Mobile mining compared to mines

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cattafett
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Mobile mining compared to mines

Post by cattafett » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 04:56

building myself a crystal fab complex in the 2nd unknown near unholy decent and somehow i've got two extra crystal fabs L than the sillicon mines can feed
as i hate yellow on my property screen and i loath to turn a factory off i decided on mobile mining the loose rock one secter north .
1 is they a way to work out how many mobile miners are needed per factory
2 will the ship used change how fast the sillicon is collected
3 is it worth placing a sillicon mine on the low yield ore mines and adding them for storage if you can't work out how much the mobile miners will collect
Last edited by cattafett on Fri, 18. Mar 11, 10:24, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Catra » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 05:10

1) Don't remeber ever seeing a formula, so its trial and error.
2) No.
3)I really don't get the big deal in putting a mine ona low yield asteroid, output is output.

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Post by StarSword » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 05:27

I go for a minimalist approach in my complexes (smallest number of supporting factories required for the final product, in other words), so when I design a complex in the complex calculator, I go for the lowest-yield asteroid(s) that will meet the complex's requirements. That leaves big asteroids free for other purposes.

And I don't know why one would ever bother to use an M-class mine. L-class is much better.
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Post by glenmcd » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 08:51

I had this problem a couple of times. I found it utterly painful to use mobile mining as a solution, because each time the ship fills and then unloads, I had to tell it to go and get another load. And that was using the largest TS in the game (MSF).

If you put a silicon mine on an ore asteroid, it actually does more than provide additional silicon and energy cell storage. It produces silicon, but very slowly - as if it was a 0.2 yield silicon asteroid that it was built on.

If you wish to avoid the flashing yellow and avoid having the regular interruptions of commanding ships to go get another load of silicon, you could try recalculating the complex to include silicon mines from nearby sectors, and use freighters to "connect" them. Another way is to simply consume less crystals from the complex, as this will allow the output crystals storage bins to fill up and temporarily shut down crystal fabs on its own accord. Yet another is to destroy your hub, destroy the additional factories and then link it all together again with CCKs. It's pretty bad way to do it though.

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Post by JAFA_NZ » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 09:29

One way to prevent the problem of having to manually restart the mobile miners is to use the CLS2 script from the Bonus Pack.

Assign whatever number of miners you want (I recommend less than 15), then add an extra freighter running CLS2, preferably with a pilot at the "Cargo Messenger" level (this allows 15 waypoints, e.g. 14 mining ships & the destination complex).

I recommend making the 1st waypoint the "Unload" @ Destination waypoint (set the quantity as "Upto <the capacity of the ship>"), then make each of the remaining waypoints a "Load" from (a different) one of the mining ships, set as "Upto..." the lower of the capacities of the ships involved.

The CLS2 ship, if running at Cargo Messenger, will 1st wander off to pick up some Fighter Drones & suchlike, but will then come back & start collecting cargo from the miners & delivering it the factory complex.

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Post by Ripskar » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 10:42

This brings back memories...
A big ship takes ages to load so your factory runs dry waiting for supplies.
I did try it with the small Mistral but those are better employed elsewhere.
The best I found was a pair of Demeter Miners per factory, with a pair of Vulture Miners coming a close second.
What does matter is the shields, or you're looking at repairs if you enter the sector whilst a ship is working.
Ultimately I abandoned this approach as a connected mine is far less hassle.

edit: Note that I was mining Ore for 1 MJ shield factories in sector. Your travel time will be longer. The 1 MJ factories consume 150 Ore to your 187 Silicon for crystals.

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Post by Triaxx2 » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 11:33

The total cargo capacity of two Caiman Miners, dove tails neatly into the hold of a Dolphin Superfreighter.

Or with a little spare into a Mistral SF, the spare works well for jumpdrive fuel, and those little things CLS2 likes to have.
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Post by Ripskar » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 11:41

I seem to remember that the Caiman Miner was the worst for self damage.
Then you've got Dolphin SF? Max Speed 58 m/s? :shock:

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Post by happy halfling » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 14:04

You can manage the Mobile Miners in a hassle free way. I have so far only done this with Nividium, but it should work better with Ore and Silicon.

Break up an asteroid and place a satellite, then send in the miners to the satellite. Once there, give them 'Collect rocks in sector' orders. They'll then just sit in one spot forever hoovering up the (respawning) rocks.

Now move a TL to them and maybe some M6s (or bigger) for security.

Configure a fully trained CLS pilot to unload the ore from each of the miners to the TL. The CLS will need a transporter device.

You now have a single point collecting your ore. In the case of Nividium you can unload it by sending another TL over, transfer the ore, then send the TL off to a shipyard to sell (or to buy and load smaller freighters and sell those).

For Ore and Silicon you can automate further by using a second (or more if needed) CLS ship configured to collect from the TL and drop off at your complex.

In my current game I'm planning on not using fixed mines at all. I'll have a large mobile mining operation supplying one complex, with further CLS ships to move ore around to any other plexes.

My plan is to have one giant crystal plex that has nothing but crystal fabs in it. The mobile miners will drop all of their Silicon off here. CLS pilots will then transfer the crystals to a single giant SPP XL plex. This will produce all the energy cells used in any other plex. Other plexes will follow the same theme, with each plex only containing factories for it's product. For example, a 'Cap Ship Supply Plex' would have x PPC and y FAA fabs and receive all of its energy and food from the giant central energy plex and the central food plex.

Each of the supply plexes will be designed to overproduce, with the surplice being sold off to the npc market. This way, if I ever want to increase the output of a particular item all I need to do is add another fab to that item's plex, rather than try to find an existing plex to squeeze it in or building a whole new plex.

The reason I'm thinking of using mobile miners for this is due to the scalability. It's not possible to completely centralise ore production using just asteroids as you would run out of asteroids in one sector.

This won't be true if mobile miners are too slow as it will take fat too many of them to supply my empire's needs. This is why I, too, would like an answer to the question: How much Ore does a single mobile miner generate per hour, compared to an L sized mine on a 25 yield asteroid?

I haven't seen an answer to that yet, but I know (or can work it out, I haven't yet) the answer already for Nividium, just need to see if it’s the same for the other minerals.

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Post by Infekted » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 16:44

Ripskar wrote:I seem to remember that the Caiman Miner was the worst for self damage.
Then you've got Dolphin SF? Max Speed 58 m/s? :shock:
Don't ever go IS of a mobile mining operation.. Not only will they all crash into each other and rocks, but you will break the respawn of the rocks.

Also, if you have TL collection point, it makes much more sense to put a logistician CLS pilot in it, and get that to directly collect from the miners. Provided you the miners are reasonably bunched (as they should be) the TL will never even move.
I regularly supply complexes using mobile mining. The actual asteroid/mines are useful, but there is obviously a limit on how much you can have.
One of my favourate things to do for example. A massive microchip complex. I will use all the silicon roids in the sector to provide the crystals/energy to run the complex. Then Mobile mine in the silicon the microchip factories need.
You would be suprised how few miners you need to supply tons and tons of factories. I usually just keep adding them untill my stocks are comfortably positive. Then either sell or ship out the excess.

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Post by StarSword » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 19:42

Is there any way to get the "Mine Minerals" command to select nividium? I tried to do it recently (so I could auto-gather the nividium for the Hub plot), but the "Mineral" field would only take ore, ice, and silicon.

I mean, I got the nividium (by jumping my Panther to Perpetual Sin, busting the 7-yield nividium 'roid with a Hornet, and then flying an Ore Collector-equipped Angel around and partially unloading it into the Panther), but I want to get the leftover nividium picked up so I can sell it off.
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Post by Catra » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 20:14

Aside from fixing it in the SE, no. You need to use the collect rock command.

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Post by cattafett » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 22:55

happy halfling
have been watching 10 Caiman Miner "collect rocks" for a few hours and i think its random as to how much they collect unless there is a pattern i can't see but if you work it out let us know
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you know you could of put the Ore Collector in the Panther and used that
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Post by StarSword » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 23:13

@cattafett: Angel's faster and more maneuverable. And neither one of them could carry all of the nividium by itself, so it didn't matter.

And I still ended up having to borrow one of my freighters to get the crap to the Hub, and buy a Baldric to store it.
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Post by glenmcd » Sat, 19. Mar 11, 01:47

In Sector mobile mining is okay only when you do it yourself, you move slowly (using SETA is recommended), and you watch the shields and slow down or stop if they get low. So from here I'll assume that you will be doing OOS mining and for reason of using/selling the minerals.

It is best if you only leave exactly one collectable sized rock in the sector, or at least in the area, and preferably near to a gate. This guarantees that all mining ships will stay close enough to each other to allow collection via transporter device without having to move your TL around too much, or even at all if you are doing the transport operation manually (but remotely obviously). With only one rock to collect, all mining ships will be "centred" around a position that is equadistant from surrounding ships in three dimensions. If you have sufficient ships, this can be several kilometres and perhaps with thousands, the outermost ships may be beyond transporter distance in which case you could use multiple satellites spaced appropriately for the require multiple collection points. But you still only leave one rock to collect. As soon as you go in sector, the simulation stops and the realist rock collecting commences. So that one rock will be collected and all ships will then roam aimlessly about the sector searching for other rocks to collect, even when there is none.

OOS, there is no "respawn" of rocks. The rocks are not collected in the first place. This is proven by the fact that in above setup, many ships can be much further away from the only collectable rock in the sector, and yet continue to "collect" as fast as the ships that are within metres of the rock. Try zooming in OOS in sector view to verify this. The RNG is used to simulate the movements that you see in sector. Each 20 seconds, a rock collecting simulation happens. Most of the time it adds one to the cargobay, but sometimes either zero or two. This isn't anything to do with the properties of the rock. It's up to the RNG to decide this each time. These same numbers are used IS. OOS, as long as the ship is actually capable of collecting rocks, it is totally ignored in the above simulation. A ship with a maximum speed of 0.0001 m/sec will perform the simulation just as fast as a 130 m/sec Falcon Hauler or a 250 m/sec overtuned, maxed out Hyperion Vanguard. The only advantage in using a faster ship is getting it from the shipyard where you purchased it to your collectable rock sooner. Thus, very cheap used ships capable of carrying XL cargo with say 53% hulls and no shields are perfect for OOS rock collection. The only possible advantage of repairing the hull and adding shields is if enemy ships are likely to attack regularly. But this will mean that the cost of the ships is double or more. It may be cheaper just to accept the loss of a few ships every so often, or better still pick a sector where enemy doesn't go. Or have an M7 defending the position.

As per OOS fights, it's merely a simulation and there are compelling reasons for this. If "realistic" fighting and mining were done in each and every sector regardless of where you were, it would use far more CPU than any of us have available. Even if it were extended to a collect rock / respawn rock cycle, this would consume CPU resources many times greater than is currently required.

Recently I built a Nividium mining operation with exactly 500 mining ships all collecting one rock. It required a minimum of three Mammoths with jumpdrive and maxed out speed, steering etc, to keep up with the collection rate. It also required me to use a finely tuned/optimised keyboard macro for the transporting operations. When running, it was transferring from around 5 to 10 ships per second. I transferred into purchased TLs at the nearest shipyard, pocketed the 110M, command the TL back to the satellite via another keyboard macro and repeated. The process for collecting some other mineral can be modeled on above but obviously you can take the automation through to completion as you don't have to buy and sell ships to make the end result.

If you have a need to go in sector, the easiest way to stop the rock collecting is to use the "command all ships in the sector" command "fly to sector", with target being same sector. The ships won't move. They will idle for 20 seconds and then will change to command "none". At that time you can move about the ships and the organised spacing of ships will be quite evident, as will the rather large distance of ship furtherest from the single collectable rock.

When you are purchasing your mining ship fleet, the easiest way to command them all to the site is to use the "command all docked ships" command "follow.." with target of your satellite next to the collectable rock. I normally do around 50 at a time, and then one more, but command it to move to position and to message me on completion. This way, I can do other things and are messaged at a time that all will be ready for the "collect rocks" command. This can be done via a keyboard macro too, while viewing your ships in the property page. So in the space of a minute or two, you can add another 50 ships to your rock collecting operation.

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Post by Infekted » Sat, 19. Mar 11, 13:06

glenmcd wrote: If you have sufficient ships, this can be several kilometres and perhaps with thousands, the outermost ships may be beyond transporter distance in which case you could use multiple satellites spaced appropriately for the require multiple collection points.
When I set up mining fleets of several hundred. No matter how many ships I add, as long as I do not go IS. They stay in a tight ball, a couple of K across tops.
You can set it up with Niv mining using CLS. That all you have to do, is every now and then go buy a TL at the closest shipyard, transfer niv from the bunch of storage TLs docked there and sell it.
Tho I did personally find when I went nuts on niv mining. Even if it was as automated as it could be. i.e. all I have to do is, buy hull, fill hull, sell hull. Then 250+ miners meant I was going to have to do that every 5mins or so.

Keyboard macros sounds interesting. How do you mean? I tried using autohotkey but it wouldn't work with X3. Do you have some exciting funky keyboard with programmable macro keys?

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Post by glenmcd » Sat, 19. Mar 11, 13:17

Infekted wrote:You can set it up with Niv mining using CLS. That all you have to do, is every now and then go buy a TL at the closest shipyard, transfer niv from the bunch of storage TLs docked there and sell it.
Tho I did personally find when I went nuts on niv mining. Even if it was as automated as it could be. i.e. all I have to do is, buy hull, fill hull, sell hull. Then 250+ miners meant I was going to have to do that every 5mins or so.

Keyboard macros sounds interesting. How do you mean? I tried using autohotkey but it wouldn't work with X3. Do you have some exciting funky keyboard with programmable macro keys?
I had assumed that if you had hundreds of ships to load from, that it would be too painful to add that many waypoints to the CLS. Note, I'm not up to speed on the CLS things at this time. So is there some way of saying "collect from all those ships over there" ? That would be nice.

Regarding the keyboard macros, I'm using a Logitech G15 gamers keyboard. I picked it up with a 2nd hand computer some time ago but came to like it and even rely on it so brought it across to my new one. You can record macros using just the keyboard, or create in its app, or a combination of these. There's an LCD screen on it too, and stuff like fraps shows you stuff which is handy when you're always using full screen mode for games. Check out the later models before you buy, they have more macro keys and larger LCD screen on the keyboard.

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Post by Triaxx2 » Sat, 19. Mar 11, 15:02

You're over thinking things.

When you have 250 ships, you have to use successive points of unloading.

It's easier to set it up as you're going, but once you're done it can be done with relative ease.

First thing is to set up collection points. Depending on how dispersed your mining operation is, determines the number of collection points you need.

So if you're spread across five sectors, you'll need 5 collection points.

Aran's are the best for this, because they can dock the collection ships, and hold 120,000 units of cargo. Atmosphere Lifters work well, but can't dock the collectors.

The next stage is collection. Caiman's are the best for this task, having speed and acceptable cargo space. So they can run out, grab a load, and run back. One Caiman per ten miners is a good number.

First thing is to set up the route on one of the Caiman's. Set it up, save it. Set up the route for the next ten, save it. Repeat. Then the new ones simply load the route, and go on about their business.

Now you'll need transportation from those collection points. Elephant's and Mammoths are both good for this. Elephants have speed, Mammoths have cargo space.

And collection at the destination end. Again, an Aran is ideal, because you can use Mistral Superfreighters to pull the cargo and haul it to the destination. 4-6 work well, because you're going to have lots of freight coming in from those TL's.

(Optional) If you're doing the Hub, or don't have Aran's, you can use TL's docked at an EQD. The EQD holds 15, and you can have the incoming TL arrive, dock, drop to the other docked TL, and leave in very short order. Then the TS transporters pull directly from the docked storage TL, and head to their destination. The Hub almost requires a docked TL, where the material is stored. The TL docked there then has a CLS2, which is set to deliver the material to the Hub as it's possible, eliminating the need for the player to wait for it to absorb the materials.
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