Cogmap1/Miner

The Miner is a special Engineering role tasked with exploring and gathering the wealth offered by a nearby asteroid field. To facilitate this, Miners start and base out of a separate facility on another z-level from the main station, connected by a two-way fast shuttle. Being a Miner means a mostly solitary job amidst cold space, and you have access to as much or more EVA gear than EVA itself on the station proper. The job can be hazardous, especially given its isolation; Security almost never responds to calls from the Mining Outpost no matter what happens, so antagonists often mark it as a murder-with-no-consequences zone. On many shifts, Mining department does not contribute measurably to the station and its operation, either due to hostile action, a lack of miners signing up, or incompetence. A skillful Mining shift, however, can be of enormous benefit, gathering precious ores by the hundreds and using the Cargo Teleporter to send them where they're needed in a matter of moments.

Miners are equipped with the yellow-striped Engineering Headset allowing them regular radio contact as well as a special Engineering channel that, while rarely used, can be more useful or private. Speaking using any special headset can be accomplished with :h before the message. On many shifts, Miners actually use this channel more than other Engineering personnel to coordinate mining efforts or conduct search-and-rescue operations for lost miners or anybody else who wanders off the main z-level and requires assistance. The only way back to the main station once one leaves its level, short of a teleporter, is the Mining shuttle.

All in all, mining is a job that is very easy to do, but quite a bit harder to do well.

Gettin' to work

As you start the round, walk over to one of the lockers and unlock it. Get rid of your backpack and suit up in an engineering space suit, breath mask, and jetpack. When you pick up the jetpack, double click on it in your hand and turn down the release valve pressure to 21. This is plenty of air to keep you alive, any more is a waste and you will be using a lot of your air just to maneuver in space. Grab your mining belt and fill it up with the 3 mining satchels, a geological scanner, and 3 low-yield mining explosives. Also bring along a space GPS. Ditch your PDA - you will never have a use for it. You will also want a cargo transporter and your handy power pick. Also don't forget to put Optical Meson Scanners on your eyes or your job identifying good veins will be much, much harder.

All set? Great! Click the jetpack icon in the top left to turn on your jetpack, and then click the breath mask icon to start your flow of oxygen. Head south until you're out on the asteroid belt. As a miner, your biggest preoccupations are going to be harvesting as much ore and as many gems as humanly possible, moving those things to where they're useful, and blinging yourself out with the coolest stuff your fabricator has to offer.

Speed Mining

The first thing to understand about mining is that while you have a pick, you should basically never be using it. Mining individual squares takes forever, and there is no chance whatsoever of you getting things done fast enough if you resort to that. Instead, you want mining explosives. Lots and lots of mining explosives.

You start off with a decent number of low-yield explosives, and your fabricator can produce the good shit if you bring it enough rocks. Before you leave, check the fabricator for the recipe of Concussion Charge and make a mental note of the materials you need. Then drift out into the asteroid field, exploring rocks that look unusual. Clicking your geological scanner on a rock will make it tell you what ores are contained in it. Use your pick to tunnel in to interesting veins if you need. Clicking on your geological scanner in your hand will make it survey the surrounding area for anomalies, letting you know if there is any danger around.

After you find a vein you need, tunnel in close, take an explosive off your belt, and click on the rock you want to blow up. Run away after you get confirmation you've set the charge, because you CAN blow yourself to hell like this! Come back a short time later, and you should find the vein mostly obliterated and the ore ready for your collection. If there are a few stubborn rock formations, hit them with your pick - they should be weakened by the blast and easy to harvest.

Try to fill up your ore pouches every time you go out. When you have enough of the ores you need, go back to the mining station, remove the ore pouch from your belt, and use it on one of the fabricators. You will empty all the usable ore into it. Now make yourself a pack of 5 Concussion Charges. Pick up as many as you can.

Now that you have decent bombs to work with, go back out into the asteroid belt and start blowing up a little of everything you find. Do not recklessly set bombs on everything, as the explosions will lag the server and make everyone pissed off at you. That said, every time you see a new kind of mineral, try putting a bomb on it to get a nice load of the associated ore. Have some fun exploring, and revisit the Mining Outpost frequently to offload your finds into crates. After putting your finds into a crate, be sure to use your cargo transporter to send it back to the station. The Quartermaster is always happy to get stuff from Mining, but if the station doesn't have one it's also fine to send it to Robotics, which goes through a lot of ore. Keep an eye on how many bombs you have and how many more you can make. Don't let yourself run out.

Once you are reasonably practiced, you should be able to produce 400, 500, or even more ore by the 25 minute mark in a round. You may not get lauded as a hero since people tend to expect so little out of Mining, but you will have a lot of fun blowing things up and learning how the coolest fabricators on the station work.

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