The Mining Area is the place in the game where you can mine for minerals. It allows you to mine directly three of the minerals avalaible: Copper, Zinc, Platinum and Exotic.
Mining is the major income source in the game surpassing scrap gains (SNIP interest is negligible compared to mining and scrap gains).
You can update your mining scanner three times, each upgrade increases the size of your maps and the exotic detection chance.
The Rank in the Mining tree in your commander skills determines how many operations you gain per day. The amount of maps to search for the best mining spot is determined by a skill and you start with 10 maps/day which you can increase to 60 maps/day.
You can store two days worth of maps and 7 days worth of operations.
Your mining gains are determined by
a) Your Depletion level (mining booster)
b) The number of harvesters you have (maximum is equal to your commander level, with a maximum of 90)
c) Your overall Harvesting efficiency
d) Your refining percentage per mineral
The Formula for your mining gains is as follows:
For Copper and Zinc
Number of spots x 100 x Depletion level x Harvesters x (1+Harvesting Efficiency)% x (Respective) refining percentage
For Exotic:
Number of spots x 10 x Depletion level x Harvesters x (1+Harvesting Efficiency)% x (Respective) refining percentage
Platinum Through the Ages[]
Originally platinum could not be mined and had to be obtained through battles in the plains. This was the only way to obtain platinum but caused issues with platinum prices.
The sub-game Platinum Digsite was added to provide small platinum gains through a simple, but fun, game.
Platinum was added to the mining function in March 2014, but you could not mine Platinum directly. Blank squares in mining had a 3% chance (each) to give you bonus Platinum from your operation, with higher valued operations giving more Bonus Platinum.
Platinum mining has been found in it's current format since June 2015.