Mobile Mining quick setup

[Infekted]

Yep, once you got the waypoints written up its great. I have found that having a core of mammoths on it, then a couple of SFs on the same route but also with an unload waypoint into the TLs it ran even smoother.

I bloody wish I could do the keyboard shortcuts you keep mentioning! I have tried software ones like autohotkey but they don't seem to to work in X3. I do actually own a keyboard with built in macro keys. But the damn flaky software to set the keys up doesn't work anymore..

[glenmcd]

Yep, once you got the waypoints written up its great. I have found that having a core of mammoths on it, then a couple of SFs on the same route but also with an unload waypoint into the TLs it ran even smoother.

I bloody wish I could do the keyboard shortcuts you keep mentioning! I have tried software ones like autohotkey but they don't seem to to work in X3. I do actually own a keyboard with built in macro keys. But the damn flaky software to set the keys up doesn't work anymore..

If you're using one of the Logitech gamers keyboards (G13 etc), yes the software is pretty bad. Occasionally you will need to uninstall the software and reinstall. The files get corrupted when your PC gets shut down improperly. I've heard that autohotkey doesn't work for TC, and I found it didn't work for some previous X's also. "Macro Toolworks" is working fine for me on TC. I used it to do the reload to get a faster HV in PP start. Rock solid for 30,000 reloads

[deca.death]

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.

There is no reason not to do it, but it's irrelevant really, except for the first run maybe. Sequence of collecting will be broken very fast and you will never see miner equally full - I mean they will all break same percentages (say 25%) in a different time.

Btw I find low percentages unnecessary, there is no reason to force your collector to make a run for 1%. You just giving it more to do this way/more runs and he cannot prioritize like CLS1. It might happen that he's collecting to often and some ships (last usually) remain full. Monitor the situation and see how it goes. No miner is ever full on my settings.

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.

No no, 0% is a bad idea, that's for certain. Important thing is that all is working, not single point to be filled to full, ever (miners, TL buffer or the HUB or some other final point) and if that's OK then setting are good enough.

[glenmcd]

From the official docs on CLS2:
"The logistician is not restricted in the amount of stops in his tour."

I found a hard limit of 200 stops for logisticians. No big deal though as having a 2nd or 3rd list to support 398 or 597 mining ships still seems practical. I'm a little more concerned about the number of save slots if we run hard with this thing. I can't find any external files related to the waypoints list saves either. I guess you could "store" waypoint lists on docked M5s. To transfer just keep one slot open for temp use. I can't think of any other way to secure dozens of waypoint lists.

[Infekted]

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.

There is no reason not to do it, but it's irrelevant really, except for the first run maybe. Sequence of collecting will be broken very fast and you will never see miner equally full - I mean they will all break same percentages (say 25%) in a different time.

Btw I find low percentages unnecessary, there is no reason to force your collector to make a run for 1%. You just giving it more to do this way/more runs and he cannot prioritize like CLS1. It might happen that he's collecting to often and some ships (last usually) remain full. Monitor the situation and see how it goes. No miner is ever full on my settings.

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.

No no, 0% is a bad idea, that's for certain. Important thing is that all is working, not single point to be filled to full, ever (miners, TL buffer or the HUB or some other final point) and if that's OK then setting are good enough.

Having done it I can say for certain that with massive way point lists that yes it is very necessary. They WILL fall into lockstep resulting in a massive "stacking effect". You have to understand this is a different approach. Using very few collectors to unload a very large list of waypoints. Unlimited by using logisticians as pointed out by glen.
And again, you have to be very precise with your percentages when using TLs as collectors. 1% of a Mammoth is 600 cargo. A caiman miner un-upgraded is what? 3.6k? Which is 6% of a mammoth tops. 3% means they wont collect until the miner is half full.. Which is actually about where I have found the happy medium to be.
I assumed when I syarted trying this system out that because they aren't moving, that collections would be more or less instant. At least very fast. It's actually surprisingly slow. 1 per second or so? Not sure exactly. However if you'd ever seen the thread by Laden Swallow about "Solid State" storage and transportation you would understand my surprise.
Check this out if you haven't seen it already:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=283441
Feel free to try all this yourself It's more for the massive mining fleet than the smaller one tho.

[glenmcd]

Infekted: officially logisticions have no limit. But there was for me! 200 stops.

I read somewhere recently where a bunch of rock collectors in a sector suddenly stopped collecting. I've never experienced that - until today! One difference in my game today is that there can be multiple ships using the transporter device on a ship at the same time. As CLS is relatively new I'm wondering whether the asynchronous transporter device access is making something fall over. Sometimes it seems most of my ships stop collecting rocks, other times it's just a handful. If 2 TLs are accessing a TS at the same time, it's likely that they will continue to do this with subsequent ships in the identical waypoint lists and thus force many TSs to stop collecting. The command is still the same - collect rocks. But the action is "none". This is precisely what would happen if the ship thought that its cargobay was full.
If I can find the player who mentioned about this happening to him it would help.

I tried out the supply condition percentages at various levels and I'm still seeing a lot of time wasted checking empty ships. It looks like each of my TLs can handle around fifty rock collecting ships. With a waypoint list each perhaps one TL could handle a fair bit more than fifty. Infekted, this is an issue I wasn't expecting to see, but I can readily understand how it comes about now.

[Infekted]

200 hey? Good to know. I have been capping mine at 100 as it was getting a bit much. And them making new chains on top of the older ones. Basically to avoid the more than 100 waypoints not all showing up problem.

And yes that's what I saw as well. Several collecting ships all performing the same action. I.E. Trying to unload the same ship. And this is with max rank CLS pilots, so you cant even blame lack of training.
And from what I can tell, on the actions list. They seem to "check" each waypoint to see if it's valid in turn. But the actual collecting takes longer than the checking. Probly explains why they lockstep as they all catch up with each other if they on the same percentage.
This is where I found slipping in a TS or two helped. Different percentages and all that.
I haven't had any problems with them stopping except when full. Although I do use the mine minerals command.
Tho all it takes is for you not to notice them fill and them getting emptied when full. And them maybe not recognizing they were now empty? This could explain my arguement with marvin about rock collectors stopping or not stopping when full.

[glenmcd]

yes I remember about the full cargobay thing too, but had nothing to relate it to. Now I do. I'm currently cutting up my waypoint lists as this seems like possibly a good solution to both issues. I've done lots of rock collecting before with massive fleets, allowed them to fill up completely and only emptied them perhaps a game day later. They just go straight back to rock collecting as soon as they have space again. Hey that gives me an idea. I'm going to do <almost> seperate waypoint lists. I'll leave in say five ships that are accessed from multiple ships. If they are the only ones that stop collecting then it's definately the parallel access that's the cause. I noticed in every ship that stopped, its cargobay was completely empty. This happens only at one time - when a TL empties it via CLS2.

Also I'll keep an eye on a group of ships to see whether they stop colllecting or fill up first. In my case I'm pretty sure that none of them are filling up. Four full-time mammoths for 150 silicon collecting ships.

[deca.death]

Having done it I can say for certain that with massive way point lists that yes it is very necessary. They WILL fall into lockstep resulting in a massive "stacking effect". You have to understand this is a different approach. Using very few collectors to unload a very large list of waypoints.

OK. But why not using more of collectors? Not that they are expensive or anything. Using one collector per two hundred miners seem like pushing game engine to the limit. You could use one per 33 or 50.

And again, you have to be very precise with your percentages when using TLs as collectors. 1% of a Mammoth is 600 cargo. A caiman miner un-upgraded is what? 3.6k? Which is 6% of a mammoth tops. 3% means they wont collect until the miner is half full.. Which is actually about where I have found the happy medium to be.

Oh well it depends of collector - I see now. I collect with caiman haulers not TL. For example I set my load condition: load up to 388 silicone w. That quantity is maximum hauler can take. That's why i put 25% (it's about 2000, my miners carry 4000, meaning 50% of miner capacity)

[Infekted]

Couple of reasons. Firstly having loads and loads of collectors adds to general spam. The 35 I have on my niv fleet add a few pages the lists. Loads and loads of collectors that travel, quickly level to logistician and will actually pull a hefty wage.
You cant get one ship to empty 200. I use 4 TLs per 100. I could get away with about 2-3 I reckon, but the extra is there for safety and built in storage capacity.
It's also the idea that you write one list for all your miners and simply copy paste it into as many ships as required. Ends up being quite a bit less effort for large fleets.
I also quite like the idea of a mobile mining mother ships sat in a cloud of collectors sucking them all dry.

[MarvinTheMartian]

Wow, that's an insane number of ships you guys are running there
Any idea on the number of wafers you are collecting per hour?

On the topic of percentages; for the collection percentage, which is what I think you are discussing, it applies to the amount you are collecting from the waypoint not the available cargo of the ship that is doing the collecting.

From plugin.com.logistics.main.mk2:

Code: Select all

456   $WareCargo = $WayPoint -> get true amount of ware $WayPointWare in cargo bay
457   skip if $WareCargo * 100 / $TransferTask >= $TransferMin

$Waypoint is the ship/station currently selected in the list of waypoints, $TransferTask is the amount to be collected (as set in the load X of Silicon) and $TransferMin is the percentage you set for the supply condition (5% if none set)

EDIT:
The reason the cargo capacity of the TL come into play is when you try to collect "max cargo" and use the TLs cargo space as the amount to collect, by using the miners max cargo instead you can fine tune the percentages much more.

[deca.death]

Wow, that's an insane number of ships you guys are running there :)
Any idea on the number of wafers you are collecting per hour?

Glenmcd said this(in this very thread that is ; ): "Each rock collecting ship, regardless of the type of ship, official speed, hull integrity, turning speed etc collects 1,2 or 3 rocks every 20 seconds. Looks like the average is around 1.3 to 1.4 (a guess)"

I calculated that my 20 caiman miners collect slightly above 5k waffers per hour, which is fine indeed.

On the topic of percentages; for the collection percentage, which is what I think you are discussing, it applies to the cargo size of the ship/station you are collecting from not the ship that is doing the collecting (that's used for the delivery condition)

Yes, we discussed that on a several occasion already. I found out that it's (the way you say it) just isn't the case.

Description says:

Minimum delivery amount for collecting
Pilot only flies to a waypoint if he can at least collect 5% of the
wanted amount.

Minimum delivery amount for delivering
Pilot only flies to a waypoint if he can at least deliver 5% of the
wanted amount.


I made few controlled experiment and this seems to be truth. CLS2 will not collect until he can collect percentage of cargo he's designated to collect. Delivery is more tricky -ship seems to deliver all the times, unrelated to conditions, high or low. Still, it works great in my ecell resupply ships (UPTO condition) it seems to fix on target lack of goods and if it detect target lacks 5-10-40% percent of UPTO amount it will fly to resupply.

[Infekted]

Ahhh having to use an actual figure than a plain max cargo when you scale up to hundreds will be a pain in the sphincter

[MarvinTheMartian]

Each rock collecting ship, regardless of the type of ship, official speed, hull integrity, turning speed etc collects 1,2 or 3 rocks every 20 seconds. Looks like the average is around 1.3 to 1.4 (a guess)

I'm curious to know if that number actually scales up and if it varies on collection method. A single miner might collect 200-350 units per hour but does the collection mechanism or sheer number of miners introduce any delay/inefficiency? I guess not if they're never allowed to reach full capacity.

Ahhh having to use an actual figure than a plain max cargo when you scale up to hundreds will be a pain in the sphincter

I got around this by creating the waypoints on a miner first and then transferring the pilot to the TL/TS but I'm not operating anything like the numbers you are.

[Infekted]

Yeah it scales linearly basically. Provided everything is emptied the collection method doesn't really effect anything. You can get surging, but its easy enough to smooth out.

Thats clever. Kudos

[glenmcd]

1. Regarding mining ships stopping collecting immediately after collecting emptying them: This happens whether it's 1 or even 3 TLs emptying it at same time. If the ship ever got full between initial command and being emptied *via CLS*, as soon as CLS accesses it (just before it unloads it) it stops collecting rocks. Re-issue the collect rocks command and it's all go again. Obviously not an ideal situation to be in continuously.

2.

It's also the idea that you write one list for all your miners and simply copy paste it into as many ships as required. Ends up being quite a bit less effort for large fleets.
I also quite like the idea of a mobile mining mother ships sat in a cloud of collectors sucking them all dry.

These were my initial attractions to the "one waypoint list fits all" method too. However due to point (1) above I can no longer see a way through without reverting to seperate waypoint lists for each collector. "Saving" the waypoint list could be done not as global save, but one that is copied to a discoverer or two which can have one docked in the TL and one in an Argon/Teladi TP. That way you've still got a quick practical way of reloading the script if you try to edit the list and screw up. You could name these "holders of waypoint lists" discoverers to something associated with the range of miners they service, much the same as normal wp lists are saved/named. Always keep last save slow open as you'll need one to act as temporary save to xfer between ships.

3.

Glenmcd said this(in this very thread that is ; ): "Each rock collecting ship, regardless of the type of ship, official speed, hull integrity, turning speed etc collects 1,2 or 3 rocks every 20 seconds. Looks like the average is around 1.3 to 1.4 (a guess)"

I calculated that my 20 caiman miners collect slightly above 5k waffers per hour, which is fine indeed.

While I've been watching the miners more closely, I'm seeing some interesting stuff. For some reason many of my miners have been collecting 2 pieces of silicon for each and EVERY 20 seconds. This went on for the entire filling of those ships with zero exceptions. If we can work out why, we may be able to force this, and perhaps take it further. I mentioned before that I've recently seen a ship pickup 3 pieces of mineral at once. I did a couple of experiments to see what's going on, by commanding my own ship to collect rocks and to watch the cargobay.
The multiple pickups may be happening because the ship is gaining access to *a* rock using a route that brings it close enough to multiple rocks for collection purposes at same time. This is not solid yet by any means. The only reason I suspect there's something in there is because of those ships that collected 2 pieces every single time. If it requires a combination of the rock formation and approach angle, one may be able to be found existing in a sector, combined with precise satellite position for initial miner placement. This enforces a particular approach angle. The advantage if any from this if it is possible, is that you may need only half or less of the number of mining ships. No big deal for costs but for creating the shorter waypoint list it would surely be a blessing, as well as having a fleet that can get your complex fully operational in half the time. Who knows, maybe one miner can continuously collect 3 or more pieces per 20 seconds if the setup is done right. Simply creating a cloud of minimum size rocks doesn't necessarily help. Pieces would need to be very close, and have none around them far enough way to attract miners to those instead.
Another possible explanation is that rocks sometimes overlap/superimpose. This is probably far easier to reproduce and make use of than the combo of rocks formation and approach angle. It should go something like this:
a) save game
b) break up multiple nearby rocks such that collectable rocks will be close together
c) Command your own ship to collect rocks. For each collection, if it's a single piece, save game. When you collect another single, save and over-write. When you finally do a double/triple/higher collection, keep a seperate copy of your last save. When you grow tired of beating your own record, reload your best save. Destroy every other rock in the area, so that the double/triple/quadruple/whatever rock is the only one available. Miners that don't have a choice will collect only that one rock and multiply their collection speed. If you don't find any multi-pickup rocks, reload your first save and break up rocks again. If this doesn't work in a particular spot/sector, try elsewhere.
d) First to get a 5-piece rock gets the giant panda

[glenmcd]

I may have a solution to the problems experienced in the setup where there's only one waypoint for all miner ships. First a couple of observations:

1. If multiple ships attempt to collect from same miners, everything slows down. Apart from two identical lists with exception of one being reverse order of the other, I don't see a way around this.

2. If there's going to be only one ship collecting from miner ships, it's going to have to do its job very efficiently. To this end, it won't have time to fly anywhere far away to unload. It needs to somehow get emptied regularly. I tried having several TLs unloading from the collector ship and freighting minerals to the complex / hub. This has one huge problem. Whenever the collector was accessed by TLs to determine whether it's time yet to xfer, the collection from miner ships was put on pause. The slowdown was somewhere in the 2 to 20 times range. It was erratic and sometimes seemed to get stuck for minutes. The fewer the TLs accessing the collector ship, the less of a slowdown there was. But then the minerals were not being taken away fast enough. The solution came in setting up another TL purely as an interface, that isolated the TL collecting from miners from the TLs freighting to the complex / hub. This is working very well. I've got one Mammoth collecting from 50 miner ships and it's able to empty them all before any of them get more than half full (approx). By fine tuning the supply conditions I expect that one Mammoth should be capable of collecting from around 100 - 199 (the CLS limit for logisticians) mining ships.

-------------------------------

In regard to my experiments in post above trying to make mining ships collect multiple rocks at once continously:
Collecting rocks is completely different when done IS compared to OOS. I therefore couldn't do tests IS and then expect them to work the same OOS. So I kept observing the rock collecting ships OOS, and found one that was collecting 3 at a time continuosly. A new record I then renamed it "THREE". Next I commanded a different ship to move to position of ship THREE, followed by commanding it to collect rocks. Guess what? It collected 3 at a time also! Other ships were still collecting just 1 or 2. I tried another ship like this (at the time it was collecting 1 rock at a time) and sure enough it started collecting 3 at a time also. But this didn't happen with every ship I tried. Perhaps the original position of the 3x rock was lost. The theory about destroying all rocks except the 2x/3x/4x etc rock may still be the answer. But you can't find out while IS. While I was commanding ships to the position of ship "THREE", THREE was still collecting rocks and thus still moving around a bit. Thus, other ships were not moving to the exact same spot. Perhaps a special rock could be found followed by stopping the ship that is collecting from it, and then moving ships to this static position. I'm now keen to find a 4x rock and try this out. And I hope that all of this isn't just the RNG playing tricks with me

[deca.death]

Perhaps a special rock could be found

Search for the philosopher's stone, as we can see, continues...

[Snafu_X3]

Could someone add this thread to the mobile mining section of the 'guides' sticky please?

Cheers

[drkpendragon]

I never even thought about mining until now that I'm on the HUB. I actually had a few questions to make sure I understand this before setting everything up.

1) Do you really need haulers to collect from your miners and give to your TLs? Since everything is at the same point, why don't you just use the TL to collect from the miners is the first place and remove the middle man?

2) If I use a sector where there are other broken asteroids, will my miners eventually scatter or will they stay around the same area?

Thank you.