Wiki / Ship sections / Mining beam

Mining beam

Screenshot assets/wiki-section-mining-beam.png The line warship's bow emitter deployed, its green beam running straight out to a locked 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. Lock a rock, point the emitter at it and hold its key: the doors part, the tip runs out, and once a second the beam cuts the rock where it hits. 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. The lock only says which rock you mean.

The mining beam at a glance
Key	its own, held: `V` on the line warship
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

A pulse runs its checks in order and stops at the first failure: a travel lock, on an asteroid, of a kind that holds ore, with its nearest point within 100 m of the emitter face, and on the line straight out of that face within 100 m. 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 200 kg, each born 10 m off the cut and drifting off it at 2 m/s.

Cutting ore

Lock the rock. Hold the radar on it with weapons lowered, so it takes your travel lock. See Targeting & radar.
Point the emitter at it. The Line Warship's emitter sits on the starboard top deck at the bow and looks forward, so put your nose on the rock and close to inside 100 m.
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.

Every pulse checks five things, in order: your ship has a travel lock; the lock is a rock; the rock holds ore; the rock is within 100 m of the emitter face; the line straight out of that face meets it within 100 m. A pulse that fails any of them does nothing at all: no beam, no sound, no cut. So no beam means a check is failing - most often the nose is off the rock or the rock is too far. Nothing else blocks the beam: it is cast against the locked rock alone.

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 locked 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 20.

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 200 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. Canisters are not saved.

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 Line Warship you fly in New Game carries it on the starboard top deck at its bow. 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.