Kuiper Object Mining: A Game of Chicken With a Rock

Guys! The Drafel are blowing up a moon! You probably heard about this.

Ledger was so happy with the replicants building all twelve space stations, he didn't notice me sneak off to visit the Drafel at the ETHIREL system. He was too busy alphabetising his reports to notice I was chatting through a relay for the last week.

I went to watch the prep work and a scout intercepted me running tests on the durability of their mining rigs. Well I say running tests, there might have been some rocks involved. Long story short, I think I've been adopted. Don't tell Shepherd.

Those mining rigs aren't just fancy drones; the way the arms stretch out to envelop the rock means we can use the lasers to exert pressure in multiple directions at once. This leads to an interesting fracturing effect on the bigger rocks. I found a couple dozen near a Drafel outpost and sent them off to the Kuiper and I've been playing with this all day. I think I've cracked proper asteroid mining! Pun absolutely intended!

Here's some tips...

Finding a good rock

Head to a system's Kuiper belt. Bring a sensor array with the detect capability. You can detect with your vessel, but it's much slower. Run the detect_object command and wait for the scan to resolve. You'll be able to keep track of 10 detected objects at once, but it's chaotic out here and you'll lose track after a day.

Each object has a composition and a mass class. Compositions you'll see out there: ice (common, good for volatiles), rock and carbonaceous (solid general-purpose resources), metallic (rare, exactly what it sounds like), and mixed (grab bag - could be anything). If you don't like what you find, keep looking.

The mass class is important. Small objects are everywhere. Large ones are rare but carry the most material - and you can wrap more rigs around it. More on that in a second.

Freeing the rock

The Kuiper belt itself is too hazardous to mine. Constant collisions - no stable orbits. Instead, detonate a vector charge on the object aiming it towards an in-system body. The charge kicks it onto an approach trajectory and it starts its journey inward. Expensive, but worth it.

If all you care about is mining, then aim for the innermost planet - the asteroid's orbital distance changes constantly as it moves through the system.

Mining on the go

Once the object is on approach, you can send mining rigs to start extracting. Mining drones are too small - they're fine for the smaller deposits in the asteroid belts, but useless on a giant rock. You can only fit a single mining rig on a small asteroid, but five should be possible on the large ones.

Tick tock, tick tock

You've got between 6 and 24 hours before the rock reaches its destination and impacts. Everything you leave there will be destroyed. Blame Newton.

You can buy yourself more time. Deploy propulsors or trajectory deflectors to slow the approach and push the ETA back. You can't stall it forever. The closer to the system's star, the harder it is to affect the trajectory and speed. This rock is coming in whether you're ready or not.

Exit stage left

So, you're extracting resources from a rock that's hurtling through a star system. Great. But that inventory is flying with it - and if you don't shift it somewhere safe, you'll lose the lot.

Get the resources off the rock. Transport them to a planet, a belt, anywhere stable. The asteroid's orbital distance is constantly changing as it moves inward. Watch the travel distances. When the rock passes close to a planet, your transport runs get shorter. Time your deposits to coincide with close approaches and you'll move a lot more material.

And if you manage to fully divert the asteroid? That rock will skim the atmosphere and slingshot into deep space. Anything left on it is gone either way. There is no outcome where you get to keep your stuff when the countdown runs out. Extract what you can, shift your stuff, and get out before the deadline.

My strategy

Ok, here's the way I play it. Vector charges are expensive - lots of volatiles to make one. Getting your volatile engine up and running is key. Start by finding a large ice object. You should get at least 4 vector charges worth of volatiles from mining it. Ignore the other resources on them, that just slows you down.

I stockpile volatiles and keep creating vector charges. Once that's working, I start launching carbonaceous and metallic rocks. The carbon and conductives from those go straight into my autofactory production line.

Pulse runners. Super fast in-system stowable transport devices. Fast enough that Ledger barely notices them. He appreciates the unexpected resource deposits and only asks questions when I forget to file the report. I designed a sweet AMI directive for shortest path sprint deliveries. I'll share that one soon.

And final tip - those last resources are excruciatingly slow to mine. Just focus on the resource you care most about, then use trajectory deflectors to push that asteroid faster for a quicker impact. Safeguards will prevent too many asteroids in a system at once, so you'll want to give them a nudge along their way.

Buy my stuff!

Risk and reward. Push your luck. Rock and roll!

I'm selling vector charges at Rock Droppers. You're going to need them. Follow BobNet for which system we're in today.

Dash