Industry Mining safety strategy

[Vavrik]

I'm slowly working out some fleet make up we can use when mining gets serious, like using a Prospector and MOLE in support of an Orion, and what other protection the fleet needs etc: but things about the Orion are theorycrafting at the moment. Meanwhile, we have the MOLE and Prospector to worry about. I will worry about the ROC and hand mining opportunities later too.

I've spent most of the last 7 days purposefully dropping into a moon (Lyria) with a Prospector to decide on some tactics to use while in a hot, detectable ship, with limited firepower to defend itself. The idea is to work out what strategies work, and what do not. Flying alone is definitely on my list of "Don't do that, stupid", but I did it to see what's possible. Also,, I don't surrender if I'm caught. Not in a prospector and definitely not if their is quantanium on board. I'd rather get them all excited and kill me before I surrender. The cost to me is some time and what I'm wearing. Everything else on my ship is inconsequential. If you stop to talk, the quant won't have enough time left to get back to the station before it explodes you or you are forced to eject it. So much for that ransom you just paid.

Some miner safety advice: You don't need to do any of this, but it works for me.

Spoiler: Some stuff to keep you and your ore alive

• Know who else is using the station with you. That can be a good early warning sign. Those two guys dressed in heavy armor with way too many weapons probably aren't miners. Some of them are total idiots and even talk to you like they own the place, or read the ship you're getting, pester you etc.. Most miners wear either regular clothing, or a simple space suit and helmet. No weapons. Occasionally a miner will be wearing medium (See my pic) or even heavy armor, but if they're not in TEST - don't trust them. Just don't.
• When you get to an OM point to go down to the surface of a moon (or when leaving the moon), watch for a momentary blip on your radar. That's not good news. Also you can send a single radar ping up there. Any blip that shows up is also not good news.
• While prospecting (even in a MOLE) you will need to ping your radar to see what's further than say 1-2 Kms away. Don't ignore other ships pinging, or other ships that show up on your radar. If you don't know who it is, they're suspect - get out of hell. If they're on your radar, you're mostly too late to react if they're hunting for a miner, but there are still things you can do. Don't go up, not right away. And for heaven's sake, don't ping. Just move away from that ping's direction (not 180 degrees, but some random direction more than 120 degrees or so to maximize what they need to search for you). In a prospector at full throttle, you get 20 Km away in a little under 200 seconds. That's a long time, so eject your quant. You can always get more.
• Also, while you're mining, your eyes need to scan a few things, not just the rock. You need to get into the habit of glancing at the radar, and doing eye scans on the horizon. You also need to make sure you look at the mining laser readout. Situational awareness needs to rule, or you're just so much burnt meat, broke, or both.
• Speaking of pinging, once you ping, select an ore ping return to move to, and put your ships reticle just above it. At full throttle, it takes just under 10 seconds to go 1Km. You should see what returned the ping when you're about 1.4 Km's away from a rock, less if it's a gem collection, but you're probably not dressed for that. Anyway, you don't need to ping more than once to get to your destination.
• Ping only while your ship is not moving.
• If you're going to go up, try to have another option than going to the closest OM point. If they have a spotter, that's where he'll be. More than once I've seen other OM's having a ship loitering too.
• Keep an eye on the ships around the station, and at the route to the station. Some of them might be mining ships, but they're not usually loitering around.
• Be in Discord if others are in there, even if you're not participating in the activity that's going on, there are TESTies who would love a chance to kick some ass, and some of them are pretty damn good at it.

I'm working out a few other things, like how to manage things in a group, etc. We used to do this regularly. The only thing I'll say is, don't leave the group and go off too far alone. They're losing a valuable team member, you're losing their eyes to help yours.

 

[Patrick Spaceman]

Good spoilers, pretty much what I do in a roundabout way. I also never jump directly to a destination. I'll pick something random and jump in that direction, then stop after a random period of time, then plot and jump to my intended destination. Also if belt mining, the first thing on arrival is plot a course back out using the same method. I've only ever been pulled out of QT once, and as irony would have it, I was in a 350R...so it was a minor inconvenience.

Also yeah definitely eyeball everyone and every ship near a station looking for the over dressed heavily armored two rifle carrying "miners" and that Eclipse that's just "hanging around" for no particular reason. When moving bulk refined ore to be sold, I leave my Taurus at the refinery and fill it, and before going to get it and fly to a planet...again, eyeball everyone and check what ships are hanging around and see what's been going on in chat.

 

[marcsand2]

with limited firepower to defend itself

Firepower is not the solution, so effective evasion of incoming fire, buying enough time to jump out is the solution.
All power to shields, it buffs your shields with 30%

Outrunning an attacker also is not a solution. You could try kiting or zoom and boom, but this involves: not being able to align a jump point.

Only thing left is the inappropriate named "barrel roll". The difference with a barrel roll is that you keep your nose always pointed at one point, meanwhile, continuously changing your vector to offset incoming fire. Not very effective when your chaser is at close range, but it might buy you enough time to calibrate your jump drive.
The one point is not your attacker but the jump point.

To speed up things, always be prepared that things will go south, so set your jump destination ahead of time, before you start mining. It saves you a lot time, looking for an appropriate jump destination. Just start spooling and look where you must turn to on your radar, if the prospector supports that feature. Some ships don't show you a line on your radar. You only get the arrow on your HUD, but when you set your destination, then it only will be 1 arrow instead of all nearby points.

 

[Vavrik]

Firepower is not the solution, so effective evasion of incoming fire, buying enough time to jump out is the solution.
All power to shields, it buffs your shields with 30%

Outrunning an attacker also is not a solution. You could try kiting or zoom and boom, but this involves: not being able to align a jump point.

Only thing left is the inappropriate named "barrel roll". The difference with a barrel roll is that you keep your nose always pointed at one point, meanwhile, continuously changing your vector to offset incoming fire. Not very effective when your chaser is at close range, but it might buy you enough time to calibrate your jump drive.
The one point is not your attacker but the jump point.

To speed up things, always be prepared that things will go south, so set your jump destination ahead of time, before you start mining. It saves you a lot time, looking for an appropriate jump destination. Just start spooling and look where you must turn to on your radar, if the prospector supports that feature. Some ships don't show you a line on your radar. You only get the arrow on your HUD, but when you set your destination, then it only will be 1 arrow instead of all nearby points.

This is great advice @marcsand2. I usually do (most) these things, including the "barrel role" - except I think that running up to an OM point is a bit of a mistake in a prospector, if you have been surprised. Thing is once you've been found, they can approach you and get in firing range almost without really trying. The ship has terrible acceleration and shields, and probably one of the worst radar detection in the game. What you'll see is the radar ping visually not in the HUD, just out the window. But if you're staring at the mining progress, you miss all the signs.

I have been able to fly up to a prospector while it's mining, and park beside it without the occupant so much as flinching. I could literally wait until they've cracked a rock, then take the rocks from them before they noticed I was there, but I just laugh when they finally react. That's what I'm trying to counter right now, is incredibly bad habits surrounding situational awareness. Because if they find you in a prospector, you've probably already lost. But if there's just a radar ping and you can't see them yet - you still have a chance if you're aware.

You know what's funny about this, is when the mining ops were coinciding with fighter training, that's when I started thinking about it. There were miners in the group who were surprised when you guys showed up on Clio, and hovered right in front of a prospector who wasn't aware you were there.

 

[marcsand2]

yeah, I usually only think in flying maneuvers, like that time when I was dogfighting with a few Ares and a Redeemer.... in a Hammerhead. My poor rear turret gunner was constantly blacking out.

 

[Vavrik]

Story you might enjoy.

My father was a fighter pilot for half his working career. One of his favorite fighters to fly was the F-86 Saber (a fighter with a few design issues). They had an approach to some of the WWII European runways that involved a sharp right hand turn. pilots sometimes crashed after doing that turn, some survived but quite a few died.

You see, right after the turn, pilots had to change frequencies on their radio to contact the tower. In that plane, that involved the pilot leaning to the left so he could reach the switch that was behind the seat. They discovered two things were happening. Some pilots were anticipating the radio switch, and reached for the switch tooo early, while still turning right. blood rushes to your head in that condition. The next moment, they had to sit up straight which involved turning to the right, so you could see the runway.

There was a complication too, this is where my father comes in. Sometimes the G suit would inflate, adding to the pressure on your legs - forcing even more blood to your head, and making it suddenly hard to push on the foot pedals. It happened to my father while he was checking out one of the fighters after routine maintenance, but he landed the plane - and as an engineer with a thermo dynamics background he inspected the cockpit. Turned out the manual trigger for the G suit was on the left hand side of the cockpit covered with a red rubber shield. Above this, but able to be obstructed by the pilot moving, is the cockpit heater. On the F-86, this could heat several houses. He saw what was happening immediately, and ripped off the red button cover.

They removed the covers from all the planes, and it never happened again - but by then the writing was on the wall for the F-86. It was replaced the following year by the F-5, and my father went on to NASA, to work on the heat shield design for the Gemini. It never failed, though there were failures on the Apollo which used a different design. Later he took command of a Canadian fighter training wing, and then retired from the military.

I spent most of my childhood watching my father, and listening to stories he told about flying. I learned how to use my hands to illustrate the maneuvers of a fighter in combat. Plenty of food for an 8 year old's imagination.

 

[Bambooza]

Just be careful cig has been changing shields and I expect more sheild changes with the fully implemented shields emitter refractor as shields will not always have multiple quardrents most of the small ships are expected to have only one sheild area.

 

[Vavrik]

Just be careful cig has been changing shields and I expect more sheild changes with the fully implemented sheird emitter refractor as shields will not always have multiple quardrents most of the small ships are expected to have only one sheild area.

Yeah, I call it the glass ass of a prospector. Sneeze, BOOM.... ... (skip a few, it's a long wait) ... Hospital.