Moon Mining

Moon mining is performed by Athanors placed in proximity to a moon, which draws a large chunk of it out into space using a moon drill. You can visually see the process of pulling out a new moon belt, which can take anywhere from 6 to 56 days to complete. Once the belt is close to the Athanor it will fire a charge that fractures the chunk into smaller asteroids that can be mined.

Moon asteroids are bigger than normal belt ore and contains large quantities of ubiquitous ore such as Zeolites, Sylvite, Bitumens and Coesite. Once processed these produce valuable gasses and minerals such as: Mexallon, Atmhospheric Gases, Silicates, Evaporite Deposits, Hydrocarbons and more, which can be used directly or as part of reactions.

Fittings

You can use various different mining ships for moon mining and find fittings available as either corporation or alliance fittings. The Mackinaw, Hulk, and Orca would be the preferred options. Modulated Strip Miner II with Ubiquitous Type A II crystals are recommend although not essential.

Orcas Inc.

The Republic has access to moon mining in the systems of: Aphi and Jakri with a daily pop in each system. We mine together with the Orcas Inc. group, so you will find many others in the belts together in a larger fleet. This also means that the mining fleet is up 24/7.

Rules

Before getting started with moon mining, please join the in-game channel: "Orcas Inc", where you will updated information on current moon belts, fleet invitation, and shared bookmarks.

Here you will also find information on current Day 1 and Day 2 moon belts, current boosters and much more. The belts are defined in the following format:

[system] - [station name] - [type of belt] boosted by [player]

Belts - Day 1

A fresh belt will consist of rocks of the sizes: 572K, 382K, and 191K m³. During Day 1 lasting from 18:00 Eve to 18:00 Eve the next day, you are allowed to mine rocks with the following ships:

572K and 382K m³ - Orcas and Porpoises only. This also means that you are not allowed to mine a large rock that your Orca is sitting on with exhumers/barges.
191K m³ - Any ship (mostly exhumers and barges).

Please do as follows when starting to mine:

Join the current Orcas Inc. fleet, so you recieve free boosts and compression.
Park your Orca no more than 500m from the asteroid to claim it and mine using drones.
Only mine your own asteroid with all your drones. Do not spread out your drones or strip miners across multiple asteroid.
If the moon "pop" has produced valuable glistening ore, also called a "Jackpot", you can only use T1 mining drones and T1 or ORE strip miners. This eliminates waste and ensures the maximum mining amount of this rare ore.

Belts - Day 2

The second day of moon mining starts at 18:00 the following day and lasts until the belt vanishes. Here the rules are simpler, as we do not wish to see any moon ore despawning. You can therefore use any ship to mine with.

Join the current Orcas Inc. fleet, but note that for Day 2 belts you cannot be sure to recieve boosts and compression.
Park your ship close to an asteroid to claim and mine it using any combination of strip miners and drones you might have.
Only mine your own asteroid with your strip miners and drones. You are not allowed to split your mining across multiple asteroids.

Taxation

All ore you mine using the Orcas Inc. partnership are subject to a 15% tax. The tax is used to pay for fuel, protection of the structures and further development of the partnership. You keep of your taxes by:

Sign up with an account for Orcas Inc.'s dashboard here. The process is similar to when you first signed up for REPUB Dashboard.
Go to the "Mining Taxes" section and then to "Setup". Here you need to register all the characters you will be mining on.
The system will now keep track of your taxes owed.

To pay your taxes, do the following:

Go to the Mining Taxes section and see your outstanding taxes. These updates once per day.
Find the corporation Quam Geriatrics in-game. Enter the amount from the dashboard and make sure to add "TAXMAN" to the description.
Your payment will now automatically be tracked on the next update.

If you fail to pay your share of taxes, you will face consequences and risk losing your ships. We will not assist you diplomatically or otherwise if this occurs due to your lack of payment, and you will risk expulsion from The Republic as well.