Discovery Gaming Community

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Welcome to the wonderful world of mining within the Discovery Mod. This guide serves as the latest version of the tutorial designed to inform new and existing players about the changes made by Cannon’s Mining Mod implemented in March of 2011. Many changes were made from 4.8.77 to 4.88.1 and then, even more, changes were made to where we are now - 4.91.0 Patch 8

This tutorial was made to help newer or even older players. If something seems off post a message here or below.





For those who are new to mining in Discovery, keep this in mind

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To make sure of the mining bonus you will need specialized equipment: A mining ID, a compatible mining ship and mining turrets.

Mining IDs are specific IDs that allow you to mine. Some companies specialize in mining, as well as independent Miners. Finally, some quasi-lawful and unlawful groups have the limited ability to mine select ores. All IDs must be used in tandem with their matching IFF, except in the case of the Freelancer ID, which may use any IFF (or none at all). Here is a run-down of all the factions available:

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Mining Turrets are sold on most planets, corporate bases, and Freeports, as well as Junker bases. They come in three varieties: "Small Mineral Extractors" are for use on light fighters, “Light Mining Arrays”, for heavy fighters/freighter turrets, and “Heavy Mining Arrays”, which fit on the heavier transports. They do virtually no damage in combat but are the only turrets capable of mining ore effectively.

Mining lasers operate by adding ore to your cargo hold when they strike and destroy a floating chunk of ore. Because of this, there is a chance you can gain increased ore through careful placement of your mining lasers. For example, on the Annapurna IMG freighter, placing mining lasers on every slot except slots one and two will result in a decent increase in ore drop rate. Slots vary between the different vessels, BUT if you use the numbers listed above you should get optimum results.

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Mining Ships when used with a compatible ID can provide extra droprate from mining fields. Not all mining ships can get a bonus on every mining ID, so check Part II of the guide for a detailed list of which IDs provide a bonus with which ships and for which ores.

Please note that the values for gun hardpoints may be incorrect.
They were done in single player with a visual test and have not been tested against the server side drop rate.
If you notice an issue please report it in this thread.

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Follow the above instructions? Great! You’re on track to becoming the next richest person in Sirius! Now, you’ll need to know where to mine, and where to bring it to once you’ve mined it.

Mining fields can be found by checking your map - open your map by hitting the F7 key (by default) or the map icon in the top right. There will often be large exclusion zones that when hovering over will read "Mining Zone" or something similar. When entering a zone, there will also be text that is displayed that will read "Entering Mining Zone" or something similar.

You can only gain ore while inside these fields, and ore will only drop from the small floating rocks, not the larger stationary ones. If you are not gaining any ore from the field, it is possible that:


If all else fails, contact other players in the field, players of any of the official mining factions, or post a reply in this thread. There will always be people willing to help you out.

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The Helium field in Pennsylvania (sector C6) is specifically tuned for newer players who're just starting out and don't yet have access to larger transports that'd make longer routes worthwhile. Unlike regular Ores that need specialized mining ships to make use of the mining bonus, Helium can be mined on any freighter and transport up to 3.6k cargo with Freelancer ID, IFF and mining turrets.

There are various sellpoints for it at different distances, all providing a decent profit. Short-range sellpoints are ideal for running on freighters and smaller transports but are only one-way profit as they don't tie into any return commodities, while the medium-sized transports can start heading out to farther sellpoints and add the option of return commodities to make the trip worthwhile. Farthest sellpoints from Pennsylvania are set up more or less on par with standard ore routes, but only return a decent profit if done in larger transports.

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Ask a nearby miner or an online [Staff] member for help. If neither of those options are available, feel free to leave a post in this thread and someone will be more than happy to get back to you with assistance.

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This tutorial was made to help newer or even older players. If something seems off post a message here or below.

Updated: 9/6/22