The Piercer is a 342 ore crate capacity mining ship with an automated rotating laser drill for mining operations.

Usage

To enter the ship, there is a button on top of the ship that will open Hatch. Once inside you can also open and close the cockpit glass Canopy. Buttons for these are available in the pilot side consoles.

Flying the Ship

See Flight Systems on how to fly the ship and use its flight systems.

Using the Waypoint System

Viewing and Selecting Waypoints

This uses the NavGrid system. Use the Down and Up waypoints selectors to select waypoint. The selected waypoint information is shown on NavP and NavC panels.

On the pilot center console, NavGrid will show the compass towards the selected waypoint while Attitude will show the ship's pitch, heading and roll directions. NavGrid is best used while not moving.

Editing and Saving Waypoints

Use Set to save waypoint of current location to the current selected waypoint position.

To edit currently selected waypoint, use your U tool to add name, X, Y and Z values to nName, nX, nY and nZ respectively. Then use the Save button to save.

Loading Waypoint to Auto Pilot

Use Load to Auto Pilot to load curretnly selected waypoint to Target to be used with the auto pilot system.

Auto Pilot and Crash Avoidance

The ship uses a modified version of NavCas which uses the 3 in 1 ISAN from Compass. Waypoints are loaded from NavGrid waypoint system.

Use while the ship is stationary. Activating Nav will start point the ship towards Target waypoint and deactivate itself when done. Autopilot will activate Nav and fly to within 5km of Target waypoint with Avoidance activated.

Avoidance will activate Guides. If the guides detect objects it will cut thrust and strafe up or down (will flash either the top or bottom Blue warning lights on the pilot center console according to the direction) while sounding an alarm (check game settings if you do not hear the alarm). It will also flash Red warning lights on the pilot center console according to the position of obstacle detected. If Autopilot is activated, it will readjust and continue its flight.

Avoids will show the counters for number of avoidances. The Trip counter can be reset by holding down the Avoids Reset Trips button.

Resetting Navigation

If ISAN or NavGrid is not working, it can be reset using the Reset ISAN button. Press once to take ISAN offline, then press again to reset.

Mining

To approach an asteroid, point the center range finder at an asteroid and activate Approach. Once in range (optimum range is 10 to 14m on Distance), activate Lasers to turn on the mining lasers. Activating Rotate will rotate the laser drill.

The laser drill has three modes.

• Fixed mode will keep all lasers converged to the asteroid detected by the center range finder.
• Manual mode allows adjustment of the Drill Pitch. The pitch range is from -15 to 20 degrees.
• Auto mode will activate Rotate and progressively increase the drill pitch with the rotations

Drill Pitch can only be adjusted in Manual mode. Eco mode will only use two lasers to conserve power.

Mine is a button which will activate automated mining. Point the center range finder at an asteroid and activate. It will activate Material Scanner and Approach, and once in range it will automatically activate Lasers.

Collect turns on the four ore collectors.

If batteries start running out of charge while mining, turn on Min Gen. Continous use of the lasers and collectors at the same time requires a Min Generator Limit of around 90%.

Ore Scanner

Activate using the Material Scanner button. Scan results will show on the Materials panel in number of stacks. It has a maximum range of 100m.

Managing Power, Fuel and Propellant

Managing Power and Fuel

See Power and Fuel Systems on how to manage ship power and refuel.

Refilling Propellant

See Propellant Systems on how to refill propellant.