Mining Ships

I was looking at this art from Star Citizen and I thought: "Star Army needs something very much like this!"



So this is a request for some sort of civilian or Star Army asteroid-eating mining starship.

Such a thing would be perfect for Origin since they have the Enkou Halo Belt around Ake. It would actually make mining the belt possible if they had a heavy ship meant for it....now I gotta talk to @CadetNewb and @Kai and see if we can get that started.

That looks totally bad ass actually.

Might I suggest looking at things from EVE Online too for additional inspiration? I was an asteroid jockey for years there and greatly enjoyed the specialty mining ships. Though I admit that is a very nice design.

Neat looking design

I think some designs for such a ship already exist, such as the Hikari-Class Mining Ship. But it would be neat if more designs were implemented.

That particular design does look very authentic, though.

Hmm the front reminds me of the Crablogger and got me thinking. Why not a crablogger esque ship for SARP?

The ship will be escorted by a small fleet of drones designed to lob heavy charges into/against asteroids in order to break them up into small enough pieces. The tractorbeam on the ship itself will then pull each piece into the "Maw" of the ship where it will be processed into usable materials. Ontop of the maw is the cockpit/bridge of the ship which protrudes outwards over the maw. (Maybe have a glass plate on the bottom to look at the asteroids being nomnomnom'ed?)

The ship will be divided into two sections. The front will be the business end when it comes to dealing with the asteroids. Large shield emiters and multiple tractor beams dot the surface as well as several turrets. The rear is connected in the same way the rear of a Wasp connects to its body. The rear will house all the processing systems and several docking ports on the sides in order to offload the cargo.

The ship will be moved by four large engine Nacelles that are connected to the ship by stubby wings.

We'll see what we can come up with. X D

Chelti have a lot of mining ships and ore processing and transport designs. I should write more of them down. Most chelti mining craft have large impact shields on the front, ancillary craft drag unlucky asteroids and comets into the processing areas where they're broken down and transferred by freighter to an ore processing ship which may be some distance away. The processed ore is then put on the barge line back the the starving industry on the home world.4

Gas giants are also tapped for easy fuel and other resources, although more present difficulties. Traditional geological exploitation is done via large mobile platforms assembled by dropship, specific mining methods differ depending on material extracted. Planet cracking is on the table, but currently infeasible.

Mining expeditions are almost always proceeded by scout ships seeding the local system with probes, scanning for life, other occupants, and of course economical viability for mining. Chelti only regard life as "intelligent" if it has invented the radio, this allows them to exploit planets otherwise inhabited by natives; although this policy has led to at least one rather bizarre first encounter regarding a race that completely skipped over radio technology and stuck to wired communication. Very messy. Lots of expensive equipment being broken.

It would be interesting to see what @Legix thinks about this design as he is working on the Dig-It.

I personally thinks it looks mega cool and love how many races of SARP understand that mining is a big money-maker. The Iroma do, that's for sure, so they'll go off their planets to use things like molecular furnaces to make all sorts of cool materials.

I'm a little bummed out that we never came up with our own badass mining ship. So this is a renewed request for the people who love making SARP starships to make one!

@Nashoba @Arieg

I can haz mining ship? Seriously this was a great idea and to see wes necro the post I mean that says somthing. Maybe @Charmaylarg Dufrain or @Alex Hart I know you both are working on ships right now but maybe add this to your list?

I think both the lore but also some plots could come of this. I mean a halloween plot evolving a misshu egg to get some of that alien vibes? or just give that little bit extra for background when your trying to stop a pirate force from stealing a mining ship? or even using it a military false flag and a commando team is onboard waiting to sneak onto a station this ship is going to off load?

I have a corp that deals with Mining, so a Mining ship would be a good thing to have honestly. So long as independents can use that too.