How do you use the mining commands?

Nami88 · Post by **Nami88** » Sat, 5. Jun 10, 07:36

I have a Demeter Miner with full cargo/engine/rudder upgrades, an ore collector, mineral scanner, special command and both trade softwares. However, when I command it to "mine for minerals..." it just moves forward a bit and then informs me that it's completed its task. I even made it automatically scan all the asteroids in that sector in case it needs to know which ones have ore.

Isn't there a way to command them to bust up the asteroids into smaller pieces and collect the ore? "Mine and trade" seems to work, but I don't want them trading the ore, since I need it for a quest.

Please help.

Targ Collective · Post by **Targ Collective** » Sat, 5. Jun 10, 07:57

Yes, build mines on the asteroids - that's what the bigger rocks are there for! Failing that, break them with Mobile Drilling Systems.

Nami88 · Post by **Nami88** » Sat, 5. Jun 10, 08:12

It has a mobile drilling laser equipped to its turret, but how do I make it use it? The "mine for minerals" command does nothing.

Targ Collective · Post by **Targ Collective** » Sat, 5. Jun 10, 09:33

No, *you* need to use it in a compatible ship, then you can set the freighter to work. But mines never run out while rocks do, so this seems a waste to me, considering how cheap L size mines are.

Nami88 · Post by **Nami88** » Sat, 5. Jun 10, 09:42

So I can't have an automatic miner while I do other stuff? I need 2,000 ore for some Goner quest, so is the Ore Mine L the way to go then?

Gswine · Post by **Gswine** » Sat, 5. Jun 10, 18:57

You could set up a TL and order it to collect minerals and it should start mining what you want. If it does not then you may have to choose a different sector till it works.

If you buy an ore collecter from an eq dock and install it on a TL you can now access the collect rocks command.

Spoiler

Show

Use this if you know that there is a lot of rock debrie in the system. Also if you destroy a roid set the TL to collect rocks (best if the TL is near you when you destroy the roid).

Jump out of the system and the miner(s) will continue to collect rocks indefinatly, they will not dissapear untill you are back IS.

So this can definatly be done without mines if you want.

Infekted · Post by **Infekted** » Sun, 6. Jun 10, 02:12

Get a fast M5 with explorer software and scanners.

Select navigation->scan asteroids->survey debris

In sectors you wish to mine in.

Nami88 · Post by **Nami88** » Sun, 6. Jun 10, 02:35

Wait, so what's the difference between rocks and asteroids? I hear people talking about "mobile mining", can someone explain what that means?

Bottom line is: I just want to leave my miner on autopilot like the "mine and trade minerals" command, except that it keeps the ore in the cargo bay rather than trading it away.

Legionnaire · Post by **Legionnaire** » Sun, 6. Jun 10, 03:02

If you are not worried about having a modified Game get Lucike's Prospector script, that lets you set a TL as homebase for a mobile miner and the miner will mine/collect rocks and then offload in the TL. In my last game i had about 5 TL's in various Systems, each with 2 or 3 mobile miners filling them.

Legionnaire

Nami88 · Post by **Nami88** » Sun, 6. Jun 10, 04:07

I don't have a TL yet, I only have 13mil. I still don't understand the concept of "mobile miner" though. I'm using a TS class miner (it has miner in the name) but as I said I don't know how to make it mine by itself....

Da-V-Man · Post by **Da-V-Man** » Sun, 6. Jun 10, 04:16

I can't help you with mobile mining as I've never done it before, but imo for now I'd rather just buy the ore. 2000 ore isn't that much, and NPC ore mines frequently have ore for sale at 50 credits. All together you'd need 16000 cargo space to ship it all, or ~4-5 standard size TS shipments worth.

Nami88 · Post by **Nami88** » Sun, 6. Jun 10, 16:39

Infekted wrote:Get a fast M5 with explorer software and scanners.

Select navigation->scan asteroids->survey debris

In sectors you wish to mine in.

What does survey debris do? I tried making my miner survey for a while but nothing new appeared on the map, it didn't seem like he did anything but fly around aimlessly.

Legionnaire · Post by **Legionnaire** » Sun, 6. Jun 10, 17:15

You should be able to find debris / rocks that can be mined in Kingdom End i believe.

Legionnaire

BillyBoyFloyd · Post by **BillyBoyFloyd** » Sun, 6. Jun 10, 22:26

(X3TC) I have 20 Demeter Miners operating in Home Of Light clearing the trash rocks. Most sectors have the trash rocks in them, and most trash rocks have either Ore or Silicon content that can be mined by TS miner ships.

I use the Trade menu command "Mine and Trade Minerals". All 20 miners happily run around breaking up and collecting the trash rocks in the sector and selling them to NPC stations both in-sector & in adjacent sectors when they get full cargo bays. One of these years they'll hopefully finish clearing the sector so I can get them started on that mess in Ore Belt...

I tend to overequip my ships, as I never know when I might need to borrow one briefly for an errand. The Demeter Miner comes default with Trade Command 1, Special Command 1, the Mineral Scanner, and an Ore collector. I added best buys/best sell, Nav, Trade 2 and the trading extension, Jumpdrive and Transporter, Fight Command 1 & 2, Triplex scanner,SETA, Boost Extension, and explorer software.

I don't think you have to specifically use "Miner" ships either. You just need a TS that can mount any laser. You only need the Mobile Drilling System to bust full "Asteroids"; once the big roid is broken, any laser can break them further until they are "collectable" by the Ore Collector. Hornet missles can also be used to initially fragment the full Asteroids; I don't know if other missles work; I've never tried anything other than Hornets.

There are no "Asteroids" in Home of Light, there are just the trash rocks that you cannot place a mining station on. I'm pretty certain you have to break a full blown "Asteroid" manually before the miners will goto work on the fragments. Supposedly full Asteroids broken up and collected in this manner will respawn in the same place with the same type and yield eventually; they did in X3 and X2 anyway.

Mobile mining like this is the only way I know of to collect any sizable amount of Nividium.

This is not a great way to get large amounts of minerals for the Goner or Hub missions. Buy Ore Mine (L) or Silicon Mine (L) factories and use them for steady production for those missions.

This is a great way to get rid of the trash rocks, support the local NPC economy, and improve framerate in really cluttered sectors, as the trash rocks (supposedly!) do not respawn.

Snafu_X3 · Post by **Snafu_X3** » Sun, 6. Jun 10, 23:11

Nami88 wrote:What does survey debris do? I tried making my miner survey for a while but nothing new appeared on the map, it didn't seem like he did anything but fly around aimlessly.

If you look in your message log it will show the total amount of various minerals that are available by collecting rocks in the sector you surveyed

Infekted · Post by **Infekted** » Mon, 7. Jun 10, 12:58

Snafu_X3 wrote:
Nami88 wrote:What does survey debris do? I tried making my miner survey for a while but nothing new appeared on the map, it didn't seem like he did anything but fly around aimlessly.
If you look in your message log it will show the total amount of various minerals that are available by collecting rocks in the sector you surveyed

Eventually you will get sent a report of minable minerals within that sector. It takes time for your ship to fly around scanning everything. Thats why its best to use a fast M5 for this. If you issued that command on a TS, dont be suprised if it takes a long while to get a report, especially in large sectors...

thegilesy · Post by **thegilesy** » Mon, 7. Jun 10, 21:07

So does the "mine minerals" command actually do anything?

Triaxx2 · Post by **Triaxx2** » Mon, 7. Jun 10, 21:14

One of the best reasons around to have Disco Raiders, but definitely an OOS ship to work with.

Post by **Nanook** » Mon, 7. Jun 10, 21:25

First of all, just to clarify, the mining commands only work on the smaller, debris rocks, not on the asteroids viewable in the sector map. If you want to mobile mine those, you need to first manually break them up somehow, either with a large enough missile, or with the Mobile Drilling System.

The 'Mine Minerals' command can be given to any ship with a mineral scanner, ore collector, special command software, and some sort of laser in a turret. You do not need the MDS, unless you're using one of the miner variants of TS's that only equip MDS's. When you give the Mine Minerals command, you can set the mineral type, the sector, how much you want mined, and a station/ship to offload the minerals to, if you wish. If you don't set a station/ship, then it will fill up, stop mining and notify you it's finished. This command is excellent for filling up a TL, or supplying a factory/complex with ore. The command is found under the Special Commands menu for the ship.

The 'Mine and Trade Minerals' command is similar to the above, except it will sell its minerals once the ship is full. As I recall, it will sell within one or two sectors of the mining operation. The mineral it selects to mine is determined by what it sees a market for before it starts. However, you can force it to mine a particular mineral by putting the name of the mineral in the ship's name, such as 'Ore Miner 1' or 'Silicon Miner 1'. If this miner can't find any mineable rocks in its current sector, it will fly to adjoining sectors and hunt again, until it finds something to mine. If homebased, this miner will place the profits in that station's account. This is a 'fire and forget' miner. This command is found under the Trade Command menu.

Note that neither of the two mining commands works for nividium, due to game balance issues. For nividium, you need to manually break up the rocks first, and then use the 'Collect Minerals' command under the Special Command menu.

spyder1911 · Post by **spyder1911** » Mon, 2. Aug 10, 23:36

Nanook wrote:First of all, just to clarify, the mining commands only work on the smaller, debris rocks, not on the asteroids viewable in the sector map. If you want to mobile mine those, you need to first manually break them up somehow, either with a large enough missile, or with the Mobile Drilling System.

The 'Mine Minerals' command can be given to any ship with a mineral scanner, ore collector, special command software, and some sort of laser in a turret. You do not need the MDS, unless you're using one of the miner variants of TS's that only equip MDS's. When you give the Mine Minerals command, you can set the mineral type, the sector, how much you want mined, and a station/ship to offload the minerals to, if you wish. If you don't set a station/ship, then it will fill up, stop mining and notify you it's finished. This command is excellent for filling up a TL, or supplying a factory/complex with ore. The command is found under the Special Commands menu for the ship.

The 'Mine and Trade Minerals' command is similar to the above, except it will sell its minerals once the ship is full. As I recall, it will sell within one or two sectors of the mining operation. The mineral it selects to mine is determined by what it sees a market for before it starts. However, you can force it to mine a particular mineral by putting the name of the mineral in the ship's name, such as 'Ore Miner 1' or 'Silicon Miner 1'. If this miner can't find any mineable rocks in its current sector, it will fly to adjoining sectors and hunt again, until it finds something to mine. If homebased, this miner will place the profits in that station's account. This is a 'fire and forget' miner. This command is found under the Trade Command menu.

Note that neither of the two mining commands works for nividium, due to game balance issues. For nividium, you need to manually break up the rocks first, and then use the 'Collect Minerals' command under the Special Command menu.

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How do you use the mining commands?

How do you use the mining commands?