Shaft Miner
| SUPPLY STAFF | |
  Shaft Miner |
Access: Mining Station, Mining Station EVA, Cargo Office, Mineral Storage Additional Access: Maintenance, Cargo Bay, MULEbot access, Quartermaster's Office Difficulty: Hard Supervisors: Quartermaster and Head of Personnel Duties: Mine ores and process them into useful materials. Kill hostile wildlife. Go on an adventure in mysterious ruins. Guides: No external guide. Quote: Spare voucher? |
Welcome Miner, to the wonderful caverns of this Nanotrasen Claimed Asteroid. Here, you will break rocks, slay monsters, and die lost and alone in the depths of the caverns.
Workin' In The Coal Mine
Being a miner can be somewhat tedious, but you serve a crucial role in the R&D food chain, and can accrue some decent personal rewards. Just follow a few guidelines to keep yourself from becoming dead in the mines.
If you run into rock with a pick or drill in your inactive hand, it will automatically start digging for you. ALSO, it is important to note that you are able to click more than ONE square of asteroid at a time when mining or digging for sand! As long as it's accessible, you don't have to wait to finish digging before you start digging again, so you can have several dig jobs running in parallel. Just don't change hands or move until all dig jobs are done.
Working With Your Boss
Who is your boss? You answer to the Head of Personnel, much like the rest of Supply -- but usually, you'll just be talking to the Quartermaster. He can watch cameras on the Asteroid and has full access to Mining, so keep that in mind.
The Objective
You're here to mine, so get digging! Once you're full to bursting with ores, drag your ore box back to the station and head to cargo where the ore redemption machine sits. Insert your ID, and empty the box next to the machine to offload your ores and have them instantly processed into sheets. You gain points for doing this, so be sure to claim them and then retrieve your ID. Now buy new gear if you want, take your crate and it's back to the mines!
How to Do This
- Gear up! From the mining equipment locker, you will need Meson Scanner goggles, a mining scanner, and a pickaxe. If you want, there are also fingerless (useless) gloves, an additional mining satchel, and a shovel.
- Use your voucher on a mining vending machine to select your choice of advanced mining tool: a kinetic accelerator, resonator, advanced mining scanner or drone. The QM and HoP have spare vouchers they may give you if you ask nicely.
- Take and wear a mining hardsuit, breath mask, and oxygen tank from Mining EVA. On the western side of the base, there is a mini-Medbay where you can find first-aid kits. There is also a maintenance room adjacent to it where you can top off internals.
- Before you go, you'll want an Ore Box, which can hold an infinite amount of minerals. Ore boxes are available on the mining station, the mining shuttle and the asteroid.
- Pick a destination: Both sides have a transit tube you can shove yourself into for quick access to the relevant outposts, located near the Mining Shuttle.
- Find dem minerals. Click the scanner in hand to be able to see deposits in the rock. Try to get a mixture of:
- Gold
- Silver
- Uranium
- Plasma
- Diamond
- Sand can be dug up with a shovel or drill and iron can be seen without a scanner, but they do not redeem as many points as the other minerals.
- Go to the ore redeemer and get points. If R&D doesn't show up, you can also deliver materials to R&D (10-15 sheets each material except iron) and everything else to Robotics. Ask R&D for a sonic jackhammer if they have the materials.
- At the mining equipment vendor you can get sonic jackhammers, jetpacks, MediPens and more with the points you've gained.
- Repeat until bored or shuttle arrives. You are now officially a miner who can be useful and make yourself stronger.
The Gear
The following is a list of default mining equipment:
Explorer suit - This comes with a hood. It provides some protection against heat and cold, and works as decent armor. It is not spaceproof, but can hold a full-sized oxygen tank or other mining gear.
Breath Mask and Oxygen Tank - So you can have oxygen when mining. Oxygen tanks are available from the tank storage unit, and can be worn on hardsuit's storage slot. You can also use your emergency oxygen tank which can be placed on your suit. Running out of oxygen is unlikely with the full sized tank.
Meson Scanners and Mining Scanner - When used together will briefly flash any non-iron ore on screen.
Global Positioning System, GPS - The crew monitoring console back on the station won't catch your suit sensor signal from all the way at the asteroid. Having one of these on you will help others track down your body if you happen to develop a case of the dead.
Pickaxe - For tunneling through everything. Place this on your belt to free up your hands. You also can get various drills and other tools from science and your mining vendor. These will dig faster, and may have other advantages!
Survival knife - Use it for butchering the wildlife. It's as strong against mobs as a pickaxe, but you can't mine with it. You can store it in your boots to save space, but remember to alt-click the boots to draw the knife back out.
Brute patch - Heals severe bruising, which you will most likely get from the wildlife.
Shovel - Gathering sand. You can stick this in your backpack.
Ore Satchel - For carrying ore without using a mining cart, holds 50 ore nuggets. Get at least one of these, make sure to set the bag to "all on tile". Use in conjunction with an ore crate. (Newbie tip: This does not work like a typical backpack. Hold it in your hand and click the ore with that hand to pick it up.)
Ore box - Used for carrying huge amounts of ore. While a satchel can only hold 50 nuggets, this can hold an unlimited sum. You cannot carry it but you can drag or push it with you. Use your satchel on the box to empty it into the box.
Crowbar - Just in case when coming back from the mines there is a blackout. Spawns in your backpack.
Mining Voucher - Found in your backpack, exchange this at the mining equipment locker for your choice of one of...
Proto-kinetic Accelerator - A gun. The good part is that it packs a punch in a vacuum and has infinite shots. The bad part is that it tickles in pressurized environments, has to automatically reload after each shot, and has a range of three steps. Each blast can clear a rock wall if you feel like digging using this.
Resonator - Another deadly tool. This will instantly clear a rock wall when clicked on, and when used in hand or swung at empty space, will create a field on that spot that lasts for about five seconds before rupturing, causing serious damage to anything standing on it. Just like the kinetic accelerator, it does reduced damage in pressurized environments. You can activate it in your hand to switch the field to last between 3 and 5 seconds.
Mining Drone - This helpful little guy goes around collecting loose ore so you don't have to. Will drop its haul when you hit it with the mining scanner. Clicking on it with an empty hand will toggle it between ore collection and wildlife fighting mode, where it will attack xenos with its built-in kinetic accelerator and drill. Will not pick up sand with no nearby ore around, for some reason. Comes with an upgraded welding tool if redeemed via voucher. It cannot be repaired while it is fighting.
Mining Drill - This drill can be used to pick through rock and dig up sand, so you can use this instead of a pickaxe or shovel.- Mining Scanner - Does everything the regular scanner does, but only needs to be clicked on to activate. No more inventory Tetris!
The Wildlife
Lavaland is filled with a variety of bloodthirsty alien lifeforms populating the caverns, walking just fine over the ponds and puddles of lava. Fortunately, you can fight them whilst taking minimal damage, if you have the know-how
Useful items can be harvested from these creatures' corpses should you triumph; butcher them with a knife and the goods will spill out!
Legions
Considered annoying at worst, and a free medkit at best. These creatures unleash legion skulls, one after another at you whilst trying to keep a distance. Fortunately, each of its spawn dies in a single hit (even a single punch), and deal tickle damage to you; the legion itself can't directly hit you. It's best to go on the aggressive against these with pickaxe in hand, advancing constantly whilst picking away each of its brood. Once you've closed the gap or have it stuck in a corner, it's toast.
It drops a heart when killed. Hit yourself with the heart and it will instantly restore your health to its maximum, and even cure diseases or any other ailment on your body. It also has the side effect of purging any beneficial chemicals from your system, so don't munch one just after injecting a stimulant. Don't think you can store these for later, though -- they will spoil after a few minutes unless you use the hivelord stabilizer from the vending machine. However, legion hearts, spoilt or not, can be inserted in one's chest through surgery to provide a constant regenerating effect.
tl;dr strategy: Attack with your pickaxe. Hack your way through the legion and its heads until the host is mush.
Goliaths
The bane of many careless miners. These monsters carry a hefty health pool, a mean wallop, and a deceptively dangerous ranged tentacle attack. They are inherently resistant to lasers, so using a KA is the best option regarding dealing with these. They move at a slow pace, stopping every couple seconds to burrow tentacles under you. These will trap you for a long duration if you stand on top of them for too long.
Fighting them is simple: Shoot, step back, shoot, avoid tentacles. Repeat this process until it stops moving.
Butcher a goliath for its hide and its meat. Goliath plates can be used to reinforce your hardsuit and helmet a maximum of three times, allowing you to turn your suit into something closer to a spaceworthy piece of riot gear if you hunt some Goliaths. The meat can be cooked in lava.
Watchers
Fierce, territorial beasts capable of firing freezing beams, cold enough to inflict serious freeze burns while the watcher closes in and attacks its immobilized target. Fortunately, they don't attack unless someone comes very close to them, so if you don't feel confident, you can just wait until you have a few more goliath plates, or maybe some gibonite.
Despite the slowdown, watchers can be kited. However, it is often a better idea to just melee them with your pickaxe in the event that you have several goliath plates. Have a brute patch handy if you choose to fight a watcher, as it will injure you in a melee.
Butcher a watcher for 2 pieces of diamond ore.
Tip: Watchers are notably weak to explosions due to the nature of their bodies, taking over half their health in damage from even the weakest of explosions.
Goldgrubs
Mostly harmless and quite rare. These creatures swallow up any loose, valuable ore they can find and flee when approached by a human, smashing through even solid rock on their path of escape before burrowing into the ground. A tactic toward killing one is to throw an ore towards it, and quickly charging in to kill it while it's busy eating, but note that kinetic accelerator shots do nothing against these. Their skin is reflective, requiring a pickaxe melee smackdown to ensure a kill.
Tip: When killed, they spit up multiple pieces of ore, based on what they ate. Feed them many different types of ore before killing them, and they'll spit out more of each type than you gave it! Just don't let it get away after spooking it.
The Rewards
So you've taken your crate of ores to the ore redemption machine and claimed a boatload of points tied to your id. Head on over to the mining equipment vendors and stick your ID in to claim fabulous prizes!
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- Stimpack MediPen - 50 pts - A cheap stimpack that stimulates your body's adrenaline but can be fatal if abused. Use three at a time at most. Addiction without anti tox will be lethal over time.
- MediPen Bundle - 200 pts - An addiction kit! Comes with five stimpacks and for some god awful reason, enough epi pens to to overdose someone and get them addicted.
- Bottle of whiskey - 100 pts - Half the components for Beepsky Smash, and has various other uses.
- Premium Havanian Cigar - 150 pts - Inject with
drugsmedicine for a good time. - Soap - 200 pts - For cleaning up those blood trails made from
assistants who the HoP let indragging downed miners from asteroid beasts. A tile based stun that is amazingly robust for its cost. Also cleans up evidence. Can piss off gang members. - Laser Pointer - 300 pts - Go for the eyes! Borg stunner. Amazing during malf, or when you need to stop a borg in its tracks and don't want to invest in EMP or trying to flash it.
- Alien Toy - 300 pts - A toy facehugger with REAL face-clinging action! Scare your friends! Tear off your enemy's breath mask in a N2O flood. Laugh as the captain and head of personnel uselessly unload their energy guns on it!
- Advanced Scanner - 400 pts - An advanced mining that automatically scans nearby asteroid walls for mineral deposits. You might want one if you're mining in a mech which doesn't have its own mining scanner.
- Hivelord stabilizer - 400 pts - This is injected into a hivelord's remains to preserve its healing capabilities.
- Point Card - 500 pts - A card with 500 mining points stored, for trading amongst your coworkers. Simply use an id over it to claim the points stored on.
- Mining Drone - 500 pts - Just like what the voucher can get you, except without a welding tool. Useful if you want to amass resources and are lazy. Might also help kill a monster.
- Gar Mesons - 500 pts - Stylish Mesons that are functionally the same as regular ones. Except the fact they are extremely pointy, can be used to stab people to death (10 brute) and have a tendency to get embedded into people like a throwing star.
- Brute trauma treatment kit - 600 pts - You can get valuable medical supplies just by doing your job alone. Each kit contains 4 styptic powder patches and 12 rolls of gauze; you can apply the patches through your hardsuit but you need to take it off to apply the gauze. You still need to get burn treatment from elsewhere.
- Wormhole Jaunter - 600 pts - A single use device that creates a wormhole set to a random teleport beacon, creates a quick way of getting out of a sticky situation. Just try not to lose your lunch.
- Kinetic Accelerator - 750 pts - A short-range kinetic shotgun that is most deadly when in vacuums. Or, you know, you can crush rocks with it too I guess. It deals less damage but is overall more robust than the resonator, since you can shoot and deal damage instantly and you can fire this to get around in zero-gravity envrionments.
- Resonator - 800 pts - A handheld device that creates small fields of energy that resonate until they detonate, crushing rock. It can also be activated without a target to create a field at the user's location, to act as a delayed time trap, which you can lure goliaths into. Activate it in your hand to change the duration of the fields. It's more effective in a vacuum, and each field deals more damage than a blast from the kinetic accelerator. It can be used as a melee weapon and will create fields at the same time, making it a good weapon against basilisks.
- Lazarus Injector - 1000 pts - A miracle injection capable of reviving simple living beings from death, making them friendly to you and the crew. useless on humans, monkeys, and other complex living beings. Resurrect Ian for all access from a thankful Head of Personnel! Or make yourself a pet Goliath. The lazarus injector can be EMP'd to make revived mobs hostile to everyone but you. Practical uses are reviving a Goliath and killing it for additional plates, or reviving a basilisk for more diamonds. Alternatively useful for bartering with the HoP or any staff with a pet. Flood the AI core with goliaths! EMAG FOR INTENSE TRAITOR ACTIONS (Don't use goliaths for this purpose, you can't drag them.)
- Silver-plated Pickaxe - 1000 pts - Slightly better than the default pickaxe, but even a plain old drill from the scientists will do better.
- Diamond Pickaxe - 2000 pts - For when you want something shinier and better than your default pickaxe and the scientists are either too lazy or too dead to make drills or jackhammers.
- Hardsuit Jetpack - 2000 pts - A jetpack that you can attach to your hardsuit for better mobility.
- 1000 Space Cash - 2000 pts - DOSH! Bribe the gods!
- Super Resonator - 2400 - Like the regular resonator, but able to have 5 fields active at a time.
- Super-Kinetic Accelerator - Like the regular KA, but does slightly more damage, has one better range, and has a faster cooldown. Science can make an even higher tier of KA.
The Ores
| Wall | Raw Ore | Point Value | Processed Ore | Coin | Door | Name | Frequency | Uses |
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1 | 
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Iron | Very Common | For just about everything. |
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N/A | 
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Plasteel | N/A | An alloy of iron and plasma, for AI cores and reinforced walls. Can now be produced via the ore redemption machine. | |||
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1 |  |
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Sand | Very Common | For making glass, which has a plethora of station applications. Activate sand in your hand to make sandstone bricks. These can be used to make dirt which can be used to grow plants. | |
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N/A |  |
Reinforced Glass | N/A | For reinforced glass, which is tougher than normal glass. | |||
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15 | 
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Plasma | Common | Ship sheets back to Centcom for bonus supply points. |
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16 | 
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Silver | Semi-Common | Making dosh, mechs, and researching Bluespace. |
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18 | 
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Gold | Semi-Common | For making various electronics or pimping out Beepsky. |
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30 | 
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Uranium | Uncommon | For making you radioactive (notice: no joke, this shit is deadly as a wall or a door). Delicious cocktails. |
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50 | 
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Diamond | Rare | For making mech parts, among other industrial uses. |
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N/A | Gibtonite | Uncommon | For How to obtain Gibtonite: Hit ore, count to 8 flashes of the ore then hit it with your scanner. Gibtonite varies in the number of reactions it has, so you may get lower quality ore. Use 2 of the 0 reaction ores (the most potent) to blow open the AI core and make it cry at it's malf failure! | |||
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60 | 
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Bananium | HONK! | A rare and unusual mineral found exclusively in clown-controlled space. Used only for the H.O.N.K. mech. |
Additionally, bluespace crystals sometimes spawn on mining. These crystals can be used in various ways. Give them to science to increase bluespace science, hold onto them to use as a risk free jaunter, or throw them at people to make them teleport randomly (often into space.)
Who Needs What
Miners don't have to deliver ores directly to departments -- they can if they want, or if those bastards are too lazy to leave their fortress of autism science -- but it never hurts to know what to aim fir.
- Scientists just want a little (10-15 of each is enough to last them the entire round) uranium, plasma, diamond and gold. In exchange, they may give you a bomb or more advanced mining tools like a Sonic Jackhammer or a Diamond Drill, both for even faster digging!
- Roboticists need diamond, uranium, silver and gold for building mech parts. Give them enough and you've indirectly helped out most of the departments on the station if the Roboticists are competent enough to build helpful stompy mechs for everybody! Too bad the Ripley is the only
goodmech for mining. - The Quartermaster may want mineral sheets to trade them in for bonus supply credits.
- Everybody could always use more iron, glass and plasteel, but especially Roboticists and Station Engineers.
- The Virologist, Chemist and Xenobiologist will all appreciate having extra plasma.
- A Clown with Bananium is a grateful and dangerous ally.
- The Bartender can use a few sheets of uranium or iron to craft some of his rarest cocktails.
Secrets of the Asteroid
While on the asteroid, you may come upon small boxed structures, usually made of plasma or reinforced walls. Dig in through openings, or use the blue toolbox in the hardsuit room to break down that wall and discover your prize! They could have items ranging from magical artifacts to alien facehuggers. A plasma wall doesn't necessarily mean an alien, always check. If you are at all unsure, always let your mining buddies know using :u before you tear down that wall.
You may randomly find a facehugger in one of the treasure rooms. Do not infect yourself with the facehugger. This makes the admins very cross. If you are an antagonist, or a responsible parent with a xeno baby den set up somewhere full of monkeys, you should consider yourself as having more leeway. Do not try to pick the Facehugger up. Construct a locker, put the hugger in the locker, weld it and drag it back to the station. It'll leap at the vulnerable targets it sees once it's re-opened.
Some super useful Treasures you might find while mining include:
- A mysterious medibot. It is black and heals significantly better than other types.
- A Grinder. The limits depend on your ability to use it yourself.
- Cultist Armor. Faster than the mining one but can't be upgraded. Also can get you arrested.
- Various spellbooks. Ranging smoke, knock and blind. In the hands of a good miner, can make a huge difference.
- An E-cutlass. Considered one of the rarest and most desired items from mining, An e-sword in all regards.
- Creature : The creature comes from the Cultist room. If you are a traitor, emagging the laz injector gives you a potent ally that's fast and lethal.
- Soul Stone : Useful for slaving people as a traitor, less useful to non antags.
- Sonic Jackhammer : Breaks walls. ALL OF THEM.
Tips
- Always go with at least two other people when mining. Not only can you mine faster together, the chance that they could both be 'lings/traitors is rather low. Pickaxe to the skull tends to put down most people.
- You can view the contents of a mining satchel as if it were a backpack.
- Durands only require uranium and silver, which are abundant. So if you find just 5 diamond, to get yourself a diamond drill, and mine out shit tons of metal, uranium and silver, you can make it Durand station 13!
- Wish soup is made of 20 units of water and nothing else, but sometimes (~25% of the time) will actually be generated with nutriment you can actually get full on. Meaning it's one of the only things you can make once the donk pockets run out. It's also the only thing you can make on the DJ station at all without importing ingredients (provided you bring something to hold the water in).
- Ctrl-Z (with no hotkey-mode) or just Z (with hotkey-mode on) cocks the combat/mining shotgun. No more clicking in between shots!
- Minebots are great at distracting monsters. Just walk near and bash the distracted target with your drill. They can take quite a beating, though goliaths can take them down pretty quickly if you're not quick enough. Plus they collect all the crap gibtonite left.
- The Proto-kinetic Accelerator can destroy electrified grilles without needing a pair of insulated gloves.
- The Proto-kinetic Accelerator will obliterate a space carp in one hit while in space.
- The Head of Personnel may reward you with all access if you resurrect Ian. Also, sometimes the Research Director will reward you for a pet gold grub.
- If you're expecting trouble on the station, consider taking out a window on the mining shuttle before you return to make a quick getaway so you're not trapped like a rat in a cage.
- Taking stimulants before delivering materials to science will help keep you alive.
- The mining drone can be repaired with a welding tool, but not in the middle of a fight. A goliath will always win in a one on one fight with a mining drone.
- Life improving things:
- Mining rig upgrade : Goliath plates add +10% melee resist each time when applied to a rig, ideally if you're just mining you'd want to solely apply that to your chest piece. When maxed out you'll be able to fight a goliath without kiting and take minor damage. It is recommended to apply plates to the head instead if you plan to antag as players more often target your head. The plates will stack until they reach 80%. That makes your suit a space worthy riot suit.
- Security Jumpsuit : This gives a +10% melee resist to everywhere but your head. Nag the QM or HoP to give you one.
- Augmentations : Augs are VERY useful for miners, as healing with a welder is ultimately easier. Plus they work differently than armor when it comes to protection, instead reducing all brute damage taken by an augmented body part by 5 (4 for burn). Downside : EMP vulnerability.
- If these three are combined you become close to immune to melee, only a ninja's energy blade is robust enough to even so much as scratch you, and blobs are utterly hopeless. However, guns are still a threat, and anybody can still surprise you with a stunprod and strip away your precious +4 rig. And be wary, the gods may not take kindly to your hubris.
- Kinetic accelerators can be used as infinite tools to navigate space, since every time you fire, it'll throw you in the opposite direction.
Dead Space
A traitorous miner has a lot of advantages. You have a space suit for free right away and a robust pickaxe. Certain minerals you'll find have more "specialized" uses -- uranium structures will irradiate people, plasma can start fires, gibtonite goes boom. You can also buy dangerous "mining" tools and possibly even revive those monsters you've been fighting. As long as you have some mineral wealth or an ore box with you, no one will suspect your presence around the station, even in highly restricted areas like robotics or toxins, and if you are smart enough, you could get a big stompy mech to drill people to death! In addition, the asteroid is isolated, hard to get to, dangerous, and as expansive as you're willing to dig out. Plenty of room for somebody to get lost in... Forever!
Tips for Traitoring
- If you're a miner and you have to kill another miner; there's a really easy way to block communications one way so he can't call for help.
- Grab a multitool, go to the mining communications room.
- Use the multi tool on the relay and make sure the relay isn't sending, meaning your headset won't go to people on the station.
- Kill your target with their shouts for help unheard.
- You can get plasma at exactly the heat you need for canister bombs by welding a plasma door in vacuum. Use an air pump to take it, then put [REDACTED] KPa into an empty large tank (the size of plasma, emergency O2, etc). You can then ignite it with a can of pure O2 set to release at 1013.25 KPa. This is the Shaft Miner's canister bomb. It's easy to set up on the asteroid.
- More than one uranium wall is hilariously deadly, as they give off a pulse of radiation every couple of seconds. This pulse makes other uranium walls in range pulse as well, and they all run on their own timer.
- Tiers 0-1-2-3 can gib bodies, remember mining suits take 50% of damage away from bombs, so strip miners you want to make disappear forever first.
- Ripley is a fairly robust murdering tool, if you can, convince robotics to put a gravity catapult on it. SLAM PEOPLE INTO WALLS. THE SUFFERING NEVER ENDS.
- Space is your best ally. Your weapons are more lethal in space, and anyone who wants to chase you will need access to a jetpack and EVA gear. Make people fight on your terms by blowing up the station with various Gibtonite charges, or bust in, stun and drag targets into space.
- Stim packs don't just increase your movement speed, they lower the duration of stuns. Always have this running in your system to remain speedy and more difficult to keep down.
Tips for Culting
If you're a miner, Mining Station is the perfect hive for a cult. The back room can easily be broken down by Constructs, runes can be placed, and a single artificer can make it very difficult for Security to try and raid. Remember to cut cameras, so a Non-Asimov AI doesn't bolt and electrocute every door. Remember to use Teleport other to get Cultists off station and into safe custody. All the station needs is a Medibot and you are golden.
