Version: 3.21
Date: 5.8.2007
Scripter: Bunny, Lucike and SymTec ltd.
Overview:
- This gets a ship to mine/collect rocks and deliver to a home base or trade them locally
- Give the mobile mining ship the required equipment.
- Select "Collect Minerals..." in the special commands menu.
- Select the worked sector to mobile mine
Equipment:
- Required:
- Ore collector
- Mineral scanner
- Special commands software
Optional: - A weapon (the ship will mobile mine rather than just collect)
- Transporter Device (if home base is a TL)
- Jump Drive
- Triplex Scanner (Improves search capability)
- Satellites (Improves search capability)
- 25 MJ shields (In sector mining can be risky)
Modes:
- The script has two modes of operation - supply or trade. The mode is determined by which home base is given to the ship
- Supply Mode:
This is selected by setting the homebase to a station that uses minerals as a product or resource. The ship will supply that station only. A TL can be used as a home base but has to remain stationary with the miner is working. Also the mining ship will require a transporter device to deliver the minerals to the ship. - Trader Mode:
This is chosen by either not setting a homebase or selecting one that does not use minerals i.e SPP or cattle ranch etc. The ship will deliver to any factory in a 1 jump range of the worked sector. A check will also be made to see which mineral is in greatest local demand and the ship will concentrate on collect that type.
General Features:
- Works both in and out of sector
- Satellite deployment: The ship will check if the rocks it finds are outside of satellite coverage. If they are then it will deploy an on-board satellite. The ship will not purchase or load satellites itself, the player has to stock the ship.
- The ship checks satellites (nav & adv) in the worked sector to locate collectible rocks within their sensor range. This is in addition to a search made with the ship scanner.
- During mining the ship will also deploy and collect navigational beacons. The name of the beacon shows the ship ID and the type of mineral it is collecting. This makes looking easy to see what the ships are doing when looking at the sector map.
- The script contains code to prevent multiple mobile mining ships from bunching up/forming convoys which would otherwise reduce collection efficiency.
- The ship ignores yield zero rocks
- If the ship is fitted with a weapon it will break up rocks for collection (unarmed ships will just collect available fragments)
- The weapon turret with the most fire power is selected for breaking rocks (front or back)
- The ship will stop and wait for its shield to fully recharge after a rock collision
- Uses a jump drive if one is fitted. Energy will be taken from the home base for a round trip (this feature is only useful in supply mode)
- A ship can be forced to collect only one mineral type by placing "Ore" or "Silicon" in the ship/homebase name. Ships with a TL homebase and free trader miners with no homebase can also use "Nividium" to collect this mineral.
- A standard charge for each unit of minerals delivered to player owned factories is
- 1 unit ore = 13 credits
1 unit silicon = 50 credits
1 unit nividium = 1610 credits
The charge for deliveries to NPC stations is 10% of the money made. This charge covers pilot wages and costs.
- 1 unit ore = 13 credits
- If the ship has a problem then a message is sent to the player log.
- Mines/Collects only the minerals carried by the home base (product or resource)
- Delivers collected minerals to home base and resumes collecting in the worked sector
- If the factory cannot pay then the ship will undock and wait in sector for 10-20 minutes before attempting to unload the cargo again.
- 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 prevents camping in docking slots and allows the station to use up minerals. The ship will resume collection after a successful delivery.
- Balanced collection of all minerals that a station uses (ore/silicon/nividium). This means if the station has more than 90% full stock of one mineral then ships will concentrate on collecting the other types that are required. If a station has all mineral stocks levels above 90% then the ship will wait in the home sector till they fall below this limit.
- Ships with a TL homebase will collect silicon and ore in balanced amounts. This behaviour can be overridden by placing "Ore", "Silicon" or "Nividium" in the mining ship name.
Trader mode Features:
- The ship checks which mineral is in greatest demand in a 1 jump radius and will mine the required type.
- The ship finds and delivers to the factory that requires the most units of mineral (Player and NPC factories covered).
- The ship will continue to deliver to factories until it is empty before resuming mining.
- Ore and silicon is collected and sold, nividium is not (market is too small for effective trading - use supply mode to collect nividium).
Additional Notes:
- This script does not create or destroy rocks directly. All of that is done by the game with weapons fire alone, both IS and OOS.
- This script can improve frame rate in rocky sector after several game hours. Entire sectors can be cleared with enough ships and time
- Map asteroids will not be mined, only rocks. Break the asteroid to mine it.
Recommended mining ship - Caiman Miner- It has multiple weapon slots that give it plenty of fire power (breaks rocks more quickly both IS and OOS).
- In sector mobile mining performance is better compared to other TS ships.
- Weapon comments
IREs - Weak but accurate - IS and OOS rock breaking is slow
PACs - Reasonable power and accurate - Recommended
HEPTs - Very Good, if you can get them to fit in the ship
PSGs - Not recommended - Overkill and has a high risk of friendly fire and collateral damage
Mass Drivers - Powerful but needs ammo
Ion Disruptors - No effect on rocks
Mobile Drilling System - Great OOS/IS rock breaking performance. The rocks that get accidentally destroyed in sector will re-spawn later.
The Attack Rocks script can also be used on fighters to help mobile mining ships concentrate on collecting rather than mining. Fighters break rocks faster than freighters.