A question about automining

[Brinnie]

I have a Wyvern set to automine silicon (more recently to advanced automine).
It has no problems with gathering resources to sell but when the cargo is full, it doesn't want to make its way to the stations that buy the goods. It appears to continue to mine though there is no more room for the minerals.

Can I be doing something wrong myself?

[Alan Phipps]

Check that no blacklist settings prevent trading such as no trading in or passage through sectors, avoiding certain factions, or avoiding hazard areas. Also check the trading range, wares and prices set for your ship as they might be preventing sales. Also you would need trading rep and permissions with the buyers.

A miner should not continue to mine when full, in fact at the very least it should report in as unable to do something and show an orange 'failed order' icon.

Is your game modded or the save edited?

[Brinnie]

Check that no blacklist settings prevent trading such as no trading in or passage through sectors, avoiding certain factions, or avoiding hazard areas. Also check the trading range, wares and prices set for your ship as they might be preventing sales. Also you would need trading rep and permissions with the buyers.

A miner should not continue to mine when full, in fact at the very least it should report in as unable to do something and show an orange 'failed order' icon.

Is your game modded or the save edited?

Thanks Alan, all useful suggestions.

As a guess I would say it's probably the price setting that needs adjusting, I thought about it but I couldn't find where to do it for an autominer. I gave up on the idea, thinking that it was not possible to do.
While the blacklist is also a possibility, I have another Wyvern working the same sector but mining ore and is not having any problems with trading.

I noticed that prices for buyers of silicon are below average, that is why I am thinking I need to adjust prices, do you know how I do that?

The save is not edited and though I am using mods, none of them do anything that should interfere with mining, they are all interface/Q.o.L.

[Nanook]

...
I noticed that prices for buyers of silicon are below average, that is why I am thinking I need to adjust prices, do you know how I do that?...

You can't. They operate independently of the player. When I encounter those situations, I manually give the miner a one-time order to sell the minerals at the best available station (or two, if necessary) and then move it to a more profitable region. Obviously in your case, silicon is no longer a desired commodity at the present, so your miner will keep suffering the same problem until it's moved.

[GCU Grey Area]

Lack of price control over auto-miners is why I prefer my miners to operate from mining stations. They're dirt cheap to build (essentially just docks & storage) but provide an additional level of control over the ships. Typically I'll use L miners to do the mining (because Kha'ak-proof) & M miners to distribute the mined resources, to reduce congestion at the docks, The M ships never have to wait for an L to undock & vice versa. M miners are safe enough in this role - it's flying slowly picking up rocks that gets them clobbered by the Kha'ak. Flying in travel mode between stations is far safer for them.

[zakaluka]

buyers of silicon are below average, that is why I am thinking I need to adjust prices

what you need to check instead is the buy quantity. Your wyvern holds 2,000. If it cannot sell all 2,000 it will idle until there is an order for at least 2,000 within range.

I suspect all your local silicon refineries have nearly full storage. As alan suggested *, make some manual sales, and explore to find a new buyer. Maybe switch to a different resource with more local demand. (silicon can be strictly the highest income but it can also be the worst when there is nobody buying)

you will eventually fill all NPC demand in your region - it's inevitable - the NPC stations don't actually use that much silicon & ore, and they have their own miners as well. In most new saves there isn't terribly much demand to support the players' miners, for long anyway.

* <That was actually Nanook. Alan Phipps>

[Brinnie]

@Nanook.

After checking Alan's suggestions being still stuck with the problem, I tried a different approach.

Repeat orders - combining the mining order with a few "sell in sector" (to 3 neighbouring sectors). I lowered sell price to the minimum and it seems to be doing its thing.



@GCU

I do like the idea of the mining stations but I'll reserve that project to later on in the game, when I already have many miners in place (I prefer L miners too, Wyverns)

what you need to check instead is the buy quantity. Your wyvern holds 2,000. If it cannot sell all 2,000 it will idle until there is an order for at least 2,000 within range...

That would certainly explain why it doesn't trade, I don't see any buyer around that can take such amount in a single transaction. If what you say is correct, it is in my opinion not a great setup for the automine order. In this particular situation it is not only second best to the lower skilled order "repeat orders" but it is useless and a waste of a 3 star pilot. Why can an autominer only sell a full cargo? It is a crippling imposition especially for the larger miners.


Just to know, what is the minimum amout of a resource in a sector (as reported by the probes) to make mining worthwhile?

[zakaluka]

Just imagine a wyvern bouncing between the two closest stations to drop off 200 ore at a time until empty. It's a pretty nasty algorithmic rabbit hole. There are ware reservations, right - oh anyway. I imagine someone in design looking down that rabbit hole and saying nope, make it have a simple failure condition rather than creating all those future problems.

You're given multiple solutions to the problem. NPC factories don't have as much demand as you'd like. So pivot into ore. Or go scout some more. Or build a resource trading post (grapedog's guide). Or really the final solution is your own refinery which is probably a lot cheaper than you might think.

Just to know, what is the minimum amout of a resource in a sector (as reported by the probes) to make mining worthwhile?

Many of the sectors have very poor density, like 0.01 or less, 0stars on the probe. Even these ones are worth mining if you can't employ your miners elsewhere.

Things start to get actually decent above 0.1 which is like 2/3 of 1 star.

Very few sectors near the core with high density. But there are a few, which I'll let you discover.

[Brinnie]

@Zakaluka.

Yes, if you put it that way, having the wywern to do drops of 200 or less seems a bit wasteful but if it is the only option to not selling anything and considering it is a passive fire and forget enterprise, it 's worth doing. As the say goes "any old port in a storm", obviously the pilots should always look for the best deals.

It is not a problem for me, I only posted as I thought I was doing something wrong. Good thing too as I now have 2 potentially interesting activities to consider in the future: Mining Stations and subsequently trading station.

Good news about the +0,1 density being good for mining.

Cheers