Argo Mole Ship Buyer’s Guide
The Argo Mole is the latest straight to flyable ship for Star Citizen and is NOW available in 3.8 LIVE.
ARGO’s pragmatic no-nonsense approach to ship design is celebrated in the unmistakable silhouette of the MOLE. Just one look at this machine and you know it means business. Tap into your full potential with the combined force of ARGO’s patented trilateral mining system. The MOLE has a total of 24 mineral pods, each holding 12 SCU. Eight pods are usable at one time – when they’re full, either head home or jettison them for collection by another vessel and carry on mining. Three independently controlled articulated extraction stations allow for maximum power and near-limitless versatility. The MOLE lives by the adage ’many hands make for light work’.
The Ship is available from $275 Warbond OR $315 Store Credit this is also the value of it’s CCU.
There are 3 skins available as well, the standard Orange one, 1 that you can purchase with the warbond version the Talus in Grey and 1 available for Concierge the carbon in Black.
Any of the Mole’s bought as Warbond come with LTI. They are the same ship just different skins.
The Mole has 8 saddle bags equipped, each of which can hold 12 SCU. Giving it a standing cargo of 96, this is focused on mineables tho.
The ship has a total of 24 of these bags tho, that detach and replace bags where they are full, the functionality for this is not in 3.8 BUT in the future they can be jettisoned and collected by another ship or later. The Mole technically has 288 SCU capacity across all of it’s bags.
The Ship is 38.5L x 17W x 8H which is significantly larger than a Prospector, the Mole is very much a medium sized ship, it’s kinda of the same size as the Vanguard with it’s wings pulled back BUT the Mole is much more of a brick shape and make use of all of it’s room that this affords across 2 decks.
The Ship has beds to support 4 crew
Pilot & Co-Pilot in the Upper Deck Cockpit.
3 Individually Manned Mining Turrets in the Lower Deck.
The Ship is split across 2 decks starting from the upper rear of the ship there is a Bunk Area for the 4 beds with a bathroom, storage for flight suits this leads to a kitchen and mess area for eating, there is a sealed ladder that leads to the lower deck, here is access to the entry / exit elevator for the ship and some components like the Quantum Drive, it also has access to the 2 side Mining Turrets which are each compartmentalised with an airlock and suit storage.
The side of the ship which has a shield opens up and extends the mining turret when a player enters the seat.
Back to the Upper Deck the Kitchen also leads towards a component room and what appears to be equipment associated with the processing and sorting of Mineables and then putting that into saddlebags.
The functionality of sorting and dumping materials you don’t want is not in 3.8.
This room has access to another part of the lower deck, which just has access to the lower front mining turret.
The Side Mining Turrets have a 180 degree horizontal range of movement BUT the front turret has 270. All turrets are very bad a looking up tho, the Mole wants to be above or at the same level as anything it’s mining.
The Ship is suitable to use for asteroid mining as well as on planets and moons.
Back to the Upper Deck again you then have the Upper Cockpit with the pilot and co-pilot seat. The Pilot can scan for minables. Each of the Mining Turrets is both a mining laser and extractor and acts in the same why as the Prospectors Mining.
The Mole has S2 Mining Heads on each of it’s lasers, these are More Powerful and Twice the Range than their S1 counterparts that the Prospector does.
There are 5 New Mining Heads in game as well, these are purchasable items available from various component stores in the game like Dumper Depots as well as Tammy & Sons on Lorville. I’ll do a quick breakdown of this here
With the new mining mechanic rebalance in 3.8 you may need a particular mining head or multiple turrets to work together on a rock. The larger the rock’s mass, the harder it is effectively for you to mine OR at least it requires more POWER for you to be able to start mining it, once you are nearing 5k mass it becomes unlikely you will be able to mine a rock with the stock laser on the Prospector.
Effects applied to mineables affect everyone mining it, so if you use a mining head that reduces rock instability then anyone else that is also mining that rock even in another ship will also get the benefit…
Remember that if a rock explodes it can destroy and damage ships & some of the mining heads can cause a lot more explodyness.
The New Mining Heads are
The Arbor MH – Standard
Helix – Reduces Resistance of the Rock and Provides more Power – it’s my favorite Laser, it has the downside of making any changes you do to the throttle slower and more of an explosion. This laser is expensive 108k aUEC.
Hofstede – More power than the Standard but at less range too, helps with instability.
Impact – Lots of Power BUT more dangerous with instability and charges explodyness quicker.
Klein – More Power than the Standard, reduces resistance but also increases instability.
Lancet – is a support laser, it reduces the resistance of a rock and makes it more stable but it can take longer to mine.
These heads have consumable slots listed as well, consumable mining items are not yet in game but these will give limited boosts in a similar vein to what the mining lasers do.
I’ll do a more in depth mining rebalance video in the near future as well. The Mining Mechanics will continue to evolve and they will be adding more minables, features, materials sorting, deployable saddlebags, mining outposts and a dynamic economy to support this in the future.
As I said earlier there are 4 beds but technically 5 stations with the ship, I do think that they have missed a trick here, having a 5th crew man that could of EVA mined while the ship has 3 mining turrets and a pilot would have actually been pretty cool, that said maybe that is viable by having the pilot EVA and have the front miner keep running upstairs to move the ship after a rock has been fully nommed up.
It’s possible that it’s life support will only support 4 once the mechanics for that are in game.