Yeah, too crowded

Thanks Bo, I see that laser strip mining is the rage these days, but I enjoy the core mining. Anyway, it's not something I do much of but wanted to give it another go and get some decent return for the time invested. The strip mining seems so boring in comparison, but I imagine it's much faster. I saw a vid of a guy just doing circles around a rock while his lasers knocked off bits to scoop. I get enough of that with the Vulture

I'll probably do a couple more sessions and get the bank account a little further along. Nothing to do with it, but that may not always be the case.

Which leaves me with a conundrum. As I was converting Poison Whiskey from a combat scavenger to a mining vessel the wisdom of having a dedicated mining ship hit home. Not only flying to where my modules were stored, but swapping them on and then redoing the fire groups showed how nice it would have been just to switch ships and go. But man, the thought of all that engineering just to build a ship I'd rarely use seemed a waste. I know it doesn't HAVE to be engineered, but we all know how that goes.

Sold my Dolphin too yesterday. No role for it.

Should I buy and build a mining Krait? Can't decide. Maybe a different ship with a new slot open. Bah, it never ends....

The Type 10 Defender has been my dedicated mining ship for months now and I absolutely love it. Tons of cargo space and decent FSD range. Sure, the ship handles like a space truck but what else would you expect from a heavy mining ship?

That's cool, it's a neat ship, the T-10. But one I'll never buy. Definitely not a ship for me.

It would bring back the nightmare of T-9 ownership, and I can't do that to myself lol.

I did another session of core mining last night, aiming for low temp diamonds mostly. Made another 140 million, so 320 million in two nights. Good money for me. Now to figure out a way to spend some of it

The two ships look similar on the outside but I can tell you with certainty that the T-10 is a big improvement in every category. It's considerably more maneuverable and has a faster sub-hypercruise speed. So while the T-10 handles like a space truck, the T-9 handles like a space 18 wheeler.

Haha good point. I think it's a cool ship the T-10. Just not my style. I like shooting them in CNBs though

I kinda want another new ship, but there are no ships I want.

Fleet carriers are a bust it appears. I was hoarding money with a view to using some of it to aid one of the guys here if they bought one, and we could donate to it. At this point I'd wager it's more likely no one here will buy one than will. So maybe I'll spend it on something else. A Beluga! no, probably not. A Phantom? Mamba? DBS? wut wut.

I have the same dilemma. For me one of the most enjoyable things to do in the game is to custom build my own ship with the best possible modules and then doing the engineering upgrades. As it stands right now, my Fed Corvette is the "end all be all" for combat, the Type 10 for mining and cargo hauling, the Asp Explorer for exploration and the Cutter for when I want to simply travel in style and pretend I'm some sophisticated member of aristocracy.

All of my other ships like the Anaconda, Python and Krait Phantom are extra ships that are just nice to have just in case I get the itch to fly them.

Boy I know what you mean there. As for dedicated activity ships, one look at my Inara page will show I endorse that. If you have the Bank, there's no reason not to build activity specific ships.

Engineering of those ships depends on your play style as well. I tend to hoover up materials at every opportunity. I've dropped the Kill Warrant Scanner for a Wake Scanner on several ships. Scanning those System Authority ship wakes can yield some tasty encoded mats. I'm sure I have enough to engineer a ship from scratch right now due to gathering everything presented. Though I'll be heading out to the Crystal Shard locations to refill those tasty grade 5 mats again soon.

Sure hope for CG's coming back soon, really miss those!

I've got the mats, and I've got the time, it's the will I am lacking at the mo. And anyway, all I'd need to do on a mining ship is shields, thrusters and DSS probe radius. The rest could be stock. But I go a little overboard really, and would go full bore to G5 everything even though it's not needed.

It's more the thought of doing this on a ship I might not use for nine months.

Yeah, Wingnuts, your covey of Kraits is an inspiration.

Wingy DOES like his KM2’s!

He sure do.

I think I'll do it, build a mining ship that is. Maybe I'll be needing it down the line for tritium

So which ship? Krait II probably

My mini-covey. I reckon I can build this thing at half-ass and I'll be allright.

The real struggle is coming up with a name...

I now own two Kraits. I bought the second one and went to work on it, flying here and there to get the modules I want for it. Not only did it need to mine effectively, but I wanted to make sure it was relatively painless flying to wherever I found the best sell prices, which could be anywhere. So it needed to have a good scoop and jump. It also needed to be fast, because I get interdicted a lot when flying to sell, while loaded down with a hundred+ tons of precious space rocks I spent a lot of time gathering. I want to be able to just submit and boost. So speed is a necessity to ensure I make it to market.

I named her Twin Reverb. I already had the power plant and shields in storage, and the mining tools, plus a couple of shield boosters. Everything else needed to be bought, and several stations visited to find it all. In the end, the build has 128t of cargo space, as I needed to use the class 4 slot for the GFSDB so that the ship had that jump to make sailing to a far-flung sell station faster. If I'm going to do this I want to be sure I am getting a good rate, so I don't mind flying a couple hundred extra light years if it means another 20 or 30 million in profits. No weapons at this point, and I left the drill-bang rockets at home. I was using them yesterday, but you get so little at the cost of a hardpoint that it's really not worth it. I get plenty from the core mining.

I know strip mining is the rage now, but I like core mining not only for the big boom, but because it's fun flipping around the rock to set the charges and use the abrasion blaster. But I've three empty hardpoints to mount lasers when I get around to trying that out. The ship still has a way to go, not everything is full G5 and some things not even touched. I'm down to my last two PIs and ICs,and I couldn't bring myself to spend them for a tiny silver of G5 progress, ya know? I need to get some better integrity, so at least HD on the stock bulkheads, or maybe some armor, but that will start to drop the speed and jump, so I'll kick around what to do with the bulkheads.

I spent about an hour building the ship and remote engineering it. Only the shields and power plant have experimentals, as those I already had. The rest await a tour of engineer bases.The PP is G3 overcharged from some ship that was sold. That's way too much power for this mining build, but it was already on hand so I used it, and plenty of overhead for the lasers. I have two freakin' Class 6 G5 FSDs in storage, but of course the Krait uses a Class 5. Once the ship was mostly ready I stocked 64 limpets and flew to Dvorsi A9 and went to work. I ended up mining 50 alexandrite which doesn't pay very well, but I was finding a lot of it so bird in hand and all. And I also mined 72 tons of LTDs. Found a station paying 1.6 mil per ton and sold the diamonds for 115 million, and then flew to another station to get an extra 100k per alexandrite for another 15 million. So 130 million for the first run which easily paid for the new ship.

There are still a few things to finish up, but here's the ship. It'll get faster when I finish the thrusters.

Twin Reverb

Congratulations on the new acquisition and build progress. Have you tried mining at Borann A2 where the triple hot spot is? You'll find core mining there pretty good if you drop in under 1m meters. I rolled out last night with 97 tons of LTD in 2 hours. Traveled to Neto as you did to sell for 1.6m. If I'm going strip mining I'll put a mining laser on the upper middle weapon mount. Still prefer core mining though as the pieces are much larger, BTW you can use your hopper for up to ten extra tons of storage if you choose.

Happy mining!

UGH... Never thought of CORE mining for LTD's. I much prefer the Hit Rate for Strip mining. Unless the LTD3 in Borann is A LOT more densely packed with Cores than VO's, I spend way too much time searching. In all the STRIP Mining I have done there, I have never stumbled upon a CORE, but I am not using a Pulse Wave Scanner at all for Surface Mining. Did come across numerous outcrops that I wished I had an Abrasion Blaster for.

Thanks Wingnuts. Borann sounds great, but I'm having no trouble finding stuff. Just now I landed from a mining expedition in Hermitage. Two pristine icy rings there, although I don't know if pristine state means anything for core mining. But good cores were everywhere and I filled up in short order with LTDs and some grandidierite and sold it, but this time only 962k for the LTDs. Where's the good price today?

Yeah Neto, that's right. I guess we swamped it with LTDs, but 1.6 mil is void opal gold rush level. I like the core mining too.

Before getting down to work, I flew Twin Reverb to Palin and Selene Jean and got drags, mass manager and put heavy duty on the stock bulkheads. The ship's already paid for itself three times over. I can't find 2A prospector controller anywhere. I guess that doesn't exist?

Nope, 2A Prospectors don't exist. Neither do 4A Collectors.

Best price is down to 1.1 million according to:

http://edtools.ddns.net/miner

Nice one Rec. Noob miner here. Bookmarked that site. 962k doesn't seem too bad in the current market. That was LTT 12680

Thanks for the module info. I wanted to swap sizes on the refinery and prospector, but it really doesn't matter. Six bins is plenty for what I'm doing.

Yup Controllers are 3's & 5's.

Recluse if your going to Boran A2 triple try the core from the middle one. Just time your drop at 1m meters from the center and work your way in. It works for me almost always.

Double and triple hotspots increase the density of existing cores not how much each core yields, correct? In other words you should find more core asteroids, but any particular one does not yield more fragments?

Hey Wingnuts, what's the scoop with your Phantom? I was thinking of building a dedicated exploration ship. I have a DBX and an AspX but was thinking of a Phantom. Folks say it makes a great explorer. What do you think it's strengths are, and what are its weaknesses?

Over the past few days I've pulled in about 700 million mining and clearing out my storage, and maybe I'll splash a little more of it on another new ship. New short-term goal. 2 billion cash on hand. Just need 40 mil if I don't spend any.

I messed around on Coriolis and did a Phantom mock-up.

Phantom Mock Up

Very disappointed it doesn't use a class 6 FSD!

I was expecting better jump frankly, I see reports of 70+, but that must be with everything undersized and lightweighted, like using a class 3 PD for example to save mass.

Is the cockpit vis like the Krait II, where you can see out the top and down along either side?

I loaded an AFMU and repair controller, although I've never used either device in Elite, but there are many slots here and I reckon I should fill them at least in the mock up. This is really no better than some of my other ships. Performance is very close to the Orca for example, and the DBX jumps a lot farther. Just kicking it around. Need to take it for a test drive to check supercruise handling, engine and boost sounds, and cockpit vis.

DBond give me a few and I'll work up a coriolis of mine. It's max jump is 67ly but usually get 63 - 64 on average, and yes light weight and undersize to improve range.

Actually look at my Inara build of it for module choice / engineering. I do keep the size 5 AMFU off to save power, but the size 3 AMFU is powered up untill empty. The view is exactly the same in both Kraits. Phantom 1 less seat and 1 less large hard point.