Serious confused and a bit pissed off and annoyed

[Magma Tung]

looks like it has no drones, then. If it had even one then you should be able to select the option.

Ive gone to 16 stations, all over the universe and none wants to sell me drones.

You know, one "would" think that starting off in the game one would start by mining asteroids, then mining Ice asteroids, and start by having small to medium mining ships.
And also doing side missions at the same time, then eventually building up from that to capital Mining & capital transport trading jobs to then leveling up more to getting capital ships like destroyers, dreadnaughts then get into the big stuff.

seems egosoft seriously slipped on a banana on this release by not clearly thinking it through for their players.
Cause now instead of me enjoying the game, im frustrated.

People are not suppose to be frustrated when playing a game.
they are suppose to have fun. and so far, this is Extremely Frustrating.....
Like EXTREMELY.....

[Vim Razz]

Yeah -- the search for drones can be a particularly annoying aspect of the game. -.-


It's shipyards that should have them, though, speaking to the med ship dealer. Retail dealers on stations won't have industrial (mining/cargo) drones.

[bm01]

As I said, you need drones.

Currently I am located in DV shipyard sector [...]

Here's the problem, DV has a dead economy, the shipyard always gets empty a few hours after starting a new game.
You have to find another shipyard and equip your ship there, or sell resources to the DV shipyard and wait for drones to reappear (but it'll eventually get empty again).

[antoniut]

Then is this scenario it would be nice to have a mod or better a vanilla feature where player can "reserve" or" preorder" a quantity of future wares production in NPC's stations

[Vandragorax]

Bottom line here is you bought a mining ship with no mining drones.

Get your ass out of DV because it's a dead-end system unless you have a multi-billion credit empire and can rebuild EVERYTHING there yourself

Go back to a Medium shipyard in Heart of Albion space, (or head to Omicron Lyrae), sell your current Dwalin and then buy a new one. This time on the drones screen, check where it shows it is already coming with 1 Mining drone, and add 2 more up to its max of 3 BEFORE you purchase it (then you don't have to worry about finding more drones).

Once the ship is built you can:

1) order it to collect in a zone using the captain's command menu. It will go off automatically and collect until full then message you for new orders.

2) order it to "follow me" and then fly yourself to a zone with ore/nvidium asteroids. Go into mining scan mode, shoot some stuff with your mining laser, and use the F key after targetting small rocks to tag them and the drones should fly from the Dwalin to pick them up. It will not use its own mining laser in this mode though and it can be considerably slower.

If you'd rather tag asteroids yourself (2), you can do this with any freighter with mining drones on board (it doesn't have to have a mining laser because you are going to use the Skunk's laser instead). So the advantage to this is you can use any L class ship with the correct cargo bay type and some mining drones.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

I don’t think it was well-advertised but in Rebirth 3.50, Egosoft substantially improved the plot URV Forge. It now makes multiple drone types instead of only interceptors:

Cargolifter URV
Construction URV
Interceptors mk.1
Scoop Collectors mk.1
Surface Miners mk.1

Taking that together with adding dronebays to the Sucellus in Rebirth 3.51, DeVries has become a more logical place. The useful plot drones production and the added drone sink mean that someone relatively inexperienced doing the plot will at least have some access to and profits from drones without needing to build further stations.

[Vandragorax]

Here is a link you will find very useful: http://www.starfreeze.com/wiki/Mining

This fully explains both manual, and automated mining options. The only thing to note is that since the last patch, you no longer need to have them in your squad to give the "gather resources..." command.

[Luanda]

looks like it has no drones, then. If it had even one then you should be able to select the option.

Ive gone to 16 stations, all over the universe and none wants to sell me drones.

You know, one "would" think that starting off in the game one would start by mining asteroids, then mining Ice asteroids, and start by having small to medium mining ships.
And also doing side missions at the same time, then eventually building up from that to capital Mining & capital transport trading jobs to then leveling up more to getting capital ships like destroyers, dreadnaughts then get into the big stuff.

seems egosoft seriously slipped on a banana on this release by not clearly thinking it through for their players.
Cause now instead of me enjoying the game, im frustrated.

People are not suppose to be frustrated when playing a game.
they are suppose to have fun. and so far, this is Extremely Frustrating.....
Like EXTREMELY.....

the problem is that drone dealers dont seel this kind of drone. you have to go to a shipyard, find a smallship dealer ask him to upgrade ship (it has to be in your squad) and install drones or something. your best bet is omicron - ethernal dawn - mass shipyard or something like that, it has quite good economy and mostly running shipyards.

[Leafcutter]

Sparky mentioned it.

URV plot station now produces all utility drones to both supply the player empire and the shipyard in DHA for a nice profit.

Useful at last ahhhh.

-LC-

[Nanook]

@Nanook There's an option to buy drones at S/M shipyards too, but I've never used it.

Thanks, didn't realize that as I haven't bought or used a medium miner.

As a side note, I'm not sure I understand the 'mining mode' myself. I had an empty Fedhelm, with 20 surface mining drones, following me and when I tried to enter 'mining mode' Yisha proclaimed that we didn't have the necessary ship to do that. Just what are the requirements for mining mode? (And I did have a mining laser on the Skunk, in case that's a requirement).

[linolafett]

requirements are:
-ship is in your squad
-ship has required drones
-ship has the "follow skunk" command active (is not busy finishing another operation)

[Leafcutter]

could it be also a problem people who have wielding (repair) laser mod installed... perhaps that object reclassification nullifies the mining laser installed on cap ships also? maybe not a requirement as just mentioned by Dev.

-LC-

[Vim Razz]

It doesn't check to see if you're carrying a mining laser or not, so that shouldn't be a problem.

[Magma Tung]

requirements are:
-ship is in your squad
-ship has required drones
-ship has the "follow skunk" command active (is not busy finishing another operation)

I really wish egosoft devs did not take away our ability to fly any ship in XR.
It was the most enjoyable thing in the x-universe game.
People like myself like to go out and mine on our own, without the need of having
to micro manage ships to do it for us.
for many it might sound crazy, But I myself like to go out and mine or trade run on my own.

but no, im here having to micro manage and babysit a ship.

[Goobers]

I haven't done any mining.... But I did do cargo collect mode, which I'll assume is similar.

Once you've set it up with freighter in your squad, all you have to do is switch to cargo collect scanning, tag a container and that's it....tag, tag, tag all day long.

So what then in mining mode? Bust some asteroids, tag whatever your here to mine and?

Nothing else is repetitive. The three steps to start (ship on squad? Drones? Following?) are only once in the beginning of when you want to mine after doing something unrelated that would've required you to not have said ship with you... Wow, so much babysitting.

[PabloRSA]

I choose the Onil, its L, but same issue.

Would not mine or allow me to choose the mining scanner.

There is certain conditions.
1st, needs a mining laser turret (not 100% sure on this one)
2nd, need at least 1 surface drone in the mining ship
3rd, ship needs to be in the same zone as the skunk
4th, ship needs to be assigned/ join squad to the skunk
5th, ship needs to be following the skunk

Once all the above is true, the mining scanner will work.

[GCU Grey Area]

People like myself like to go out and mine on our own, without the need of having to micro manage ships to do it for us.

It is possible to do mining with just the Skunk. Can't collect the bulk minerals (those do require a mining ship), however there is other stuff which can be mined from asteroids which the Skunk is capable of collecting. Most of the time you get silicate minerals & unidentified artifacts, though gold, gemstones, etc can also be collected from certain asteroids, albeit more rarely. Can have quite a lucrative career as a miner even if you don't want to use a second ship to collect & sell the bulk stuff.

So what then in mining mode? Bust some asteroids, tag whatever your here to mine and?

That's essentially correct. However in practice it's often a lot faster to scout round an asteroid field looking for a big high-yield rock, park near it, then tell your mining ship "fly to my current position" & "gather minerals" when it get's close. I'm normally too busy collecting all the silicate minerals & other stuff mentioned above to bother tagging individual chunks of silicon & ore.

[Goobers]

I choose the Onil, its L, but same issue.

Would not mine or allow me to choose the mining scanner.

There is certain conditions.
1st, needs a mining laser turret (not 100% sure on this one)
2nd, need at least 1 surface drone in the mining ship
3rd, ship needs to be in the same zone as the skunk
4th, ship needs to be assigned/ join squad to the skunk
5th, ship needs to be following the skunk

Once all the above is true, the mining scanner will work.

1) Skunk started with mining laser... Not that it particularly matters since you can use any weapon.

3) if you ship is in your squad and following, it's either already in the same zone, or will be shortly. Only need wait a little.

[Santi]

We want a "real economy" that reflects supply and demand, but with some high demanding wares like drones and in general, materials needed to build ships, from the player perspective, I would say that we need some "cheating" so ships and drones are more easily available to purchase, especially when you have to go all the way to the zone where a shipyard is located.

[Goobers]

We want a "real economy" that reflects supply and demand, but with some high demanding wares like drones and in general, materials needed to build ships, from the player perspective, I would say that we need some "cheating" so ships and drones are more easily available to purchase, especially when you have to go all the way to the zone where a shipyard is located.

You can always hack the save file.