Remember the other day I posted about this supply mission? Well he’s only gone and done it.
My basic mine is quite simple - four Extractors, enough Solar Panels to power them, a buffer tank because who doesn’t love a good buffer tank, and a Cargo Link.
I have four outposts. I sent Cu to the planet where I was mining Al, and combined them there to make Reactive Gauges. Then I sent them and the Ni from my third outpost to the planet (actually, moon - all of this is on various moons of the Tau Ceti system) where I found the key to making this all work.
It took me less time than I thought it was going to, but I found a location with mineable veins of both Fe and He-3, both within the radius of a single Outpost Beacon. So I was able to use one Cargo Link to import Reactive Gauges, …
Remember the other day I posted about this supply mission? Well he’s only gone and done it.
My basic mine is quite simple - four Extractors, enough Solar Panels to power them, a buffer tank because who doesn’t love a good buffer tank, and a Cargo Link.
I have four outposts. I sent Cu to the planet where I was mining Al, and combined them there to make Reactive Gauges. Then I sent them and the Ni from my third outpost to the planet (actually, moon - all of this is on various moons of the Tau Ceti system) where I found the key to making this all work.
It took me less time than I thought it was going to, but I found a location with mineable veins of both Fe and He-3, both within the radius of a single Outpost Beacon. So I was able to use one Cargo Link to import Reactive Gauges, one to import Ni, mine the Fe on site, and fuel the Inter-system Cargo Link with He-3, also mined on site. Three Cargo Links. Get in!
I needed to make repeated trips to other planets to get more resources, mostly Al, Fe, and Cu, because all this infrastructure used a shit ton of those, but that went faster once I had those mines set up. In fact the only resource I needed that was not available in-system was W, for which I had to go to another system. Offhand the only place where I knew I could get it was Titan. The upside of all this manual mining for resources is that I have four ranks in Geology, so not only was I mining more from each nodule, I was also getting a ton of different rare resources as I was doing so. Platinum, Vanadium, Plutonium, Ytterbium - all of which I can use for research or sell later.
And oh yeah there were a bunch of pirate attacks while I was jumping between planets, so that was fun too. I now have four ranks in Piloting, so I can now fly a Class C ship. Can’t afford one yet, but it won’t take long.
Was it worth the cash and XP? Absolutely not. Was it in fact a complete pain in the arse? Absolutely. But in the end the dopamine hit when I saw that ship launch off to Volii Alpha with my first load of six - count’em six - Austenitic Manifolds was totally worth the effort.
I need a cigarette.