Mobile mining questions.

[buddysmith30]

I have around 3 mercury tankers xls attached to my mammoth. They are mobile mining in ore belt near my complexes. However I have 2 issues the main one is.... Is there a way to keep them moving with out stopping? I have the CSLs running the track between the mammoth and the complexes. The second is can I clear that sector of roids?

[Alan Phipps]

1. If you use TMs rather then TSs for mobile mining, you can have Falcon Haulers homebased to the miners doing repeat trips to take minerals to the TL or complexes. As long as the miners don't ever completely fill up then they won't stop.

2. Due to rock respawns, the only way to clear rocks completely is to personally shoot them (PSGs or PBGs are good, shoot then pause as the rocks reposition before shooting again) or repeatedly ram them with a well-shielded big ship with no ore collector. You cannot clear full asteroids by attack as they eventually respawn if broken, but respawn does not happen if you put a mine on them first and then either tow them away or attack/self-destruct the mine.

[paulhamm]

The answer is simple, configure CLS to pull the ore from the miners before they get filled. They will never stop collecting. Well if you are over producing it may be a problem but not very often. BTW using the Mamoth is a waste of a good TL.

[StarSword]

Yeah, the Mammoth is possibly the best all around. Its cargo space ties with the Terran Mobile Mining Base-Ship and is second only to the Terran Atmospheric Lifter, and unlike the MMBS, it can mount actual combat weapons in all its slots (whereas the MMBS can only put mobile drilling systems and tractor beams in its bow and dorsal turrets).

Although the MMBS can carry the Terrans' most powerful capital ship weapon, the point singularity projector, in its flank turrets, whereas the most powerful gun you can put on a Mammoth is the incendiary bomb launcher.

[garv222]

If you use the collect rocks command, the mining ships will collect until full but never "finish" their task. So if one of your ships remotely comes by and takes out their cargo/ore they will keep on collecting rocks. A well configured setup using the mining command will run just as well if not better, but using the collect rocks command leaves room for error on your part. The only possible downside is if there are multiple mining materials in a single area. I haven't encountered it, but I suppose it's possible for a collect rocks command to pick up silicon and ore.

[glenmcd]

I have around 3 mercury tankers xls attached to my mammoth. They are mobile mining in ore belt near my complexes. However I have 2 issues the main one is.... Is there a way to keep them moving with out stopping? I have the CSLs running the track between the mammoth and the complexes. The second is can I clear that sector of roids?

I find it frustrating that all ships when commanded to collect rocks, seem to have a purposeful pause between collecting one rock at a time. Like it could be sped up x100 easily. All in the name of game balance I guess.

Navigation and game performance problems are both strong reasons to remove rocks. Collecting or destroying them manually was something I tried, but found that the time and effort to do so even for one sector was completely unpractical to endure. So I ended up using a script to remove any rocks in universe that were not large enough to put a mine on. I did fix the problem using a script but it marked my game as *modified*. I accepted this but others may not.

To break up the larger rocks into collectable size, try ramming them with your Mammoth at 18 m/sec on SETA, with the external (F2 key) view. This view does more than offer a different perspective. It no longer collects rocks, it breaks up rock exclusively which is perfect for setting up for perpetual rock collection. But the same cannot be said for some other ships. For some reason shield damage is greatly reduced, allowing you to move a little over twice the speed whilst maintaining some shield at all times. For manual collection, I found the Mammoth at 8 m/sec in normal cockpit view worked best, occasionally switching to F2 view only to get a better perspective so I could turn the ship to the thickest patches of rocks. The Hyperion can break up rocks at a sustained 30 m/sec approx, but is only one tenth as productive for manual rock collection compared to the Mammoth. Shields on the Hyperion max out at 1GJ, same as Mammoth.

I found that using automated mobile mining of ore and silicon wasn't really productive in feeding a complex. It has been last resort only. Also, every time any ship collects a rock, it puts a load on the game engine, and with enough ships mining, this brings your frame rate down to unacceptable limits, independantly of anything else that would bring gfx performance down. And the effect is not "smooth" either, it tends to give you small graphic "lockups" at random times for random durations. Because of this I tend to use mines exclusively for ore and silicon, and only do Nividium mining as a means of quickly getting to be able to afford the property / resources I need for money makers that don't reduce graphics performance so much. I've tried up to 120 mining ships working in parallel. Not pretty.

Once you break up asteroids / rocks, try to do mobile mining on them exclusively rather than continually moving on to others. Leaving behind multiple clouds of small rocks is really bad for frame rates too.

Many guys have mentioned Falcon hauler in relation to mobile mining. I haven't tried it yet.

[kotorone1]

heres how i mass mobile mine-
get lots of miners (aroung 70) and set them all to collect rocks
get roughly 18 CLS mk2 with transporters to transport ore from the miners to the themselves
get 5 CLS mk2 to beam all the ore off of the 1st 18 CLS mk2s
get 2 more CLS mk2 to beam the ore off of the 5 CLS Mmk2s
one more to beam the ore off of these other two collectors
buy one last CLS mk 2 and have it beam the ore from those 2 to a TL (I use an albatross)
Then use another ship to fly the ore from the TL to your base, or in nividium mining, the neart SY

theres how i mobile mine nividium. all of these CLS mk2s have to own a transporter device, and they take a while to train to the point where they are effective. It sometimes help to beam any extra ore off of the miners, so they dont get clogged up.

In general, to beam the ore off of 20 miners, you need 6 untrained CLS mk2s to get the ore to a TL, if you got more advanced CLSs you need less.

edit: setting this up can take over an hour, and it is very tedious. It also will burn through your bank very quickly
edit2: alternatively, you can tell them to collect a certain mineral in sector x or pretty much any other mining command. Once you set this system up,you can never fly into this sector again, unless you wish to set this mining operation up again.

[Donziboy2]

Ive found that 10 miners will pull in about 1500 silicon an hour, should be around the same for ore.

Ive never had much trouble getting 1 CLS per 10 miners to feed my plex's, just need to make sure your CLS can collect from miners and move between plex and miners fast enough that the miners dont fill up.

I actually had to look at one of my older posts on another mobile mining post since I havent done any mobile mining in months, and my current pacifist game thats on its second day is soon to be over

Maybe ill spend more time and do a nice guide with statistics on how much you get per hour based on different ships. (prob wont be much lol)

[tbowen]

heres how i mass mobile mine-
get lots of miners (aroung 70) and set them all to collect rocks
get roughly 18 CLS mk2 with transporters to transport ore from the miners to the themselves
get 5 CLS mk2 to beam all the ore off of the 1st 18 CLS mk2s
get 2 more CLS mk2 to beam the ore off of the 5 CLS Mmk2s
one more to beam the ore off of these other two collectors
buy one last CLS mk 2 and have it beam the ore from those 2 to a TL (I use an albatross)
Then use another ship to fly the ore from the TL to your base, or in nividium mining, the neart SY

theres how i mobile mine nividium. all of these CLS mk2s have to own a transporter device, and they take a while to train to the point where they are effective. It sometimes help to beam any extra ore off of the miners, so they dont get clogged up.

In general, to beam the ore off of 20 miners, you need 6 untrained CLS mk2s to get the ore to a TL, if you got more advanced CLSs you need less.

edit: setting this up can take over an hour, and it is very tedious. It also will burn through your bank very quickly
edit2: alternatively, you can tell them to collect a certain mineral in sector x or pretty much any other mining command. Once you set this system up,you can never fly into this sector again, unless you wish to set this mining operation up again.

Impressive. But, is this really more efficient than just mining? (Outside of nividium, of course.) Also, are these miners all in one sector, or are the spread out? And, finally, which sectors do you mine?

[kotorone1]

Its more or less efficient, but it takes 4 game days to train the CLS mk2s. All these miners are in the unknown sector above Argon M148 mining nividium

[JAFA_NZ]

@kotorone1:

4 days? You should be able to train them up much more quickly.

You list 28 CLS2 pilots let's round up to 30, get 30 ships & you can train all of them to Cargo Messenger in a tad over (Edit: Corrected miscalculation) 6 hours.

But, as listed only 2 of them need to be trained at all, the rest should be left at Apprentice so they don't draw wages or training fees (there is an option to disable leveling).

The 2 who need to be trained to Cargo Messenger are the TL Pilot (can't pilot a TL otherwise) & the pilot shipping out-sector (so he can use the Jumpdrive).

Of course, if the ships delivering to & collecting from the TL list it as a waypoint, there is no need for a CLS2 pilot at all unless it's the ship transhipping out-sector.

There are ways to make this even more efficient, especially when you consider that even a Boron Angel can hold nearly 200 units of Nividium, & set your CLS pilots to only do transfers of near maximal volume for the originating or recieving holds.

[buddysmith30]

Everyone thank-you for the help and if anyone else has ideas I would love to hear them. I find that my rum runners seem to hit roids In the savage spur sector (Maxed Out m5 argon haulers) due to the short conflicts in the area between the Kha'ak and yaki. I feel that If I could clear it out a little along with all the sectors next to and not including ore belt I may not have to many headons when in sector as I supply pirates across the map. Also I find that the massive area clean up will jumpstart my story line missions that eat way to much time when you only get about an hour a day to play due to making real money. I have a few TLs I have bought and have not bought a single ship besides a TP to steal other ships to sell and the supply freighters. The Split hate me but that is ok I live on argon prime. Now I will rethink my plans and maybe slower ships to jump and drop maybe buy some TMs from OTAS. They maybe could hold their own with the clusters.

[kotorone1]

Well, when mining nividium money becomes no real object, and in order for the CLSs to do their job at the same rate that the miners miner requires them to be above the rank of apprentice IMO.

[Infekted]

Thats like basically 1 CLS ship per two miners? All emptying each other? To me that just looks horrifically inefficient.. Far too many non miners... Take ages to write all the waypoints...
Don't forget if you are ordering ships to unload miners without moving much, one ship can service an unreal number of miners.. One TL with a logistician on board can easily empty 100+ miners provided there's no movement involved.
At the very least one cargo messenger in a decent TS can service ten miners, with travel time to an emptying point.
CLS wages are basically trivial compared to the volume of minerals you pull in regardless of what you actually mine...

[kotorone1]

one CLS can do four commands when brand new, so its four miners/CLS.
edit: you couldn't be more right on how long it took to get the waypoints up
edit2: so, how would i go about setting up the TL?

[Infekted]

Ah yeah. Well whilst its dull I always send my miner CLS collectors to herrons to activate first. Which gives you cargo messengers, perfect you emptying 10 miners and dropping off somewhere.

Alternatively train up a max rank CLS pilot, logistician. Transfer him into a TL. Add every single miner as a load waypoint.
Provided your miners are nicely clustered in a rough ball (as they should be), the TL will just sit in the middle emptying them all like some giant funnel. Due to the fact it never moves, it can empty very fast.
Then you can simply use other CLS ships to empty the TL. Apprentices if within sector, or cargo messengers if they need to jump.

[kotorone1]

Thanks. this should add another 20 miners to my mining operation( not that i need em but whatever)

[buddysmith30]

I saw that the atmo-lifter has the largest cargo bay in the game as far as TLs go. How would i cap. one or five? I assume this because I can never find one for sale... I would catch it but how do I get it to my home sector?
Also Do you all think that the Falcon Hauler is worth its weight for a mining run to the stations from a TL or just from my TM to the TL? I just started a new game as a Terran Defender and do not want to tick them off.
I want to "K.I.S.S." (Keep It Simple Sailor)
I think my plan is this...
Cap about 3 to 5 atmos.
Buy 10 magnatars (what other TMs can use mobile mining lasers?)
Buy 40 Falcon Haulers for the 10 TMs
Run the Tms for Mining operations
run the Falcons to the TL's
Load the TL's up and dump the minerals into TS with large Holds
when the missions need massive minerals will dock the TS's at the station
What TS is best for Minerial storage?

[Thunders]

I would catch it but how do I get it to my home sector?

By transferring energy cells and jumpdrive to it.

What TS is best for mineral storage?

Probably the best cargospace-wise TS in the game: Argon/OTAS Mistral Superfreighter (up to 15k cargo units) from the OTAS shipyard in Legend's Home or, if you only intend to store stuff and rarely move the said ship around the universe, a TL or even a Goner Aran (M1 with 22k to 120k units).

[buddysmith30]

I would catch it but how do I get it to my home sector?

By transferring energy cells and jumpdrive to it.

What TS is best for mineral storage?

Probably the best cargospace-wise TS in the game: Argon/OTAS Mistral Superfreighter (up to 15k cargo units) from the OTAS shipyard in Legend's Home or, if you only intend to store stuff and rarely move the said ship around the universe, a TL or even a Goner Aran (M1 with 22k to 120k units).

Thank you I will go to OTAS and buy a few...
The aran is a rare ship to see I believe that I will need a few plots done before I will see the Jewel of the void in some sector right?
THank you agian