[Bonus Plugin] Mobile Mining / Mineral Collection Software

[plw]

Many thanks for the reply, things seem to have settled down now that they are mining a few sectors away, and I might add they are doing a good job of selling the ore as well. Thanks for the add on.

Some possibilities

1. It might have got in the line of fire of a ship breaking rocks
2. Hit a dense cluster of rocks while trying to slow down after the initial collision
3. Got caught inside a large rock (aggregate) when the ship was viewed.

Two things can be done to avoid these problems
1. Stay out of the worked sector
2. When in sector, do not view the mining ship with F3 mode or target it so it is viewed on the mini monitor. Rock collisions do not occur in sector if the mining ship is not close/being viewed by the player

Cheers

Bunny

[jlehtone]

Question about designed semantics. A Miner without homebase and thus in trade mode. A player complex of Silicon Mine and Ore Mine (for CLS convenience) with no money (part of closed loop). Now the miner complains that the complex has no money to pay for minerals. Of course it has none, as it needs no money. Needs no minerals either, for it produces them.

I like closed loops. But I prefer them truly closed. No trader of mine is allowed into them without my explicit permission. Poor Miner apparently does know this company policy ... yet.

What is Bun Nyak Software Corporation's recommended amount of lashes for insubordination?

[Bunny]

The miner has a wife and kids to feed - he needs to be paid

[seethestar]

Question - im probably missing something obvious... but cant work it out..

I equipped a paranid freighter with a Mobile drilling system in its turret - along with the ore collector and the mineral scanner - sent it off to mine some asteroids for me in paranid space...

"message - no place i could wsell so im stopping" - ok so i sent it somewhere else - this time no message - just it flys around in circles and never gets anywhere close to destroying a roid - let alone mining for me...

anyone else experienced the "drunken bumblebee" effect from this command?

(note this is all OOS - not tried it in secotr yet)

[Pogi]

Sounds to me like you sent him to a sector where there is no debri to mine...If there is no debri "only" astroids, you need to break them yourselves in order to collect them...Zero debri loads will be ignored by these miners, there is plenty of zero debri out there too.

[jlehtone]

The miner has a wife and kids to feed - he needs to be paid

I know that. IIRC, I rescued them three months ago from a Split Cartel, so kids name is probably Jul'n. Even arranged a protected home for them at my SPP XL. So if they need anything, they have that at home.

My grief is that this miner insists on selling to a place that I want to keep "off-limits". Had I a Forge short on Minerals, I would have vash at that Forge to pay for whomever delivers. And primarily I'd like to see that Miner deliver to the NPC industry. Too bad Three Worlds (+1 jump) has little, and my regular mines probably saturate part of that market already.

But this Complex.
* Trade with other races: No
* Trade Intermediates: None (well, there are no intermediates in the complex)
* Trader Barrier (Commercial Agents)
* Credits in account: 0

Wait, "greatest demand" says the flight procedure. So filling the stock in complex is the only way to keep the Miner out? I have to talk with my Logistics chief about that.

[Pogi]

@jlehtone

So filling the stock in complex is the only way to keep the Miner out?

I'm with you on that...These pilots we hire and pay wages are supposed to have a brain are they not?..They are supposed to take orders and be able to follow them as well..I am really looking forward to the day/patch/X-version that addresses that issue. We need more control over these pilots orders. In the real world if I hired a trucker to deliver a load for me, by gosh he would deliver it where I wanted him to deliver it..period...Or he would not work for me very long.

[jlehtone]

These pilots have brains, and even this detail is perfectly sane default. Ask any Teladi and she will explain why closed loops and complexes lose profitsss.


A configuration flag perhaps? Maybe adding a check for "Trade with other races" of destination, if Miner has Trading Systems Extension? No need for extra command slot.

[Pogi]

Not really focusing on these pilots in this bonus pack, just pilots in general.......................

I really like what BOF did with his "Remote Docked Freight Transfer", giving the player clickable, multiple choices......Question: Can sub-routines for these pilots be ran from that type of interface?.....If so, that would seem to me to be the best way to add additional commands to be able to fine-tune these pilots orders...

Commodity Logistics Software (which in my opinion needs a healthy dose of user friendliness), could even benefit from the BOF approach. People don't want to have to remember or manually input loads of data to get their pilot working for them..It should be multiple choice and click...Just my thoughts.

[jlehtone]

Collection "statistics":

Had a simple plan for in sector mining:
1. Enter Kha'ak sector
2. Break one map asteroid
3. Collect Nividium

* Started with 9 Caiman Miners, fully tuned, with MDS in back turret.
* Orca right above the mined asteroid, unloading should be quick.
* Added two Centaurs, 4 MDS on front: 'Attack Rocks'
* Insufficient defences: Kha'ak seem to target soft targets rather than M2's. Most Navigation Beacons shot out.
* Insufficient defences 2: no Fighter Drones on those Caimans.
=> Four Caimans destroyed near start (last of them had maybe 100 units of Nividium on board).

* Added defence fighters.
* Called in 10 unarmed Falcon Haulers to 'Collect Minerals'.
* Added 100 Fighter Drones to each remaining Caiman.
=> Navigation Beacons get shot like before, Drones have saved Caimans from further losses.

* Caiman Miner can hold a lot of Nividium. Loss of nearly full one would be expensive.
* Falcon Hauler is slower, more agile, smaller, and more shielded than Caiman. Much better chance to avoid collisions (and maybe attacks.) And clears its hold frequently.


After about 8 hours of mining, there are about 10.000 units of Nividium in the ships. That is around 1.200 units per hour, 20 units per minute. Ie one ship collects about one unit in one minute, in sector.

I wonder how much they would gather in "optimal" setup?

Edit: RTFM A guide written by certain Bunny says:
"3 mil per hour". Doesn't that resolve to about 6 units per minute per ship?

[Bunny]

Put lots of satellites in the system to keep the ships spread out. This stops them chasing the same rocks and therefore ups the collection efficiency.

[jlehtone]

Does it matter if I drop satellites after, as collectors are already active? I assume not.

Status: 13.000 units of Nividium after 10 hours.
(Bloody Kha'ak eat my satellites almost quicker than I drop them. Ie this is even more fun than anticipated. )

[Bunny]

No problem, they find the new ones.

So how do you keep the khaak at bay?

[jlehtone]

So how do you keep the khaak at bay?

I'd say there are three groups of Kha'ak:
1. BigShips and their escorts.
2. Single KM5, KM4, KM3
3. What spawns around personal ship frequently (from 3 KM5 to couple broken medium-sized clusters).

1 and 2 respawn near center if killed. Group 3 is always around you.

Killing group 1 would cause obvious havoc. Killing group 2 is unavoidable.

Group 1 chases the first target that gets close to them (KM2 "see" at least 35 km, KM1 about 9 km). Their fighters stay in formation, unless you get to within 3 km or kill the BigShip. The obvious stunt is to make all BigShips see you and chase you. Then you can draw them where-ever you like. But the "rabbit" has to be you, for AI is not so clever.

Ahh, you say that those KM1 and KM2 are fast? True, they were fast before PPC fire punched holes into their hulls, slowing them down. Took a while and couple died accidentally, but now their "top dog" is down to 27 m/s. And they are all somewhere out there, chasing my ship (which is now 800 km from the centre).

The group 3: I fly Oddy. Its shields recover quickly enough.


That leaves group 2. They are the real problem. Some of them spawn right in the middle of collector-fleet. Even a KM5 can kill a Satellite or Beacon before my defences reach it.

I started by placing a ring of FAA-ships around the asteroid. They have no command, but their turrets are on "Attack all", and they have Mosquito Missile Defence. Too bad some group 2 ignores them.

Group Management System groups of five ship. Three escorts attack the target of leader, fourth protects. The leader runs "Defend Position", but they tend to cluster to points where the last intruder was killed.

Currently I have there (IIRC) 5 Medusa groups, 2 Chimera, 2 Mamba-R (inteded to buy Chims, but were careless), 3 L, 2 M, 2 Nova-V. So about 80 fighters. The M (APBE) are good against those KM5. And Caimans had 100 Drones each.

This is in sector. One Mamba has been killed by Asteroid. One Medusa group decided to attack Kha'ak Station, but luckily none of them died (they are now in PHQ for repairs), and I had to remove the Station with Zeus (using the remote piloting via Monitor).


Had I chosen a different Asteroid, far in the west, the group 2 would probably not spawn so close. Besides, the one I'm on has other Asteroids very near to it, so there is plenty to collide to.


Does that answer the question?

[jlehtone]

Addition of satellites does help a bit, although some clustering is still observed.

Kha'ak find Lasertowers attractive. Reduces beacon casualties a tiny bit.

There was one Falcon collector that messaged "Bay over 90% full, waiting". Its bay was 100% full, mother-TL had plenty of room, and this Falcon was about 30 km away from everybody else. No rocks out there.


Status: over 30.000 units of Nividium after 23 hours.

[Incubi]

This is a minor bug, but worth mentioning. Pilots being made in argon space are getting teladi names, and pilots being made in teladi space are getting Argon names. So far this only happens with this command and attack asteroid command. Other than that I am loving how much easier my nvidium operations are now
I am using busters for attack asteroid commands. for one simple reason. names are
Nvidium Buster, Ore Buster, and Silicon Buster

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consider letting a mineral gatheror loose in Home of Light. a couple type 0 silicon rock clusters there and lots of local places buying it.

[jlehtone]

In both cases he should get paid per unit delivered

Minor exploit? I do watch my in sector mining operation, and since those TS take a long time to fill up, I have manually cleared their hold to prevent excessive losses to the enemy actions. Does this mean that they do not get paid, as they hardly ever deliver to TL?

[Bunny]

Hmm, yeap that is an exploit. But the hassle of having to keep micromanaging the miners probably is balanced by the savings made .

[LV]

I must admit here that i've not had goog results here, in one test with a mining caimen (poss DDRS) it naffed off way off position to where no roids where when using break up

then collect rocks seemed to not collect anything, this must be on my part but i don't know why

[jlehtone]

"no roids" as in "no small rock fragments that do not show on the map anyway"? If the "Break asteroids" does not see anything to break in (sat) scanner range, it does "wander off" to look for some more.

"collect rocks" or "collect minerals"? Former is a stock command (ie not smart), the latter from Bunny.