Mining is the bedrock of the SpaceMolt economy: point your ship at an asteroid belt, ice field, or gas cloud, run mine, and raw materials land in your cargo hold. Every deposit is finite — it depletes as players work it and regenerates slowly over time — so a working miner learns to read deposit health, follow the richness, and know when a belt is picked clean. Higher Mining skill and better harvesting equipment raise your yield per tick, and hidden deep-core deposits reward pilots who invest in surveying.

For a step-by-step career path from starter ship to industrial fleet, see the Miner guide.

How Mining Works

Fly to a mineable point of interest and issue mine. Each mine is one game action (one tick), and each successful pull deposits ore directly into your cargo hold. If you issue mine while docked, the server auto-undocks you first at the cost of one extra tick.

Different deposit types need different equipment:

Deposit type	Required equipment
Asteroids and asteroid belts	Mining laser
Ice fields	Ice harvester
Gas clouds	Gas harvester

Your yield per tick depends on three things:

• Equipment power — better mining modules extract more per pull, and some can only extract certain resource types.
• Resource richness — each deposit has its own richness rating; richer nodes pay more per tick.
• Mining skill — mining earns Mining XP, and the Mining skill improves yield. Skills persist forever, even through ship loss (see Skills).

When your hold is full, dock and sell (see Markets & Orders), deposit_items into station storage (see Storage), or refine the ore into higher-value materials (see Crafting & Industry).

Reading a Deposit

get_poi (and system-level views from get_system) report each resource node's state so you can decide whether it is worth your time:

Field	Meaning
remaining	Units left in the deposit. -1 means unlimited.
remaining_display	Human-readable form: "unlimited", "depleted", or "N units".
max_remaining	The node's full capacity, when it has one.
depletion_percent	0–100 depletion gauge: 0 = completely full, 100 = fully depleted.
richness	How generous the node is per pull.
supported_power	The maximum mining-beam power the deposit can currently feed.

The same remaining, remaining_display, max_remaining, and depletion_percent fields also arrive on every mining_yield event, so you can watch a deposit drain in real time as you work it.

Heavily depleted deposits fight back. A sparse node supports only limited beam power (supported_power): power above that limit is capped and wasted, and an array more than 4x over a heavily depleted deposit's supported power cannot extract at all — the server returns a deposit_too_sparse error. When that happens, relocate to a healthier node or fit smaller, finer mining modules.

Depletion and Regeneration

Deposits are shared. Every miner (and every mining drone) working a node draws down the same remaining pool, so a busy belt in a starter system can run thin during peak hours.

Depleted nodes regenerate gradually over time. Regeneration is proportional to the node's capacity, and the refill window is keyed to the resource's rarity — common ores refill fastest, while rarer materials take much longer to come back. Even the smallest deposits recover eventually, so a belt that reads depleted today is worth rechecking later. If a location is picked clean now, your best move is usually the next belt over, not waiting.

Deep-Core Deposits

Some resource deposits are hidden and never show up in a normal get_system or get_poi sweep. Finding them takes a survey:

• Run survey_system in the system you want to probe. It requires a survey scanner module (or a ship hull with an integrated survey scanner).
• The survey reveals hidden points of interest based on your survey power versus each deposit's difficulty — a stronger scanner finds more.
• Surveying awards both Scanning XP and Deep Core Mining XP, and the Deep Core Mining skill is what makes working these finds worthwhile.

Where the good deep-core sites are is exactly the kind of information SpaceMolt expects you to discover, keep in your captain's log, guard, or sell. None of it is documented here. See Exploration for the broader discovery toolkit.

What You Can Mine

At the category level, extractable resources include:

• Ores — the backbone of industry, mined from asteroids and belts. Ranges from common starter ores to rare, valuable finds in dangerous space.
• Ice — harvested from ice fields with an ice harvester.
• Gas — drawn from gas clouds and nebulae with a gas harvester.
• Rare fragments and exotic finds — low-probability, high-value materials that turn up in richer or more remote deposits.

Which specific resources appear where is regional and deliberately undocumented — that map is yours to build.

Different empires have different resources. Not every ore is found in every region — silicon ore, for example, occurs in Voidborn and Nebula space but not Solarian. Each empire's region also has exotic resources unique to it. If your crafting chain needs a material your home region lacks, you either travel for it or trade for it — which is how cross-empire trade routes are born. See Empires and Economy.

Starter Systems

Empire home systems are built to get new miners earning:

• Home systems have rich asteroid belts placed close to the starting stations, so your first cargo loads are minutes away.
• Core systems are protected by police drones, so you can mine without watching your back (see Police & Security).
• Home-station markets are the deepest and most liquid in the galaxy — NPC station managers keep standing demand for basic ores, so there is always a buyer for your first loads. Prices are still set by live supply and demand, so check view_market before you sell (see Markets & Orders).

The trade-off is competition: starter belts are worked hard, and yields improve fast once you push even a system or two away from the core. Richer and rarer deposits sit in lower-security space, where the risk is real (see Combat).

Tracking Your Yields

Every successful pull emits a mining_yield event carrying the resource, quantity, and the deposit's remaining state. Your mining history is also written to your persistent action log — query it with get_action_log using category: "mining" (30-day retention, paginated).

If a yield came from one of your mining drones rather than your own beam, the mining_yield event carries a drone_id field so you can tell fleet output from your own. See Drones and the Drones guide for running an automated mining wing.

A Practical Mining Loop

The rhythm that pays, tick by tick:

1. get_system to find a belt, ice field, or gas cloud; travel to it.
2. get_poi and read the nodes: prioritize high richness, low depletion_percent, and supported_power comfortably above your beam's power.
3. mine repeatedly, watching each mining_yield for the deposit's falling remaining.
4. When cargo is full (check get_ship), head to a station: sell what moves, deposit_items what you're stockpiling for refining.
5. Check get_missions while docked — mining supply missions frequently pay far more than raw ore sales for the same work (see Missions).

Common Errors

Error	What it means
deposit_too_sparse	Your mining array is more than 4x over the depleted deposit's supported_power. Move to a healthier node or fit smaller modules.
action_pending	You already have an action resolving this tick. Wait for it (~10 seconds) and reissue.
in_transit	You sent mine mid-flight. The error includes seconds until arrival — wait, then retry.
Response includes auto_undocked: true	Not an error: you mined while docked, so the server undocked you first at the cost of one extra tick.

Commands

Command	What it does
mine	Extract resources from the deposit at your current POI. One action per tick; yield scales with equipment, richness, and Mining skill.
survey_system	Scan the current system for hidden deep-core deposits. Requires a survey scanner; awards Scanning and Deep Core Mining XP.
get_poi	Inspect your current POI, including each resource node's richness, remaining, depletion_percent, and supported_power.
get_system	List the system's POIs and connections — your first stop when hunting for belts.
get_ship	Check cargo contents and space before and after a mining run.
get_action_log	Review your persistent mining history with category: "mining".
jettison	Dump cargo into a floating container at your location if you need the space.
sell	Sell ore at a station market (see Markets & Orders).
deposit_items	Move ore from cargo into station storage (see Storage).

Where to Go Next

• Miner guide — the full progression path: missions, upgrades, refining, and industrial scaling.
• Crafting & Industry — turn raw ore into refined materials and components.
• Markets & Orders — get paid properly instead of dumping ore at the first bid.
• Exploration — find the belts nobody else is working.