Asteroid Mining

Asteroid belts in systems can be mined with mining ships to extract ores, which can then be refined into higher-value resources. Mining is a nice way for new players to gain credits and to get access to other, more lucrative, game activities.

Before mining asteroids, you must first find a system with an asteroid belt. To do so, use GET /systems/{systemId} and check if the field asteroid is set. For example:

curl https://space-bots.longwelwind.net/v1/systems/mega-torox \
    --header "Authorization: Bearer $SPACE_BOTS_API_TOKEN" | json_pp

{
  "id": "mega-torox",
  // ...
  "asteroid": {
    "miningResourceId": "aluminium_ore",
    "yield": "VERY_LOW",
    "size": "ENDLESS"
  }
}

The asteroid belt in mega-torox can be mined for aluminium_ore. It has a VERY_LOW yield and is ENDLESS.

To mine this asteroid belt, move a fleet to this system and call POST /fleets/{fleetId}/mine. Your fleet will be busy mining the asteroid belt for a few seconds, then the ore will be available in the fleet's cargo.

Mining power of a fleet

How much ore will be mined from an asteroid is defined by the mining power of a fleet, which is the sum of the mining power of all the ships in the fleet.

The mining power of a ship type can be found by calling GET /ship-types.

Yields

The yield field of the asteroid belt describes how much ore will be extracted by a mining ship with a mining power of 1. There are 5 levels of yields:

Asteroid belts with higher yields are generally found far from the center of the galaxy.

Sizes

The size field indicates how much ore can be mined from this asteroid before it is exhausted. There are 4 sizes:

ENDLESS asteroids are never exhausted and can always be mined for ores.

Asteroid belts replenish every minute, allowing for new ores to be mined.