1.31 Bug or Missing feature? Mining with L ships

[AkayaKaito]

The bug with mining turrets not working was fixed, which is nice. So now you can fly big mining ships like the Crane and the turrets will mine the asteroids, which results in them being broken into smaller bits with ore.
But thats where the problem starts: How to get the ore into the ship? You can not do it by pressing O like in smaller ships. The ore will explode. So there are mining drones, but how to use them?
There are no key bindings, you can't start them from ship info, since they are not available and so on. The only other solution I can think of is that you have to buy an S mining ship and manually colect them and deliver them to the L ship.
Is this really meant to be like this, am I just to dumb or is it a missing feature for now?

Ps: This all is while flying the ship manually. I know I can click automine and all, but I do have fun with mining manually

[Alan Phipps]

Have you tried just giving the ship's NPC Captain the relevant mining command and letting the ship do its mining? I don't think you are intended to command each mining drone yourself - and L ships do need to use drones to mine.

Also make sure that the mining drones *equipped* on the ship (ie not just in the cargobay) are the correct type for the resource that you want to collect - since you mentioned mining turrets, I assume that you need solid ore collection drones.

[gusglenn]

I had this problem too. Mining drones are supposed to be deployed to gather the ore but there is no command to deploy them. Sure, I can turn the controls over to a captain but... I kinda wanted to mine the first load myself.
Another thing I wonder is how to transfer wares from my L trader ship to the build storage of my station. Only way I have found is again to let my captain do it. Except he bugged out and got stuck. I was unable to fire or replace him or give him any orders. So I finally had to sell the ship. I assume my cargo drones could be deployed for the transfer but again there is no way to command drones I think. Or is there? In that case where?

[AkayaKaito]

Have you tried just giving the ship's NPC Captain the relevant mining command and letting the ship do its mining? I don't think you are intended to command each mining drone yourself - and L ships do need to use drones to mine.

While automining everything seems okay. The NPCs can mine without problems. But in this case I mean while flying the mining ship yourself. In X3 it was possible to order freight drones to deliver Cargo/bring cargo from big ships. You gave one order and they acted themselves doing their task. how is it now?

Also make sure that the mining drones *equipped* on the ship (ie not just in the cargobay) are the correct type for the resource that you want to collect - since you mentioned mining turrets, I assume that you need solid ore collection drones.

So how to get these mining drones equipped?
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... 5004_1.jpg
(sorry game is german) The drones are under the category drones, mining drones are there, two of them. But they are "not available" as stated behind their number.
So the NPC Captain can use them, he even filled the cargo as I was away. But how do you command the drones to collect ore while flying the ship yourself? After not finding any keybind nor an drop down menu where something like this is listed.

[Hananack]

same problem here/ when i try to command the L miner miself the drones wont launch

[slickrickulous]

This is part of a wider issue regarding drone control: there is currently no way to control them manually. I spent almost 20 minutes trying to get defence drones to get back in my Cerberus before realising they were waiting for its escort S fighter to dock (even though it wasn't even queued for docking).

When you are in combat the drones work autonomously as they are triggered by you being "in combat". However this doesn't work for mining drones as there is no trigger for being "in mining".

Add an additional UI control in the ship HUD and quick menu that allows you to deploy/recall drones and start their auto-mining routine, or simply show them as subordinates in the UI so you can issue commands to them directly.

An even cooler idea would be to implement a "mining mode" where you can tag asteroids for mining and drones and mining turrets will only target the tagged asteroids. The mining mode will also allow you to see the yield of each individual asteroid within a certain radius and you can increase scanning radius etc. by buying a better "Resource Scanner Mk2".

[drgnfr7883]

L mining ships are all messed up atm

#1 Magnetar (argon) has a mining laser- wont automine without drones (yup......)

#2 Wont allow subordinate small ships to mine for it even though they are tech the same thing as a mining drone they dont share the same script as the drone when assigned roles (defend should be the same as defence drone behavior)

#3 I think this one goes for all carriers but the S-ship docking is terrible took my mag 45 mins to get 7 ships docked so it could move to a new sector.

#4 L mine ship IMO has to much S-ship capacity and not enough drones. should be able to carry all 4 drone types in a useful quantity 10 really isn't enough as it would take forever to rep a cap hull with only 2 drones should they get the inter faction combat working.

[MrMikey]

Have to add that the Magnetars usually ram the asteroid because it tries stops to close and the L-mining lasers turret efficiency on larger asteroids is well... low