I want to make some money by mining low temp diamonds but I want to know what a good home station would be for doing this.
It should preferably not be too far away from anything and not too hard to get to.
A good home station for mining low temp diamonds
elite-dangerous
Related Solutions
If you're trying to sell a specific commodity, the "exported to" system list in the commodities screen of the station services is a good start, but here's what I do to locate better info:
- Figure out what economies consume and produce the resource I want to sell. Either via the description,the ED wikia commodities info pages, or this handy spreadsheet
- Go to Galaxy Map
- Go to the 'view' options.
- Set "View by color" to "Economy"
- Un-set the economies that don't consume or produce that commodity (so it's easier to see the ones that do).
- Enable the "show trade routes" option.
- Clear all the trade routes (so nothing is shown)
- Enable the one commodity you're interested in.
- Buy up some trade data from systems that might need or produce that commodity. Not all systems have trade data available (especially further away), so including producers will increase the odds of finding a trade route for that.
- Look at the trade routes for that commodity. They're the brightly colored curved line of the same color as in the trade routes selection, with bright "sparks" traveling along them to show the direction the commodity flows. Make sure to watch for smaller sparks traveling backwards along a route. You want a system that the commodity flows into but doesn't flow out of. If there's a lot of that commodity flowing into a system, it might mean they have very high demand, but it may also mean their market is flooded with it and demand is now low.
- Now you should have some candidates. Click on them and go into the system view.
- When you're looking at the system, check all of the stations. Look at both the primary and secondary economy of each station to verify that your commodity isn't produced anywhere in that system. Verify that your commodity isn't illegal at that station. See if it's in the list of top 3 imports (or at least similar to one that is), and verify that it isn't an export. Try to verify that the station you want to travel to isn't too distant from the primary star.
- Switch to Navigation tab of the galaxy map, pick "Fastest" route option, click the "route to this system" button for the destination (if you intend to grab more cargo, make sure to slide that slider over).
- Optional: Do a quick check on the intermediate route systems to make sure my commodity isn't illegal in any of them. I think for that, you only need to check the station closest to the major star, since it will be the one whose faction sets the law for the space around the star that you'll be jumping through. If you're in a poorly armed ship carrying expensive cargo, you may also want to avoid anarchy systems. This is optional, since you can usually jump through intermediate route systems without spending enough time there to get interdicted by authority or pirate ships.
The same basic technique works well for searching for where to buy a specific commodity, such as when you have a mission.
In the example of H.E. Suits, those are imported by pretty much every economy except agriculture (maybe also not service and tourist?), and they're produced in high-tech systems.
Alternately, you can skip all of that, go to Thrudd's Elite Dangerous Trading Tool, an do Search/Commodity/Station Buying and put in your commodity, station, etc and see what price different stations were buying it for in the last couple of days.
Other trade tools:
The route planner now(since update 1.1) will path up to 1000LY away, and you don't need to wait for it to path before selecting.
Just select the star you wish to travel to and if it is within 1000LY you can click the plan route button and it will set one up for you quickly.
The automatic route planner still takes a decently long time to build a web, though.
If the line that appears is solid you can make it there in a single tank. if the path becomes a dotted line, you will need to stop and refuel or scoop some fuel to keep going.
There are some tools people use to speed up the searching, but as with any third party app. Use at your own risk/discretion.
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Best Answer
Setting up a long-term base of operations for mining isn't really that good of an idea. Mining hotspots become depleted the more they get mined out, so your yields will decline over time. Additionally, the selling price of the material you're mining will go down as the station that is buying receives its demand. What I recommend instead is looking for a medium term base of operations, which will shift pretty regularly.
/r/EliteMiners has a good tool to help find good hotspots with good prices here, which I used to get my Elite trade rank.
At the moment, the tool indicates that there is a good spot to mine Low Temperature Diamonds in Borann A2 ring B 123.06 LY from Sol, and a good spot to sell at Noon Orbital in Goibniugo 46.59 LY from Borann, however, this information will shift based on the depletion of the hotspots and the sale price at Noon Orbital.
Be advised though: player pirates will also use this information to plan interdictions. Fly safe.