Arrrr Matey! (Yet another) Miners won't mine for station Post

[aard00]

Sorry! Really I am me hearties! But I've gone cross-eye (singular) looking through all the threads with mining problems, and obviously I've missed the 'X' on the map because my miners are still laying about like landlubbers ("Searching for Wares" eternally unless I manually send them), instead of earning their silver for my Brand Spanking New Pirate Base! Arrrrr! (Well, as close to a pirate base as you can get without actually being able to build one.)

(I have, incidentally, a ton of other stations with hundreds of miners working fine, but this one just isn't playing ball.)

Anyway! Doubloons to the Seadog who can help me see what I've overlooked!

Here's what I have (and checked off against other threads) and these here images prove what I say be true!:

. Station Manager with pirate-sounding name. Check.
. Station Manager with 3 stars. Check.
. Two miners that only need to mine ice. Scallywags! Check.
. Miners assigned to Mine for Station (right-click > Mine for commander). Check.
. "Automatic Buy Amount" for ice checked in Logical Overview. Check.
. Credits in Station (not Build) account. Check.
. Solid Storage constructed at station. Check.
. Plenty of storage space available at station. Check.
. Mineral Miners (not Gas). Check.
. Miners have mining lasers (not needed but). Check.
. Miner Pilots with 2 stars. Check.
. Resource Probes showing ice at nearest destination (x2 @1.0/km ice). Check.
. No traders assigned to station. Check.
. Distance to ice <= 3 Gates. Check. Is this it? I would have counted that as 2 jumps from Hewa's Twin IV The Cove to Trinity Sanctum. But even if the Superhighway between IV The Cove and III counts, I make that 3 jumps and still within 3-star Manager range.
. Just in case - unassign all miners from station after triple-checking all of the above and then reassign. Check.
. Just in case - check miner behaviour both IS and OOS. Check.
. Miners still aimlessly meandering while drifting further and further from the station in the familiar manner meaning THEY'RE GOING TO WALK THE PLANK! Arrrrr!. Check.

I think it's got to be a gate-jumpy resource-probey type thing, but I can't see it: jump count seems within range and Trinity Sanctum is the only place with ice and it is probed. The sectors in between have no ice. You'd have to go further still (perhaps even to the Americas!) for other sources.

So... stumped. Like all good pirate should be. And wondering if I can turn a coat hanger into a reasonably good hook. Arrrr!

[Puts stuffed parrot on shoulder and waits]

[Raevyan]

It's 2 jumps from Hewa's Twin IV The Cove to Trinity Sanctum III. You count the big hexagons for jumps. You might also want to check your blacklists. I would also try and remove the resource probes.

[pref]

Just a couple wild guesses:
send your parrot out to collect those probes, they should not be needed,
let manager decide buy price,
try sending them over to Trinity and see what path they take - maybe they don't prefer the 1 jump path (hewa is a single cluster, no jumpgates between) but take a length highway loop,
then try issuing a mine order manually and see if they can sell that and come back (sounds stupid but that helped me once in a similar situation)
assign more miners (same stupidity but this also worked once)
wait longer - let em run on SETA for 10-20 mins (same),
check blacklists..
Or
Do some missions and make that manager 5*.

[Tamina]

Wow, that is the first time I've seen such a post and it is not for some simple reason. You went all in. However, I can't see any problems either.

The only weird thing that stands out to me is, according to your pictures, your manager has only 2 1/3 stars but your ships can jump 3 sectors anyway. (?)

[LameFox]

I had that happen once when I used L miners and my station had not yet stocked up on cargo drones, but it looks like yours has a lot of drones already so I assume some transfer cargo.

[Imperial Good]

Make sure station has at least its recommended operating budget in funds, possibly 5 million if that is lower and L storages are used. Even if you are sourcing the inputs yourself the manager still needs the money to generate purchase orders for subordinates to fulfil.

Make sure that the buy limit of ice is set to automatic. A buy limit of 1 will mean that the station will only try to have 1 unit of Ice in storage. If you want to restrict trade so that NPCs do not sell you ice and waste your money then use a trade restriction.

Make sure that any trade restriction used for ice permits the player. It is possible to blacklist yourself in a trade restriction and doing so will prevent your ships from trading with any player owned assets, including subordinate miners trying to auto mine ice for the station.

If the mining ships are L miners, then make sure they have at least 1 mining drone. Without at least 1 mining drone the ship will be unable to auto mine. Unlike mining lasers and turrets which are optional, at least 1 mining drone is required as the mining logic explicitly checks for it.

Make sure that the mining subordinates have either nothing or only ice in their cargo hold. Subordinate logic does not discard wares automatically, even if those wares are preventing the subordinate from operating at all. This can especially be the case if the mining ships were pirated from NPCs since they may come with mined wares already in the cargo hold.

I also suggest you change the marines to service crew. Marines are only used by the player for boarding operations against NPC ships. Since the player's ships will never be boarded by NPCs the result is that marines are effectively dead weight as they do not contribute to ship performance like service crew do. Converting them to service crew is good enough as at least they will contribute some small amount to ship performance while still retaining their marine skill if you ever need to use them in boarding in future.

[Solomon Short]

It's 2 jumps from Hewa's Twin IV The Cove to Trinity Sanctum III. You count the big hexagons for jumps. You might also want to check your blacklists. I would also try and remove the resource probes.

Err... AIUI, Jumps is Gates not Large Hexes, thus Hewa's Twin III/Hewa's Twin IV & Hewa's Twin V may be separate Large Hex's from Hewa's Twin I & Hewa's Twin II, but my map shows all the connections as being Accelerators, so they're a single System, so Trinity Sanctum (via the gate between Hewa's Twin I & Trinity Sanctum III) is only 1 jump (be it to III or VII), as is Company Regard (via the gate from Hewa's Twin II).

A 3-star Station Manager should be able to trade up to 3 Gates(/Systems) away, with all 5 Hewa's Twin sectors being at a range of zero, & the other possible systems being (by number of gates range):

1. Trinity Sanctum (III & VII), & Company Regard.
2. Bright Profit, Unholy Retribution, Turquoise Sea (IX & X), & Scale Plate Green (I & VII).
3. Profit Center Alpha, Ianamus Zura (IV & VII), Memory of Profit (IX & X), & Pious Mists (II, IV, & XI).

[Buzz2005]

station miners and traders use pilots skill or manager skill depending on whats higher

[Kannibal666]

If you are using L miners, does your base (or your mining ship) have cargo drones ?

[sh1pman]

Gates and Accelerators count as Jumps, Superhighways don’t.

[aard00]

Ahoy Me Hearties!

Arrrrr! Doubloons aplenty be going to rene6740 and pref!

Old Salts they be, correctly pointing me to the scourge of the Black (Sail) Lists!

For the rest of ye, a smaller, but not insignificant share of the booty! Thank ye for all ye kind words and contributions! Arrrr!

But sink me, that is nigh on a 20-point check list - required because the game too often doesn't communicate essential info to the user. "Searching for resources..." is ok as long as its not stuck in a loop not getting anywhere. If the result of searches isn't bubbled-up too, the user stays completely in the dark: "Searching for resource 1 of 1 (Ice)... Result: Found 2 sectors away. Blacklisted Sectors en route: 1. Pending resolution." would be far more helpful.

Also mystified by the claim in the Description of the Blacklist that "Ships can violate this restriction if they are ordered explicitly by you or their commander". Is the Manager of the Station not the Commander of the miners assigned to it? Is the Manager not ordering the miner to go mine ice? If the answer is yes, then this is looking like a bug.

Also: The Blacklist in that pic is the one that was causing the problem. I removed Hewa's Twin III from it, and the miners began to mine. However, Hewa's Twin IV The Cove remains in it (that's where the station is), so I don't understand why it's not necessary to remove that sector too from a Travel Blacklist since we are travelling in it to get to the station.

All be told, a hornswaggle I tell ye!

[jlehtone]

"Ships can violate this restriction if they are ordered explicitly by you or their commander". Is the Manager of the Station not the Commander of the miners assigned to it?

When Admiralty sends their Interceptor class carriers to weed out ye pesky pirates, their Captain, Master and Commander will launch those minions with pointy sticks at you even if you hide in the blackest night. The fighter jockeys obey ignoring all Federal Safety Protocols.

It is harder to see a meek bean counter in his cosy office sending anyone to blacklisted regions.

[Tamina]

Your ships will violate a blacklist if they get an order to do so. "Planning" to do something like "Searching for ressources" or planning a path from A to B is not an order, yet, and will respect your blacklists. What can happen, is them getting an order to follow another ship that happens to fly through a, for them, blacklisted sector.

You can set costum lists for your stations and ships that differ from your global lists. Setting a custom list to a station will automatically apply it to its subordinates as well.

It would be nice if we could see blacklisted sectors on the map, marked with a little red cross or something.

[Solomon Short]

Trade Blacklists can also be used to (almost) emulate a Trade Rule for autotraders (I was grinding my ZYA rep by blacklisting everyone but them & myself, 'cos you can't blacklist yourself for some reason).

[aard00]

It is harder to see a meek bean counter in his cosy office sending anyone to blacklisted regions.

Stay your tongue lad! If the Governess of The East Hewa's Twin Trading Company heard you call her a bean counter, she'd have you keelhauled and your bones thrown to the briny deep!



I understand the replies since my last reply But I still maintain that users posting repeatedly on forums trying to clarify (and often guess at) the intended meaning of game situations is a sign that the game is not clear enough to its users.

When is an order to mine ice not an order? (One that incidentally goes into the same order queue every other order goes into.)

When is a subordinate not being commanded by the entity it's subordinate to?

These are rhetorical questions; I don't think a user should be trying to second guess what a programmer intended.

In this particular instance, the issue is the game is not making clear that "Searching for resources..." is in fact a search that is fruitless given the current conditions. That info should be conveyed.

Arrrr!

[pref]

Also blacklisting (not travel but activity) the home sector of a station assigned ship should not cause that ship to stop working.

It's easily possible that someone does not want their station to trade in the same sector for whatever reason.

[Alewx]

Oh i have some great miners active for my gigafactory in Antigone Memorial, they shall just go and mine the dman methane, but no they just go searching for it. But there is already something located to go for it.
So why is the miner too stupid to see the resource probe marking the spot with methane? In profitable trade they mine methane with tiny amounts at the probe.

Spoiler

Show

[xiriod]

Sorry! Really I am me hearties! But I've gone cross-eye (singular) looking through all the threads with mining problems, and obviously I've missed the 'X' on the map because my miners are still laying about like landlubbers ("Searching for Wares" eternally unless I manually send them), instead of earning their silver for my Brand Spanking New Pirate Base! Arrrrr! (Well, as close to a pirate base as you can get without actually being able to build one.)

(I have, incidentally, a ton of other stations with hundreds of miners working fine, but this one just isn't playing ball.)

Anyway! Doubloons to the Seadog who can help me see what I've overlooked!

Here's what I have (and checked off against other threads) and these here images prove what I say be true!:

. Station Manager with pirate-sounding name. Check.
. Station Manager with 3 stars. Check.
. Two miners that only need to mine ice. Scallywags! Check.
. Miners assigned to Mine for Station (right-click > Mine for commander). Check.
. "Automatic Buy Amount" for ice checked in Logical Overview. Check.
. Credits in Station (not Build) account. Check.
. Solid Storage constructed at station. Check.
. Plenty of storage space available at station. Check.
. Mineral Miners (not Gas). Check.
. Miners have mining lasers (not needed but). Check.
. Miner Pilots with 2 stars. Check.
. Resource Probes showing ice at nearest destination (x2 @1.0/km ice). Check.
. No traders assigned to station. Check.
. Distance to ice <= 3 Gates. Check. Is this it? I would have counted that as 2 jumps from Hewa's Twin IV The Cove to Trinity Sanctum. But even if the Superhighway between IV The Cove and III counts, I make that 3 jumps and still within 3-star Manager range.
. Just in case - unassign all miners from station after triple-checking all of the above and then reassign. Check.
. Just in case - check miner behaviour both IS and OOS. Check.
. Miners still aimlessly meandering while drifting further and further from the station in the familiar manner meaning THEY'RE GOING TO WALK THE PLANK! Arrrrr!. Check.

I think it's got to be a gate-jumpy resource-probey type thing, but I can't see it: jump count seems within range and Trinity Sanctum is the only place with ice and it is probed. The sectors in between have no ice. You'd have to go further still (perhaps even to the Americas!) for other sources.

So... stumped. Like all good pirate should be. And wondering if I can turn a coat hanger into a reasonably good hook. Arrrr!

[Puts stuffed parrot on shoulder and waits]

Are they L-class miners by any chance? Did you make sure to make an L-class dock for them? Just have to ask because I had that exact brainfart where all my S-class miners mined happily and the L-class miners just looped around searching because my L-class dock wasn't built yet... Once the dock was finished building they all got to it though!

[Alewx]

. Station Manager with stupid name. Check.
. Station Manager with 5 stars. Check.
. Two miners that only need to mine Methane. Check.
. Miners assigned to Mine for Station (right-click > Mine for commander). Check.
. "Buy Amount" for methane set to max in Logical Overview. Check.
. Credits like hay in Station (not Build) account. Check.
. Solid, Container, Liquid Storage constructed at station. Check.
. Plenty of storage space available at station. Check.
. Gas Miners (Not Mineral). Check.
. Gas Miners do not need any mining lasers. Double Check.
. Miner Pilots with 5 stars. Check.
. Resource Probes showing Methane at nearest destination (x3 @0.19/km Methane). Check.
. No traders assigned/ traders assigned to station. Check.
. Distance to ice <= 5 Gates. Check.
. Just in case - unassign all miners from station after triple-checking all of the above and then reassign. Check.
. Just in case - check miner behaviour both IS and OOS. Check.
. 4 Large E dockingports constructed and completed. Check
. Miners still aimlessly meandering while drifting further and further from the station in the familiar manner meaning THEY'RE GOING TO WALK THE PLANK! Arrrrr!. totally Check!!!!