For each ship below, I will discuss what I think of it for use as your own ship, and for use as an escort. although it depends a lot of your personal tastes. Space, but are generally less agile and have less outfit space - one must find a balance between all four factors in order to get the best ship. Lastly (and not so obviously) there's the physical ship size - ships with a larger image size thus sweep out more space on the screen, and are thus more likely to pick up those renegade blobs. If one can never catch up to the asteroids, one will have trouble destroying them, and if the ship is too sluggish, then the blobs will all vanish before you can scoop them up.
Thirdly, one must consider the ship's agility - acceleration and turning, and to a lesser extent the maximum speed. Increase the rate of asteroid carnage, and thus decrease the time you need to spend in mining. Secondly, there's weapon capabilities - how many guns can you carry, and how much room for upgrades do you have? Since the asteroids aren't shooting back, you don't really need much firepower to do mining (even a single light blaster will do) but more powerful weapons can
In short, they are as follows: Firstly, you have your cargo space - how many minerals can you hold before you need to go and sell some to free up room? If you only have ten tons, then you can only mine one asteroid (two if they're small) before you need to go and sell them, which can cost money if you have to jump to a different system. There are many ships from which one can choose - but which is the best to have as an asteroid miner? There are many factors which one must consider, some of which will be discussed in greater detail in Appendixįour. 5.5 The Brains of the Bunch - Advanced Mining Tacticsĥ.1 Flying Around with the Greatest of Ease 5.4 The Crux of the Matter - Where is the Best Place to Sell? 5.3 All Dressed Up and Nowhere to go - Where is the Best Place to Mine? 5.2 The Most Bang for your Buck - Which Weapon Should I Use? 5.1 Flying Around with the Greatest of Ease - Which Ship Should I Use? (Oh, and please don't tell me I've spelt "colour" wrong, because that's the correct way to spell it =P ). If you would like to make your own contribution, or tell me that my opinion is rubbish, or correct me on other matters, then please do - my e-mail address can be found above, in the introduction. I'm just doing this page because it's fun (and besides, I have nothing better to do).
Imposing my will upon others is the last thing I want to do. Most of everything that follows is based almost entirely upon my own opinion - if you think it's all rubbish and would rather choose your own ship, then feel free to. What I've covered in the previous page is basically everything you need to know - but why stop there? Sure, it's easy enough to grab any old ship with any old weapon and start blasting away at those pesky floating rocks, but what is the best ship to use? What is the best weapon? But more importantly, where on (or rather, off) Earth are you supposed to go toįind the asteroids you're looking for? And then where are you meant to go to sell them? You can't sell Opals everywhere you go, you know. Belthazar's Guide to Asteroid Mining Still Under Construction 5.