2.6x BUG Idling Miner

[TheBillyGoatee]

The post contains bug details of what, when and where in the game, plus why you think this a game bug rather than normal play.

This bug happens when I order my auto miner in a magpie to automine in the max amount of sectors. He is currently automining in the Grand Exchange area and selling to the ice refineries in the same areas. I believe this is a bug because he was just flying a kilometer or so in one direction then stop, and then a kilometer in another and stop in space with no asteroids to mine. However, his sector had plenty of asteroids and also his cargo bay was full. After leaving him be for maybe an hour, I had flown to him and saw him doing nothing. That is when I ordered him to auto mine again and he instantly went off to sell his cargo. If I had not ordered him to automine again, which is his default action, then he would've just sat there for eternity. I am using Advanced AutoMine.

Love your game btw!

[CBJ]

Can you provide a savegame in which the miner is doing what you describe?

[TheBillyGoatee]

Well it wasn't as though I was expecting it to happen, so I don't have any footage of it. But I do have another miner who is just sitting out in space like the previous, I might've removed his job because I am going to sell his cargo manually due to the fact hes been sitting with full cargo for a lengthy amount of time.

Its the Manorina under wing2. Currently in Grand Exchange 1. Currently trying to figure out how to send you the file...

[Alan Phipps]

@ OP: Is it anything like this?

This is how you upload and then provide a link to files as taken from the 'Read this First' Sticky:

"If you are supplying information that will not conveniently fit into posts in this forum (approx 70,000 character limit per post), in the worst case you can split long text files across 2 consecutive posts, or ideally you can upload the data to a reputable public fileshare site (a few examples are Google Drive, DropBox or PasteBin, etc) but please don't use sites that spam advertising or require registration for downloads."

[Faustov]

Hello,

I am having the same issue in 2.60. I have ensured that mining ships do have drones, but for some stations they just don't mine, they float around in spaces without resources. Did you get a save to look at?

[CBJ]

No. Do you have one?

[Duncaroos]

Hello,

I am having the same issue in 2.60. I have ensured that mining ships do have drones, but for some stations they just don't mine, they float around in spaces without resources. Did you get a save to look at?

What setting do you have the logistic inputs for the station (i.e. settings for Buy/Sell Orders and restrict trade) ? If you wanted to have a behaviours of "I only want to sell excess ore/silicon/ice tock to other factions but not buy from them", then I assume you might have set the Buy Order section to manual for both stock level and price and set both to minimum. I noticed this unfortunately has a consequence of the manager also not ordering their miners to continue mining, because stock levels are above the buy threshold (1).

If you indeed did this, set it back to automatic and turn on restrict trade and you should see the miners begin to work again (if your storage can accept more wares anyways).

[Faustov]

Hello,

I am having the same issue in 2.60. I have ensured that mining ships do have drones, but for some stations they just don't mine, they float around in spaces without resources. Did you get a save to look at?

What setting do you have the logistic inputs for the station (i.e. settings for Buy/Sell Orders and restrict trade) ? If you wanted to have a behaviours of "I only want to sell excess ore/silicon/ice tock to other factions but not buy from them", then I assume you might have set the Buy Order section to manual for both stock level and price and set both to minimum. I noticed this unfortunately has a consequence of the manager also not ordering their miners to continue mining, because stock levels are above the buy threshold (1).

If you indeed did this, set it back to automatic and turn on restrict trade and you should see the miners begin to work again (if your storage can accept more wares anyways).

OMG this is exactly what I did, thanks for the hint! But I spent an hour to go over each resource in each station to ensure I'm mining and not buying.

Egosoft, will this be fixed?

[Browser_ice]

I need to understand why my assigned ships are not mining when 100KM away there's a probe saying there are minerals there.

If I take one of those ships, it shows:
- pilot skills = 4 stars
- Moral = 4 stars
- Engineer = 2 star
- Management = half a star
- Looking at ship behavior property, I see its automine skill = 1 star (not sure if its the actual skill or just the minimal requirement)
- ship is a Plutus Sentinel with cargo = 11,520 M3 (cubic meeters), medium weapon = mining laser MK2, medium turrets = Pulse MK1 Par
(all my 3 ships have the same hardwares and softwares)
- sector = Napileos Fortune II

nearest probe indicating something says:
- hydrogen = 0.021
- Nividium=0.0037
- Ore=0.42
- Silicon=0.39

Viewing this ship on screen and selecting it, my display says :
- Free mining + Looking for resources
- storage=0 M3

If I unassign it, transfer its cargo to my station and manually tell it to mine for nividium, it does mine. If I reassign to my station for mining, it just idle around in "Looking for resources" and does not even botter going near my resource probe. It just hangs around my station.

If I unassign it and set its default behavior to Sector automine for all solid minerals, it goes 200 KM away mining Nividium. I put both Max gate options to 0 so it stays in that sector. I could see in its order queue a Mine order.

If I transfer its full cargo to my station and set its default behavior to Advanced automine selecting all possible solid minerals, it goes mining for ice where my res probe is. I put both Max gate options to 0 so it stays in that sector. I could see in its order queue a Mine order.

I could not test Expert Automine because it was not available.

Now with the ship being on my station, I manually transfered its cargo, change its default behavior to hold position and then assign it to mine for my station, it takes off with a command status of Free mining + looking for ressources but its order queue is empty. Its behavior window does show that its current role is mine for my station but its not doing it. It just idles around my station as if always looking near it and never finding anything. The maximum gate to gather resources is set to 4 (I cannot change it) and the maximum gate to sell is set to 0 (I cannto change it).

My station manager skills:
- Pilot = half star
- management = 1 star
- engineering = 1 star
- moral = 1 star

My station has 2 large Argon solid + container storage modules and 4 solar pannels. No other production module.

In my logical overview, I see all 4 solid wares and each have a selling price that I set myself after manually transfering those wares to my station.

Besides not having a production module requiring a mineral/gaz ware, all conditions for mining are there, except they are not mining.

Game version is 2.6, I had removed/deleted and unsubscribed all extensions before doing this. I thought it was an extension causing this but it does not seam to be the case.

While doing all this, I was standing on my station. So I was not aboard any of my mining ships. The other mining ships still assigned to my station have done nothing but idleing around during this whole time I did those tests.

I checked the available trade offers on my station and I do see selling offers for all 4 minerals I have gathers so far via manual transfering to it.

About the only possible issues I can see is the low level manager or having no production modules needing any mineral/gaz wares. However it should not matter if there are no production modules needing the mineral/gaz ware. As long as I have selling offers for them, the assigned ships should just keep mining.

Any ideas?

[Alan Phipps]

Similar threads merged and also see this thread.

[Faustov]

Similar threads merged and also see this thread.

Do you need a save? Or other details to confirm an issue?

[Browser_ice]

Similar threads merged and also see this thread.

Soooooooo, is it a confirmed issue or no one knows because so far no one has looked at this?

[Alan Phipps]

"Besides not having a production module requiring a mineral/gaz ware .." would seem to be one of the potential problems from that list I linked. I believe that requirement is intended to stop the player making every station into a mining trading post.

EDIT: here's confirmation of some station miner requirements from a dev:

- That the station the ship is assigned to wants solid wares for whatever reason (has buy offers and manager has cash),
- and that the station can acquire more minerals (has enough free storage of the correct type and doesn't have incoming trade reservations that would fill storage up).

[Faustov]

I think I still have an issue even meeting those conditions. It affects my shipyards which are built to be self-sustainable (i.e. not requre to buy any goods, produce all themselves). Miners are idling or slowly flying without goal in sectors which have no resources.

Sometimes removing assignment and assigning back works. I also noticed it helps if the assignment is made when the ship is near the station and not in the other end of the galaxy.

[Faustov]

No. Do you have one?

I missed this post sorry. I'll try to upload one as soon as I get a chance to play again.

[Browser_ice]

.... I believe that requirement is intended to stop the player making every station into a mining trading post.

Be carefull when saying this because it could be interpreted as if Egosoft never wanted warehouse facilities in X4 like we used to have in XR.

However if this is the case, then honestly, it would clam my worries by half. I used to love doing that in XR and wanted to redo this in X4. So if it was never meant to be possible, I could then stop trying to do it ... unless there is an issue in this thread that once fixed could allow us to still do it

[Alan Phipps]

@ Faustov: You mentioned that your shipyard is self-contained and does "not require to buy any goods". Is it generating buy orders for the miners' resources and who is normally meeting those and how well? It seems to be a requisite from what the devs said to me that there have to be current buy orders for their mining resources that are not already being met by reserved trades and not being prevented from happening for other reasons.

[Faustov]

@ Faustov: You mentioned that your shipyard is self-contained and does "not require to buy any goods". Is it generating buy orders for the miners' resources and who is normally meeting those and how well? It seems to be a requisite from what the devs said to me that there have to be current buy orders for their mining resources that are not already being met by reserved trades and not being prevented from happening for other reasons.

Alan, I think those orders disappear once I reduce the buy amount - which is what I want, the purpose I invested into my own fleet was to avoid buying from others.
Anyway, to keep the station running, I've set the buy amounts to some small value. Please have a look at Nopileos Fortune shipyard - the miners all float around it instead of mining, resources are just around the "buy amount" mark.

Please find the save here: https://file.io/a0Wzas

[Faustov]

Seems the file upload had expired - has anyone had a chance to have a look?

EDIT: since I'm having more "idlers" now even with the buy quantities in the middle of the scale, I uploaded the save with another provider.
Let me know please if you need more info.

https://wetransfer.com/downloads/3bb881 ... 228/5ef94f