ore at any concentration, though it will need to be over the absolute minimum for the small drill to work.

Depends how you're powering the setup.  It's not uncommon for folks to use fuel cells to power miners, since RTGs just don't have enough power, and solar can have issues (becomes unavailable at night; doesn't produce enough electricity in the outer solar system).  Works great, as long as they're above the "break-even" point where the fuel obtained from mining exceeds the fuel consumed by the cells.  (Which is impossible IRL, of course, but works in-game.)

For a given engineer skill, that break-even point corresponds to a certain ore concentration on the surface-- so the player cares whether the ore concentration is above or below that point.

[Tex_NL]

19 minutes ago, Snark said:

(Which is impossible IRL, of course, but works in-game.)

Are you sure? If real life drilling/mining would cost more energy than was taken out of the ground there would be no profit and nobody would be drilling or mining. Real life drilling/mining as all about going beyond the break even point.

Edited August 1, 2017 by Tex_NL

[Nicias]

3 minutes ago, Tex_NL said:

Are you sure? If real life drilling/mining would cost more energy than was taken out of the ground there would be no profit and nobody would be drilling or mining. Real life drilling/mining as all about going beyond the break even point.

That's because of life. Only petrochemical mining is energy profitable. 

[Snark]

8 minutes ago, Tex_NL said:

Are you sure? If real life drilling/mining would cost more energy than was taken out of the ground there would be no profit and nobody would be drilling or mining. Real life drilling/mining as all about going beyond the break even point.

Only when there's a chemical process that actually creates energy-storing material.  The only such process we know of is life, as @Nicias observes.  Real life drilling-mining goes beyond break-even only because it's picking up fossil fuels.

Getting off-topic from the actual question in this thread, though, so remainder of response is in spoiler section.

Spoiler

Lifeless bodies generally don't have energy-storing chemicals around.  Planets and moons are generally made of stuff that's already been "burnt", so to speak.  When people propose IRL space missions to mine other bodies for fuel (e.g. on Mars), they're not talking about exploiting an energy source-- they're talking about exploiting a source of raw materials.  The miner / refiner would need to supply all the energy that's being put into the "fuel"-- e.g. if it's mining water, it would need to supply the electricity to crack it into hydrogen and oxygen.

KSP, of course, is "just a game," and if they want to make it possible in-game for fuel cells to power a mining rig that supplies the fuel for the cells, I've got no problem with that, and feel no particular need to "justify" it in real-world scientific terms.  If someone wants to come up with some sort of a justification, I suppose one could make hand-wavy arguments that the Kerbol system has some sort of exotic chemical processes that are different from ours (heck, we've already bought the implausibly dense tiny planets, why not implausible chemistry too?)  It's a toy universe, we can assume whatever we like. 

Just sayin' that KSP-style mining on other worlds wouldn't work IRL.

 

[RoverDude]

1 hour ago, monstah said:

I think the question then is: are those 10% swings detectable exclusively with the Ground Scanner, or are they considered already on the M700's map overlay?

Ground scanner only.  The orbital scanner is there to give you a rough idea of where to look, and reflects averages till ground truthing takes place.  It's resolution is also pretty low (NBS has much higher resolution).

40 minutes ago, Tex_NL said:

Are you sure? If real life drilling/mining would cost more energy than was taken out of the ground there would be no profit and nobody would be drilling or mining. Real life drilling/mining as all about going beyond the break even point.

Also bear in mind in real-life drilling and real-life combustion engines, we are also taking advantage of oxygen that's free for the taking in the atmosphere.  Also life, as noted previously.  i.e. we're kinda cheating

[ThreePounds]

You guys are underestimating the aesthetic appeal of those items. They make for great decorative pieces.

Edited August 1, 2017 by Three_Pounds

[bewing]

22 minutes ago, Snark said:

Only when there's a chemical process that actually creates energy-storing material.  The only such process we know of is life, as @Nicias observes.  Real life drilling-mining goes beyond break-even only because it's picking up fossil fuels.

<snip>

Or fissionable materials. Or fusable materials. And fusable materials covers about 99% of the contents of our universe, so I think I'm safe disagreeing with your theory.

 

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

I like to put a surface scanner on any vessel with drills on it so that I can be absolutely sure what the ore concentration is where I've landed. My planning is done entirely with data from the M700, though.

I agree that the narrow-band scanner is pretty much useless but I still put them on my polar orbiters (which I send to every planet/moon that I plan to visit) just because it would make sense for a space agency to want to get as much data on a body's surface as possible. Sort of like why I regularly rotate crews on my various space stations and surface bases even though there's no gameplay reason to do so.

[monstah]

2 hours ago, bewing said:

Or fissionable materials. Or fusable materials. And fusable materials covers about 99% of the contents of our universe, so I think I'm safe disagreeing with your theory

We can burn fossil fuels to get the energy out of them. Can we fuse hydrogen (controllably, past break-even point)? No, at least not yet.

Besides, those 99% of the universe you mention are H and He, and you don't find so much of them in rocks as much as in stars (or diffused around). Fissionables might be more common, but I seriously doubt the conversion would be so easy as it is in KSP.

 

That said, it was a long time for me to accept that, for gameplay purposes, KSP's energy-rich ore is just fine, actually. But that's my opinion at the moment.

[Snark]

3 hours ago, bewing said:

Or fissionable materials. Or fusable materials. And fusable materials covers about 99% of the contents of our universe, so I think I'm safe disagreeing with your theory.

 

Sure. Except that's not at all what we're talking about.  We're not talking about mining a nuclear ore, or refining it into nuclear fuel, or powering the process with a nuclear reactor or a Mr. Fusion.

We're talking about mining some form of ore, which can be chemically turned into fuel and oxidizer upon the input of electricity, and being powered by a fuel cell that runs on the fuel and oxidizer produced by that process.

Which doesn't work IRL.

[CSE]

1 hour ago, Snark said:

Which doesn't work IRL.

Just as well, really. It would imply we were sitting on planetary-scale deposits of well-mixed fuel and oxidizer in a state that was only metastable.

[Spricigo]

6 hours ago, monstah said:

That said, it was a long time for me to accept that, for gameplay purposes, KSP's energy-rich ore is just fine, actually. But that's my opinion at the moment.

I share this opinion.

In any case, the high chance that  a spot, picked at random, will sufice make one wonder why bother with survay scanners.

[Alshain]

11 hours ago, Tex_NL said:

Are you sure? If real life drilling/mining would cost more energy than was taken out of the ground there would be no profit and nobody would be drilling or mining. Real life drilling/mining as all about going beyond the break even point.

The Law of Conservation of Energy.  Energy can not be created or destroyed which means by implication, perpetual energy is impossible.  Even the sun will die one day.  So making more energy than you are using to produce energy is can not be done.  However, you are forgetting other sources of energy.  Coal is mined by humans which supplies it's own energy.  Oil and Gas are under pressure which is potential energy as well.  For some oil wells, suction is used but this takes advantage of atmosphere.  They are producing more energy than they are spending money on, but they are not producing more energy than is being used.

Edited August 2, 2017 by Alshain

[RoverDude]

1 hour ago, Spricigo said:

I share this opinion.

In any case, the high chance that  a spot, picked at random, will sufice make one wonder why bother with survay scanners.

Because the mini drill has a concentration threshold.  So sometimes that extra tenth of a percent matters.  Also, mods (remember resources were built as a framework with a simple stock implementation).

[Spricigo]

25 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

Because the mini drill has a concentration threshold.  So sometimes that extra tenth of a percent matters.

I know that is not what you meant but for the sake of argument:

To the scanner matter I need to operate under a set of conditions that is as easely avoided as running a survey scan?

Notice, there is noting wrong with how scanning works or how the concentration of ore is distributed.Actually I think the fact that one can just send the drills and "hope for the best" fit perfectly well in the stock game. (hey, What is the worse that may happens? A mission to correct the problems? Those are the fun ones, I'm in!)

Quote

 Also, mods (remember resources were built as a framework with a simple stock implementation).

Which is the solution for people that think the system should be different.

 

[magnemoe]

On 31.7.2017 at 10:09 PM, Foxster said:

Does it really matter what the concentration is anyway? You can just timewarp to a full tank of ore at any concentration, though it will need to be over the absolute minimum for the small drill to work. 

No its not so important, only time it was an issue for me was then I had to jump loops as my Tylo SSTO ran out of food, but that was could not search for good spots with the surface scanner anyway. 
It can be important if you want to build an base and the high ore biomes are hilly or underwater and you need to hunt along the edges for an good location. 

[RoverDude]

19 hours ago, Spricigo said:

I know that is not what you meant but for the sake of argument:

To the scanner matter I need to operate under a set of conditions that is as easely avoided as running a survey scan?

Notice, there is noting wrong with how scanning works or how the concentration of ore is distributed.Actually I think the fact that one can just send the drills and "hope for the best" fit perfectly well in the stock game. (hey, What is the worse that may happens? A mission to correct the problems? Those are the fun ones, I'm in!)

But that is what I meant.  Concentration is important when you deal with the threshold limitations of smaller drills.  And concentration varies in the same biome.  And the only way to figure that out is with an NBS and a surface scanner.   Sorry, some folks just don't like surprises.

 

19 hours ago, Spricigo said:

Which is the solution for people that think the system should be different.

 

Or - given I am the fellow who designed and built the resource system - it was designed for mods from the start.  i.e. we included code for atmospheric and oceanic resources even though there are none in stock... and a fancy pie chart even though we only include one resource.

 

[Spricigo]

1 hour ago, RoverDude said:

Sorry, some folks just don't like surprises.

Yes,  that was the point of my comment.  Some people don't like surprises,  some enjoy taking some risks. 

I suppose some compromises were made to build a system good for those different expectations. And, depending on what one expects, a detail may seem unnecessary or even "wrong" (many quotes there) .  But that is not a problem  with the system,  is a problem with expectations. 

And as you said,  there is a solid foundation where mods can build upon  to meet more specific expectations.