Mobile Mining quick setup

[Panzerman]

I'm planning to use Falcon Haulers to move the Silicon between the mining ships and the MMBS; a choice based on their speed and ability to hold XL cargo more than anything else. Perhaps bigger ships would be better??

In my experience one Falcon Hauler is just enough to handle another single Falcon Hauler set to mine silicon (or two Falcon Haulers set to mine ore). With bigger freighters it might be a bit more - one for 2-3 of TS class ships.

To add to this, a Mistral is just as fast and holds more than ten times the cargo for 1/10th the price. Not sure why you'd ever want to use Falcons for mining.

[patient zero]

Don't forget yield levels also apply to rocks. It's quite annoying to find your miners collecting Y:0 rocks.

I had about 200 mobile miners in Reunion with good results, but TC requires too much micromanagement; too much work & no fun. Of course I put mines on some very high yield 'roids, but I quit mobile mining.

NPC mines are frequently overstocked and therefore sell below manufacturing cost. I homebased a Mistral SF CAG to the Hub and set the purchase price of ore at 75 and silicon at 300. This gives me all the minerals I need cheaper than mining my own, and setup is fast & easy.

[MarvinTheMartian]

Out of curiosity, which Unknown Sector are you using for this mobile mining? I've got a bunch of Demeter Miners en route to the US down below Spring of Belief - nicely out of the way, no through traffic, and I'll never need to go there.

This is where I have my mining operation, the US west of Unholy Descent, lots or debris to work with and is nice and quiet (until a PB spawn in the US sector to the south but they leave me alone) however, that sector is used in one of the plots (Aldrin 2 I think), I'm waiting until I've completed that plot before I increase the operation.

[deca.death]

Out of curiosity, which Unknown Sector are you using for this mobile mining?

You missed it (it's in the post): sector is south of Menelau's Oasis

And I agree with panzerman, using fighters to do any kind of economic activity is just terribly economically unjustified.

[kurush]

To add to this, a Mistral is just as fast and holds more than ten times the cargo for 1/10th the price. Not sure why you'd ever want to use Falcons for mining.

Simple answer: you can dock your whole fleet on your TL (i used Ryu) and jump it somewhere else. With numbers of TS it is harder to react if you suddenly find loads of enemies in your sector. And I prefer mining in unsafe zones just for the kick

[glenmcd]

thanks for the post deca.death, actually seeing the settings like that is something that has been needed.

[deca.death]

Simple answer: you can dock your whole fleet on your TL (i used Ryu) and jump it somewhere else. With numbers of TS it is harder to react if you suddenly find loads of enemies in your sector.

That's why you bring M2 and a wing of fighters to a gate.

And I prefer mining in unsafe zones just for the kick :)

Oh yes, 500 miners and a Q patrol in a same sector. What a ...splendid idea.
; )

[kurush]

That's why you bring M2 and a wing of fighters to a gate.

Booring They will also start slaughtering pirates and duke's ships and ruin your corp missions.

Oh yes, 500 miners and a Q patrol in a same sector. What a ...splendid idea.

Duh! I was mining Kha'ak sectors, trying to finish what Paranid started. No Xenons there That is where I got my signature btw...

[deca.death]

Booring :) They will also start slaughtering pirates and duke's ships and ruin your corp missions.

Duh! I was mining Kha'ak sectors, trying to finish what Paranid started. No Xenons there :) That is where I got my signature btw...

In a case of bigger mining operation, evacuation is simply not the option. And they are sectors in which pirates rarely venture (like one I currently mine in) You could set duke to friendly, their transporters won't start trouble. You should be OK in few red pirates kills, that is something you just cannot avoid. I can't anyway and I'm keeping pirates mostly friendly.

So...what were those null ships...? You saw them..? : )

[kurush]

You should be OK in few red pirates kills, that is something you just cannot avoid. I can't anyway and I'm keeping pirates mostly friendly.

So...what were those null ships...? You saw them..? : )

You kill a few pirates, your carrier resets its FOF status for pirates to FOE and starts slaughtering duke's. Happened to me many times Null ships were Kha'aks killed by the sector defense before my CLS pilot managed to file a report about this attack

[Infekted]

I have mobile mined in that unknown sector in many games, for a loooong time in each.
Provided you make sure no PBs spawn there, you will never see a pirate there. Or xenon. Khaak can occur before completion of OFF but its vanishingly rare occurance... Nothing an M2 plus fighters cant sort out with ease.
About the only ship you are likely to see is th eoccasional recon craft. Thats it.

The reason people used to use falcon haulers is that it was basically the most efficient way to do mining. Before CLS became signed.
Now using them is just plain inefficient.

[kurush]

The reason people used to use falcon haulers is that it was basically the most efficient way to do mining. Before CLS became signed.
Now using them is just plain inefficient.

How would you use Falcon Hauler for mining *efficiently* without CLS? I mean, you have to restart mining command each time they get full....

[Laden Swallow]

Mine with a TM, use Falcon Hauler to empty TM. It was the only fully automated way of continuous mobile mining.

[Bill Huntington]

Thank you to deca.death and all the other contributors to this thread, and to Kora'h for his guide. I planned to check CLS sometime in this game, and thanks to you, I'm doing it now. I learned from Kora'h that it is smart to start training pilots early, and how to do it. I learned enough from this discussion to get a small demo up and running, and started to gather ships to do a big one.

One thing I noticed is that many TS can do mobile mining, without being a miner. Two I have already used are the Vulture and the Mercury Hauler. CLS is NOT necessary to do the mobile mining, but to empty the mobile miners and unload it somewhere. And the basic Caiman can Gather Rocks. If there is only the one item desired in the area, it can work fine. And the CLS works fine to pick up from those TS that are Gathering Rocks.

All of these points were made in one way or another in your discussion. Thank you.

Over a number of months, I have seen a number of the things we do in our game start from one report and a lively discussion. Later, it seems like most pilots have added it to their game, in their own way. I can see that Mobile Mining with CLS is likely to be added to that, along with using it to help with the Ore and Silicon parts of the HUB.

[MarvinTheMartian]

One thing I noticed is that many TS can do mobile mining, without being a miner.

Indeed, any ship capable of carrying XL cargo can "collect rocks" if it has the Special Command s/w and an Ore Collector, "Mine Minerals" command also requires a mineral scanner - the miner variants have these already installed making it easier to set up a large fleet.

Would like to hear how you get on with your expanded operation

[Bill Huntington]

That is a very kind offer, Marvin The Martian. I have a pretty clear idea of what to do, thanks to this thread. I didn't need to repeat too many of the things already said. I saw how to do a lot of them with my own demo. I'm sure I will be asking when it's time, when the parts are ready and I have started the HUB. That said...

I would be glad to hear what you have to say. Thanks again!

[deca.death]

.

No prob Bill.
All issues here seem so simple but putting them all together might not be. For example, mentioned Kor'ah guide is most simplistic way of adding several safe stations to your cls pilots waypoint list (flying cheap stock M5 ships) and sending them circling, doing nothing but flying actually. Good thing about it is that it's completely fool proof, and that everything is described in detail. All you have to do is buy 10 discos (I upgrade their speed but it isn't mandatory) and send them flying for 10 hours. Investment is minimal and results are great.

Interesting, with this mobile mining thing, I just wanted to see how it's done more or less, to learn something new. Ultimately, we all learned, which is great. In fact this fully automated mobile mining is so powerful that once mastered would allow you in some of your future games, not to be dependent of asteroids in a whole universe ever again. Instead of mine, you just add one properly set cls pilot and that's it.

[glenmcd]

hey deca I finally got the full auto thing happening! I did actually get tricked up with the discos initially, as I tried to make them buy and sell a single EC instead of just docking. They sat in a particular station forever. There's actually two guides, and only one of them specifically mentions using docking, while the other doesn't specify what to do at each station. anyways I got a batch of 40 discos up to logistician, and while this was happening I built my 500 x Argon chip plant complex just outside the bottom wall of the Xenon hub sector (with complex hub inside wall obviously). I transferred the first logistician into a Mammoth and am slowly adding to his waypoints list. It's now running as smooth as silk. I'm not using grouping as you are, I'm trying out something else. More later if I can get it working..

[Infekted]

Over a number of months, I have seen a number of the things we do in our game start from one report and a lively discussion. Later, it seems like most pilots have added it to their game, in their own way. I can see that Mobile Mining with CLS is likely to be added to that, along with using it to help with the Ore and Silicon parts of the HUB.

Funny, I had noticed that too ;p



Glen - Congrats on going fully auto! Are you trying the whole, use a couple of TLs to collect from a waypoint list of miners a few hundred long?
If so. To get it running smoothly I found it worked best if I set the minimum amount on collection to 1% for a couple of them, 2% for a couple more, 3% for one, 4% for one and 5% for one. Nothing more than that. They cant be on 0% or they spend all their time trying to empty the ones at the beginning of the list. And I found if I set them all to the same percentage, they all tried to unload the same ones at once. Several different percentages between 1 and 5 meant the entire list was kept regularly empty.

[glenmcd]

Glen - Congrats on going fully auto! Are you trying the whole, use a couple of TLs to collect from a waypoint list of miners a few hundred long?
If so. To get it running smoothly I found it worked best if I set the minimum amount on collection to 1% for a couple of them, 2% for a couple more, 3% for one, 4% for one and 5% for one. Nothing more than that. They cant be on 0% or they spend all their time trying to empty the ones at the beginning of the list. And I found if I set them all to the same percentage, they all tried to unload the same ones at once. Several different percentages between 1 and 5 meant the entire list was kept regularly empty.

Thanks Infekted! Yes I'm running same method as you. The decision to go this way was fairly easy as there's only so many save slots and doing groups of ten or twenty would not allow them all to be saved. List is 100 long now, just about to extend to 150. I'm using a keyboard macro to do most of the work to extend the list. That's a good tip regarding staggering the supply conditions. About to try it now. Really it doesn't take too many Mammoths to keep the whole show running. Nice.