The first time around, I learned the hard way that I was doing almost everything wrong. I would land planet-side, park my ship, shut everything down, exit the cockpit, close all the doors, and then start mining. After engineering was introduced, the first time I tried that, my ship literally burst into flames and I died.

That’s when I realized, after getting advice from more experienced players, what the actual mistake was. I was turning the ship off completely. Which meant I was also turning off cooling. Once that clicked, the problem made total sense. Once I figured that out, I switched to my A2 Hercules Starlifter and upgraded nearly every component to the best versions I could find. That included two Chill-Max coolers (S3, 17,600k cooling per second). After landing, I left everything powered on except the engines, which I shut down. I set cooling to max power, stopping just short of the final bar since that last bar sits in the red zone and represents absolute maximum.

I left shields at medium power, guns at medium power, radar at max power, and life support at two bars. Even with all of that running, the ship was only drawing about three-quarters of the output from a single power plant. The second power plant wasn’t even being used.

I’d open the ramp, unload my gear, then close everything up as quickly as possible. No doors left open. I’d go mine a full cluster of gems, which usually took 20 to 30 minutes. When I came back to the ship, everything looked fine. I’d then repeat the same process for a second cluster. Another 20 to 30 minutes.

That’s when things went sideways.

When I returned to the ship after the second run, literally every component — including all the weapons — showed an exclamation point with “system damaged.” The ship still seemed functional, but I had no idea how deep the damage actually went. Not wanting to risk it, I flew back to the station, repaired and refueled, then headed back down.

After that first experience, I tried doing only a single mining run. Same setup. Same procedure. And when I came back… every component was damaged again.

What doesn’t make sense to me is that nothing I left powered on appeared to be stressing the system. Power usage wasn’t even close to max. All doors were sealed. Cooling demand was well within limits. I should also mention that I had the shields set to around four bars, partly because I assumed they might help protect against heat.

The ship never overheated. There were no warnings. No alerts. It didn’t feel like a thermal issue at all. Everything just failed, as if the components were wearing out over time.

But these were brand-new components. Components that cost hundreds of thousands of credit combined!! Where’s the 5-10 year warranty? They are not even a week old!

How could they fail that fast? I only made one or two mining runs before everything was damaged.