Mining Operations and Transport

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aurelcourt
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Mining Operations and Transport

Post by aurelcourt » Sat, 5. Oct 19, 12:03

Hello,

For RP and efficiency, I wish I could set up Remote Mining Ops in areas rich in minerals/gases, have my miners staying there mining 24/7 and ferry the extracted goods back to a production center/a warehouse.

Several issues are encountered when trying to do that :

1/ The resource probes are... very difficult and inefficient to use... any improvements coming on that ? Like a better radius, an automated command for explorers (like the X3 "scan asteroids") and a better map view of the densities? And some actual nice "spots" for mining that we'd need to find first ("we" being my fleet of explorers of course^^)

2/ How to force the miners to stay in one location? They just go... in whatever direction they like... I'd like to have them "anchored" at a specific location ==> "X km" radius around a resource probe for example !

3/ How to avoid all the trips the miners do to unload their cargo? I'd like a remote ops base, something like the TL we had in X3. Could that be done with a very small station with only docking and containers? Then how to make miners unload there without a factory "buying" the ware ?

4/ How to ship the collected minerals back somewhere else? The game lacks some actuel "Transport" ships, only the miners themselves can carry ore/gas... to me Miners and Transporters are not the same thing ! :-)

All in all, i'm looking both for workaround for the current state of the game, and hopefully additions to the game that allow this sort of feature, very common for 4X space games :-)


Have a great day!
Aurélien

aurelcourt
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Re: Mining Operations and Transport

Post by aurelcourt » Fri, 11. Oct 19, 11:46

Up 🙂

Apparently with 2.6 we can set custom buy orders in any stations so I guess my point 3/ can be addressed with a station that would buy the ore from my own sector miners ?

Still looking for some thoughts for points 1/ 2/ and 4/ though!

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MarvinTheMartian
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Re: Mining Operations and Transport

Post by MarvinTheMartian » Fri, 11. Oct 19, 23:38

1/ I don't believe miners pay any heed to resource probes anyway. I say this because my gas miners have travelled to another sector in which I've never placed a resource probe.
However, if you want to place them for RP reasons then you can order any ship loaded with resource probes to deploy them. To do this, click on the ship in the map and then right-click the point in space you want them deployed and then in the context menu go down to "Civilian" and there's the option to deploy resource probe by clicking on "Resource Probe", you then just repeat with the next point in space.

2/ There's no option to do this with station auto-mine, sadly. It doesn't appear possible to alter the max gate distance either but you may be able to apply a blacklist that will stop them leaving the sector.
Please Egosoft, give us the ability to configure the gate range on independent and subordinate trading/mining ships.

3/ As you've pointed out, in 2.6 (currently Beta 5) you can now configure a station as a warehouse by adding at least 1 of that ware and setting options as to whether it's traded or not. You then just set the miners to mine for that station by clicking the mining ship and right-click the station and select "mine for".
Unfortunately, we are also unable to assign a miner to a specific resource i.e. if you assign a gas miner to a station it will decide for itself whether it goes for Hydrogen, Helium or Methane and (it seems) not always based on demand at the station.

4/ Just buy another L miner and use it to transport the minerals/gas to wherever, a Magnetar has only slightly less storage than a Shuyaku; don't give it a mining laser or mining/collecting drones and it's a transporter ;). I would suggest, however, that instead of building just a warehouse - build a refined goods complex to turn:
- ore into refined metal/teladianium
- silicon into silicon wafers
- methane into graphine
- hydrogen in antimatter cells
- helium into superfluid coolant
the raw materials can only be used in the production of these refined goods and by shipping these in their refined form the transportation is an order of magnitude more efficient. Up to you though.

At the moment, I have not found any command for a ship to transfer wares between only player stations automatically as a default behaviour. There may be a way of fudging this with blacklists and ware trade restrictions but either I'm missing something really obvious or there's a massive hole in trader behaviour.
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Imperial Good
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Re: Mining Operations and Transport

Post by Imperial Good » Sat, 12. Oct 19, 01:38

aurelcourt wrote:
Sat, 5. Oct 19, 12:03
1/ The resource probes are... very difficult and inefficient to use... any improvements coming on that ? Like a better radius, an automated command for explorers (like the X3 "scan asteroids") and a better map view of the densities? And some actual nice "spots" for mining that we'd need to find first ("we" being my fleet of explorers of course^^)
Auto miners do not care about resource probes. They just know where to mine. They spread out to prevent localized depletion as well.
aurelcourt wrote:
Sat, 5. Oct 19, 12:03
2/ How to force the miners to stay in one location? They just go... in whatever direction they like... I'd like to have them "anchored" at a specific location ==> "X km" radius around a resource probe for example !
This will decrease mining efficiency due to local depletion of mineable material from the zone. Eventually you will hit the replenishment rate for the Zone at which stage miners will become increasingly less efficient and not yield any more material.
aurelcourt wrote:
Sat, 5. Oct 19, 12:03
3/ How to avoid all the trips the miners do to unload their cargo? I'd like a remote ops base, something like the TL we had in X3. Could that be done with a very small station with only docking and containers? Then how to make miners unload there without a factory "buying" the ware ?
There is practically no benefit to be gained here since there are no specialized "mine hauler" ships. The same ships that will do the hauling back can mine so in practice having them mine and then haul their load back is at least as efficient as mining and transferring their wares to another of the same ship to haul back.

With a dedicated "mine hauler" things would look different. Such ship would be unable to mine but instead hold more liquid/solid and a considerably faster travel mode. With such a ship having them move the wares back would save considerable wasted mining time for the miners and overall be more cost effective. Of course for this to make sense the maximum travel speeds of miners would need to be lowered, to encourage use of this approach as currently the gains would be very small for the effort applied.
aurelcourt wrote:
Sat, 5. Oct 19, 12:03
4/ How to ship the collected minerals back somewhere else? The game lacks some actuel "Transport" ships, only the miners themselves can carry ore/gas... to me Miners and Transporters are not the same thing !
They are not needed as miners do that already. See my answer to 3. If they were added the current miners would be nerfed and the net result might be just a more complex game to achieve the same as we get currently.
aurelcourt wrote:
Fri, 11. Oct 19, 11:46
Apparently with 2.6 we can set custom buy orders in any stations so I guess my point 3/ can be addressed with a station that would buy the ore from my own sector miners ?
No it is not addressed. One cannot assign miners to trade for a station and hence although one can buy and sell ore like a warehouse, one cannot automatically buy and sell ore with traders.

In the end it still might not justify the extra complexity since one could just place refinery modules on that station and have normal traders haul the much more compact refined products to destinations rather than raw materials.

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MarvinTheMartian
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Re: Mining Operations and Transport

Post by MarvinTheMartian » Sat, 12. Oct 19, 03:04

Imperial Good wrote:
Sat, 12. Oct 19, 01:38
There is practically no benefit to be gained here since there are no specialized "mine hauler" ships.
Hmm, just checked and you're right. It's not possible to assign a mining ship trade tasks for a station, only "mine" or "defence" :gruebel: An oversight if you ask me. Still more efficient to haul refined goods though.
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aurelcourt
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Re: Mining Operations and Transport

Post by aurelcourt » Sat, 12. Oct 19, 07:52

Thank you for your answers !

I hope we'll soon get an incentive to search the universe for lucrative mining spots instead of the autominer that knows more than the player...

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MarvinTheMartian
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Re: Mining Operations and Transport

Post by MarvinTheMartian » Sat, 12. Oct 19, 10:10

aurelcourt wrote:
Sat, 12. Oct 19, 07:52
I hope we'll soon get an incentive to search the universe for lucrative mining spots instead of the autominer that knows more than the player...
There's a limited range for miners and transporters for automation (4 sectors I think for a 3* pilot and above) so you still need to choose location wisely. I've set up a refined materials complex 2 sectors away from my Wharf which was more luck than exploration so it's good to do some exploring and look at the range your miners/transporters will need to travel and ensure supply.

There are some sectors with good connections but no resources in them directly so I'll be relocating at some point I expect.
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