Shaft Miner
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Shaft Miner
Superiors: Head of Personnel then Quartermaster
Difficulty: Easy
Guides: No external guide
Access: Mining Dock, all of Mining Station, Cargo Office, Delivery Office
Duties: Mine ores and process them into useful materials.
Welcome Miner, to the wonderful caverns of this NanoTrasen Claimed Asteroid.
Overview
Being a miner can be slightly boring as of now, but that's how it is. For a job that is primarily out in space, it's an extremely safe occupation. Just follow a few guidelines here to keep yourself from becoming lost in the mines.
Your Boss
Your superiors are the Head of Personnel, and then the Quartermaster. Generally they won't butt into any of your affairs other than talking over the cargo channel and (if they know what they're doing) attempt to coordinate your efforts for the good of the station. Instead of delivering your minerals yourself try sending them to Cargo Bay using the connecting conveyor belt.
Chatting it Up
You can talk with all of your mining buddies, as well as the other cargo technicians and the all-important Quartermaster, over the cargo channel using :u or :h.
The Gear
The following is a complete list of mining equipment:
- File:RIG.png Mining Hardsuit and Helmet: Used so you can mine with impunity on the airless, cold, resource-rich planetoid.
Breath Mask and Oxygen Tank: So you can have oxygen when mining. Get an O2 tank from the tank dispenser, and wear it on your suit storage slot with your RIG.
Meson Scanners: Let's you see where the ore is through the rock.- File:MiningPick.gif Mining Tools: For tunnelling through everything. Place this on your belt, it saves room. Alternatively, you can get various drills and other tools from science. These will dig faster, and may have other advantages!
Shovel: For gathering sand. You can stick this in your backpack.- File:Lantern.png Lantern: For seeing in the dark. Put one in your pocket. Or three.
- File:OreSatchel.png Ore Satchel: For carrying ore without using an ore box, and holds 25 ore nuggets. Get at least one of these and make sure to set the bag to "all on tile" (should be set to this as default setting). Use in conjunction with an ore crate. (Newbie tip: This does not work like a backpack. Hold it in your hand and click the ore with that hand to pick it up.)
- File:OreCrate.png Ore Crate: Used for carrying huge amounts of ore. While a satchel can only hold 25 nuggets, this can hold 1000. Use your satchel on the box to empty it into the box, place the box in the unloading machine's input slot to unload it. Drag this around with you for easy carrying. Can be loaded into a Ripley exosuit for even faster mining.
Gear that will be very handy, but not included:
Crowbar: Just in case you come back from the mines to a power outage.
Ripley: Just because these mechs are awesome at mining. A Ripley equipped with a drill and with an ore box loaded up (using the Hydraulic Clamp) mines three squares at a time and automatically picks up any ore gained from the squares. Can be upgraded with diamond drill for even faster mining.
The Objective
You're here to mine, so get digging! Put on your mining hard-suit (make sure to put a large oxygen tank in your suit storage), grab your pickaxe in one hand, click on an ore tile, and then pick up the ore with your mining satchel. You can then empty the satchel into an Ore Box, so it's probably best to drag one around with you.
Once you're full to bursting with ores, drag your crate to the conveyor belt outside of the airlock. If there's uranium coming down on the belt, wear your hardsuit inside the production area so you don't get a blast of radiation. From there, you can use the machines and computers to smelt raw ore to its finished states and stack them up to 50-count piles. From there, it's off to wherever those resources need to be, but hopefully you have a Cargo Technician for that. Back to the mines!
The Ores
Who Needs What
- Scientists just want a little uranium, plasma, and gold. Refine a little of each for research (5-10 blocks each should do it). In exchange, they may give you a bomb or more advanced mining tools (like a sonic jackhammer), both for even faster digging!
- Scientists may ask you for plasma or uranium coins, too. Head to the mint to make these, but remember that you can't actually retrieve the coins yourself, only make them. Ask the AI for assistance, or the captain if they have free time.
- Roboticists need plasteel, diamond, uranium, silver and gold for building mech parts. Give them enough and you might get a big, fancy machine for your troubles! Too bad the Ripley is the only good mech for mining.
- Everybody could always use more metal and glass, but especially Station Engineers.
Traitoring
A traitorous miner has a lot of advantages. You have a space suit for free right away and your mining tools are pretty good weapons too! As long as you have some mineral wealth on you, no one will suspect your presence around the station, even in highly restricted areas like robotics or toxins. In addition, the mining station is isolated, hard to get to, and as expansive as you're willing to dig out. Plenty of room for somebody to get lost in... Forever!