Oolite Bulletins

G’Day, Commanders!

I came across an unusual natural phenomenon in my OOUNIVERSE. I decided to try my hand at asteroid mining. Installed mining laser on the side and ore processor and took off from station. When I got to asteroid field I noticed that most of them were ice asteroids. Yes I do have ice asteroids OXP installed, but what is most interesting when I shot several of them with mining laser they got evaporated and left alloy plates flying, which I scooped. The second strange thing is when I shot the normal looking asteroid it split into several ice boulders. The third one is that most normal boulders I shoot with mining laser do not get split into splinters but evaporate as if I shot them with military laser. Can it be because of cargo teaser OXP? I think the normal stone asteroid shot with mining laser should not do that??? Looks like there are could be some problems with ice asteroids OXP and or with cargo teaser one??? Out of dozen of asteroids I managed to scoop only one normal looking asteroid, boulders from the others got destroyed, which is not very productive for a mining business.

Right on Commanders!
vsfc

Try install [wiki]Asteroid_Storm[/wiki] also, this will increase the variety and chance of normal rocks. Maybe there is not mineral in iceballs frequently.

Here is an update:

Thanks Norby, but I already had Asteroid Storm OXP installed.

Anyway, I removed ice asteroids and cargo teaser OXPs. This time mining was better. Only one asteroid evaporated and most boulders did split into splinters allowing me to harvest up to 20 ton of minerals. I am not very patient about flying around trying to chase and scoop splinters, but returns can be nice.

What raised a question with original behavior how alloys can be flying off the ice boulder? Is it some miner crashed into asteroid and got frozen? My imagination is playing up here, I bet.
And getting ice boulders from normal asteroid did not look normal to me. Oh well

Cheers,

vsfc

vsfc wrote:

I am not very patient about flying around trying to chase and scoop splinters, but returns can be nice.

In this situation I recommend the Cargo Shepherd OXP. Very handy!

vsfc wrote:

What raised a question with original behavior how alloys can be flying off the ice boulder? Is it some miner crashed into asteroid and got frozen? My imagination is playing up here, I bet.
And getting ice boulders from normal asteroid did not look normal to me. Oh well

Sounds like a bug with the Ice Asteroids OXP.

Hi!

I got another question. Somewhere here I read that once asteroids are destroyed they are not recreated. If I jump out of the system and come back, do they get recreated? What is the mechanism of populating asteroids in system?

Thanks,
vsfc

There's no current way of repopulating asteroids except leaving the system and coming back, or saving your game at a station and reloading it. Unlike ships, they can't launch or hyperspace in and fly to where they're needed.

I don't particularly like this - it raises the awkward question of how the asteroids get there when you aren't looking, and why there's any near a rock hermit at all when you enter the system - but for now it's what we have.