Mining drones vanishing/being left behind

[Vertigo 7]

I've been trying to catch what's going on with this for a few days now. Every now and then I would notice my capital mining ship would be short a few drones. Checked a little while ago and it was down to just 1 mining drone. So I ordered it to the nearest dock to restock the drones and happened to see that one was still out trying (and failing) to catch up with the ship. Then suddenly, it blinked out of existence. It wasn't attacked, no mines around. I have the area pretty well littered with satellites and there was no spec of red to be seen.

Drones disappearing is 1 issue here, the other, the ships carrying the drones aren't waiting for them to return before going about their business. I realize, in this specific instance, I ordered it away, however, when mining for my station, I've observed the drones chasing the ship for quite some time, and they rarely (if ever) enter travel mode to attempt to catch up with the ship, even when the ship is in a different sector. I think maybe some adjustments to the automining script would help with both issues, to have the captain wait before engaging travel drive until all of the drones are back aboard. That would work around the drones disappearing, though, I still have no logical reason for that happening.

[Alan Phipps]

I'm pretty sure one of the updates introduced the eventual removal from the game of orphan drones (drones that have no prospect of ever getting back to their parent ship or station). This was to stop these orphans becoming space clutter and affecting game fps. So I think your first 'issue' is intentional under some circumstances.

Of course that might not be necessary if your second issue was very rare. There was some interesting debate about this type of issue in X Rebirth and I am pretty sure that not so very long ago the devs once debated what they might do about this in future X4 gameplay improvements.

[RegisterMe]

Useful info

I encountered precisely this situation tonight:-

* I had an L Crane sector mining ore in The Reach. At some point it had nowhere to sell its cargo. It had filled up as a result.
* I noticed a Refined Materials (or somesuch) station in Silent Witness 1 with a big buy (40k+?) on ore.
* I sent the Crane in that direction and it navigated the gauntlet and arrived and sold its cargo.

>> The reason I was paying attention to it was because my large (by my standards) station / HQ in GE was about to pop a load more demand for basic minerals (ie silicon in this case).

Seeing that it was going to be a while before the silicon demand in GE ticked up I figured I might as well do another quick and naughty ore run in SW6. This I did.

But I watched it. From the....docking bay / landing bay / something on the Crane, in SW6.

And mining drones that had caught something, when the ship was already full, were shit out of luck.

Free? Fine.
Delivered? Fine.
Not sent out yet? Fine.
Got a lump of ore when mum is full, and when dad executes a command on the L mining ship?

So long son.

The Crane, after being explicitly ordered to "wait for subordinates" (or whatever) went back to Argon Prime.

The two remaining drongs (in Silent Witness XI?)? Well, if I could have ignored and rebought them I would, but their continued existence was a pita.

I was concentrating on other things when one of the mining drones left behind in SW XI rocked up in Argpon Prime. I've no idea what happened to the other one (there were Ms and Ns nd various Khaak around but......).