[Bonus Plugin] Mobile Mining / Mineral Collection Software

[Whuppee]

(edit: nevermind)

[Afterburnerz]

If a delivery to the home base fails to empty the cargo bay to less than 90% full the ship will wait in the home sector for 10-20 mins before attempting to deliver to the home base again.

This often happens in my current game, so I was hoping that there would be an easy way to turn off the incessant barrage of messages. A toggle switch would be much appreciated.

There are 3 TLs in different sectors which fill quickly, so over 90% of all my messages are from my full ships.

Congratulations on another great script!

[Bunny]

Hi,

Just a (hopefully) simply question for clarification. The instructions say an advanced sat will be used if it is deployed, but do not state whether you can use either nav or adv sats to stock the ships for themselves to deploy.

And also, do they drop their sat & then recollect? Or is there benfit to loading them up with multiple sats?

Cheers.

Tim

The script does the following:

1. Look if the system contains standard/advanced satellites.

2. If it does then select one and see if there are any within range of its scanner. If not then check using another satellite until all satellites in the system have been used. If suitable rocks still have not been found then perform random sweeps and use the ship scanner to locate rocks.

3. If a satellite has rocks in range then fly to the indicated position (with a random position offset is used applied - 33% of ship scanner range iirc)

4. The ship will drop a navigation beacon to mark the spot and will mine in that area until all suitable rocks within range of the nav beacon have been exhausted. The ship may need to make several trips to exhaust the area. When no more rocks are available then the ship will pack up the nav beacon and consult the satellites to locate more rocks.

The following should points should be kept in mind
1. The more satellites in the system the better. This will keep ships spread out and prevent them from bunching up and chasing the same rocks. However, this is dependent on how rocks are broken down.

2. The mineral name on the navigation beacon indicates the mineral the ship is collecting.

3. Navigation beacons do not need to be purchased.

4. A ship will deploy an advanced/standard satellite it is carrying if it find rocks in region of space, not covered by an existing satellite, after a random search. This satellite will be permanently deployed...................
So you could throw a ship into a new system and it would eventually drop satellites it carries to cover all the rocks in the system - however this would take a bit of time and you would in the meantime get a fair bit of spam mail telling you the ship is running random searches.

P.S. I think name overriding was included on the official script - putting a mineral name in the ship/satellite/station name would restrict the minerals the ship collected to a specific type.

Anyway that was my 50 cents on how it runs

[GCU Grey Area]

Been experimenting with this script recently & while for the most part it's been working fine, 1 thing has been puzzling me.
Every time I give the 'Collect minerals...' order it resets all turret commands to 'None'.
Not a huge problem - doesn't take long to redo the turret commands, just wondering if this is supposed to happen, is unavoidable or if there's a way to stop it happening.
Otherwise think this is a fantastic script & much more interesting to watch than mines.
By the way, using Ospreys to do the mining.

[jlehtone]

A known issue of Attack Rocks, the sister-script of this:

- Turret commands can stop the ship firing. Keep them off while running this script.

The (Mobile Collector) ship may use any one turret for breaking rocks. Thus, it cannot let any other script tamper with turret, and stops other turret tasks at start. The possible side-effects of restarting the other turret tasks manually are unknown.

[GCU Grey Area]

Thanks for the info - when I watch them in-sector my Ospreys are using their main guns to break rocks, so for now think I'll leave them with active turrets & see what happens, but if any wierd side-effects start happening I'll know to switch them off. Cheers

[Buck_Rogers]

Hi Bunny.

1st congrats on getting the mining script signed! Its taken me until now to realise I was running bonus pack 3.1.06 instead of .07 or whatever

Anywayz. I have a problem which I think relates to this script and was hoping for some help

OK. I have since tried to install the most recent bonus pack with your scripts in. however I completely forgot I had BMS 3.21 installed in the Plugin Manager also. So now when I go to the combat section of my Caimans console I have: Readtext2010-361as the very bottom command. Which when selected, runs the break rocks command. Also in the Special section of the command console at the bottom of the list is: Readtext2010-561. Which when selected, runs the collect minerals command.

Both of these commands ARE correctly displayed in the command console a little further up in the combat and special section, but now obviously it looks like I have them twice now.

I have tried removing the script from the PM and running the game, to get the uninstall script to run, but without success Both Readtext errors are still present.

Can you help?

[Bunny]

Look in the script folder and see if setup.BAR and setup.BMS (or something with a similar name) are there.

If they are then move them out of the folder and see if the readtext entires are removed.

[Buck_Rogers]

OK i have the following in my scrips folder:

!setup.plugin.bar
!setup.plugin.bms
setup.plugin.bar.pck
setup.plugin.bar
setup.plugin.bms.pck

Thats all I can see that resemble what you said Bunny. What should I move? Also I have a miner running in game. Should I stop him mining before I do this?

[Buck_Rogers]

I tried removing the 3 scripts without the explanation marks at the start of their names. It did not get rid of the read-text errors

Anything else I should try?

[eladan]

The bonus pack scripts will have pck extension. I'd assume the ones you list which don't show their extension are xml. Get rid of the non pck versions (reinstall the bonus pack if you've already removed the pck ones.)

[Buck_Rogers]

YES!!

Another read-text error bites the dust!

I removed everything from the scripts folder with either "bms" or bar" in the name. I then re-installed the bonus pack and hey-presto! No more read-text errors. YAY!

thank you Bunny and Eladan!

[jlehtone]

Just for record:

* Elena's Fortune
* 110+ large Dolphin SF on BMS collect
* ~70 BAR Buster
* couple dozen Mammoths
* CLS, 4 CAG
* some complexes as storage
* major blunders in logistics, massive traffic jam in Silicon Mine (PE), etc

Still, about one game week and now Elena.Count(debrii clusters)==0

[Starhaus]

I am using X3 ver. 2.5 with the latest bonus pack installed. When I purchased a Demeter Miner, it showed a mineral scanner and ore collector as part of the purchase package. Also when these preinstalled mining extensions are examined with the trade details panel at an Equipment Dock, both the ore collector and mineral scanner are shown as installed (and therefore not purchasable again). I also have most other software extensions installed for trade, navigation and special commands.

With a mineral scanner installed in any ship (I know this from using it in other ships), opening the special commands panel gives the option to "scan asteroids". However, in the newly purchased Demeter Miner, the option to "scan asteroids" is absent. Moreover, because the mineral scanner is not functionally present, the option to "collect minerals" also is absent. I can only "collect rocks" with the ore collector. (note: the listed in-game prereq for mineral collecting also cites a "mineral collector", however a review of the X3 literature only refers to the already-installed ore collector).

I can not find a workaround because Equipment Docks selling the mineral scanner claim the scanner is already installed (and can not be repurchased or sold). This is a critical issue.

Also, with the mobile drilling gun installed I noticed, although it works, it has an incredibly slow refire rate, approx. one shot every 5-10 seconds or so. Is that normal?

[jlehtone]

Miner variants do have the Mineral Scanner builtin, but the Mobile Mining (BMS) script should cope with that. I definitely do have Caiman, Demeter, and Vulture Miners in operational BMS-duty.

Special Commands Software installed? And you not in the ship? (Command is not available in personal ship.) Just checking the obvious.

Besides, this is a specific question about specific script, and therefore the most useful place to ask it would have been the BMS thread in S&M. (But please do not repost there, rather see if a kind moderator [ie not me] can move this.)


And yes, the rate of fire of the Mobile Drill is low. But that does not matter if you are not in the sector, and with BMS there is no need to be in the sector.

[pjknibbs]

That refire rate on the mobile drill is perfectly normal, yes--the weapon is actually pretty powerful, so if it had a fast rate of fire it would be better than most military weapons! As for the other, I suspect that "Scan Asteroids" is a Bonus Pack command and may not be recognising the presence of the pre-installed mineral scanner. The scanner will still actually work--if you go within 10km of an unscanned asteroid, target it, and press I for information, does the asteroid scan correctly?

[jlehtone]

With a mineral scanner installed in any ship (I know this from using it in other ships), opening the special commands panel gives the option to "scan asteroids".

"Scan Asteroids" command is part of "Explorer Software" script. It requires the 'Explorer Software' (from Teladi Docks) on the ship and

Code: Select all

if $ship -> get amount of ware Mineral Scanner in cargo bay

nothing else. No recollection if that test succeeds for builtins.

[Starhaus]

Ah, I see. Explorer software. My Mamba had it but the Demeter did not. However, the prereq list does not mention explorer software. If you click on the greyed out (unusable) options of "collect minerals" or "scan asteroids" there is no mention of "explorer software" in the prereq list.

[Starhaus]

Ok, I added explorer software to the Demeter, and although the "scan asteroids" option appears in the command list, it is still greyed out and unusable directly. However, that option was directly usable in my other personal ship. Clicking on the greyed out option simply gives a blurb about how "scanning asteroids has never been easier...". No prereq list. I think prior to the explorer extension, the "scan asteroid" option was not even available, although "collect minerals" was (although greyed out).

It is an idiosyncratic inconsistency that one ship can directly use the option and another can not. The exception is counter-intuitive as well, since one would expect to be able to directly scan asteroids from a mining ship. Is there a list of exceptions to availability for various options? (Or perhaps is it, as was mentioned earlier, simply a glitch resulting from the extension not recognising a pre-installed scanner?)

[Nanook]

I've never had a problem with any of my miner-class ships using the 'Collect Minerals in Sector' command. Above and beyond what the miner-class ships come with, it only requires Special Command Software. Are you sure you have that on your Demeter Miner? Do you have any other scripts installed besides the Bonus Pack that might interfere with the command? Any mods? Has the ship ever been used for another purpose, such as CLS, CAG, ST/UT? If so, there may still be an active script on it overriding the mining script. I really can't think of a reason the option would be there but greyed out.