Bug? Ships going beyond edges of the sector

[Kosta88]

My mining ships often wander way beyond the official visible sector edges, making the sector technically smaller and smaller. I have to zoom further and further in to be able to see the stations. That can't be right.

[alt3rn1ty]

No its not a bug, its intended. The game will reset the "edge" of the sector after a reload of the game (pretty sure I have seen it happen without a reload too if you go far enough away and there is nothing happening or established (like stations) outside the normal edge)

This feature though can cause a bug or two, if you are in sector when a sector is nudged by one of your ships to expand it, the gate paths can become visually disconnected with the gate it is supposed to be attached to. It doesn't stop the gates connecting to where they are supposed to though, and also resets after a game reload.
Egosoft have said they will be refining the behaviour of the sector expansion / contraction in a future build.

[Alan Phipps]

Also you can use resource probes (dropped where you actually want them to mine specific resources shown as present there) to control miner wandering. These don't have to be the best resource nodes in the sector, just sufficient.

[Rei Ayanami]

If you mean the mining ships will wander away from the sector without doing anything productive, I mentioned this problem in a previous topic:
viewtopic.php?t=430032
One of the developers said this should be fixed / improved in a future patch.

If on the other hand you mean the mining ships fly away and actually mine far, far away, then I suggest placing a ressource probe at a location with the ressources they need. Mining ships, at least in my experience, always prefer mining spots with ressource probes over searching for a mining spot themselves.

[jlehtone]

Mining ships, at least in my experience, always prefer mining spots with ressource probes over searching for a mining spot themselves.

That was added in 3.30. Miners ignored probes before that.
Your (L-miners?) do now also get upkeep mission, if they mine in sector sans probes but they can still mine.

You can disable a probe/beacon/satellite/mine in order to pick it up. (You don't have to do that, when you tell a pilot to pick them up.)
The miners beeline to the probe, whether it is "active" or not. I wish they did not.

I told (L-)miner to automine Ore. Sector had no probes. The miner got a nearby destination and I told it to deploy a probe. Poor spot, but some Ore.
Next I told the miner to go to other side of the sector and told it to automine Silicon. It did beeline to the probe. Probe had been deactivated, but the miner did not care.

Then I told the ship to deploy a beacon where the probe is and collect the probe. Again fly to the other side and automine. Now it did find a spot there, and it had way more of Ore too than spot 1.

I have "allies". Map can show their orders; where NPC miners will mine. I deploy probes on those spots. They do not all gather to the "best spot".

Summary:

• Both NPC and player autominers can find resources on their own, but they don't necessarily find the best area in the sector
• Player autominers will go to "best probe" in sector (Don't know about multi-sector miners)
• There is no sane way to find the "best area" in sector (to deploy a probe)

• When searching on their own miners, particularly the NPC, can fly "far to the edge"
• Sectors do not have edges, the borders expand as necessary. Content of "new zones" in sector; I guess it is generated on the fly
• Sector borders are far enough to show all player assets; you fly far, they do stretch, but when you return the borders will shrink back if possible

[Kosta88]

Ok Fine, I’ll see if they shrink back on reload.
But yes, I am quite annoyed how the current system works. I had deployed lots of probes, many showing nothing in the areas of the map that is marked as resources.
Even some where in the middle of the asteroid field and showing nothing.
It would be very useful if we would get some kind of discovery ship that would search for resources. Even doing it manually is not really viable - I tried.
In the end, I just collected all my probes, as they had seem to cause some bugs, like miners hanging and shimmering on one spot.

[Falcrack]

Sectors that are zoomed out because a ship goes past the regular borders will zoom back in as soon as the ship that was beyond the borders is no longer there. Unless you do something like drop a resource probe or place a station there, there the map will remain zoomed out.

[Raevyan]

Ok Fine, I’ll see if they shrink back on reload.
But yes, I am quite annoyed how the current system works. I had deployed lots of probes, many showing nothing in the areas of the map that is marked as resources.
Even some where in the middle of the asteroid field and showing nothing.
It would be very useful if we would get some kind of discovery ship that would search for resources. Even doing it manually is not really viable - I tried.
In the end, I just collected all my probes, as they had seem to cause some bugs, like miners hanging and shimmering on one spot.

The map background colors and visual asteroids are no indication whether there are resources or not. You can technically be in an asteroid field with no resources being present in that sector.

[alt3rn1ty]

It would be very useful if we would get some kind of discovery ship that would search for resources. Even doing it manually is not really viable - I tried.
In the end, I just collected all my probes, as they had seem to cause some bugs, like miners hanging and shimmering on one spot.

Until then, dont go by the presence of asteroids. What you need to be targeting is the centre of fluffy clouds / space dust ..

The map background colours can be used to get you into the vicinity of resources (not necessarily the correct resources), then switch to first person Pilot so you can go up or down to where the centre of the clouds are. https://i.imgur.com/VDd0v6a.png

Head for the centre of those white fluffy clouds for example to get Ice, and drop a couple of resource probes (maybe three depending on your judgement of where the cloud centre is going to occur, and your ships speed causing them to drift a little, one of them will be close enough to get a high yield).
Different coloured clouds have different resources, and sometimes you get a mixture of resources in the same area ...
https://i.imgur.com/x10OVlT.png
https://i.imgur.com/1KRUFir.png

I had a mission which wanted me to get a good Ice percentage in one of the Grand Exchange sectors recently, personally I thought this was not doable because I had resource probes all over that sector for Silicon, Ore and one of the gasses but had not seen Ice in that sector, but sure enough down to the south west on the map there is a little patch of blue, changed to Pilot mode and used the above method, bingo first drop was bang on. The map colour seams though are not generally a reliable indication of what resources are where.

I open the Pilot menu a little before I hit where I think the centre is, and if you are slow enough you will see the cloud particles close enough to look a little pixellated, that imho is a good place to drop the probe. But best to drop one just before then, and another and another .. Let your NPC pilot collect the worst ones with less yield.

1. Entering pixellated cloud / dust https://i.imgur.com/yD9y652.png
2. Probably about in the centre of the cloud https://i.imgur.com/URV7lCA.png
3. Gone too far https://i.imgur.com/a5AsOV6.png

If you are travelling fast and you are at the position relative to the cloud as in screenshot 2 above, the probe will by its own inertia travel too far outside of the cloud.

Works for me anyway

[Buzz2005]

It doesn't stop the gates connecting to where they are supposed to though, and also resets after a game reload.
Egosoft have said they will be refining the behaviour of the sector expansion / contraction in a future build.

you don't have to reload the game, just close and open the map again, connections will be right again

[alt3rn1ty]

It doesn't stop the gates connecting to where they are supposed to though, and also resets after a game reload.
Egosoft have said they will be refining the behaviour of the sector expansion / contraction in a future build.

you don't have to reload the game, just close and open the map again, connections will be right again

Yeah sometimes, not always though in my experience, and someone else who raised a bug report recently, that's where I found out Egosoft would be looking into making things better. Its a complicated problem though.

[Buzz2005]

I see this a lot and always goes back to normal with off on map, but good that it will be fixed

[Kosta88]

It would be very useful if we would get some kind of discovery ship that would search for resources. Even doing it manually is not really viable - I tried.
In the end, I just collected all my probes, as they had seem to cause some bugs, like miners hanging and shimmering on one spot.

Until then, dont go by the presence of asteroids. What you need to be targeting is the centre of fluffy clouds / space dust ..

The map background colours can be used to get you into the vicinity of resources (not necessarily the correct resources), then switch to first person Pilot so you can go up or down to where the centre of the clouds are. https://i.imgur.com/VDd0v6a.png

Head for the centre of those white fluffy clouds for example to get Ice, and drop a couple of resource probes (maybe three depending on your judgement of where the cloud centre is going to occur, and your ships speed causing them to drift a little, one of them will be close enough to get a high yield).
Different coloured clouds have different resources, and sometimes you get a mixture of resources in the same area ...
https://i.imgur.com/x10OVlT.png
https://i.imgur.com/1KRUFir.png

I had a mission which wanted me to get a good Ice percentage in one of the Grand Exchange sectors recently, personally I thought this was not doable because I had resource probes all over that sector for Silicon, Ore and one of the gasses but had not seen Ice in that sector, but sure enough down to the south west on the map there is a little patch of blue, changed to Pilot mode and used the above method, bingo first drop was bang on. The map colour seams though are not generally a reliable indication of what resources are where.

I open the Pilot menu a little before I hit where I think the centre is, and if you are slow enough you will see the cloud particles close enough to look a little pixellated, that imho is a good place to drop the probe. But best to drop one just before then, and another and another .. Let your NPC pilot collect the worst ones with less yield.

1. Entering pixellated cloud / dust https://i.imgur.com/yD9y652.png
2. Probably about in the centre of the cloud https://i.imgur.com/URV7lCA.png
3. Gone too far https://i.imgur.com/a5AsOV6.png

If you are travelling fast and you are at the position relative to the cloud as in screenshot 2 above, the probe will by its own inertia travel too far outside of the cloud.

Works for me anyway

THANK YOU for taking time to explain it. I am just trying to do that, until now no success. I can't find any fluffy clouds like you posted. Been flying through couple of sectors now... only asteroid fields.

[alt3rn1ty]

Some sectors dont have them, the sector your PHQ gets built in has quite a lot. Sometimes you might need to fly outside the sector boundaries to find good seams, the colours on the map will lead you down those.
Could also be affected by graphics settings?
And the colours of the clouds which I think represent Ore and Silicon might not be right, but I am pretty sure the white fluffy ones are Ice .. makes sense really, and always came up with good results for my Ice miners.

[Mr.Killer]

IT IS A BUG......
Few weeks back I had a few miners and traders (those were about 1000 KM away from the station to look for trades) who were really off course, so I provided a savegame.... don't know what happened after that, so maybe it is fixed in next update.

[Shepp]

I had this happen with large large miners assigned to stations. If the station storage filled up the miners would just fly off in random directions outside the default sector. They wouldn't actually mine anything. They would just fly around searching for resources.

[dtpsprt]

I had this happen with large large miners assigned to stations. If the station storage filled up the miners would just fly off in random directions outside the default sector. They wouldn't actually mine anything. They would just fly around searching for resources.

The Large Miners require a resource probe to mine properly, if you have placed one (per the instructions in your Maintenance Missions description) they would just go there and mine. The fact that the sectors expand to tremendous sizes I have also queried if it is a bug and got the answer (from Egosoft) that the sectors have been greatly expanded in V3.30. No reason for this given though...

[Shepp]

I have resource probes. They also work properly when the station storage isn't full. Once station storage fills up the miners fly off the edge of the map in random directions. Its not a deal breaker by any means. But it would be nice of the game handled this situation a little bit more gracefully.

[Buzz2005]

a recent thread about the same topic had a dev that confirmed the behaviour is improved in the next patch

[Nort The Fragrent]

It’s dangerous beyond the edge of the map, that’s where monsters live!

Well it could be if the game had any weight !

But no !

There is nothing out there !

Due to the lack of any menacing monsters, the space beyond is classed as the safe zone.
A place of freedom,
Happiness,
A place to contemplate ones navel.
Meditate and hum, or chant.

A safe place to send your grandmother for a holiday.

Space the final safe place to not bother exploring.

That is unless you want to go granny spotting.