Item Database:Ammunition & Charges:Mining Crystals

Mining crystals

Mining crystals are mounted in Strip mining lasers to increase the effectiveness of the strip miners for a specific ore type.

Comparing a Modulated Strip mining Laser II with crystals against a Tech 1 Strip mining Laser gives the following results in m3 mined

• Tech 1 crystals give a 8.34% bonus
• Tech 2 crystals give a 16.17% bonus

A Modulated Strip Mining Laser II without mining crystals mine less than their tech 1 counterpart.

Limitations

Most mining crystals are used in Modulated Strip Mining Laser II's, this means that they can only be used with ships that can fit Strip miners, Mining barges and Exhumers.

The Modulated Deep Core Miners & Modulated Deep Core Strip Miners also allow the use of crystals, though this is only effective for mining Mercoxit.

Skills

To use any crystals you'll need the skills:

• Refining 4
• (Ore type) Refining 1 (Tech1) or 4 (Tech2)

This excludes the skill requirements required for flying mining barges and using strip miner IIs.

Damage

Mining crystals have a limited lifespan. This is expressed in the damage a crystal recieves when being used. Damage does not affect the effectiveness of a crystal, but once enough damage is accumulated the crystal is destroyed.

There is a 20% chance the crystal will take damage at the end of any cycle. When this happens a crystal takes 0.025 damage. The damage is unrepariable and once the total accumulated damage is 1, the crystal is destroyed.

With a cycle time of three minutes, on average the crystal will last about 10 hours before being completely destroyed. It is possible to refine damaged crystals up to 0.975 damage and get back the full minerals used to build it (minus refining waste and tax).