[2.0] Station miners totally borked - gamebreaker or near gamebreaker

[Gregorovitch]

Dropbox link to save file to see this issue (never used dropbox before, please advise if problem downloading this link):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/noaxuete7prjn ... gz.7z?dl=0

At save point you will find my ship, Alice, near to my complex in Second Contact II. The complex needs ore - a lot of it - and also silicon. Hence my struggles and subsequent study of this situation.

1. Sit there and watch the station miners for a few minutes in map view. After unloading about 50%+ of them will head for this one isolated red hex (ore only) in the sector just by the highway. Once there they will find that there are no asteroids left at the location. They will mill about for a while and then all head in a southerly direction towards the nearest asteroids. But they are on a rubber band. At a certain point before they get to the asteroids they stop and turn back to the anchor point in the red hex. They will then go back and forth on this rubber band endlessly, or at least for longer than I have the patience to observe them.

2. Now fly over to the red hex in question. As soon as the miners gathered there come into cockpit view (or possibly ship radar view) they suddenly wake up and head for the nearby asteroids a little to the south and start mining properly. So long as you stay there watching any new miners will head for the red hex and then do the same. Once they have got to the nearby asteroid field they will continue to mine there even if you go away until they mine a full load. However any returning miners arriving at this red hex will start the rubber band dance again if you are not within eyeball range of them.

3. If you now fly up to Argon Prime (or anywhere OOS) the situation changes, I have only just discovered. The miners again beeline for this wretched red hex but this time they just sit there doing nothing (since there is nothing to mine there). However if you watch them for a bit you will notice that the game appears to be "cheating" them a full load of ore after a minute or two. Which they then deliver to the station not, judging by the icons, on the normal "trade" order but using a different one, "transfer wares" probably. WTF??

So, OK the complex gets ore despite this glitch so long as I am OOS, but the breaker for me is that this red hex (which seems to be a magnet for them for some reason) doesn't have any silicon (which is probably why they are not being "cheated" any silicon) and the complex needs silicon urgently and will soon require a lot more of it. Which looks like it's going to break my game because I can't control these station miners or influence what they do in any way.

I am very upset about this. My first game broke because most of the Argon guild missions failed to trigger guidance markers to enable me to complete the missions. This time after tens of hours play my first complex is being scuppered by station miner glitch resource starvation I can do absolutely nothing about. 200 hours play, two broken games caused by bugs coming out of nowhere I can do nothing a bout. My confidence in the game and appetite for a third attempt is waning, I have to say.

[SPiDER]

Ai controlled station miners have always cheated...watch them in argon prime they break up roids that have no content and fill up their holds..its the same reason the "player" cant gas mine only ai can gas mine...but I do agree that since the 2.0 update the miners behaviour is odd but they still do mine.at least in my game they do..

[Imperial Good]

Out of sector and in sector work completely differently.

OoS miners use the resource volume system to mine. These are the values reported by resource probes. Since you are not going to be watching your miners mine (as that is boring...), this is the only value that matters.