[3.1 SV] Resource probes bug? -SOLVED-

[Andrey12y]

Some resource probes didnt show anything despite they placed right in asteroid fields.
https://imgur.com/casJUfy

But if there just no resources - why it dont show a simple message - "no resources foud" for example. This is not hard and many people will not be confused ... wow is this a bug? lets ask on forums...

[radcapricorn]

Some more information would be helpful. For example, did you place the probe yourself or ordered your subordinate to do so? Was it done in-sector or out-of-sector? There's at least one report describing subordinate-deployed probes not showing any resources. Though I can personally affirm that, at least in my game, such deployment works and probes do show resources.

One idea that comes to mind is the probe not being actually placed inside a region, due to it, or the region, being offset from the ecliptic.

Also, the current release version is 3.10HF1. Have you installed the update and verified your files?

[Alan Phipps]

Resource probes do not scan asteroids. They scan for volumes of mineral/gas densities pre-allocated on the map and which can be auto-mined by AI ships including OOS.

Asteroids only exist when the player is IS or viewing them remotely through another asset. As an example only, ore asteroids seen by the player and a volume of ore density seen by a resource probe usually coincide to some extent on the map but they don't have to and sometimes don't. You need to go looking for asteroids.

For long term automatic resource mining, find the useful permanent resource densities using resource probes and send your AI mining ships near there to mine.

[Andrey12y]

Oops, I disabled steam webhelper, maybe thats why my game not updated.
But I observe this trouble since release.
Now I foud a post of Imperial Good, and realise that just put probe in wrong place.
So I added an update to my 1 post. Really, we all love Xgames, including for difficulty, but some times a little bit of explanation or additional info here and there will not be redundant.

[Alan Phipps]

Back then in 2019 (the date of that thread link), I didn't understand the resource probe mechanism either. It's only when you have done a few (maybe a lot of) frustrating 'find minimum resource density' missions that you begin to understand.

[LennStar]

I have seen probes not showing any resources inside a colored area and IS in the middle of asteroids.

Definitely for subordinate probes. But I think one time was a probe I let free.

[Andrey12y]

I think better just check with your own miner - if order to mine can be given - you can put probe and it will work.
Just did it in 18billions - in north fields order to mine was inactive and probes show nothing, in south - possible to mine and probes show yelds.
But its a kind of exploit, because you also see what exactly can be mined.

[Alan Phipps]

I think that is the point. What you the player can see, ie asteroids and coloured areas when you LR scan, is actually quite irrelevant to the resource probe which just reads and calculates volume resource density figures off the map. The fact that the two often don't correlate at all is probably some sort of bug but more a mapping or sector map design bug than a straight resource probe bug.

For remote mining believe the probe and not your eyes.

[joppe_k]

I've seen this problem a few times as well. In my case, it was always with probes that I dropped myself. Probes that I dropped a few minutes later in another area would typically find some resources so the problem was not persistent.

My interpretation of this was simply that there were no resources around, despite the asteroids in the area.

One potential improvement to make, however, could be to explicitly state that no resources were found, rather than to display nothing at all.