[Feedback] 7.00 Economy

[PersonyPerson]

Hi,

I remote built a station in The Reach, to utilise its 367% sun to help process Scrap into Hull Parts and Claytronics. I just teleported to my station there for the first time and it's really dark! The sun level works great for EC production, but visually it doesn't match that 367% sunlight level.

If the star in The Reach was realistically depicted in the position where it is currently, it would be so bright that you literally wouldn't be able to see anything given where your ship is in the sector (I'm not sure how the people in the planet can even live there tbh). To keep myself sane I just pretend that the ships and spacesuits have some form of light filters.

I do wish the light levels in a system made a bit more sense. Why is Avarice dark with a huge star sitting right there? Why is Windfall I perhaps the brightest place in the game, even washing out the light inside ships and stations, with nearly no sunlight rating?

With Avarice, it's a Red Giant, it's big but it's dim. You can make the case that parts of the star come to the sector through the Tide, hence why it has such a juicy solar output. Gives a reason to finally build in Avarice aside from the Protectyon.

I get Windfall since it's in a Nebula, the small amount of light that does come into it constantly gets refracted, making it appear more luminous than it actually is. There's even a class of Nebulas called "Refraction Nebulas". Don't think it would be outrageous to suggest that Windfall is in one. Watchful Gaze would be another.

Well they do make (some) sense. The Reach has a Blue Dwarf, which emits a lot of energy, it has already been "nerfed" a bit. This being a beta and having asked for feedback is why we are here.

MFG

Ketraar

The term "Dwarf" is quite an outdated astronomical term when it comes to stars that have Spectral types G or brighter. I wish Stars in the game were described by Spectral type (with both Harvard and Yerkes classification scales) instead. Because when the game says something is a "White Dwarf", I immediately assume the stellar remnant that's known as a White Dwarf, so I get confused when I see systems with that description have high sunlight values, whilst the game intended to mean Spectral type F or A stars.

There's also many sectors I've seen that upon where their sunlight values don't make any sense:

- The Moon (105%) is brighter than Earth (100%) despite the fact they roughly receive the same amount of sunlight.
- Silent Witness XII (147%) is brighter than Silent Witness XI (118%) which is brighter than Silent Witness I (98%). To me they all look like they're at a similar distance from the star.
- Segaris (187%) and Gaian Prophecy (208%) are Nebulas but are very bright?
- Hatikvah's Choice I (112%) is brighter than Hatikvah's Choice III (91%) despite the fact that they are very close together.
- Grand Exchange III (135%) is brighter than Grand Exchange IV (129%) which is brighter than Grand Exchange I (123%). Despite the fact that they're very close together.
- Loomanckstrat's Legacy (2%) should be 0% because there's no star.
- Freedom's Reach (265%) seems a bit excessive given how far away the star is.
- Mi Ton's Refuge (36%) should be boosted to at least 70% given the star type and how far away it is. (no way that is only 18x more luminous than a system with no star...)
- Moo Kye's Revenge (83%) could also be boosted to at least 95% for the same reason as above.
- Pious Mists II (136%) is significantly brighter than Pious Mists IV (89%), despite the fact they're orbiting the same planet.
- Trinity Sanctum VII (106%) looks brighter than Trinity Sanctum III (133%), but has significantly less sunlight.

- The Hewa's Twin sectors all share the same problem of varied solar output despite the fact they're all next to each other astronomically.
- Turquoise Sea, Ianamus Zura, Thuruk's Demise, Guiding Star, Morning Star, Second Contact all have the same problem. I'm sure the problem is the same for a lot of Xenon sectors too. Faulty Logic and Atiya's Misfortune being additional examples.

Most of these mutli-sector systems should be like Kingdom End and Saturn, where the Sunlight is at the same value, unless it's obvious that the star is further away or closer depending on the direction of where you're going, as is the case for Litany of Fury, Zyarth's Dominion, Tharka's Ravine and Black Hole Sun. Because currently, there's a lack of consistency. Is there a gameplay reason as to why some these multi-sector systems have such vastly different sunlight values despite being very close to each other?

Aside from the one's I've mentioned above, the rest of the sunlight values make sense from a logic standpoint.

[LameFox]

With Avarice, it's a Red Giant, it's big but it's dim. You can make the case that parts of the star come to the sector through the Tide, hence why it has such a juicy solar output. Gives a reason to finally build in Avarice aside from the Protectyon.

Dim in star terms maybe but visibly, while it's right there? idk that seems weird.

I get Windfall since it's in a Nebula, the small amount of light that does come into it constantly gets refracted, making it appear more luminous than it actually is. There's even a class of Nebulas called "Refraction Nebulas". Don't think it would be outrageous to suggest that Windfall is in one. Watchful Gaze would be another.

I mean sure, it could be bright for that reason, but then why can't we use that light? We can see it so we can presume it's in the visible spectrum, and it's very bright there. Plus you can actually see the star that's illuminating it and that is pretty bright in the sky too.

Anyway it's not that I'm asking for full realism, it's just jarring to see a place being super illuminated by a star and have the game tell you there's nearly no sunlight, and vice versa, to have the place which is best for sunlight in the whole game and has a huge visible sun in it be really dim. I'm sure lore can always be written to explain it like with anything in this sort of game, but that won't make it feel more intuitive.

[geldonyetich]

I started a new 7.0 Beta 2 game and have not gotten too deeply into the economy yet, but one thing I did notice was a lot of dead ships in Windfall. I was not sure why so many ships were being destroyed so early into a new game, but eventually arrived at the conclusion that traders of all factions were trying to address water shortages. Water being contraband in Vigor Syndicate space, it was causing a lot of combat between freighters and police ships. Is this intentional behavior?

[Ketraar]

The term "Dwarf" is quite an outdated astronomical term when it comes to stars that have Spectral types G or brighter. I wish Stars in the game were described by Spectral type (with both Harvard and Yerkes classification scales) instead. Because when the game says something is a "White Dwarf", I immediately assume the stellar remnant that's known as a White Dwarf, so I get confused when I see systems with that description have high sunlight values, whilst the game intended to mean Spectral type F or A stars.

I know and as a space nerd myself I would agree on the classification, the question then also is one of communication, so we need to be aware that not everyone knows what they mean, but also could be a case of informing people. We should at least think about it, but cant say if its feasible in the short term.

- Loomanckstrat's Legacy (2%) should be 0% because there's no star.

We cannot have below 2%, otherwise it borks the production calculation on stations.

Aside from the one's I've mentioned above, the rest of the sunlight values make sense from a logic standpoint.

Thanks for the detailed feedback. Wrt to the different values within the same cluster, you have to consider that its also a gameplay balance. In some cases its just to have a difference, if the values are the exact same then we would be back to where we were before.

MFG

Ketraar

[Ketraar]

I started a new 7.0 Beta 2 game and have not gotten too deeply into the economy yet, but one thing I did notice was a lot of dead ships in Windfall. I was not sure why so many ships were being destroyed so early into a new game, but eventually arrived at the conclusion that traders of all factions were trying to address water shortages. Water being contraband in Vigor Syndicate space, it was causing a lot of combat between freighters and police ships. Is this intentional behavior?

Not aware of anything specific, we would need a save to investigate.

MFG

Ketraar

[Scoob]

Thanks for sorting the Pricing thing, my miners are all selling automatically now. A couple that were stuck prior to updating to Beta 2, remained stuck, not selling their wares. However, after manually ordering them to sell once, they've since sold automatically just fine. Perhaps if I'd given them more time, they would have sold automatically, but I needed the credits lol.

The Avarice sectors are still a bit of a mess, individual Modules shut-down or destroyed on most stations, due to damage from lack of Protectyon. They do appear to be recovering, hopefully the L-Class Ship Fab Module will be rebuilt so I can buy a Teuta soon.

[PersonyPerson]

Dim in star terms maybe but visibly, while it's right there? idk that seems weird.

Refer to my comment about The Reach. Whilst it is a Red Giant and is far dimmer per capita, if it was realistically depicted from that distance, it would be so bright that you wouldn't be able to see anything, and that's purely because on it's size... so... light filters?...

I get Windfall since it's in a Nebula, the small amount of light that does come into it constantly gets refracted, making it appear more luminous than it actually is. There's even a class of Nebulas called "Refraction Nebulas". Don't think it would be outrageous to suggest that Windfall is in one. Watchful Gaze would be another.

I mean sure, it could be bright for that reason, but then why can't we use that light? We can see it so we can presume it's in the visible spectrum, and it's very bright there. Plus you can actually see the star that's illuminating it and that is pretty bright in the sky too.

For the same reason you can't see the bottom of the Ocean from Earth's surface (it would be a 0 IQ idea to put a solar array down there), however in our case, our view would towards the surface whilst we're ~50m down. The molecules in the Nebula absorb and scatter light. This nebula is not too dense but is translucent, so it doesn't block all the light but does enough to sap a lot of the energy from it, whilst still putting on a light show in the distance.

The term "Dwarf" is quite an outdated astronomical term when it comes to stars that have Spectral types G or brighter. I wish Stars in the game were described by Spectral type (with both Harvard and Yerkes classification scales) instead. Because when the game says something is a "White Dwarf", I immediately assume the stellar remnant that's known as a White Dwarf, so I get confused when I see systems with that description have high sunlight values, whilst the game intended to mean Spectral type F or A stars.

I know and as a space nerd myself I would agree on the classification, the question then also is one of communication, so we need to be aware that not everyone knows what they mean, but also could be a case of informing people. We should at least think about it, but cant say if its feasible in the short term.

Perhaps the classification could be in brackets whilst retaining the current description. So it would say something like "Blue Dwarf (B7 V)" or "Yellow Giant (G8III)" That way people who don't know the terminology can associate "B" with blue, "G" with yellow, "III" with Giant, "V" with Dwarfs/Main-sequence stars etc, whilst those who do, won't be confused by the description. I just hope there won't be a new sector that contains a proper White Dwarf, because that'll be a handful to describe without calling it that.

Wrt to the different values within the same cluster, you have to consider that its also a gameplay balance. In some cases its just to have a difference, if the values are the exact same then we would be back to where we were before.

Of course gameplay balance should take precedent. I'm just overly nit-picking with my ultra-realism. So if the NPC economy can't work without the sunlight values being what they currently are, then I'm all for keeping them that way (Except Pious Mists, that one is criminal). But from my experience, the one resource that never reaches a crisis point is Energy Cells. There's always demand, but it's rarely ever the reason why a NPC station stops working.

[geldonyetich]

Of course, there's also the question of how solar panels in the X universe work in terms of efficiency. It could very well be that 2% output could be expected from ambient solar radiation or starlight from neighboring solar systems.

But it in regards to the concern about supply and demand of energy cells in 7.0, have you played it long? I had about a 30-hour-long game after I restarted for Beta 1, and no shortage for interested buyers for energy cells.

But in an established game it might be impossible for them to be too heavily in demand no matter what you set the solar output levels for. The thing is, you build a solar panel once and get infinite energy over time. If you want more, just build more solar panels. Combine with salvage modules and now you have a way to get free station building materials as well.

It's a wonder anyone needs to bother buying any energy cells. I wonder sometimes if it might be a good idea to add a required resource. In previous X games you needed crystals. But it stands to reason for me that any solid building materials to store the cells would do.

[geldonyetich]

Of course this may be impossible because it would make a lot of work for existing saved game compatibility, but an alternative is to make it so energy cells cannot be traded.

This would have two big impacts:

1. No need to be concerned about energy cells requiring no resources to produce because it's not like they are tradable wares anymore.

2. Solar output of a sector is wholly a concern of how many solar panels are required to allow a station to run its production modules.

[LameFox]

Refer to my comment about The Reach. Whilst it is a Red Giant and is far dimmer per capita, if it was realistically depicted from that distance, it would be so bright that you wouldn't be able to see anything, and that's purely because on it's size... so... light filters?...

Like I said, I am not seeking true 'realism' here. It would be nice if such a game existed but this one isn't it and I'm at peace with that. What I want is for it to be intuitive, i.e. if it tells me there's a lot of usable light I can see that light, and if I can see a lot of light it should be usable. Avarice doesn't need to look like the surface of the sun but I do think thematically it ought to be brighter. Windfall I is... I'm not even sure, broken maybe? No amount of light outside ought to be having that effect on interiors the way it is.

Which is not to say I mind things being different for balance reasons, but I'd prefer the system lighting visuals are brightened or dimmed to suit it.

[PersonyPerson]

Of course, there's also the question of how solar panels in the X universe work in terms of efficiency. It could very well be that 2% output could be expected from ambient solar radiation or starlight from neighboring solar systems.

Nah, I've accepted the inference that Loomanckstrat's Legacy would be 0% if it wasn't for making a sector 0% breaking the game. There is no chance what so ever of getting 2% solar output from anything in a system with no star. Nothing natural could generate that.

The description in the encyclopedia clearly states that the system is in a galactic void of stars.

But it in regards to the concern about supply and demand of energy cells in 7.0, have you played it long? I had about a 30-hour-long game after I restarted for Beta 1, and no shortage for interested buyers for energy cells.

Like I said before, there's always demand and Energy cells get used up pretty quickly, but it's never the resource where it gets to a critical point and holds up the supply chain. The point I was trying to make there, is that I don't believe putting multi-sector systems to the same sunlight if they are astronomically next to each other would have a significant material impact on the NPC economy, but wouldn't be opposed to keeping it the way it is if it turns out I'm wrong (Except Pious Mists... sod Pious Mists). My criticisms were mainly logic based rather than gameplay based anyway.

[donzi]

..just wanted to add some visuals of one of the fundamental issues that prevail with the X4 approach.

Part of it I guess is the trade matching algo(s) but from my perspective it's more hamstrung by the map price gathering box[es] and limits on what/how trades are presented. (EG: optional filter setting to show up to 5 trade offers instead of 3)

The mining side of this style of presentation is in some way even more restrictive and misleading. Anyhow...



As you can see, a simple desire to find the best universe wide trade for refined metals.. is debatable. Without fussing around with pan/zoom all over the place the first option would take more time and make less profit. Not so helpful.

I could understand quirks like this if the algo was taking into account a wide variety of stats (EG: the cargo capacity and speed of the selected ship, etc) and was demonstrating trades with varying granularity -- EG: here is your simple best profit trade, here is your fastest profitable trade, etc.

..those are the things with XR that are possible when player is manually doing trades. Really not practical/possible with the X4 design afaik.

[donzi]

RE: auto mine

Lots of comment on the forum about that being odd.

I've noticed that part of it may be responsible by the lack of 'failed' status with automine. Single sector form anyhow. No 3 stars yet to observe.

I left a L miner in the reach harvesting ore to sell to the two refinery there. Some time later, hour(s) I got around to checking on it. The NPC (or me) are not doing much with the refined metals produced in the reach so the ORE needs were totally saturated. The L miner maybe is selling off bits of ore as the demeand threashold goes above some amount, but for the most part it's just idle there.

There automine trade side of the task apparently does not include 'failed' result similar to so many other tasks so the player simply never get's a heads-up about the ship just wasting time with no worthy trades possible.

[Scoob]

Since the pricing fix, my Autominers have been working well. I've saturated the market (one buyer of what I'm mining in the sector) in places. In these saturated markets, I've noticed that my miners won't sell a part load, but will wait until the station can accept a full load.

It's normal for me to set up quite an extensive mining operation, supported by a central Mining HUB station, which runs for hours. In my current game, demand seemed very low for Ore and Silicon vs. what I'm used to. With all stations only offering rock-bottom prices, despite having trade offers for 10, 15 and even 20k of Ore / Silicon. So, I just went with regular Autominers instead, placing them where there was resource and demand in the same sector. This has worked fairly well, even though profits are down on what I'd usually expect.

With a healthy supply of Ore and Silicon - largely from me - I'd expect Refined Metal and Silicon Wafer availability to be quite strong. It is, but this availability doesn't seem to be making it up the chain so to speak.

I think the player needs access to a better Auto-Trader earlier in the game. The basic local auto-trader is ok, but they can only do one ware in one sector, they're not really very helpful to the economy. There's like ONE sector that I have in my current game - Argon Prime - where a much needed ware is produced and consumed locally - hull parts - pretty much everything else requires multi-sector travel to satisfy the order. I have literally NO three star pilots yet on any of my ships that I can turn into the better auto-trader. In my game, I can see certain wares - like refined metals - building up, but with no demand locally, my basic auto-traders are of no help. Manually ordering potentially dozens of ships around is not fun!

In my modified game, I use the "Tater Trader: Dead Tater" third-party mod. Having a few of these running TRANSFORMS the economy in the areas they operate. I suspect it's a bit too good for vanilla, as they have quite a long range per Pilot level and can trade all wares. But we do need some better form of trader for vanilla, to keep the economy running well. Am I right in saying that DeadAir works for Egosoft now? It'd be GREAT to see a version of Tater Trader (Dead Tater) in vanilla. I think, especially considering the very limited range of JUST the local sector, allowing the Auto-trader to pick any and all wares it can trade would be a good start. This would allow it to level up more rapidly and be promoted to range over multiple sectors.

When talking Economy as a whole, we really do seem to be missing a decent "free trader" option that works well.

[Scoob]

Regarding my comments above. I'm aware of the "Fill Shortages" command, which I think can be considered a "Tier 2" Auto-trader, where we can select multiple wares. I've traditionally found this to really not be very good, missing obvious trades and spending excessive time seemingly doing nothing. However, I gave it another go just now and it seems to be correctly buying wares and roaming several sectors to sell them. I've not once had it work this well for me, has the behaviour of this command changed as part of the Economy stuff?

As an aside: I think that "Fill Shortages" while descriptive sorta sells this option short. Now it's working quite well for me, it really is a significantly more powerful Auto-Trader. The ability to select multiple wares - I'm not sure if there's a limit - as well as it readily roaming several sectors - again, not sure if there's a limit - makes it very powerful indeed. I would like to see an "Anchor space" and a range limit, to control how far it roams. At the moment I can do this with Black list to ban certain sectors / factions, so it's workable.

[donzi]

Fill Shortages is an interesting default option. I've been using it since I got enough cash to buy the the basic and 1-star training.

I had some 6.20 traders using that and it seemed like it would chain trades all over if what trades it was doing lead it. With the economy in my game, something like 72 hours now I think, it's a bit different acting. Got hung up on nostrum oil doing very very small sales qty from a full hold ~7100 m3 on the Hermes.. So I took control and emptied it and moved to HOP sectors trying to find something for it to bite on.

I have one still puttering around there but it's never left Holy Vision I think.

The basic autotrade can be busy non-stop in the right sector composition though. In the GE tri-sector group I've had 1 disco doing nonstop meds since I got it and the Cerberus (?) that player can snag while doing the HQ mission has been moving Teladium ever since I got it. Both are quite meaningless now as for cr accumulation, and AFAIK both are just where they were in pilot skill after I used whatever training books they'd allow. FWIW, I don't think any of my hirelings have increased except the station manager.

The economy has moved a little bit from the start but it's still very isolated without adv traders outside of my station ships, which can do 4 sectors. The HQ I've expanded to be a basic station builder -- mine for all the gases, ores and produce all intermediate wares to turn out my own clay, hull parts and EC.. along with water which is a great seller to all the med facs and whatnot.

I've not quite got the selling excess intermediates dialed in yet, but my cash problems are gone for the most part now. Just need to study the existing NPC sectors so I expand with more stations in a way that will work with 1-sector well while I wait for any new stations to expand their range as I don't have a lot of encouragment that the pilots are going to get that 3rd star very soon.

I suspect once there are a lot more NPC ships and station lost to invasions things might pick up economically.. The only thing ANY of the NPC shipyards or wharfs lack is adv electronics and some weapon components basically... neither of which I can make yet and have not found the kink in the NPC supply lines as to why they're not apparently producing those things in at least 4 digit qty.

[castleberger]

Feedback: ZYA/Split in general have always (I've been playing since 6.2, so not that long) had transportation issues with their Buffalo/Boas/etc. dying in droves in Tharka's Cascade. This is still true in Beta 2 of 7.0. But hey, now FRF and CUB have a lot better economy to the point where they've purged the Xenon from their borders. ZYA starts with some raptors, then loses and is never able to replace them. I've noticed both FRF/ZYA being bottlenecked in engine parts now, not hull parts. If you place an order, it will generally fill after a while even with shortages, but I am noticing that some stations just a sector or two over will have the needed materials but there simply isn't enough transportation.

I don't know of a solution to this besides player intervention, otherwise what eventually happens is (without player intervention) Xenon overruns the Dominion sectors. Meanwhile, HOP/ANT/TEL and even FRF have almost purged all connecting Xenon sectors with zero player input.

[Scoob]

I was actually really quite impressed how well "Fill Shortages" has been working for me in v7.0 beta, it really is the next step after a regular Local Auto-Trader. I set up a second one last night and... it did nothing, for ages. Not one trade. It eventually woke up and bought a load of a given ware - many hundreds of units - then failed to sell any more than a few dozen in an hour or so. It evidently thought there was demand at the time, but it's not finding buyers now. It was an L-Class Freighter, rather than the M-Class Transporter I was already using, and it wasn't very good. Higher cargo, but very very slow.

Also, and I'd forgotten this quirk of the regular trade commands, my local Auto-trader has now stalled, despite hundreds of thousands of credits of trades just sitting there. Through, in part at least, my efforts, Hull Parts production in Argon Prime is on fire, the station is near full of them, selling at a rock-bottom price. Both the Wharf and Shipyard in the sector still have high demand, many tens of thousands, however, the offer price has dropped just below average, so the Auto-Trader simply does not see them.

It'd be great if this could be improved upon. The very simplistic "Buy BELOW average, Sell ABOVE average" works to a degree, but it leaves a LOT of trades on the table. I'm guessing it might be this causing the "Fill Shortages" traders to have problems too? They'd potentially "see" a large demand for something when the price is over average, but not see the, still substantial, demand when it drops below average offer price.

One of the good things about the Tater Trader (Dead Tater) third-party mod, by DeadAir, is that it sees price differences, you might have a ware for sale at ABOVE Average Price but if there's a buyer offering an even higher price, it'll see it as a valid trade opportunity - just like the Player would. The downside is that this modded Auto-Trader command is a little more resource intensive. However, it'd taken many dozens of such traders to have any impact... at least in my experience. Also, how often such a trader "ticks" so to speak, can be throttled of course to reduce any overhead.

I don't think it can be denied that, generally speaking, the game is running the best it ever has. Sure, some graphical options can still push the GPU - AA combined with certain fog / cloud effects are particularly punishing at times - however, when we talk CPU, the game is running so very well. With that in mind, a "smarter" Trade command is less likely to damage performance.

Talking Economy as a whole, there was one feature that X-Rebirth had that X4 never gained. I'm talking about the advanced manual trading options, where the game would present the most lucrative trades it could find, based on what the player had discovered. It would present a list of these trades and the player could simply assign a ship to satisfy them. This was a very powerful feature, and a viable alternative to the Auto-Trader in many ways. In X4, it's often the matching of Sell and Buy options that's tricky. Sure, I can select given wares, zoom out and see if I get any good trade options, but it's not as elegant as that UI in Rebirth was. Basically, it's presenting directly to the player what an Auto-Trader might see, using it to make it's own trading choices. However, the "player view" encompasses the whole game universe.

[Scoob]

Some feedback regarding the Recycling economy...

I'm pleased to see that, with TWO active Scrap Processors, returning Manticores appear to be reliably returning to distinct Modules, rather than each choosing the same one regularly. This is really good. However, there are some points from earlier feedback of this feature, prior to the current Beta, that remain:

1) A Tug that is waiting to return, i.e. there's no free Scrap Processor yet, remains next to where it collected its current Wreck / Scrap Cube. This wastes time, the Tug should return as soon as it collects something, queuing near the Station while it waits. This means delivery time would be shortened when a Scrap Processor becomes available.

2) Further to the above, with a Tug not electing to return right away, this exposes it to Danger. Scrap collection often doesn't occur in safe environments, rather places where BATTLES are taking place. Get them out of that area ASAP!

3) The often discussed lack of a "buffer" at Scrap Processors, or any ability to store delivered Wrecks / Cubes before it's processed is perceived to really slow things down. However, any such buffer / storage would fill up eventually, so the issue would always occur if Tugs are delivering frequently enough. Perhaps this is a deliberate design choice as, after a while, Buffer or no Buffer makes little difference.

For me, with how things stand right now, having a Tug return home and wait near the station as soon as it collects something, would be a HUGE deal. As soon as a Scrap Processor is free, a nearby Tug can quickly drop-off any Wreck / Scrap Cube. Plus it's safer to get back to the Station, to be under the protection of its guns / defending ships. Back in v6.2 and prior, point 3 - having a "buffer" for delivered wrecks seemed like a really big deal. However, with the improvements made for the v7.0 Beta, I'd suggest that Tugs simply returning right away, to wait near the station is all that's needed, considering having Multiple Scrap Processors at one station now seems perfectly viable.

Note: the "down time" for my Scrap Processors now is solely while it waits for the next two (two Scrap Processors remember) Tugs to return. At the moment, these Tugs are fetching Cubes (I have a Teuta operating in the area) locally, so their return time is fairly short. In other locations though, that return time can be several minutes, or longer. That means the Scrap Processors are idle that entire time the Tugs are returning. If only they returned promptly...

[Arisaya]

Feedback on miners, can be observed/reproduced with this save: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wWa1_B ... drive_link

1) Observe in Scale Plate Green I: Miners are still significantly clumping up
2) Observe in Nopileos' Fortune II (renamed Dragon's Lair II in that save): Terran Tech factory in that sector is very low on ore and out of silicon, despite sitting in the middle of an asteroid field with much ore and silicon (see adjacent resource beacon). Miners have entirely stopped going to that sector, as if the mining algorithm explicitly prefers going as far away as possible instead of just using the resources right on their doorstep. A much steeper distance penalty needs to be applied to it.