New Mining Updates 3.9.0
Welcome to some more Star Citizen, we are looking at Alpha 3.9.0 PTU and Quantanium the new volatile mineable… as well as mining consumables that can make your life easier and some tips. I also want to talk a little bit about pocket sandwiches and what food to carry around with you in the verse.
Mining Consumables can be added to appropriate mining lasers
Then Activated by via interaction or innerthought.
Mining Consumables are subcomponents that have a certain amount of charges that affect your mining from making something easier or quick to mine to reducing the energy in the rock to prevent explosion.
You can only use one consumable at any one time on an individual laser BUT you can use one after another… some consumables are instant use others last 10-30 seconds.
BUT if you are in a mole for example each laser operator can use a consumable on each laser.
By far the most useful consumable is the Optimum, which makes the green mining window considerably larger and therefore easier but it costs 3000 for 5 charges… and at 600 auec a charge for 30 seconds… you don’t want to be using it all the time.
Multiple lasers can still be used to mine the same rock and if they are all using consumables then their effects will be combined.
You can typically purchase mining consumables anywhere you can buy mining lasers, dumpers depot, tammy and sons, Shubin Interstellar… BUT they might not have all the mining consumables you are after… I find Dumpers Depot’s to be the best shout.
Rented ships – can’t have consumable items attached to them as you Can’t Change Ship Gear.
Quantanium Mining – Quantinium is a very valuable reasonably rare mineable that the Prospector and Mole can extract. You’ll get it in various sized rocks.
Clio & Euterpe by microTech definitely have Quantum on the ground, as do Q-Type Asteroids in space that I have found.
Larger deposits are harder to mine typically & It’s useful to lower the resistance
You’ll want aHelix Mining Head really for this the new mining Consumables are obviously very useful here too BUT you don’t want them to hamper your profit. However I’ve been able to grind up a million or so of UEC in like 3 hours using a Prospector, mining quantanium and using the Optimum Consumable and the Helix Head.
I find you have around 15 mins once you start mining the ore to needing to sell it… otherwise it will explode.
You’ll get an Alarm then you have 10 mins or so.
Next Alarm at around 3 mins.
You can jettison your quantuanim if you need to… and if the alarm is going off like crazy then you SHOULD!
If you jettison your quantanium it will only jettison that… not all of your cargo/mined ore.
Also being landed is still not being safe and if you don’t sell it in time your ship will go boom boom still.
Due to this time issue it’s worth picking it up as the last thing you mine OR at least with the timer in mind.
After I have mined a set of rocks in an area I’ll then mine all the quantanium quickly near me then travel to new babbage and the Commons Shopping area there and sell at the refinery terminals… one trick I did find was when you land spawn another one of your ships quick bam… your quantanium hopefully is safe in storage with your mole or prospector and you can sell it without it exploding in the hangar.
Be Careful when flying round planets and moons as wind & storms can really do a number on your ship… so if it looks windy… maybe fly a bit slower… you don’t want to be bumping quantanium around… Bang bang BOOM.
Food & Drink Storage – No Pocket Sandwiches
You need to occasionally eat and drink in Star Citizen in 3.9… most of the time you can just nom at the food courts as part of your natural visiting a landing zone or station when you go to sell OR rearm, repair and refuel.
There are some food items you can’t store – This is most common with bought food… specifically anything that you couldn’t really have loose in a bag out of it’s wrapper isn’t stowable.
Most of the drinks / bottled items can be stowed tho… as can fruit… OR harvestables
You do need to have a backpack OR storage space on your character to be able to store food and drink.
Also storing it on a particular backpack or suit will save the storage of those items there… So you can have a Novikov Armor full of noms if you want… and then switch into it when you are hungry!
It’s drink that you want to really be carrying with you if anything. As that is typically what you will be needing to tend to in a session… your hydration.
Fruit and smoothies can also be stowed from shops and garcia’s greens on New Babbage microTech is a treasure trove of effective delicious.
I can highly recommend Golden Medmons and Garcia Green’s Smoothies. They give buffs like hydrating as well as catering for lots of hydration and a little nutrition too… which is all you will need!
Harvestables on Planets can be sold OR nommed… some are not particularly great and can even give your debuffs or poison you. We should in the future see cooking that will enable some of these harvestables to be more edible after some prep.