Mining ship design

I've been playing Space Engineers off and on since it came to steam. And one of the most fun aspects of the game for me is designing mining ships, and mining away asteroids. So, I am curious what mining rigs you all have designed in survival.

My biggest question is, what is the most efficient setup for drills?

Every miner I have designed has had the same drill design as I haven't thought of one that works better. Granted I could spam drills as close to eachother as possible, but in survival you have to be able to access the inventory of the drill.

My current miner design in survival:
https://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/3278925160542136575/42BE5EB78FDE7B2B542DB4781DAB238B8A8CCC41/

https://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/3278925160542134605/86762A475E5DC70D6919FE919E54B9D3E1E88B28/

The original idea behind the design was to use it as not only a miner, but as well as a transport ship while building stations, ships, etc. That way you can just load up all of your building materials into the ship instead of going back and forth to your beginning station / platform.

The holes on the sides, and top of the ship are access panels for three small ship large storage containers. I'm playing on Survival x3 so they have about 85,000 storage room each. More than enough for any project.

The ship has a ore detector, 40 thrusters, only two of which are large, 2 Large Reactors "A little overkill for this ship perhaps but I wanted to have enough power if i add onto the ship a lot." As well as 6 drills. All engines are protected by a layer of armor that way they dont break off while tunneling. And the two large thrusters at the rear of the ship have a layer of heavy armor incase i back into something.

My question is, how could I add more drills to that ship while still being able to access all of their inventories without making it look like a monstrosity. Any insight you guys could provide, or even screenshots of your own rigs would be appreciated

 

Hint, back acces hatch.

 

No? really? they have those? The point was for people to post pictures of their mining rigs, I suppose i could make a huge wall of armor blocks on the front of my ships one block thick and add a bunch of mining drills to it and just cut out the backs, except, that would look dumb. I have a couple ideas of how i could do it, but was curious how other people design theirs.

 

In the future, you could just use conveyors.

 

My usual setup is is 4 heads. I haven't needed drill ship yet in survival, the crashed red ship is so full of resources that so far its only been scavenging for me. I have plans to start with something small possibly 2 heads side by side. Ill post picture, or maybe it will be in a siggy when I get to it.

 

The one I made had 12 drills it kinda looked like a wheat harvester I had 4 rows with 3 drills on each with enough space in between I could get to all the hatches

 

This is not my biggest miner but it is by far the most "fire and forget" ship I have so far made.

I use sliders on my Saitek X45 to continually press fire for the drils and to make make the ship use the rear thrusters without intervention from the player, two seconds on - two seconds off.

I point it against the asteroid, start it up and go eat dinner

I use side, bottom and top drills purely as defence from hitting the sides of the tunnel, works well. This model went right through an asteroid and had slight damage on 3 side blocks.

It doesn't always make a straight tunnel

Every drill is accessible as is the large reactor.

My question is, with your ship being so long, how does it not take damage at the back ?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=239796300

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=239796319

 

The ship on the left kind of looks like a Raloz Heavy constructor from Sins of a solar empire

As for my ship, I haven't had any issues with armor damage on my ship, the only thing I had trouble with was engines getting knocked off if I tried to backup in the tunnel for any reason.

I also slapped the heavy armor back there to avoid backing into anything and losing my main engines...

I like your design for its sheer efficiency, I may try to add a bunch more drills onto my ship...I've been debating on making a small ship, but make it large enough that I could have the reactors and such inside, and have all of the drills rear hatches showing in the front wall. And then make a hatch in the bottom middle of the ship to simply drop ore out of...Me and my friend made a depository where you unload ore from the drills, and drop it down a chute, and it lands in a hole near the refinery's...

 

So far I have kept my miner pretty compact. I have 7 drills on the front with the middle one rotated so that I can access the hatches through a gap between the outer drills.

X-X
X.X.X
X-X

The - is where I've left the gaps.

The cockpit is between the top two drills so I can roughly see where I'm going.

I'll post a link when I get back home.


I plan to do a much larger drill later on, but until they implement conveyors I don't think it will be worth the hassle.

 

At the moment I'm still using my initial mining ship which is just a dual drill, very small ship. It's only just slighter taller and wider then a large block, actually.


It's done a phenomonal job so far. Fits into very small spaces but still manages to chew through ore at a pass that is faster then I can refine it. The only drawback of this setup is I don't have any conveyors. Figured they weren't worth including since they don't work yet. Below is what it may eventually end up looking like, though, once I add conveyors and more drills.

It has two extra small reactors (the current model only has 2) and I will have to temporarily move the gyro so I'll be able to access the cargo bin. But once conveyors are active (and assuming they work as I expect them to), this should be a very good setup. At least until I'm ready to try and build my 32 drill monster rig.

 

Here's the pics of my miner

https://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/3282302860267992127/A004745C2944620AD76A5CF93C74B2D56C73DB18/

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=239837285

https://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/3282302860268033102/7C1F85A05238253F1AEB394232FFC7EF7C2D45A6/

https://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/3282302860268039660/FC3D576DA9CF85C8C04AE5FCB9BCFD2154FF6709/

I put a fair few lights on it so I can see what I'm doing inside caves, and the heavy armour roll bars let it punch through asteroids without taking any damage from bumps and jolts inside a tunnel.

 

I really like that ship barrio. Very pleasing to the eye.

 

I have a single drill ship and I'm struggling moving ore from the drill to my refinery 1000kg at a time. I fail to see the incentive for multi-head drills other than "just because" and "because I can".

Obviously, when conveyors and/or hoppers are available, I'll be up there with the rest building drill monstrosities.

 

The main reason I've got 7 is so that the size of the hole is big enough for me to drive the rest of the ship through . Its also a good size to strip out small deposits easily.

To unload I park right next to the refinery hatch so I can just flick between the two as quickly as possible.

I'm playing on X3, but it is the same amount of trips if I fill up the drills.

I totally agree with you about conveyors though. That's the most urgent update needed for survival in my opinion.

 

Well for me its just so I don't have to go mining as often, on x3 unloading the drills isnt so bad, especially if you have your refinery's setup so you can easily access them.

 

well in survival i had grand plans of importing this as a frame and building it up

that took much longer than i initially hoped so i ended up with this

 

I can't make a screenshot right now but one thing I did this last time around (which made it a lot better, IMO) was to extend the grinders on a long boom out in front of the cockpit area. Whenever I have the cockpit in a little tug with the grinders right in front it becomes hard to manage orientation and it's impossible to see through the dust.

I have a 20-unit boom coming out of the cockpit / power platform and four grinders spread in a square a bit apart. The spotlight and ore detector are in the middle of the grinders set back a little bit. I put pillars of armour in all directions out of the cab area to take collisions with the tunnel walls without damaging thrusters, etc.

The end result is that I can SEE what I'm doing from a good ways back. I just dig around like using a toothpick. If I am in really deep, I make the tunnel big enough and let the cab part bang into the walls some, it doesn't damage anything important.

I keep a welder and some plates in the cab and if the pillars get damaged I touch them up between mining jobs.

Setting the control back a ways from the grinders has really changed it for me and it costs 20 plates to make the boom.

 

Heres my latest

 

Have to test when I get home from work but it sounds like I'm going to have to redesign my little mining ship. The new destructive exhaust update is likely going to cause my reverse thrusters to destroy my drills.

 

I did something a little different. With the help of friends focusing on mining and assembling/disassembling for resources, I made a monorail into a large open asteroid (you know the one) with a drill crane attached. Works like a dream, just don't try to drill with the crane fully expended, and uses very little power.

 

Myself, my brother and a friend of ours have been playing Survival multiplayer and I came up with this ship to take care of our mining needs:





This is the Mk2 version, the original featured an enclosed engine design which we had to scrap and redesign since the latest 'engines melt things' update. This newer variant is actually shorter as a result, which has been a surprisingly welcome improvement.

It's designed to be compact and able to burrow into the asteroid, directly to the deposit you require, and still have some ability to manoeuvre inside the tunnel. The whole thing is powered by three small reactors, and features an ore detector, spotlights and an identifying/locating beacon.

The compact design makes this a quick and efficient little ship with relatively low power consumption. It's also very cheap and easy to produce, which means we have been able to build and operate three of them without making a huge dent in our resources.

Steam Workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=240598855&searchtext=resource+collector+mkii

 

I really like your design EvilBlue. How stable is it?

 

It seems fairly stable, but I don't have much to compare it to. If you like I'll put one together in a creative world for you to try out sometime and have a good look at, or put one up on the Steam Workshop.

Edit: I've uploaded it to the Steam Workshop, you can find it here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=240598855&searchtext=resource+collector+mkii

This is my first time using Workshop so if there are any issues then please let me know.

 

Nice setup there Smartie ...
You might consider covering the lower thrusters and the spotlights in some armor - wouldn't be good to lose your lights or maneuverability because of an errant piece of rock.

 

I call this one, The Beast:

https://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/795190344638984481/82F4316483DA9752B2576060B2FC3037686D24B6/

https://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/795190344638985906/0959B0FD4E306C9A512CABE5CAE0369EA7A3D42E/

I digs it's own tunnel, doesn't use much fuel, and best of all it's designed around thruster damage! So no worrying about thrusters forcing the ship to implode. Oh and it also includes 4 small reactors and 2 rocket launchers for dealing with griefers.

 

Has drilling changed for anyone else after last patch? Going from my 14 drill design to my 1 drill design is now far more efficient

 

Yes, I've noticed that my drills don't collect near as much, and there is quite a lot of ore floating around. It does cause the game to start lagging fairly quickly when I'm mining. There is a post about this in "Bug Reports".

 

Try a ship with one drill only, fills up very fast

 

This is with NO gravity at all? I haven't been able to get in and try the ship I built before this last patch, or I'd test this myself.

 

Figured I'd make a short video of my little miner.

Specs:
1 drill
14 thrusters (2 forward, 2 left, 2 right, 2 up, 2 down, 4 rear)
2 small reactors
Gyroscope
Beacon
Fancy flashing industrial lights

Enjoy

https://youtu.be/ATomty2O8CY