Belthazar's Guide to Asteroid Mining

Addendum: Mining in the Polycon Plugin

Still Under Construction

A-1 Introduction to the Polycon Plugin

A-2 What Do I Need to Start Mining?

A-3 What Do I Mine?

Normal Asteroids

Yep, they're normal. They're boring. They're everywhere. No minerals inside, but still fun to blow up.

Metal Asteroids

Metal - the only type of asteroid of which I have been able to find four different sizes (although it just suddenly occured to me that the two middle sizes are actually different rotation frames of the same asteroid, since Anubis told me he'd used twelve asteroids, and counting the two middle asteroids as different gives a count of thirteen), and it's the next most common variety of asteroid after the Normal ones. Since Metal is one of the standard commodities, they sell pretty much anywhere - the trick is finding a place where they sell high. They're almost black, and quite hard to see against the starfield (or maybe I just need to turn up my monitor's brightness). The released metal looks quite pretty - like a cloud of silver coins =). Most of the asteroids have the disconcerting effect of not rotating. There's a reason for this, and I'll repeat it here, but I'll black it out, because it's actually a slight spoiler. Just highlight the following text to read it: "The reason the medium sized metal asteroids do not rotate is because they are the type of asteroid that the Draconen mines mimic. Since the animation frames in the Draconen mine ship are already used to show the "gun extending" frames, I could not use them to show the ship rotating like a normal asteroid. Having nonrotating Draconen mines in a universe where all the asteroids rotate would have caused the mine to jump out as "wrong" the second the player saw it. But since dozens of systems have loads of the nonrotating metal asteroids, the Draconen mines appear normal at first... until they start to attack you." So Spoke Anubis.

Arthermite Asteroids

It's hard to tell in the image to the left, but Arthermite asteroids are kind of speckled green and red and browny-tan, and they have a really lopsided-looking rotation, like their rotational axis is off-centre. I realise it's physically correct when looking at the asteroids, but it still looks pretty odd. Arthermite is one of the three asteroids which produce red crystalline mineral blobs, but you know it's Arthermite because you just destroyed an Arthermite asteroid (silly). According to the Athermite planetary description (in the Arthermite system), Arthermite is a mineral that will superconduct at room temperatures, and thus is important in quantum computing.

Dysprosium Asteroids

Dysprosium asteroids look like a red crystal around some kind of brown core, and they have an odd-looking rotation as well. They look more like a drop of water running down a dry sheet of plastic than like a solid, rotating object. Dysprosium makes more money when you sell it than Arthermite does, but there are the same number of places to buy and sell it. Dysprosium asteroids usually release two or so of the smallest size metal asteroids when you destroy them.

Junk

These junk asteroids can only be found in the Neutral Zone - systems N-1 and N-8 - as well as Comenx. They're pretty much worthless, although watching them fly around can be fun, same with blowing them up. Anubis claimed that they don't release any minerals when destroyed, but while this is true for the larger one, the smaller one seems to release two or so odd-looking metal blobs - probably a holdover from the standard Nova scenario.

Kilingite Asteroids

Kilingite: the most valuable mineral in the Polycon galaxy, and also the second hardest to find a place to sell (of the three places, one is deep inside hostile territory and they won't accept bribes, and another doesn't seem to actually have a Trading Centre). If you can find a place to sell, they sell for almost 1600 credits per ton - quite a nice profit.

Red Haze

With the Red Haze counted, the number of asteroids in the Polycon universe appears to exceed the maximum number of asteroid spin resources allowed by the Nova engine, but Anubis has managed to find a sneaky way around it. Each of the Haze variants you see above are actually the same "asteroid" - just different frames of the rotation. Anubis explains it better than I: "The red clouds in the Rift are treated as a single type of asteroid by the engine. The reason there appear to be several different types of red clouds is because the asteroids are supposed to be animated to make them rotate and the engine will assign each asteroid a random frame when it is spawned. The cloud asteroid has a rotation speed of zero, and the frames of animation contain different types of clouds instead of images of the cloud rotating, which causes multiple different static clouds to be spawned when asteroids are added to the system by the engine." Clever trick, eh? Anyway, they can only be found in the Rift (that little collection of systems which are only accessible from Stargates 8 and 9) and they produce no minerals whatsoever - they're only included here because I promised an image of every asteroid. On the other hand, it only takes a single shot to destroy them, and there's usually a lot of them in a system, so it can be fun shooting at them.

Tantalium Asteroids

Tantalium is apparently used in the Polycon Universe as fuel. It doesn't sell for much, and it doesn't sell in many places, but wherever it can be mined, there are usually many, many asteroids in the system. The asteroids are purple and sort of crystalline, and the minerals look like the metal ones.

A-4 Mining

System Name	Stellars in System	Government	Direction from Polycon	Normal	Metal	Other	Notes
Arthermite	U'u-la Mining, Athermite	Polycon	West		Not Seen		S(A)
Attyo	Attyo	Naglafarr	South-South-East	Not Seen	Not Seen		S(T)
Cobal	Cobal	Polycon	South	Not Seen	Not Seen		S(D)
Cratu	Cratu	Independent	North-West		Not Seen		S(D)
Collador	Collador	Polycon	North				S(K) P
ERG-03	None	Uninhabited	West				P
ERG-04	Thorin Platform, Thorin	Pirate	West		Not Seen		P
M-13	None	Uninhabited	North-West	Not Seen			-
M-14	Takari Stargate	Uninhabited	North-North-West	Not Seen			H
M-15	None	Uninhabited	North	Not Seen			-
M-23	None	Uninhabited	North-East				-
MI-18	MI-18 Outpost	Meridian	South			None	P
MI-19	None	Uninhabited	South-South-East				P
MI-21	The Rock, MI-21	Pirate	South-South-West	Not Seen	Not Seen		S(D) P
MI-23	None	Uninhabited	South-South-East	Not Seen	Not Seen		P
Rrnedia	Rrnedia	Meridian	South			None	S(A)
Stkor	Stkor	Meridian	South	Not Seen	Not Seen		S(T)
Stromgar	Stromgar	Meridian	South			None	-
Vortar	Vortar	?	South	Not Seen	Not Seen		-

Key to Notes:
H = Stargate in system
S = System contains a stellar where minerals can be sold. Letters in brackets indicate which mineral (Arthermite, Dysprosium, Kilingite, Tantalium or Metal) and colours indicate price level (Blue is high, Green is medium, and Red is low).
P = Here be Pirates. Arrr

A-5 Selling

Key to Notes:
H = Stargate in system
M = System is a good place to Mine; that is, this asteroid can be found in the system
P = Here be Pirates. Arrr

* This information appears in the data files, but for various reasons, it doesn't actually appear within the game

Tantalium can be

• mined in:
  
  • Vortar
    
  • ERG-03
    
  • ERG-04
    
  • Stkor
    
  • Attyo
    
• sold low at:
  
  • Ihmidar (Iihmidar)
    
  • Geidi Prime (Geidi Prime)
    
  • Stkor (Stkor)
    
  • Attyo (Attyo)
    
• sold high at:
  
  • Messiah Mining (Messiah Mining)
    
  • Diploris (Diploris)

• mined in:
  
  • Arthermite
    
  • Krellre Labs
    
  • Deep Space Ballistics Range
    
  • Kllsk
    
  • MI121
    
  • Alpha Centuari
    
  • TTP-27
    
  • DRA-13
    
  • 11010
    
  • Senicrit
    
  • MI-19
    
  • MI-23
    
• sold low at:
  
  • U'u-la Mining (Arthermite)
    
  • Vecon Mentat (Vecon)
    
  • Senicrit (Senicrit)
    
• sold high at:
  
  • Balgon 2 (Balgon)
    
  • Centari Station (Centari)
    
  • Hypertec (Hypertec)
    
  • Rrnedia (Rrnedia)

• mined in:
  
  • SH-04
    
  • DRA-19
    
  • Sorac
    
  • ERG-02
    
  • DRA-21
    
  • Collador
    
  • TTP-114L
    
  • M-05
    
  • Tarsidaus
    
  • TTP-114l
    
• sold low at:
  
  • Sorac Prime (Sorac)
    
  • Collador (Collador)
    
• sold high at:
  
  • Infinity Starsystems (Infinity)
    
  • Sorhali Shipyards (Sorhali)
    
  • Balgon 2 (Balgon)

• mined in:
  
  • Cobal
    
  • M-13
    
  • M-14
    
  • M-15
    
  • Cratu
    
  • M-23
    
  • MI-21
    
  • M-14
    
• sold low at:
  
  • Cobal (Cobal)
    
  • Cratu (Cratu)
    
  • The Rock (MI-21)
    
• sold high at:
  
  • Masoruph (Masoruph)
    
  • Vista 2 (Vista 2)
    
  • Strobokor (Strobokor)
    
  • Mpphoria (Mpphoria)

A-6 Ships

Byspa Frigate
The Byspa Frigate is an "on the high end" miner, it is neither bad nor super good at gathering those precious fragments of roid. The Byspa is only availible from New Valeeid shipyards [in the Valeeid system - Ed.], and its price is pretty steep: 11 million. For that, you get a ship armed only with missiles and three Pneumatic Turrets. But it has plenty of upgrade room and the manuverability and speed of a Ghoral. Ok, suppose now you have added the neccessary Mining Arm and a Plasma Hammer. Let's also suppose that you are in a system full of valuable roids, the first thing you will find out is that if you fire the hammer while holding the thrust key down you remain at the same speed, and that if you fire it when stationary and then thrust, you move slowly forward. This makes the byspa frigate a good ship to be outfitted with a Hammer because you will not be affected by the massive recoil. The next strange thing about this ship that you will notice is that it looks just like an enterprise from Nova, and guess what, that means that there is a nice, wide wing on the front of the sprite, just right for flying through a rapidly expanding cloud of asteroid particles. Although the Byspa sprite is not actually as wide as the Ghoral sprite, because the wing is on the front is tends to be easier to maneuver and gather the lumps of minerals! The cargo space on this ship is impressive 100 tons, but if you are serious about mining, an escort is a good idea. All in all, Iıd give this ship about 8 in 10 rank for mining capabilities.

Ghoral Frigate
The Ghoral Frigate is an interesting ship, like most Frigates in Polycon it is armed almost exclusively with forward-firing weapons. To be able to use these weapons properly, it therefore must have good maneuverability, and it does. The Ghoral comes armed with eight Meson Cannons and two Thermal Turrets as standard. The Meson Cannons fire from the wingtips. For mining, this ship has good points and bad points. For good points, it has a wide profile, those wings make it easy to gather the usefull little balls released by asteroids. However, they also mean that the Plasma Hammer fires from them! Although the Ghoral Frigate is big enough to counter act the recoil of the Hammer, it is almost impossible to hit an asteroid with it. But luckily, there are other ways to bust those roids. If you want to keep the shipıs original armament, then rapidly pressing the right and left keys will send a spread of meson fire that usually destroys an asteroid pretty quickly. But Iıve found that it is better to sell one Meson Cannon, and buy a seventeen-ton Howler. The Howler is an exellent mining gun, if you have a large enough ship to mount it. One shot and POOOOOF, no more roid. I have found this configuration the best for asteroid mining. Next we come to the factor of cargo space. The Ghoral has 60 tons of cargo space, which is pretty poor in my opinion. But a few loads of roid particles and you will have enough to hire a dumpster, which greatly increases your profits. All in all, I would say this ship is a mediocre miner. It exels at combat, but isnıt quite so hot at mining.

Howler
The Howler will have you howling with mining joy once you get started. This awsome ship is built for mining and combat. But Iıd better start at the begining. The Howler mining ship is availible on only one planet, Messiah Mining, along with the weapon that is its namesake, the Howler. This weapon is a mining weapon, it destroys an asteroid in one shot. The Howler mining ship carries four of them. In short, to mine using this ship, just add water... I mean a mining arm ;). Then you're ready to roll; the Howler is perfect for mining. I was, however, able to find a downside with its mining capabilities, this was the fact that it moved and maneuvered like a slug, that is, very slowly. But luckily, this doesn't cause too much of a problem. This ship is five thousand meters long, according to the stats, and has a massive profile, add its three arms and it picks up those pieces quickly and cleanly. Not only that, it can carry 300 tons of cargo no problemo! Mining with this ship, I was able to earn almost a million in a few game days. However, this baby does have a pricetag to make you cry: 36 million! If you want this thing, you had better find a good income!

Meridian Frigate
"The poor poor Emalgha, this is all they have." - quote from Hellfire's Guide to EVO Ships. That line accurately describes my feelings on the Meridian Frigate. This ship maneuvers badly, is armed poorly, and has awful cargo space at 60 tons. The surprising thing is that it has 130 tons of upgrade space. This means that it is possible to add some cargo crates to the ship and increase your mining room. The Meredian Frigate comes armed with a pair of Pneumatic Cannons and a pair of Heavy Pneumatic Cannons; this is actually not bad armament for mining. Those slugs tend to take out asteroids pretty fast. If you add a Plasma Hammer to this ship, you will be sorry to find out that the Plasma Hammer just barely reaches beyond the shipıs wings. This means that to use the hammer, you must have a roid between your wings. [That's not neccessarily such a bad thing, you know - Ed.] The Meridian Frigate also has a narrow forward profile, this means youıll have to fly sideways to get the more spread-out sections of miniral. The Meridian Frigate is availible from Jjolinnar Shipyards for 11 million, an extravagant price for such a poor ship. I would suggest not buying this unless you have no other choice.

Escape Velocity concept and EV Nova copyright Ambrosia Software, but they won't sue me for using them here... I hope
Polycon EV Plugin and all images on this page created by Anubis
Web page created by Joel Alexander (aka Belthazar) - jva2006@yahoo.com

This page has seen visitors since August 30th, 2004.