[WIP] Advanced Mining Technologies

[marce]

So a quick update.

Still polishing off the new code - a lot of this is a completely new resource DLL. Basically asteroid mining, planetary mining, and a generator all rolled into one (where in the past we would have had the USI_Converter, DynamicTanks from ART, and ORSX). Basically a 'recipe' based system for resource conversion that's pretty generic. It will be released as a stand-alone library once complete.

Oh... and here's a video of a mining laser (asteroids first, but will work for planetary as well).

This laser looks so damn cool!

[RoverDude]

More updates.

So it looks like phase I is almost ready.

So here's how it works.

For the first bit, I am focusing purely on asteroids. Planetary is next, and it turns out I accidentally made a new converter while I was building this

So! Parts.

0.625m and 2.5m Claws for grabbing stuff.

2.5m laterally deployed mining laser - see above. Raycasts up to 5m looking for an asteroid to hit.

A small radial science part for analyzing asteroid composition.

Now - how it works.

Configs determine what potential resources exist on an asteroid. Also determine how much is plain rock, and how much is valuable stuff. You can drill away without an analysis, but you may get some surprises. A smarter move is to send out a tiny probe (hence the small claw) and only hit the choicest asteroids with a larger mining craft. Each resource has both a presence chance and a range of relative quantity if present. So water is very common and you get lots of it. Xenon Gas is rare and only in trace amounts. The balance of an asteroid is in rock. You can harvest up to 75% of an asteroid's mass, and between 10% and 90% of that mass will be useful stuff, the rest being rock.

As you zap the asteroid, it's mass is converted directly into the contents determined by the analysis. We'll assume storage is taking place in/on the asteroid itself (I considered requiring tanks, but that had it's own friction). You will of course need to pump stuff out of the asteroid once you're done.

Lasers work while the ship is unfocused. Code wise, it's a complete from scratch implementation, so I'm tackling a lot of the issues with harvesting and generators in more of a holistic way - let's see if it works out

[Chyort]

I just hope some asteroids have Karborundum.

That would be a decent way to bootstrap our further adventures without making it too easy. Limited asteroid quantities would help retain the value, while still making it a bit easier than time warping years going to Eeloo or Eve just to fill up the tank and get started with K+

[TicTacToe!]

Loving the work, Rover.

[Errol]

I just hope some asteroids have Karborundum.

That would be a decent way to bootstrap our further adventures without making it too easy. Limited asteroid quantities would help retain the value, while still making it a bit easier than time warping years going to Eeloo or Eve just to fill up the tank and get started with K+

I am in favour of this line of thinking.

[RoverDude]

They do actually, it's just rare. So send out probes.

[Errol]

yyeeeeee---haaaaaaaaaa!

We're gonna have ourselves a real karborundum rush!

[BigFatStupidHead]

So, RoverDude. What would you suggest for the best complete, light-weight (in VAB parts) mining experience, mod wise? Will AMT cover this all, or would a combination of Karbonite and ART be the way to go?

[Redchrome]

I had an idea to try using three stock claws together on a tri-coupler to see how well they compare to the big claw from AMT. Here's what I put together at one end of the ship:

The other end of the ship used the claw from AMT, which is really awesome because it has an attachment point on top of it so it can be stacked inline against a coupler, or have a coupler and nose cone put on top of it.

While the tri-claw arrangement seemed to work at first, when grabbing a fuel tanker, it started to show Kraken problems as I got close to my target asteroid:

I got connected to the asteroid, but then the Kraken bit me and tore the coupler and claws off the ship in a bunch of different directions.

The AMT claw however, seems to hold up just fine, and eventually I used it to stick my now-crippled ship to the asteroid (which obviously already has a ship stuck to it). The AMT claw seems to need a bit more force to grab the asteroid (0.6 m/s instead of 0.1m/s) but does the job.

So thanks RoverDude for a really awesome claw! When will there be a 3.75m version?

[RainDreamer]

So, RoverDude. What would you suggest for the best complete, light-weight (in VAB parts) mining experience, mod wise? Will AMT cover this all, or would a combination of Karbonite and ART be the way to go?

I think Karbonite is like an "on the go" type of mining, smaller scale but mobile and allow you to top off your fuel as you travel the system. While AMT is like, colony mining, heavy duty, static equipment, but high yield (provided that you are on the right spot).

[RoverDude]

Karbonite will be more hand-wavey and less complex. AMT will be a deep dive into mining.

[Serino]

Hey rover I was using the claw/extractor combo on asteroids and was getting proper amounts but figured hey why not get resources faster with a couple of lasers. Unfortunately for some reason they were only mining rocks, does the laser mine resources in order or was it just being a weirdo? I haven't tried the laser again cause I wasn't sure what to make of that and I am mining an E class that is 23% Karborundum so I didn't want to risk losing any if it was being weird.

[RoverDude]

Yes - lasers are faster, rock only. Excavator is slower but does everything. So use your lasers if (a) you just want rock (and space if you use ART), or ( you plan on sucking out trace amounts of a resource that you would not be able to get with an excavator.

[lo-fi]

Wrong thread

[Serino]

Thanks for clearing that up and yes I use ART so it seems that I will be figuring out how to link 2 asteroids together 1 for ART tanks and 1 with all my nifty stuff.

I will say you might want to tweak the Karborundum numbers though cause my 23% E class netted me about 4.5ish k Karborundum which I promptly abused by building a fusion SSTO (it needed more than one stage to originally launch it since it was empty until I docked and filled it) with 90 km of Dv and a TWR of over 1 no matter what planet I landed on. It didn't even use up half my stock from that 1 asteroid.

[Redchrome]

Thanks for clearing that up and yes I use ART so it seems that I will be figuring out how to link 2 asteroids together 1 for ART tanks and 1 with all my nifty stuff.

So here's the nifty (I think) thing I managed to bash together (almost literally, RoverDude's low-profile claw seems to require quite a bit more force to 'grab' an asteroid when compared to the stock claw).

That's 7 ships on two asteroids. Stuck together with a double-ended coupler and a lot of attempts, failures, good ideas and poor ideas. I don't yet know what all I need to make those asteroids 'mineable' (i.e. have more than 0 for the quantities of stuff they contain), but it looks like the game will let you magically transfer stuff between asteroids.

Thanks again for all the goodies, RoverDude!

[Serino]

You need to use the regolith extractor to mine with. The tranfer thing makes sense in the fact that asteroids are just considered ships so yea. I am actually turning my E class into an asteroid station right now before I bother with attaching another. The amount of Karborundum I have is so crazy that I ended up building probes with fusion drives cause hey why not.

[rottielover]

I'm not finding the part in the OP screenshot, the "PSM-1500 Planetary Survey Module" Is it supposed to be in the AMT download from the dropbox page?

[Donziboy2]

Just an FYI Roverdude, you may want to add this thread to your catalog list;)

[Ricardo79]

Hi RoverDude

I get an "insufficient power" status both on the regolith excavator and on the inline mining laser.

I do use my own generator (config copied from the original pb-nuke and it is creating 30 ElectricCharge/Sec. It is integrated into an overpowered ion drive) Also on the same vessel I have got 4 pb-nuke and two gigantor XL solar panels getting maximum sun exposure.

I use 3 of your mods karbonite + AMT + MKS/OKS (copied in this order into the game data folder with overwrites)

Other mods are (not related I think)...

Infernal robotics, chatterer, scansat, tweakscale, alarmclock, distant object enhancer...

In the VAB there are no indication of power usage on those parts. In their config file I see something unknown to me: "PowerConsumption = 6"

So what does it mean if it is not 6 ElectricCharge/sec ? How can I make them work?

Editted here:

I saw a youtube video about this part... And noticed something different. On my asteroids detailss page there is only "rock 0/0" although the multispectral module shows percentages about 20-50% of ore, water... etc.

So I must have missinstalled the mod.

(If it is a helpfull info: I did used the Ateroid recycling mod of yours. I just deleted the UmbraSpaceIndustries/ART directory before I installed the AMT + MKS combo.)

Also please on your next updates please make the fuelswitchable tanks to store lots of XenonGas as well (Maybe with the monoprop tanks) Thank you in advance.

Richard

Edited February 15, 2015 by Ricardo79

[StahnAileron]

RoverDude,

Are you planning on updating this anytime soon-ish? The last date on Github lists Aug 2014 as the last update. Judging from your activities with your other mods, this one is using some out-of-date systems (like ORSX instead of your Regolith).

I ask because I'm looking for an asteroid mining mod. It was either this (AMT) or your ART mod. ART is more recent, but you stated that it's quite buggy. This one shows more promise with the higher return on resources for asteroid mass, but hasn't been touched since it was originally released. (It's the latter part I'm worried about since I'm running several mods that use resources from your Regolith library.)

Are AMT and ART going to stay separate mods or do you have plans to consolidate them at some point?

[narf0708]

StahnAileron, the last I heard RoverRude was working with Squad to implement a stock resource system for the 1.0 release, which I would bet is going to include asteroid mining. If not, there should at least be the code infrastructure in place for some decent asteroid mining mods. So just have a little bit of patience, and you'll get to mine the asteroids soon enough.

[RoverDude]

See above Yes, this gets a full retool/refresh for 1.0.

[Donziboy2]

Is it still possible to detect/find Karborundum on Roids?

Edited April 26, 2015 by Donziboy2

[pasty2k2]

RD - this is a fantastic companion mod to your others - any estimates on a v1 update? Any extra features you have up your sleeve for AMT?

As always, love your work on KSP!