AdderMining

Mining rewards two things the Adder doesn't have much of: ore capacity and the muscle to keep pirates off a laden, stationary ship. What it does have is a medium and two small hardpoints — enough to fit a seismic charge launcher, an abrasion blaster and a sub-surface displacement missile, the complete core-mining toolset, on a hull that costs ~41k Cr. So it can prospect a metallic ring, crack a core, and refine the fragments. The problem is what comes after: its seven small optionals barely hold the refinery, prospector and collector controllers, leaving only a few tonnes for the ore itself.

As a small-pad ship it lands anywhere and reaches any ring, and the buy-in is trivial. But its base 60 MJ shield and light hull mean an interdicting pirate ends the session, and a typical run nets a handful of tonnes before you have to dock. The Adder mines the way it does everything — cheaply and a little of everything — but here that breadth runs straight into a hold too small to make the trip pay.

The handful of points the Adder earns as a miner come from:

• It fits the whole core toolset. One medium plus two small hardpoints take a seismic charge launcher, abrasion blaster and sub-surface missile — the Adder really can crack cores.
• Rank-free and almost free. ~41k Cr, no rank or permit gate, trivial rebuy — the cheapest entry to mining there is.
• Lands anywhere. A small pad reaches every outpost and surface port near a ring, so resupply is never a problem.
• Light support modules fit. A class-1 refinery, prospector and collector controllers and a DSS all squeeze in — just not alongside much ore.

It fits the entire core toolset on a rank-free ~41k Cr small-pad hull, but ~16–24 t of ore behind a 60 MJ shield caps it as a learner, not an earner.

The 48/100 headline is a verdict against the mining role's priority-ordered factors. Each factor carries a weight (its share of 100); this hull earns part of each based on how it performs against the whole field. The points sum to the rating.

Both tables rate ships for mining specifically. The role column is the maximum cargo capacity in tonnes — though practical ore capacity is lower once the mining suite (refinery, limpet controllers) is fitted.

Same class — small-pad miners

Among small-pad miners the Adder is the cheapest and the weakest. Both Cobras hold more ore and can defend the haul; the Adder's only edge is price. If you intend to actually earn from a small ship, a Cobra is the pick — the Adder is purely the budget-learner option.

Other classes — the real miners

Step up one pad class and the gap is stark: even the budget Type-6 and Keelback carry three-to-four times the ore, and the dedicated Type-11 and Type-8 are in another league. The Adder's small pad isn't even an advantage here — mining rings don't need it. It survives this table only as the learner's first tool.

At ~41k Cr the Adder is almost free, with no rank or permit gate. A full mining fit — seismic launcher, abrasion blaster, refinery, prospector and collector controllers, DSS and a token shield — comes in around 1.5M Cr A-rated, and a few million engineered. The whole loop costs less than a single decent ore find on a bigger ship.

That cheapness is the entire case. The Adder lets you try mining without committing to a real miner; the moment you want to earn from it, the price difference to a Cobra or a Type-6 is a few hours of any other activity — and they pay it back in a single trip.

A complete (if tiny) core-mining fit on the cheapest hull that takes one. Initial is buy-only; A-rated is the working baseline; Engineered focuses on range and cool running so the small frame travels well. The mining tools themselves are not meaningfully engineered. For pure laser mining, swap the seismic launcher for a mining laser and drop the missile.

• Buy the hull (~41k Cr) — it ships with stock Lightweight Alloy bulkheads, so armour costs nothing — and fit a single 2D Mining Laser (Fixed) in the medium hardpoint to learn the basic laser loop cheaply.
• Add a 1E Refinery, one prospector and one collector limpet controller, and a Detailed Surface Scanner to find hotspots; fill the remaining optionals with cargo racks.
• Leave the two small hardpoints (abrasion blaster, sub-surface missile) and the Pulse Wave Analyser empty for now, and carry the stock heat-sink launcher in place of a shield — buy-only money goes on the loop, not survivability, and the E-rated plant and distributor can't run a full core suite anyway.

A-rating priority for a budget core miner:

• 1Power Distributor → 2A — Mining tools and limpets are power-hungry; A-rate first. ~250k Cr
• 2Power Plant → 3A — Run the tools, limpets and a token shield together. ~300k Cr
• 3Refinery + limpet controllers → 1A — The heart of the loop; A-rate the refinery, prospector and collector controllers. ~150k Cr
• 4Add the core toolset — 2B Seismic Charge Launcher, 1D Abrasion Blaster, 1B Sub Surface Displacement Missile for cores, plus the 0C Pulse Wave Analyser to spot them. ~200k Cr
• 5FSD → 3A + 2C bi-weave shield — Reach distant rings; survive a clumsy landing. Add a 0A Shield Booster and A-rate thrusters to boost clear of interdictions. ~300k Cr

Mining engineering is light and targets the ship, not the tools — the mining hardware isn't meaningfully engineered. On the Adder it's mostly about travel and a little survivability. Felicity Farseer (maxed) carries the FSD; pin blueprints for remote G1→G5 application.

Recommended order

• 1FSD Increased Range so the light hull reaches distant rings and carries ore home in fewer hops.
• 2Low-Emissions plant keeps heat down through long mining sessions.
• 3A small bi-weave plus a booster — modest, but enough to survive a clumsy landing.
• 4Leave the mining lasers, limpet controllers and refinery stock — they don't benefit from engineering.

Approximate progression across the three states (figures are representative, not exact rolls):

Engineered, the Adder runs the whole mining loop — prospect, crack, refine, collect — but brings home barely two dozen tonnes behind a shield that still won't survive a determined pirate. The Lightweight Armour blueprint on the bulkheads shaves about half their mass for a little extra jump range to distant rings and adds modest resistances, but it doesn't change the flee-only verdict. It teaches mining perfectly and earns from it poorly; the moment the loop clicks, move the kit to a bigger hull.

• Treat it as a trainer — the loop transfers directly to a bigger miner, the ore income doesn't.
• Don't engineer the mining tools; they don't benefit. Spend the mats on FSD and a token shield instead.
• A-rate the small plant and distributor first, or the tools and limpets brown out together.
• Pick rings near a small outpost — the tiny hold means frequent docking, so keep the round trip short.
• Flee every interdiction; the 60 MJ base shield can't trade blows with a pirate.