Shaft Miner
| SUPPLY STAFF | |
  Shaft Miner |
Access: Mining Station, Mining Station EVA, Cargo Office, Mineral Storage Difficulty: Medium Supervisors: Quartermaster and Head of Personnel Rank: Not defined Duties: Mine ores and process them into useful materials. Kill hostile wildlife. Guides: No external guide. |
Welcome Miner, to the wonderful caverns of this Nanotrasen Claimed Asteroid.
Workin' In The Coal Mine
Being a miner can be somewhat boring, unless you go out and fight monsters. Just follow a few guidelines here to keep yourself from becoming dead in the mines. ALSO, it is important to note that you are able to click more than ONE square of asteroid at a time when mining or digging for sand! As long as it's accessible, you don't have to wait to finish digging before you start digging again, so you can have several dig jobs running in parallel. Just don't change hands or move until all dig jobs are done and save yourself some time!
Take your Mining Pick in one hand and your Satchel in your active hand. Run into a rock. You're now automatically digging in it. Use this to mine using only your keyboard, for a quicker done job.
Working With Your Boss
Who is your boss? The answer is the Quartermaster. Don't expect to interact with this guy much, though, as he'll often be too busy directing his cargo tech slaves or sleeping in his office to ever regard your existence.
The Objective
You're here to mine, so get digging! Once you're full to bursting with ores, drag your crate or ore box back to the station and head to cargo where the ore redemption machine sits. Insert your ID, and empty the box next to the machine to offload your ores and have them instantly processed into sheets. You gain points for doing this, so be sure to claim them and then retrieve your ID. Now take your crate and it's back to the mines!
How to Do This
- Gear up with standard pickaxe on belt, gloves on, mesons, crowbar into box, O2 into pocket, scanner into pocket. Get to Mining Outpost. Take additional satchel.
- Select your choice of superior mining tool. Resonator is generally more useful and less of a hassle to use to mine but accelerators can be good for antags. It is always better to use resonator for fighting mining mobs. Always.
- Take your mining rig. If you're new to mining, take a mining GPS and put it in your box. Name it "HELP" when you're in trouble. It's easy enough for telesci to understand that you want them to grab you. It will likely do nothing. Go to west side station and take one bruise pack and ointment from the medkit. Fill your pocket O2 fully up at the big oxygen canister, embark to mining outside the south airlocks. Lantern on your exo slot!
- Find dem minerals. Use the scanner, for your first haul back to the station prioritize a mixture of silver,gold,uranium,diamonds but in small portions for anything not diamond (get as many diamonds as possible), have at least 1 ore satchel full of plasma, it's very important for miners to do this.
- Go to the ore redeemer and get points for the plasma and diamonds, deliver some materials to R&D (10-15 sheets each material except iron) and everything else to Robotics. And buy either a jetpack or the more useful Stim pills. Consume at least 2 bottles of stim pills for a good lasting effect.
- Assuming you didn't fuck off into space with the jetpack, use your new found speed to find materials quickly. You are now either artifact hunting, or mob hunting till shuttle call (or still collecting materials for science, why you'd need to I don't know).
- Repeat until bored or shuttle arrives. You are now offically a miner who can be useful and make yourself stronger.
The Gear
The following is a list of default mining equipment:
Mining Hardsuit and Helmet - Used so you don't freeze to death in the airless tunnels of the resource-richbarren planetoid.
Breath Mask and Oxygen Tank - So you can have oxygen when mining. Get an O2 tank from the tank dispenser, and wear it on your backsuit.
32px Meson Scanners and Mining Scanner - When used together will briefly flash any non-iron ore on screen.
Global Positioning System, GPS - The crew monitoring console back on the station won't catch your suit sensor signal from all the way at the asteroid. Having one of these on you will help others track down your body if you happen to develop a case of the dead.
Pickaxe - For tunneling through everything. Place this on your belt, it saves room. You also can get various drills and other tools from science and your mining vendor. These will dig faster, and may have other advantages!
Shovel - Gathering sand. You can stick this in your backpack.
Lantern - For seeing in the dark. Put one in your pocket. Or three.
Ore Satchel - For carrying ore without using a mining cart, holds 50 ore nuggets. Get at least one of these, make sure to set the bag to "all on tile". Use in conjunction with an ore crate. (Newbie tip: This does not work like a typical backpack. Hold it in your hand and click the ore with that hand to pick it up.)- 32px Ore Crate - Used for carrying huge amounts of ore. While a satchel can only hold 50 nuggets, this can hold an unlimited sum. Use your satchel on the box to empty it into the box, place the box in the unloading machine's input slot to unload it.
Crowbar - Just in case coming back from the mines you notice there is a blackout. Spawns in your backpack.
Mining Voucher - Found in your backpack, exchange this at the mining equipment locker for your choice of one of...
Proto-kinetic Accelerator - A gun. The good part is that it packs a punch in a vacuum and has infinite shots. The bad part is that it tickles in pressurized environments, needs to be reloaded after each shot, and has a range of two steps. Each blast can clear a rock wall if you feel like digging using this.
Resonator - Another deadly tool. This will instantly clear a rock wall when clicked on, and when used in hand or swung at empty space, will create a field on that spot that lasts for about five seconds before rupturing, causing serious damage to anything standing on it. Just like the kinetic accelerator, it does reduced damage in pressurized environments.
Mining Drone - This helpful little guy goes around collecting loose ore so you don't have to. Will drop its haul when you hit it with the mining scanner. Clicking on it with an empty hand will toggle it between ore collection and wildlife fighting mode, where it will attack xenos with its built-in kinetic accelerator and drill. Will not pick up sand with no nearby ore around, for some reason. Comes with an upgraded welding tool if redeemed via voucher.
The Wildlife
While the eastern half of the asteroid is free of harmful things (save for the occasional murderous traitor, rogue cyborg, and gibtonite deposit), it's quite sparse in any ore more precious than plain iron. The western half has much richer bounty of minerals to harvest... but there's a bit of a problem in the form of a variety of bloodthirsty alien lifeforms populating the caverns. Fortunately, you can fight them if you know how, and useful items can be harvested from their corpses when you triumph. Many sporting miners even come to the west asteroid just for the sake of monster hunting.
Hivelords
Considered annoying at worst, and a free medkit at best. These strange creatures will unleash hivelord brood one after another at you whilst trying to keep distant. Fortunately, each of its spawn dies in a single hit, and deal tickle damage to you. It's best to go on the aggressive against these with pickaxe in hand, advancing constantly whilst picking away each of its brood. Once you've closed the gap or have it stuck in a corner, it's toast. Drops its core when killed, which when eaten will instantly restore your health to its maximum, and even cure diseases or any other ailment on your body. Has the side effect of purging any beneficial chemicals from your system, so don't munch one just after taking a stimulant pill.
Fight Pickaxe. Just pickaxe the host body, do not recommend resonator because you could bubble yourself.
Goliaths
The bane of many careless miners. These monsters carry a hefty health pool, a mean wallop, and can even knock you down from a distance with a ground-bursting tentacle attack while they advance toward you, crushing through walls with ease. However, they're incredibly slow and mindless, leaving them extremely vulnerable to being lured into resonator fields or simply being hit and ran with a kinetic accelerator. The main issue is their tentacle attack, which can be dodged with the right know-how. Each time it attempts to trip you, four tentacles appear on and around you, always leaving one spot open, simply move there to avoid it. If a wall is blocking your safe spot, you'll need to be quick to clear it with your resonator or kinetic accelerator. Once dodged, you have some time to deal damage while the tentacles are on cooldown. When felled, these beasts leave behind their hide plates, which can be used on your hardsuit or helmet to reinforce them against melee damage. Up to four plates may be used on each to cap them at a hefty 80%(!) damage resistance.
Fighting a Goliath is easy as pie but it can sometimes fuck even the most experienced miner if it gets the drop on them. If using a resonator, stay 2 tiles away from it, and hit the ground where it WILL move and use bubbles to kill it. If using the gun, same idea but shoot Goliath directly. The resonator will always be faster.
Every 2 steps the goliath takes make sure you have your resonator or gun off cooldown and are 2 additional steps away from goliath so when it tentacles, you can dig a wall if it's blocking you from escaping it's tentacles. If there are no walls blocking your escape, just walk out of where the tentacles are and then rush back to the 1 tile away and keep bombarding it till it succumbs.
Goliath plates add 10% melee resist each time when applied to a rig, ideally if you're just mining you'd want to solely apply that to your chest piece. When maxed out you'll be able to fight a goliath without kiting and take minor damage. It is recommended to apply plates to the head instead if you plan to antag as players more often target your head. The plates will stack until they reach 80%. That makes your suit a space worthy riot suit.
Basilisks
Fierce, territorial beasts capable of firing freezing beams, cold enough to inflict serious freeze burns while the basilisk closes in and attacks its immobilized target. Fortunately, they don't attack unless someone comes very close to them, so one can easily just leave them be until prepared with stimulant pills to reduce the cold and slowdown or a few goliath hide upgrades to go toe-to-toe with them. Drops two diamond ores when taken down.
If using resonator, rush up to it before it freezes you and bash it's fucking face in with the resonator, it'll stay put and get popped by the bubbles and take the additional 10 damage from the resonator itself when you bash it. If using the gun, FUCK THE GUN, use your pickaxe. Kiting this thing with a gun is how you kill yourself.
Goldgrubs
Mostly harmless and quite rare. These creatures swallow up any loose, valuable ore they can find and flee when approached by a human, smashing through even solid rock on their path of escape before burrowing into the ground. A tactic toward killing one is to throw an ore towards it, and quickly charging in to kill it while it's busy eating, it's worth noting that kinetic accelerator shots do nothing against these. When killed, they spit up any ore they have eaten prior to being put down.
The Rewards
So, you've taken your crate of ores to the ore redemption machine and claimed a boatload of points tied to your id. Head on over to the mining equipment lockers and stick your id in to claim fabulous prizes!
- Stimpack MediPen - 50 pts - A cheap stimpack that stimulates your body's adrenaline but can be fatal if abused.
- Leporazine MediPen - 50 pts - A MediPen that can be used to rapidly stabilize your body's temperature if your hardsuit malfunctions or you run in to local wildlife.
- MediPen Bundle - 200 pts - An economy bundle of three stimpacks and two leporazine medipens; Buy four, get one free!
- Premium Havanian Cigar - 100 pts - Inject with
drugsmedicine for a good time. I don't even. - Bottle of whiskey - 150 pts
- Soap - 200 pts - For cleaning up those blood trails made from
assistants who the HoP let indragging downed miners from asteroid beasts. A tile based stun that is amazingly robust for it's cost. Also cleans up evidence. - Alien Toy - 450 pts - A toy facehugger with REAL face-clinging action! Scare your friends! Tear off your enemy's breath mask in a N2O flood. Laugh as the captain and head of personnel uselessly unload their energy guns on it! Really robust little toy. Strips gas masks off people's faces and blinds them. Can cause a large issue for wizards. Unsure how to properly weaponize it else-wise.
- Laser Pointer - 400 pts - Go for the eyes! Borg stunner. Amazing during malf, or when you need to stop a borg in it's tracks and don't want to invest in EMP or trying to flash it.
- Point Card - 500 pts - A card with 500 mining points stored, for trading amongst your coworkers. Simply use an id over it to claim the points stored on.
- Lazarus Injector - 1000 pts - A miracle injection capable of reviving simple living beings from death, making them friendly to just you. useless on humans, monkeys, and other complex living beings. Resurrect Ian for all access from a thankful Head of Personnel! Or make yourself a pet Goliath, do note that while hostile creatures will be friendly to you, they won't play nice with others. Can be emagged to make hostile mobs on station (?). Practical uses are reviving a Goliath and killing it for additional plates. Alternatively useful for bartering with the HoP or any staff with a pet. Flood the AI core with goliaths!
- Wormhole Jaunter - 200 pts - A single use device that creates a wormhole set to a random teleport beacon, creates a quick way of getting out of a sticky situation. Just try not to lose your lunch.
- Mining Drone - 500 pts - Just like what the voucher can get you. Doesn't come with a welding tool. Useful if you want to amass resources and are lazy. Might also help kill a mob.
- Resonator - 650 pts - A handheld device that creates small fields of energy that resonate until they detonate, crushing rock. It can also be activated without a target to create a field at the user's location, to act as a delayed time trap. It's more effective in a vacuum.
- Kinetic Accelerator - 650 pts - A deadly short-range kinetic shotgun that puts internal organs on the outside when in vacuums. Or, you know, you can crush rocks with it too I guess.
- Sonic Jackhammer - 800 pts - For when you want something slightly better than your default pickaxe and the scientists are either too lazy or too dead to make diamond-tipped equipment for you after you bring them minerals. Good if you want additional speed at digging in combination with stimpacks. The fastest digspeed from the equipment vendor, period.
- Jetpack - 2000 pts - Has a special miner paint job so security won't beat you for stealing from EVA. Best bang for buck, can fit into your backpack if needed, but at the cost of some capacity.
- 1000 Space Cash - 5000 pts - DOSH! Bribe the gods!
The Ores
| Wall | Raw Ore | Point Value | Processed Ore | Coin | Door | Name | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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1 | 
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Iron | For just about everything. |
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N/A | 
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Plasteel | An alloy of iron and plasma, for AI cores and reinforced walls. Cannot be produced via the ore redemption machine. The antiquated furnace on the mining station must be used to make these. | |||
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1 |  |
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Sand | For making glass, which has a plethora of station applications. Also used to make dirt, something not wanted by Hydroponics. | |
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N/A |  |
Reinforced Glass | For reinforced glass, which is tougher than normal glass. | |||
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20 | 
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Gold | For making various electronics or pimping out Beepsky. |
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20 | 
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Silver | Making dosh, mechs, and researching Bluespace. |
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40 | 
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Plasma | Ship sheets back to Centcom for bonus supply points. |
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20 | 
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Uranium | For making you radioactive (notice: no joke, this shit is deadly as a wall or a door). Delicious cocktails. |
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40 | 
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Diamond | For making mech parts, among other industrial uses. |
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N/A | Gibtonite | For How to Gibtonite: Hit ore, count to 6-7, hit with scanner. Hope you get tier 0. If failed it blew up in your face, if succeeded you have tier 0-3. Use 2 tier 0s to blow open the AI core and make it cry at it's malf failure! | |||
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30 | 
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Bananium | A rare and unusual mineral found exclusively in clown-controlled space. Used only for the H.O.N.K. mech. |
Who Needs What
Miners don't have to deliver ores directly to departments -- they can if they want, or if those bastards are too lazy to leave their fortress of autism science -- but it never hurts to know what to aim fir.
- Scientists just want a little (10-15 of each is enough to last them the entire round) uranium, plasma, diamond and gold. In exchange, they may give you a bomb or more advanced mining tools like a Sonic Jackhammer or a Diamond Drill, both for even faster digging!
- Roboticists need diamond, uranium, silver and gold for building mech parts. Give them enough and you've indirectly helped out most of the departments on the station if the Roboticists are competent enough to build helpful stompy mechs for everybody! Too bad the Ripley is the only
goodmech for mining. - The Quartermaster may want plasma sheets to trade them in for bonus supply points.
- Everybody could always use more iron, glass and plasteel, but especially Roboticists and Station Engineers.
- The Virologist, Chemist and Xenobiologist will all appreciate having extra plasma.
- A Clown with Bananium is a grateful and dangerous ally.
- The Bartender can use a few sheets of uranium or iron to craft some of his rarest cocktails.
Secrets of the Asteroid
While on the asteroid, you may come upon small boxed structures, usually made of plasma or reinforced walls. Dig in through openings, or use the blue toolbox in the hardsuit room to break down that wall and discover your prize! They could have items ranging from magical artifacts to alien facehuggers. A plasma wall doesn't necessarily mean an alien, always check. If you are at all unsure, always let your mining buddies know using :u before you tear down that wall.
You may randomly find a face hugger while mining. Releasing this on the station when not an antag will get you banned! Delivering it to Xenobiology in a welded shut locker will not.
Dead Space
A traitorous miner has a lot of advantages. You have a space suit for free right away, a pair of gloves, access to highly explosive minerals, you start with a robust pickaxe and can also buy very dangerous "mining" tools and possibly even revive those monsters you've been fighting. As long as you have some mineral wealth or an ore box with you, no one will suspect your presence around the station, even in highly restricted areas like robotics or toxins, and if you are smart enough, you could get a big stompy mech to drill people to death! In addition, the asteroid is isolated, hard to get to, dangerous, and as expansive as you're willing to dig out. Plenty of room for somebody to get lost in... Forever!
