Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield

[Ezra]

An exploratory prospecting vessel would make an interesting Traveller campaign, but I'm wondering if GURPS has published a system for mining that would give a table of ore availability and yield. The GM could just make it a long task and assign some arbitrary amount of ore available, but it would be fun to have a random ore generator, and a system to see how much prospectors retrieve after working for a set amount of hours.

[copeab]

There was an article in the old print JTAS that covered mining for Classic Traveller, and was reprinted in Best of Vol 1. Included a two page flowchart and a list of all the required rolls. It doesn't go into a lot of detailed on specific ores that can be found.

Book 6: Scoundrels for Mongoose Traveller has a three page chapter on mining, including two pages of charts and one page of "life in the belt".

Neither are quite what you are asking for, but they are the closest I have available to refer you to.

[cptbutton]

In the brand new Xboat issue #2, there is a four page article on asteroid mining "Based on the original charts from JTAS."

But I am not sure if there is a way to get it yet if you weren't in the Kickstarter.

[Anthony]

Realistically this is going to be super boring (the geological processes that create concentrated veins of ore don't exist in asteroids, so much a question of whether it's mostly silicates or mostly nickel-iron, plus ice in the outer system), but that doesn't make for much of a game.

I would avoid using random tables, though, because the interesting thing from a campaign standpoint isn't the mining itself, it's the shenanigans around the mining (claim jumping, etc).

[thrash]

GURPS Transhuman Space: Deep Beyond discusses asteroid mining (pp. 34-36), but doesn't have any tables.

Classic Traveller offers the Beltstrike module boxed set, which expands on the JTAS article. It has a fairly detailed prospecting procedure, based on somewhat dated (i.e., pre-Grand Tack model) stellar system physics. The asteroid types are still as Anthony says. The discoverable resources are different than the JTAS article: radioactives*, dense metals, crystals, and artifacts.

For what it's worth, I tried to write up belters for GURPS Traveller. I couldn't make the economics of independent prospectors and miners work without some kind of "space diamonds" or unobtanium.



*Radioactives are mostly not, in fact, good asteroidal resources. They are concentrated by the geological processes that occur on planetary surfaces.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by thrash

*Radioactives are mostly not, in fact, good asteroidal resources. They are concentrated by the geological processes that occur on planetary surfaces.

That statement is true of just about any resource you might name. They're a bit better for finding siderophile minerals because most of Earth's supply is trapped in its core, but it's still along the lines of "purify a thousand tons of iron to get a kilogram of platinum", and more problematically, there isn't a "mother lode" out there, one nickel-iron asteroid has the same stuff in it as another.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by thrash

The discoverable resources are different than the JTAS article: radioactives*, dense metals, crystals, and artifacts.

F

Fortunately for us (if not so much for the worlds in question) The Ancients blew up a significant number of (formerly) Earth-like planets producing a number of thoroughly unnatural asteroid belts.

The science Anthony and Thrash mention as applying to asteroids untouched by the Ancients is ast least as borign and unhelpful as they imply.

The "geology" of these post-catastrophe asteroid belts is the same as that of the terrestriakl type worlds they used to be enlived by Ancint artifacts or at least semi-melted hyperdense battlearmor.

Remeber: all Traveller problems that can not be solved by Vilani conservatism can be solved by the Ancients!

[Ezra]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Realistically this is going to be super boring (the geological processes that create concentrated veins of ore don't exist in asteroids, so much a question of whether it's mostly silicates or mostly nickel-iron, plus ice in the outer system), but that doesn't make for much of a game.

I would avoid using random tables, though, because the interesting thing from a campaign standpoint isn't the mining itself, it's the shenanigans around the mining (claim jumping, etc).

I see what you mean. It might work if you devised a system that said you can mine X number of silicates per day and your prospectors determined this belt has Y amount of resource. Then you could create problems for them over the duration of time it would take mining a specific belt, moon, etc.

[hal]

Mongoose Traveller also has rules for asteroid mining that is based upon BELTSTRIKE if that helps.

[Ezra]

These sources both sound interesting. I'll check them out. Thank you! :-)

Originally Posted by copeab

There was an article in the old print JTAS that covered mining for Classic Traveller, and was reprinted in Best of Vol 1. Included a two page flowchart and a list of all the required rolls. It doesn't go into a lot of detailed on specific ores that can be found.

Book 6: Scoundrels for Mongoose Traveller has a three page chapter on mining, including two pages of charts and one page of "life in the belt".

Neither are quite what you are asking for, but they are the closest I have available to refer you to.