Pilot Archive

Here is a guide I did for my Guildies. It is fairly similar to Kaleborn's one - and once you have the hang of it, the biggest time sink is flying to Kashhyk to unload. If you hyper there to unload it can be quicker than flying to your nearest station (because the Kashhyk station is only 2k from the Hyper-in point). Here goes


Space Mining! or.....



How I learned to stop worrying and lick them roids!


Righty oh - first step to space mining is to get the equipment. Whilst SW can make it, it is worth doing the quests simply because the Tractor Beams and Cargo Holds use a LOT of Asteroid Resources. You are actually quicker doing the quests until you get the tractor beam.

However - to speed up the mining sections of the quests you should use a Mark III Mining Laser available from all good SW . If you can't find one just give me a shout instead .

The Quests

- Firstly go to Kashhyyk and speak to a guy called 'Flash Harrsion'. He is found in the Cantina on the 1st level of the Great Tree on Kachiro.
- He will tell you to go and speak to Thom in the Dearic Canitna.
- Thom will give you a couple of quests (the first is a Tier 3 patrol one) after which you will have to speak to Captain Khol (I think) - again in the Great Tree - but this time on the 3rd level.

I won't go through all of them as they are very simple. Once you have done his quests, you will have the Large hold (holds 1k resources) and the Tractor Beam.


Setting up the Ship


Get a Ship that holds 3 weapons (I use a Kimogila).
* 1 for the Tractor Beam
* 1 for the Mining Laser
* 1 for a regular gun in case you get jumped.

When in space hit Ctrl G
- This will bring up the Weapon Group Assignment
- Assign the Mining Laser and the regular gun to Group 1
- Assign the TRactor Beam to group 2

Close the window.

Now go into the Options(Ctrl + O) screen and click on 'Keymap'
- Choose Ship
- Assign your joystick fire button to Weapon Group 1
- Assign another joystick button to 'Fire Tractor Beam'

The reason I say this is that 'fire tractor beam' is actually a toggle. When you hit it the beam goes on and stays on. If you fire it like a normal gun it will go on/off/on/off etc.


The Actual mining Bit


Now comes the fun bit

Head for the nearest asteroid you want to mine.

Using the mining laser hit it with about 4 shots. You should see a medium chunk break off the main asteroid.

Now move in close to this medium chunk - I mean about 70m from it.

Now hit M to match speeds.

Hit the button to 'Fire Tractor Beam' - you will hear it hum as it activates and stays on.

Now shoot the medium chunk with your mining laser - keeping it dead center in your targeting sights.

Now if all goes according to plan, the medium chunk will explode into little chunks. If you are under 80 from it when this happens, and you have your tractor beam on, most (if not all) of the small chunks will be immediately sucked into your cargo hold.

Any that are not sucked in should be fairly close by - move the target reticule over them and the tractor will pull them back towards you. At this point it is up to you whether you just wait or you shoot them with the mining laser either way works.

Using this method I am able to get 1k units in about 5 minutes. It takes a bit of practice, but once you get the hang of it it is very easy. All credit to Sharde for thinking of tooling up a Kimogila with two mining lasers instead of one. Works a treat and is very very fast.

Now before you get the tractor beam, you have to shoot the small chunks with your mining laser - but if you follow the above method it shouldn't be too hard as they will not be far from you when the medium chunk explodes.

Something that might help you is the macro

/target asteroid chunk;
/pause 1; (optional)
/follow;

Hope that helps a bit

VERY nice!!!

Thankyou sir!!

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Vegitaa wrote:

Now, I don't know how everyone else is doing with tis, or even how widespread mining is becoming. But.. I have a quick and dirty way of making mining a little less troublesome.

Now, this is not a "Hit a macro and walk away solution" but it has made my life easier.

Ok, you will need to create a macro... (mine is named "mining"

Mining

/ui action targetSelf

/ui action cycleTargetOutward

I put that in the F10 position on my toolbar. I have /follow in slot F11 on my toolbar.

This is easier when mining in a starfighter as opposed to the Y-8 (hehehe try it with a Y8 and you'll see what I mean...)

Ok, so pull up to the asteroid. Use your mining laser to blast a chunk off of it. Hit the F10 key (this will target the closest object to you, if you positioned yourself correctly that will be the big chunk. Pay attention to what you have targetted)

Now hit the F11 (/follow) key. Now your ship will move to follow the target closely. Now, hit it again with your mining laser.. boom 2-6 pieces go flying everywhere. Hit F11, then tractor, hit F11, then tractor... with some practice you'll be mining like a pro in no time.

I know, it's not as "challenging" and I can understand that point of view if I only needed say under 10k asteroid resources. But I'm running a mining business and this saves me lots of time.

To yield larger amounts of material be sure to use a tractor beam, the extra yield is worth it IMHO. I suggest going out and mining enough to have a good shipwright craft you a Class 3 mining laser, Tractor Beam (there is only one type) and a Large Cargo Hold (starfighter class).

Using this method it took around 2-3 hours to gather all the resources I needed to have all the above mentioned mining gear and a Hvy TIE crafted. Once you get the hang of it, you can do it quicker than that.

(I believe you would be more successful using a Y8 with at least one aditional crew member as the hold is much larger, but for solo-mining this is the best method I have come across so far. For more detailed information on mining please check out the FAQ links in this forum)

/bowrespectfully

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I run a looping macro /target asteroid

As soon as a chunk blows off the main astroid, the macro grabs it. And continues to grab the nearest asteroid chunk as it's blow to smaller and smaller pieces. It also targets asteroid bandits who might appear

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Zendi wrote:

Great tips here, I was able to fill a 1550 hold in under 10 minutes. I was trying to do some comparions between my JSF with Mark 3 Mining Laser / Tractor Beam and my Krayt with 2 Mark 3 Lasers. Unfortunately, I kept getting aggro from stupid bandits which messed up my timing, I do think I will go with the Krayt. It is much faster to destroy the asteroid when it is tapped out and needs to be respawned when you are firing away with twin Mark 3's. I also loved the idea of putting the tractor beam on the wingtips of the Krayt. It seems to pickup more stuff than when in the nose.

I toggle on the tractor beam and run this recursive targeting macro while firing manually:

/target Iron; (or whatever asteroid)

/pause 0.1;

/target Asteroid;

/pause 0.1;

/follow;

/pause 0.5;

/macro Mine;

Message Edited by Zendi on 08-27-2005 01:52 AM

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This... works like a charm. kudos and thanks Zendi, I can now repair my AV-21.

Maj - Jedi Knight

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