Deep Core Mining #
Equipment #
Deep core mining can be fun and profitable, but requires a decent amount of equipment:
- Pulse Wave Scanner (Module)
- Surface Scanner (Internal)
- Refinery (Internal)
- Prospector Limpet Controller (Internal)
- Collector Limpet Controller (Internal)
- Cargo holds (Internal)
- Seismic Charge Launcher (Weapon, class 2)
- Abrasion Blaster (Weapon, class 1)
Before you launch, make sure to fill your hold 50-60% with limpets. They’re cheap and you’ll need a lot of them. Also make sure to stock up on seismic charges.
Finding an asteroid to crack #
Once you’re kitted out, travel to a planetary ring and use your surface scanner from supercruise to find “hotspots”, where more resources available. After scanning the ring, you can target the hotspots to see which resources are in that area. When you’ve found a hotspot with the resource you’re after, just fly into the ring to start mining.
Within the ring, fire off your Pulse Wave Scanner. Asteroids with resources will light up in various shades of red, yellow, and orange and at different brightness. The asteroids you’re looking for are very bright. At a distance they’re immediately noticeable and only get brighter as you approach. If the asteroid dims a bit, it’s not what you’re looking for.
Cracking an asteroid #
Once you’ve found a rock you want to crack, launch a Prospector Limpet at the asteroid to scan it. The prospector will tell you what resource is in the asteroid and where the fissures are. (You can see the fissures more easily using night vision, and you can save some prospectors by looking for some fissures before launching one.)
You’ll need to launch Seismic Charges into the fissures. Once the first charge attached, a 2-minute countdown starts and a meter will appear in the HUD. You want to get that meter in the blue “optimal” range to get the most out of the asteroid. The yellow range is too weak and won’t crack the asteroid; the red range is too strong and will destroy some of the resources.
The best way to get into the “optimal” range quickly is to fire high-power charges into weak fissures. When firing seismic charges, the longer you hold the fire button, the stronger the charge (indicated by the three-part meter in the weapon HUD). Charges only lodge themselves in fissures. If you miss, the charge will bounce off and explode. If you place too many charges and the meter goes into the red, go to the contacts menu and find the charge you want to disarm. Select “Disarm Charge” and the charge will explode on its own.
Once you’re in the “optimal” range, back about 1km away from the asteroid – seismic charges are powerful and can cause damage if you’re too close. Once you’re ready, you can detonate your charges by finding any of them in the contacts menu and selecting “Detonate Now”. This will cut the timer to 10 seconds, after which time all your charges will detonate in spectacular fashion.
Scooping resources #
Here’s where the collector limpets help out. Launch a couple and they’ll start collecting the resource chunks freed from the asteroid. In addition to the chunks, there will be several new surface deposits exposed. Use your Abrasion Blasters to blast the deposits, freeing additional chunks.