[SCR] Condense Asteroids

[Gazz]

(Das entsprechende deutsche Topic ist hier.)

. Condense Asteroids .


The universe is full of space junk. Asteroids with yield 1, yield 3... BAH.
The true micromanager must use them all but the voice of reason says you're nuts...
Besides, the FPS in the sector would be terrible if you completely mined Ore Belt. Mines are even worse than asteroids. =)

Anyone for a game of pool?
Gently push 2 asteroids into one another and hey presto - you have one bigger asteroid.
You can't push too hard because you want 1 asteroid. Not 6123461 fragments.

A simple idea. It would have been a very simple script - had I not insisted on animating this process... and allowing multiple ships to work simultaneously. Silly me.

• Required: X3 v2.5
  
  
• Required Equipment:
  Tractor Beam
  Mineral Scanner
  Special Command Software Mk1

What the script does:

• There is 1 Menu Button (Piracy Menu)
  Input: Target Sector
  Input: Minimum Yield of the asteroids
  
  
• Which asteroids your ship condenses is determined by it's freight.
  1+ units of ore and it deals with ore asteroids. You get the idea...
  
  
• If installed, the ship uses a jumpdrive to reach the target sector.
  
  
• Asteroids with less than the Yield you specify are ignored.
  
  
• Every condensed asteroid costs 1.200.000 Credits.
  That is the price of the extra mine that you do not have to build.
  The advantages are better performance in the sector and an easier time building a complex.
  (Moving mines around is annoying at best.)
  
  
• The speed at which the asteroids move is low but keep in mind that an asteroid of average "rock" density has a mass of about 8.000.000.000 tons.
  
  
• Your ship creates asteroids with a max yield of 99.
  If that is not enough for you, edit the script. =P
  
  
• Entering a high minimum yield prevents the ship from burning a lot of your credits but it will rarely be able to match asteroids into a perfect 99 without having access to the small ones.
  Your decision.
  
  
• Due to the way X3 calculates the mine's productivity, combining the asteroids actually results in a small loss. 2 small mines produce a fraction of 1 yield point more than 1 big mine.
  Through the joys of X3's integer math there are no fractions .
  You can't crash 2 huge chunks of rock into one another without a few tiny bits flying off. =)

Scripts for the complex builder: ComplexCleaner v2, Condense Asteroids, Super Tractor, A.R.E.S. Station Building


(ZIP)

Resources used:
COMMAND_TYPE_PIRACY_56
T-File / PageID 7045

[jlehtone]

[Gazz]

[jlehtone]

[Gazz]

[Gazz]

Version 3 released.

Bugfix.
The script was creating bugged asteroids.

[Tritous]

There are in fact two plausable reasons for not using this though.

a: just how many mines do you need? I calculated how many ore mines I'd need for 1AHEPT, 6BHEPT, 125MJ, 2x1GJ (which is 5 Otas reapers with a Hyperion leader every 20 hours, plus lots of 1GJ to sell as profit). And i only need ore mines....

b: in some ways more mines is better since it increases ore/sil storage space. If a ship gets excited and starts to oversell then that inertia is what keeps a complex stable. very hard to break a station that can hole 50k

I am tempted to use it through purely for asthetics: I've got a nice 4 silicon rocks (2x40, 2x42) sitting underneath my very beautiful complex...Adding too many more would mess it up so I may want to limit the number of rocks i have serving as a floor to my complex >.<

[Gazz]

[Tritous]

hehe, well i use XTM, so vanilla is just a flavour to me . Then again, the advantage of the complex warehouses covers many of my needs.

and yes, the number of mines you need is an arguement. I was considering mining all over 20 yield in the oort cloud and realised that apart from the comedy of it...why would i want to mine 49k ore an hour and 43k silicon an hour?

Mind, if ore isn't getting used much, then not much storage is needed >.<

[s9ilent]

To Gazz- Heh, Nice picture, I have the sudden impulse to watch Spaceballs now...???

To jlehtone- How has your computer not imploded from rendering that? Let alone building it

[Tritous]

I'm having a little confusion here. I gathered from reading the top that the purpose of this script is to take all asteroids over a certain yield and merge them into a small number of "superasteroids" which can be mined with less mines and higher productivity.

When I try to use it I believe what is happening is it is taking the small rocks and merging them into minable asteroids but only with yields of 40. I thought the script meant less mines, not more? Am I just being as dense as a roid or is it a bug. for reference I'm OOS.

[Gazz]

Are they even finished merging?

We're talking about rocks with a mass on a million ton scale.
Those don't move like rabbits.

[Tritous]

ship command console->none
audio message something like "asteroid tug autopilot off"
message log saying no more rocks with yield 40 found, total 2 small asteroids merged into larger ones or something like that.
I waited a little longer after that too, it's not moving any more, although it did some seemingly unproductive moving before that

but no apparant change to the asteroid list. Certainly no big ones, and still just the same 2x40 and 2x42 yields that were there before and that I hoped to merge.

The ship doing the merging is an argon mammoth, it has a tractorbeam, the software and mineral scanner.

Only thing I can think of is it's a huge (200km) sector, maybe it isn't recognising asteroids that far outside it's range, even through theyve already been scanned and are on the map?

hope the info helps


edit: oddly the three 80+ mines have just appeared. Does the condensing process continue AFTER the ship has finished?

[Rawn]

yes after the message it takes much more time until the roids are finished
the ships give the roids just a "push" in the right direction

[Tritous]

ah, I thought when it said it was done it meant it was done, not that the ship is done but the roid isnt