Resource Probe X4 3.30 - Explained.

[Harryh]

I just built a Refined Goods factory in Black Hole Sun IV and the station needs Ore and Graphane to get started. Bought 2x Drill and Sunders (high spec) and assigned them to said station. I was looking at my mission manager and I had a mission to deploy a Resource Probe for each mining ship. Is this a new feature of 3.30 or is it a bug ?


Thanks

[Raevyan]

It’s a new thing in 3.30. The miners are supposed to mine near resource probes with best yields. The only problem with that is, that the visual indication of resource areas on the map or the asteroids you’ll see, have nothing to do with the actual resources available in that region. So it’s more or less rng to find a spot with good yields.

[Slashman]

I just built a Refined Goods factory in Black Hole Sun IV and the station needs Ore and Graphane to get started. Bought 2x Drill and Sunders (high spec) and assigned them to said station. I was looking at my mission manager and I had a mission to deploy a Resource Probe for each mining ship. Is this a new feature of 3.30 or is it a bug ?


Thanks

I believe it is a new feature. I've heard it discussed around the boards during the 3.30 beta.

[Harryh]

This has just ruined the game for me

[Raevyan]

This has just ruined the game for me

Why? Haven’t played 3.30 yet but as far as I know you do not need to deploy resource probes. Your miners will do their jobs without them. They just give you the possibility to deploy them in resource rich areas and some control where your miners go.

[RoverTX]

This has just ruined the game for me

They still act the same as before if you don't put any probes down. I think this can only increase their productivity and not hurt it.

[Harryh]

Ok glad to hear it but why is there an entery in Mission Manager to Deploy a Resource Probe for each mining ship???

[Alan Phipps]

Further explanations here.

[Imperial Good]

They will prefer to mine near resource probes. This lets you control where they mine, potentially avoiding paths frequented by enemies or operating close to the factories for less travel time.

[Panos]

They will prefer to mine near resource probes. This lets you control where they mine, potentially avoiding paths frequented by enemies or operating close to the factories for less travel time.

So no more travelling from Grand Exchange III to Grand Exchange IV to mine something that is just 2km away (with probe installed)?
Wooohooooo

[Nort The Fragrent]

I do struggle to figure the logic,
There is an up date with new stuff in it. And I read that players are asking each other what to do.

Would it not be prudent for ES them selves to hand out a memo, explaining in detail the new way things now work. Instead of guess work by the players.

Or did I not get the instructions for 3.3

[luckbox]

Would it not be prudent for ES them selves to hand out a memo, explaining in detail the new way things now work. Instead of guess work by the players.

Obviously not, would not be an X game anymore.

[Lord Dakier]

They will prefer to mine near resource probes. This lets you control where they mine, potentially avoiding paths frequented by enemies or operating close to the factories for less travel time.

I don't really throw miners down in places frequented by enemies anyway. Perhaps to compensate this, mining/collecting speeds without resource probes should be nerfed slightly? I'm all for people needing probes to mine, although that seems a little harsh for those of us who aren't purists. It would also make resource probes more relevant.

[dtpsprt]

Another useless and annoying addition while the S/M pilots struggle to land on a Warf or an Equipment Dock and they try to leave through the walls...

The only good in it is that this way the player will have to actually find the places where resources are in many systems, The downside being that what we see on screen does not correspond to what's really there... Either scrap the need for Resource Probes or make resources be where we see them to be (I think the first of these two options is easier and worked for the 2 years that X4 is being around).

[Artean]

This has just ruined the game for me

Why? Haven’t played 3.30 yet but as far as I know you do not need to deploy resource probes. Your miners will do their jobs without them. They just give you the possibility to deploy them in resource rich areas and some control where your miners go.

Yes, and that's a good thing. There's always so much whining going on surrounding features I enjoy. I must be that special snowflake after all.

[z1ppeh]

They will prefer to mine near resource probes. This lets you control where they mine, potentially avoiding paths frequented by enemies or operating close to the factories for less travel time.

This 'control of where they mine' is wrong. The entire feature is broken in its current form as it is an all or nothing approach... which is quite frankly stupid.

There was already a problem with adding satellites to cover the entire map before you were credit fluid and repped enough to buy the trade subscriptions. Now I am expected to manually drop or manually order a ship to drop resource probes EVERYWHERE too?!?!?!

I have taken the nothing approach, as my interactions with the resource probe requirement were terrible when it was first implemented during the beta. My miners find local ores just like they used to, with their magic mining book, and failing that they drop down to the logic within the mining scripts for deep space mining.

If I have all of my factories in Argon Prime and forgot to remove my satellite from GE3 from the PHQ plotline, once my managers leveled up ALL of my miners now travel to GE3 for mining. I anticipated this knowing full well how broken this feature would be and wanting to see it first hand. They mined perfectly well prior to them leveling up, and all of a sudden they now HAVE to mine in GE3.

I will stick with teh resource probes being as useless as chocolate fireguards for now. Unless a mission, of which I now dodge them religiously unless one is part of a plotline, requires it... then they are a redundant feature now.

[Imperial Good]

This 'control of where they mine' is wrong.

I am pretty sure that is what happens after some recent tests. Miners will prioritise mining at the origin of a resource node that is being sampled by a resource probe. This origin can be some distance away from where the probe was placed, but is still the same resource node. With some time-cost analysis they choose the probe sampled resource node with the highest current yield nearby. This means they will not even deplete a single resource node as long as many are available.

There was already a problem with adding satellites to cover the entire map before you were credit fluid and repped enough to buy the trade subscriptions. Now I am expected to manually drop or manually order a ship to drop resource probes EVERYWHERE too?!?!?!

I have never had to spam satellites everywhere due to how cheap the trade subscriptions are. Only satellites I deploy are for combat intelligence such as to warn of Xenon invasions that must be intercepted.

Resource probes are still optional. Miners will just work without them. However they might work inefficiently as they may choose to mine far away from anywhere they can sell or choose a low density resource node.

When deploying resource probes only the high maximum yield ones need to be kept. Miners will never use the low maximum yield ones. Only ones near the point of sale are ideally required since that minimizes ship flight time.

If I have all of my factories in Argon Prime and forgot to remove my satellite from GE3 from the PHQ plotline, once my managers leveled up ALL of my miners now travel to GE3 for mining. I anticipated this knowing full well how broken this feature would be and wanting to see it first hand. They mined perfectly well prior to them leveling up, and all of a sudden they now HAVE to mine in GE3.

Dump a few probes in Argon Prime near the factory. They should switch back to mining there. If not then report it as a bug, preferably with an unmodified save and some measurements in terms of resources per hour or minute that the bad probe choice logic is costing.

[dtpsprt]

I have never had to spam satellites everywhere due to how cheap the trade subscriptions are. Only satellites I deploy are for combat intelligence such as to warn of Xenon invasions that must be intercepted.

Seriously Imperial? In the long term you are right but what about the start? Why you Egosoft people keep forgetting (intentionally?) that a player starts small. Nothing wrong with that, but if he can not, IN A REASONABLE TIME (Less than 6h ingame), get to a point that a reasonable money source (something like 1M per hour) exists, he'll probably quit the game in all (giving bad publicity btw).

Then again, you are leaving the main aspect of trade subscriptions outside. A player needs 20 rep with a faction to get them not just money... and that takes time (rightfully so)... What is the player supposed to do in the meantime? Spam the explored Universe with satellites, what else? Or rely in "revisit known stations" when his S/M ships are flying around them in glacial pace (see my post "If Then Else", not to mention that you too experienced the same speed problem in our "guide the ship outside of the ecliptic plane" test and pointed it out yourself (nothing been done about it of course)). A Catch 22 case (it means a choice between equally bad situations to save you the Googling, after the film "Catch 22").

Now, more to the point, and the needed grinding... Is the player supposed to fully investigate a sector to find the "sweet resource spots"? Can you imagine the time it will take? Especially since there is no visual or otherwise reliable way to find them? Surely, players with more than 2000 hours and 20 savegames in their pocket already know where these spots are, at least in "crucial" sectors... The not so seasoned, or even worse the novice will not even know which the "crucial sectors" are...

Which brings us back to the beginning: What is a new player going to do? Abandon the game... And (supposedly) OK.. who cares... he's already bought it alright... Come to think: Is this player going to buy the new DLC's? X5? the answer is a resounding NO (This sentence is just trying to put some brains in the managers).

[GCU Grey Area]

Is the player supposed to fully investigate a sector to find the "sweet resource spots"?

No, at least I don't think so. Most of the time it's completely unnecessary to hunt for sweet spots. Good enough is fine for most applications. For example these are the resource probes I dropped, more or less at random, in a rough ring around my main production station:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/eblow38el7xce ... 1.jpg?dl=0
Yields are frankly abysmal, however they've proved to be good enough for the purpose of feeding my station. Ensures that my mining ships barely have to leave the station before they're smashing rocks. Before I deployed the resource probes they were going much further to collect resources &, although they could probably collect faster once they got there, overall it's been noticeably more efficient for them to collect resources closer to the station.

[Imperial Good]

Seriously Imperial? In the long term you are right but what about the start?

They are not needed at the start. I usually open by an all mining economy which will keep the subscriptions of the important stations, where minables are sold, refreshed automatically due to frequent visitations by miners. After a few hours I have both the reputation and the money to afford subscriptions in areas I need them.

Why you Egosoft people keep forgetting (intentionally?) that a player starts small. Nothing wrong with that, but if he can not, IN A REASONABLE TIME (Less than 6h ingame), get to a point that a reasonable money source (something like 1M per hour) exists, he'll probably quit the game in all (giving bad publicity btw).

I suggest checking my video series out. The first 6 hours were recorded in their entirety and by the end of them I was making well over 1 million per hour. In fact by that time I not only had spent a lot, but I was also sitting on 10 million credits of liquid capital in the bank. I also wasted a lot of time for entertainment at the start during that series so everything that was done in 6 hours could potentially be done in 4 or less.

https://youtu.be/ka2aoK9_xC4

Key point is to reclaim the always placed abandoned ships fast, and downgrade them for a large capital injection (few million). Use that money to buy low loadout miners (any faction designs work). Use plot view to discover stations and in sectors where there is mineable demand set a sector miner to operate. Using this approach it is fairly easy to hit 10 million or more per hour after just a few hours early game. The income starts to drop off as the universe gets older but by that stage you can afford your very own Warf, which quite literally prints money, and all the trade subscriptions for key players.

At the time that video was made there was a serious exploit. Using that exploit you could own all ship building module blueprints and ordered a fully working shipyard in under 2 hours with over 1+ billion credits spare. Thankfully 3.30 has finally patched this.

Then again, you are leaving the main aspect of trade subscriptions outside. A player needs 20 rep with a faction to get them not just money... and that takes time (rightfully so)... What is the player supposed to do in the meantime? Spam the explored Universe with satellites, what else? Or rely in "revisit known stations" when his S/M ships are flying around them in glacial pace (see my post "If Then Else", not to mention that you too experienced the same speed problem in our "guide the ship outside of the ecliptic plane" test and pointed it out yourself (nothing been done about it of course)). A Catch 22 case (it means a choice between equally bad situations to save you the Googling, after the film "Catch 22").

I usually spend that time remote exploring the universe and setting up mining. Newer players could instead fly around and explore manually similar to what I did in my video series for the DLC content (which was new at the time, never seen it before). The first playthrough can be quite slow as it is more about learning and having fun than getting things done.

Now, more to the point, and the needed grinding... Is the player supposed to fully investigate a sector to find the "sweet resource spots"? Can you imagine the time it will take? Especially since there is no visual or otherwise reliable way to find them? Surely, players with more than 2000 hours and 20 savegames in their pocket already know where these spots are, at least in "crucial" sectors... The not so seasoned, or even worse the novice will not even know which the "crucial sectors" are...

They do not need to be "sweet" resource spots. Just sufficient. If you only operate 1 miner then a 10 ore or 14 ore mining spot does not really make a difference while the travel distance does.

So far the only issue I am seeing is with low resource density sectors. resources are often available in such low densities that the local region quickly depletes so many resource nodes (probes) are needed to keep mining efficient.

Yields are frankly abysmal, however they've proved to be good enough for the purpose of feeding my station. Ensures that my mining ships barely have to leave the station before they're smashing rocks. Before I deployed the resource probes they were going much further to collect resources &, although they could probably collect faster once they got there, overall it's been noticeably more efficient for them to collect resources closer to the station.

Surprised you are not running into depletion issues. I have some node that get so mined they are 0.3 resources down and this is in a high density (faster replenishment) area.