Mining is the entry point of the Spacewar economy. You shoot a beam at an asteroid; ore comes off; you sell it or refine it. From there the whole tech tree opens up.
Equip the Mining Laser module's hotbar slot (it's on your starter Frigate by default). Right-click while pointing at an asteroid: a continuous beam fires, drawing ore out of the asteroid in pulses.
Each pulse is one "mining operation" that:
You see the beam in space. The asteroid block visibly vanishes after each pulse. When the asteroid is dry, it stops yielding.
Mining lasers come in 5 tiers (Mk I → Mk V). Higher tiers mine faster (shorter cooldown) and yield more per pulse. The Mk I is the free starter; you craft or buy higher tiers.
The galaxy is painted into 4 security zones, each with a different yield multiplier. Higher-risk zones pay more per pulse:
| Zone | Display name | Yield × | Risk | Ores available |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CORE | Patrolled Lanes (§a green) | 1.0× | Safe; NPC patrols deter PvP | Iron, Copper |
| MID | Outer Lanes (§e yellow) | 1.5× | Some pirate spawns | Iron, Copper, Titanium |
| FRONTIER | Frontier (§6 orange) | 2.5× | Heavy pirates, light PvP | + Platinum |
| NULL | Wild Drift (§c red) | 4.0× | No NPC protection; full PvP | + Iridium |
Each higher ore tier is gated to a zone: Titanium needs MID+, Platinum needs FRONTIER+, Iridium needs NULL.
So the basic deeper-zone tradeoff is: more yield + better ores, but you might get killed.
Five raw ores, each with its own zone gate:
Mining the same asteroid type in a higher zone gives both the higher multiplier AND access to higher-tier ores. Plan your routes accordingly.
Raw ore isn't directly useful for crafting — you refine it first. Build a Refinery module on a station (or rent a room and put a refinery there). The refinery:
Refined metals feed the fabricator for module crafting (see crafting wiki for the full tree).
Refining the higher-tier ores — Titanium, Platinum, Iridium — consumes one Refining Flux per batch in addition to the raw ore. The two basic ores (Iron, Copper) don't need it.
Flux comes from two places:
Flux is also an input on the higher-tier alloy recipes (Steel, Aerospace, Iridium Composite), so refining + alloy specialists are the two main consumers — generally a steady low-value trade good.
Mining in NULL zone (Wild Drift) has a small chance (~4%) per pulse to deposit one Tritanium Crystal alongside the ore. Tritanium is a required input on every T5 manufacturing recipe and the Dreadnought shipkit — it's the mining-side gate on the endgame, mirroring the combat-side gate (Void Fragment from Reaver kills, see NPCs and Shops).
Tritanium drops into the ore hold, but T5 fabricator recipes read from the general hold — you'll need to transfer crystals between holds before crafting.
Every mining pulse also has a ~6% chance (any zone) to drop 1–2 Raw Silica alongside the ore. Silica is the feedstock for the two electronics components — Circuit Board and Focusing Lens — which gate the entire T3+ fabrication tree, so it accumulates passively as you mine and you'll rarely run short. Vendors only buy silica from you; there's no buy path, so mining is the only source.
If you'd rather not babysit the beam, a Drone Miner module deploys autonomous mining drones near an asteroid belt that mine to your ore hold while you do other things (within range, while you're online). See Drone Miners for the full loop, tiers, and how to get one.
Asteroids aren't the only place to mine — landing on a planet lets you mine surface mineral deposits that drop materials found nowhere else (carbon, oxidizer, cryo-salt, rare-earth, planetary cores), the feedstock for the T4 fabrication web. See Planets.
The Fold Wave Harvester is a special mining module. Once placed on your ship, it passively generates Drive Cells (a fuel item) while your faction is online — no active mining required.
Caveats:
The Drive Cell catalyst is needed for warping between regions, so the harvester is the main "passive earning while doing other stuff" loop.
There aren't many — mining is mostly UI. The TAB menu and the in-game chests cover everything. No /mine command exists.