Wiki / Ship sections / Mining beam

Mining beam

Screenshot assets/wiki-section-mining-beam.png The mining tug's bow emitter deployed, its green beam running straight out to an ore rock about 58 m ahead and ending on the rock's face.

A mining beam is a one-cell emitter behind two sliding doors. Point it at a rock and hold its key: the doors part, the tip runs out, and once a second the beam cuts the rock where it hits. No travel lock is needed. The ore it cuts free leaves the rock as canisters, and a cargo intake takes them into your hold.

The beam does not aim. It runs straight out of the emitter's face, so the ship aims it, the way a railgun is aimed. If the ray meets more than one rock, it reaches the nearest one first.

The mining beam at a glance
Key	its own, held: `V` on the mining tug
Deploy	doors 0.3 s, then the tip 0.3 s
Reach	100 m from the emitter face, straight ahead of it
Rate	a pulse as soon as it is out, then one a second
Cut	a sphere about 7.5 m in radius where the beam hits
Health	90

The emitter ray checks the nearest asteroid it intersects within 100 m, with no travel lock required. A barren asteroid in front of an ore rock refuses the pulse rather than letting the beam pass through it. A refused pulse shows nothing on the HUD. A pulse that passes cuts a sphere about 7.5 m in radius where the beam meets solid material; the first pulse into an untouched rock cuts nothing. Ore leaves only after the rock's remesh lands, as canisters of up to 1,000 kg, each born 10 m off the cut and drifting off it at 2 m/s.

Cutting ore

Point the emitter at a rock. The Mining Tug's emitter sits at the tip of its bow boom and looks forward, so put your nose on the rock and close to inside 100 m. A travel lock is optional and does not choose the mining target.
Hold the beam's key. The doors part and the tip runs out. Once the tip is out, the beam fires at once and then once a second for as long as you hold the key.
Let go. The tip runs in first, then the doors shut. Pressing or letting go halfway reverses from wherever the parts are.

The emitter ray takes the nearest asteroid it meets within 100 m of its face, then checks that the rock holds ore. A missed ray or barren rock draws no beam and cuts nothing; it plays one refusal sound at the emitter, once a pulse while you hold the key. So no beam and a refusal sound mean a check is failing - the nose may be off the rock, the rock too far, or the nearest rock barren. Other bodies do not block this asteroid-only ray.

A pulse that passes draws the beam to the hit, flares it, throws sparks and plays a pulse sound at the rock. The first pulse into a rock nobody has cut yet only readies it and takes nothing; the cut starts with the next pulse. A pulse into a crater an earlier pulse or a weapon already emptied finds nothing to cut and frees no ore, so walk the beam onto fresh rock.

Loop capture assets/loops/loop-section-mining-beam.webm The bow emitter through a whole cycle: the doors part, the tip runs out, the beam pulses through the canisters earlier cuts freed and into the rock, and on release the tip runs in and the doors shut.

Where the ore goes

What a rock is made of decides the ore. Every ore weighs 10 kg, so one canister carries up to 100.

Rock kind	Ore
rock	Stone ore
metal	Iron ore
ice	Water ice
carbon	Carbon ore
plain	none: the beam does not fire on it

The ore leaves the rock once the cut is drawn, packed into canisters of up to 1,000 kg. They are born one at a time, 10 m off the last cut and drifting away from it at 2 m/s on top of the rock's own motion, and the next waits until the space there is clear. A rock that is cut away entirely still lets its last canisters go. Fly your cargo intake onto a canister to take it in. A saved Open World keeps a canister as you left it; any other scenario keeps it only for the session.

Screenshot assets/wiki-section-mining-beam-carve.png The same rock after the beam is released and every canister has left it: a crater cut into the face where the beam hit.

Every rock in the New Game world holds ore. Ore sells only to a docked ship that trades - see Buy and sell - and the New Game world has no such ship yet, so for now mined ore stays in your hold.

Variants

Mining beam - shipped prototypes

	Variant	Reach	Rate	Cut	Deploy	Health
captureassets/catalog-mining-beam-section.png	Mining Beam Sectionmining_beam_section	100 m	1 pulse/s	1.5 field cells	0.6 s	90

One emitter ships. The Mining Tug carries it at the tip of its bow boom. Bolt one onto any other hull in the ship editor; it takes neighbours on every face except the emitter face. The Ship pane lists it as MNG. See Ship sections for mods for the numbers a mod can change.