Belting and Beltstrike

Annatar Giftbringer

Emperor Mongoose
Greetings,
I started reading about belting, and accumulated a couple questions... Potentially stupid questions... But here goes:

1) First of all, just to be sure, when Beltstrike talks about tons, is this metric or displacement? I'd assume dtons, but on page 4 it speaks of metric tons and size of asteroids, and after that it's just tons. Asteroid Size and yield on page 7 tells us how many % of an asteroid's mass is worth mining for instance.

2) Mining Drones. The major difference between main book "Mining Drones, 10 ton" and Beltstrike's individual drone is the level of detail the players want when playing, yes?

3) The Extraction addon for mining drones. Can a drone without it only be used for prospecting?

4) Cargo Drone. this one is connected to 1 above, can the cargo drone carry 20 dtons or 02 metric tons?

6) Page 7 mentions a "Mining exo-skeleton", a piece of gear not mentioned again. I picture something along the lines of the loader from Aliens, but should it be viewed as something required in order to extract ore manually, or as a tool for improving manual mining?

7) More of an observation than a question, but assuming that 1 does indeed talk of dtons, it seems to me most belting ships would spend more time travelling and selling than actually mining? The 10 ton drone package mines 1d6x10 tons per day, and most belting ships appear to be small, meaning they fill their entire cargo hold in one day. The only configuration that requires more time out by the asteroid than travelling or in port seems to be a solo miner working manually, and even then they could realistically mine 4-6 tons a day (Work 6 hours, rest 6, work 6, rest 6).

Using the individual drones from Beltstrike would yield similar results, since the space and money required for Main book drones means room for a lot of individual drones.

Or, would each drone require a dedicated operator? Beltstrike hints that a drone can work in auto-mode, but if each drone needs someone to remotely control it all the time, then I can see it taking longer to fill the hold unless the ship has a large crew, and there'd still be a use for manual labour too, to help speed up the process.

8) Are special ship sensors required for prospecting, and/or does regular penalties apply, such as -2dm for civilian sensors?

9) Larger asteroids require multiple scans, these could be done simultaneously right? If a mining ship carries a cutter, or a couple of mining drones? Using the 'standard program package' a number of drones might even be able to auto-prospect potential asteroids while the players are asleep?
 
1 ) When talking about metric tons, the author is describing real world asteroids. Since MgT only uses dtons everywhere else, I would ignore the background fluff and just assume that all measurements are in dtons.

2 ) The CRB mining drones and the Beltstrike mining drones appear to be completely different:
CRB – Cost MCr. 10, includes ore transfer equipment, mines 1d6x10 dtons/”working day” (8hrs?). It implies that Remote Ops skill is required to use them.
Beltstrike – Cost Cr.50,000, mines 1d6+3 dtons/6 hr. “watch”. Intended to operate with Remote Ops skill, but has optional software available (not listed) to allow autonomous operation. It is interesting to note that if actual mining is desired (extracting ore) an optional adaptation system costing Cr. 20,000 must be added. So the Beltstrike Mining Drone appears to be primarily a prospecting device unless upgraded.

3 ) See above, the answer is yes.

4 ) Assume 20 dtons. Note that while not mentioned, it should be possible to carry extra empty ore hoppers so that once a full hopper is loaded into the cargo bay the cargo drone can go out and collect additional mined ore. It would make mining ships most efficient if they are designed with cargo bays in 20 dtons multiples.

6 ) An interesting lapse on the author’s part. Beltstrike says “Mining requires some or all” of the equipment in the list, so I would assume that a mining exoskeleton is not actually required. Assume it is the same a cargo waldo from p. 82 of Scoundrel and it is used only to increase the worker’s strength to add an additional 1 dton of ore to his productivity each watch.

7 ) Yes, if you use the CRB mining drones. Manual mining or Beltstrike mining drones are much slower. If the Beltstrike drone is upgraded with the autonomous operation software, it could be left behind to continue mining while ore is being hauled to market, making the prospector more of a freight hauler than a miner.

There could also be brokers travelling around the asteroid belts buying ore directly from the prospectors to allow them to keep producing ore rather than wasting most of their time flying back and forth. A corporate operation would almost certainly have dedicated ore haulers for that reason.

8 ) Beltstrike has Prospecting Sensors on its ships designs that appear to be the same cost and size as Basic Military sensors. I don’t know why a prospector would need jamming capability so we can assume that there are densitometers installed instead of jammers.

I would assume that all sensor DMs apply normally, so you could go prospecting with Standard sensors, but you would have a hard time finding useful ore deposits. On the other hand, if you were using Very Advanced sensors with Enhanced Signal Processors and Extended Arrays from High Guard, you would be very successful indeed.

9 ) It makes sense that multiple ships (including drones) could survey a planetoid together to get the job done more quickly. Drones could also do the work alone if they had autonomous operation capability.
 
Thank you for your answers!

Most of them were what I'd thought, but good to have them confirmed. I don't own Scoundrel, but the proposed exoskeleton solution (+1 ton/watch) sounds like a quick and easy solution!

Regarding the speed of mining, I'd say that beltstrike drones are only slower if you settle for one. If you, on the other hand, start with a ship designed with main book drones and aim to replace them with the beltstrike variety you get 10 tons and a million credits to play with, would speed up things with 8-9 fully upgraded mining drones and a cargo drone or two. Of course, that money could be saved, or spent on other upgrades instead, if a slightly lower mining rate is acceptable.,,
 
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