Does Mobile Mining "Clean" A Sector Of Rock Debris? Con't Questions...

[Monkeyfister]

Just received Mahi Ma's first delivery request for the Hub Plot.

I have 12 Silicon Mines (2 64-yield, 1 56-yield, 9 25-yield), and 10 Ore Mines (all 25-yield) in Ore Belt, built over time from early days of this game, and am beginning to tow them together to complex them for Hub production. Lots of little rocks, and useless-yield large rocks, out there floating around, am running into issues of those mini rock fields in the way of safe towing. It's a bit of a navigational nightmare at times, and as I plunk down mines, I really need to consider the order of operations, but am now at a point where I need to figure some stuff out before re-commencing.

So, my question is this: If I start up some Mobile Mining efforts in the sector, will they "clean up" all those pesky rocks? I also want to blow up some of the low-yield big rocks (below 26-yield Sil/25-yield Ore) to make room to move the Mine-sat rocks of real value safely.

My hope is to have all the Silicon Mines that I need connected up in one discrete section of Ore Belt, and all the Ore Mines connected up nearby, so that eventually, with the exception of the various NPC stations and my complexes, Ore belt will be mostly clear for shipping traffic.

Is this a realistic expectation?

Or do the Mobile Miners leave a big mess behind?

And, yes, there are probably better sectors to use for Hub Minerals, but I had all these mines here already, and would rather sort and use what is already to hand, first.

--
OT: Looking forward to Rebirth, but only had a machine worth playing TC for a few months! I feel like I am ages behind the curve at 1-1/2 months into TC. I am sure there are answers to this question in old, old posts, but I see the mods do not like thread necromancy.

[DiArmada]

one of my friends tried to rid Seizewell of small rocks which took him ages.
even with a small fleet of TS class vessels.
personally I've never tried this.
I do have hauled a lot of asteroids around, including the ones in Orebelt.
it's not hard to plot a fairly straight line to the place you want to build your complex.
in TC I've built the complex near the northern gate, without interfering with passing traffic.
you can fly max. 80 m/sec while towing, so you have to watch out for slow ships.

using mobile mining will speed up your Hub-plot considerably though.
you need to split the asteroids a few times, otherwise the chunks will be too big to transport.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38714568@N07/9159359515/
my Orebelt complex in TC.

[Sabrina Bergin]

Asteroids that are of low yield and in the way you can stick a small mine on and self destruct it and it won't re-spawn.

an expensive way to do it but quite effective.

[Monkeyfister]

one of my friends tried to rid Seizewell of small rocks which took him ages.
even with a small fleet of TS class vessels.
personally I've never tried this.
I do have hauled a lot of asteroids around, including the ones in Orebelt.
it's not hard to plot a fairly straight line to the place you want to build your complex.
in TC I've built the complex near the northern gate, without interfering with passing traffic.
you can fly max. 80 m/sec while towing, so you have to watch out for slow ships.

using mobile mining will speed up your Hub-plot considerably though.
you need to split the asteroids a few times, otherwise the chunks will be too big to transport.

So over time they do clear them out. Good.

I can tow up to 80m/s??? !!! The several guides and discussions on the forum here indicated that ~13m/s was the fastest. Heavens-- the first 10 mines I've towed together have taken me 4 nights of 6 hours of real time to place.

I am complexing the Silicon Mines NW of the West Gate. There are a bunch of very-low yield 'roids in the way of the next batch of Mines I want to tow.

If I am going to complex them anyway, should I just plotz down mines on those "useless" rocks and never mind their low yields? Perhaps that is more timely and cleaner than busting them up and scooping up the debris (???)

My goal is to reduce the clutter of the sector-- I do not want to create any more hazards.

Seems the way for me to go then may be to grab all the big rocks and tow them together, and then use MMs to hoover up the remainders? Is that the best way?

(edited "km/s" to m/s.)

[Monkeyfister]

Asteroids that are of low yield and in the way you can stick a small mine on and self destruct it and it won't re-spawn.

an expensive way to do it but quite effective.

But, what kind of debris does it leave behind?

Goal is to clean the joint up, and produce the minerals.

[Vim Razz]

In TC, if you're out-of-sector when your mobile miners are running around then debris will respawn instantly. If you sit in-sector, they will eventually clear it out, but it takes a long, long time. (In AP, it will not respawn in either case.)


If you're not worried about mineral extraction, you can burn out the debris fields with PBGs or PSGs. It's a fair amount of work, but a lot more realistic than waiting around for a mining fleet to clear things out.

[Bill Huntington]

TC allows every pilot to do it their own way. So you can. But why?

When you out of sector, there are no collisions, and no navigation deviations. And when you in sector there is collision avoidance, so ships avoid asteroids, large and small. A little slower, but they get there.

You can make one big complex if you want. No need for separate. I hear that aligning the scattered asteroids helps with computer lag. I can, but I usually don't, take my personal ship back to a sector with a huge complex. If you mobile mine, the small rocks regenerate, and never run out. If you are out of sector. This applies to Ore, Silicon, and Niv. If you come to the sector and the regeneration stops, there are always more asteroids to start again.

A note. If you blow an mine, or any station, the 'station debris' remains for a game day or so, then fades. You can see the black outline. This is a navigation hazard that can destroy a ship.

[Monkeyfister]

TC allows every pilot to do it their own way. So you can. But why?

When you out of sector, there are no collisions, and no navigation deviations. And when you in sector there is collision avoidance, so ships avoid asteroids, large and small. A little slower, but they get there.

You can make one big complex if you want. No need for separate. I hear that aligning the scattered asteroids helps with computer lag. I can, but I usually don't, take my personal ship back to a sector with a huge complex. If you mobile mine, the small rocks regenerate, and never run out. If you are out of sector. This applies to Ore, Silicon, and Niv. If you come to the sector and the regeneration stops, there are always more asteroids to start again.

A note. If you blow an mine, or any station, the 'station debris' remains for a game day or so, then fades. You can see the black outline. This is a navigation hazard that can destroy a ship.

OK. I think all this sorts out my decisions. I was truly hoping that the little rocks did not re-generate.

Just slap mines on every rock that I **need** to move, and attach it to the complex. The very last thing I want to do is create any more mini rock debris.

Once all the mines are connected, there is no real difference between a 4-yield rock and a 64-yield rock. I'll just not put expensive large mines on the low-yield rocks. All the same in the end.

Looks like the only reason I'll need to engage in Mobile Mining is for Nvidium, which suits me fine, as M-M'ing seems an expensive and lugubrious thing to set-up, and since it doesn't clean up the sector it doesn't serve my needs.

[jgarriso]

One thing to consider if you're building mines for the HUB plot is storage space. You want to get those mines producing as early as possible, but you can't deliver the materials until the correct phase of the plot.

450,000 units of ore requires 3.6 million cargo space to store. That's 240 fully expanded Mistral Super Freighters full of ore. You don't even want to know how many it takes to store 400,000 silicon wafers.

Every extra Ore Mine L holds 4610 units or just over two fully expanded superfreighters worth and costs less than a million credits.

So I've been putting L mines down on every crap rock in the sector just to expand my storage capacity at the mine complexes. It seems way more cost efficient than buying freighters or TLs.

[Monkeyfister]

One thing to consider if you're building mines for the HUB plot is storage space. You want to get those mines producing as early as possible, but you can't deliver the materials until the correct phase of the plot.

450,000 units of ore requires 3.6 million cargo space to store. That's 240 fully expanded Mistral Super Freighters full of ore. You don't even want to know how many it takes to store 400,000 silicon wafers.

Every extra Ore Mine L holds 4610 units or just over two fully expanded superfreighters worth and costs less than a million credits.

So I've been putting L mines down on every crap rock in the sector just to expand my storage capacity at the mine complexes. It seems way more cost efficient than buying freighters or TLs.

Good advice on the storage space for the mines! Thank you for that consideration! Large Mines all around then!

As a general rule, which I suppose countermands the "max profitsss" rule of the game, I have made it a point to always, always max-out the cargo space of every ship I purchase or acquire. TLs are cheap for the large collectors for ultimate delivery to Mahi Ma. Every mine I have built to date has one energy collector, and one product seller attached to it (CLS/CLA). I'll just need to change general waypoint orders for the lot of them once they are all connected as a single complex.

Seems the easiest and tidiest (less admin hassles) way to go about it.

I realized early on in my game that if a shipyard shows 10 "fully-loaded" TS's for sale, and I purchase only two of them, the other eight simply vanish from the shipyard's stock. So, I buy them in full lots of 10, and build mines to keep them occupied and trained. Seemed like the easiest way to get what I needed ship-wise, and have a lot of mines at the ready for this little plot line. Made the Goner Plot Mineral acquisition a matter of two maxed-out Mistral Super Freighters, 5-minutes and a couple of jumps.

One thing about the Hub mineral deliveries that I have not seen addressed is this: Do I have to deliver the minerals/stuff in one big lot, or can I fill up a TL, and send it to the Hub, return, refill, repeat? I am certain that 450,000 silicon will take plenty of TL-loads, and I'll probably buy a few disposable TLs for this, but do I really need an enormous fleet of them for a single delivery, or as stated above, can I just have a few five or so shuttling back and forth whilst I do other things?

One Silicon Mine holds 1040 Silicon. I have 12 Mines already, all the largest in Ore Belt. I only **need** to tow two more into place, but I'd just assume go ahead and clean up the sector into tidy complexes, as I've already gone this far.

At any rate, the 12 Large Silicon Mines I have will store a total of 12,480 at a pop. So, I need to make about 36 cycles for full delivery. I've emptied a Mine before, and it refills surprisingly quickly. 36 trips back and forth from Ore Belt to the Hub (one gate) with a few SFs filling a couple of TLs isn't worth buying a whole fleet of miners, and all the stuff for a spread-out MM operation.

I don't see this part (silicon/ore) of the plot as much more than a time-wasting annoyance. The Teladiadinum, chip and crystal complexes just expensive time-wasting annoyances. Again, once those are built, it's just assigning a couple of TLs to shuttle the goods to Mahi Ma. Once set up, it seems it will all operate on autopilot... unless I must be present at time of delivery-- THAT would be ridiculous.

Now that I am on the ramp-up for the lot, I don't understand the hyperventilating so many have exhibited over this plot line. Am I missing something here?

[Sabrina Bergin]

Ore delivery:

You can make multiple deliveries to the hub you'l see the outstanding requirement listed in your hub mission brief after each delivery.

[jgarriso]

You're understanding it correctly. One TL can make all the deliveries and you don't need to be in it. The challenge is just collecting the necessary resources.

A "standard" 26 yield silicon mine L takes about 5 hours to fill up so 36 full cycles is still 180 hours. Larger yield mines will fill up faster. Not bad if you SETA a lot, but if you play like I do that's a long time. Which is why I'm stockpiling the resources that are needed for later.

[Monkeyfister]

Thanks for clarifying the delivery side of this. Easy peasey.

Once all this is set up, it'll be auto-pilot for the entire lot. Just switch from retail to the Delivery project just prior to Mahi Ma asking for stuff, then switch all the ships and complexes back over to retail when done. I have plenty to occupy my time while that bunch of boredom goes down.

At the end of the evening of play last night (~9:30pm), I had 200,000,000CR in the bank. I started the evening at 4:30pm with 165,000,000CR, so I have the scratch to build the complexes in steady time. I suspect just hauling around these asteroids will take me to Sunday night before I can really start dropping the SPPs and support facs.

I'll buy 10 more Mistral SFs tonight, and get them upgraded, hang them at my Shields complex in the SW corner of Ore Belt, or set them up as temporary Sector Traders for the interim.

At this point, I have only finished the Terran Plot through Aldrin discovery. FF I need to drop the ADVSat and scan the base, and I need to build the Teladiadinum fac for the Goners. I have it in the Elephant, in Elysium of Light, and actually set it up for them once, but then realized I'd have to do the whole rest immediately following, and the Goners are NAAAAAGS about getting hot onit, so I re-loaded, and they can stew about things for a while. The goofy jumpdrive and their pretty M6 aren't worth the hassle right now, to me... probably aren't worth the hassle period, but... and I only just found the HUB a few days ago. Started towing rocks and making ready.

Needless to say, I have plenty to do. I mean, I don't have enough Marines trained to even start capping any ships, yet. First 10 only went in for their final set of training two nights ago.

Can somebody confirm the max speed for towing an asteroid? If I can really drive 80m/s instead of 10-13m/s, I would be a very happy Humble Trader.[/u]

[jgarriso]

Can somebody confirm the max speed for towing an asteroid? If I can really drive 80m/s instead of 10-13m/s, I would be a very happy Humble Trader.

I tow all of mine at 80 m/s using a Centaur. Never had any problems. Just lock on the tractor beam and hit tab.

[Monkeyfister]

Most excellent. I am using a Dragon (my first M6), to do the towing, so no tabbing for me on that score, but very nice to know that this part of the job doesn't need to be the gawdawful chore it has been to date.

THANK YOU!!!

[Monkeyfister]

That Complex is a TRUE thing of sheer beauty. I hope mine turns out as orderly as yours. Just lovely.

Inspirational!

[TTD]

I very rarely put M size mines on 'roids.
I like the storage.

Mobile mining in TC is just one way to automate mineral production.
Cuts down on FPS lag caused by large complexes that you might otherwise build there.
However, I have not done mobile mining since doing the Hub plot a year or so ago.

I have just recently cleaned up Savage Spur, in AP 3.1
Such a nice cruise between gates now

[Vim Razz]

I realized early on in my game that if a shipyard shows 10 "fully-loaded" TS's for sale, and I purchase only two of them, the other eight simply vanish from the shipyard's stock.

The availability of M or L equipped ships is actually randomized by time, rather than being related to a discreet inventory number.

So you can (hypothetically) buy infinite numbers of L-equipped ships when they're around, and it wont deplete the total numbers available.

[Monkeyfister]

I realized early on in my game that if a shipyard shows 10 "fully-loaded" TS's for sale, and I purchase only two of them, the other eight simply vanish from the shipyard's stock.

The availability of M or L equipped ships is actually randomized by time, rather than being related to a discreet inventory number.

So you can (hypothetically) buy infinite numbers of L-equipped ships when they're around, and it wont deplete the total numbers available.

It's a **bit** OT, but the reality is there. If OTAS Shipyard has 10 Mistrals of the sort I want for example, showing in their stock, and I only buy two, the other eight simply vanish. Several times I meant to buy 4, but a head full of Strongbow bought 3 instead... the rest were no longer available.

Conversely, as you say, if it says there are ten in stock, I can, from experience, buy 15 no problem (I once accidently bought 19 as a result of pressing 9 instead of a 0), but once the transaction is done, there are no more for a long, long time.

So, I just buy the lot, as many as I can afford, as "a bird in the hand..." as they say.

The ships always end up being put to good use, even if they hang in a complex for a while. Spare ships become STs, trained STs become UTs, and there is always a loss that requires replacing.

Mistral TSs and SFs are the only freighters I purchase these days-- speed, cargo, and shielding, plus 6 guns keep them survivable. I buy the occasional Demeter or Caiman for more specialty needs when it comes to shifting L-sized cargo. I started, of course, buying Mercuries, but once monies started coming in, I switched to Mistrals. I intended to scrap the Mercs and replace them, but their slow speed, and single, lousy rear turret is attriting them without my having to deal with too much admin on that score.

Never thought I would ever break the 100-Mil mark the way I deck-out my ships, but time and steady play has pleasantly surprised me. Every ship goes to Legend's Home for everything needed for that line of ship that OTAS has to offer, then to Home of Light for everything TerraCorp has to offer, as appropriate (I don't put Trade MK2 or 3 or Supply Command on fighters for example-- unless they are CLA selling small shields or missiles), then to Argon Prime EQD for the rest, then I put Explorer Software (There are at least 20 sectors I have never visited), and goggles on them.

I made this policy after too many times needing to jump into a ship only to find I cheaped out and didn't put Trade Extension or Best Buy/Sell, or decent Fight Command Software or something equally useful in it. The frustration was too much. So, every ship gets everything before given a name beyond "Your Ship 01-10," and put to service. Money happens and it is meant to be spent. Every freighter is interchangeable, and IF I **must** drive it, It has what I NEED.

I can jump into any ship, and know it has what it needs for it's make and purpose. Cargo Life Support, of course, I only put into a few ships for Mission purposes. My Mistral SF "PACK MULE" is carrying around a couple of Ore Collectors I accidently bought in haste... but the policy works well. I'll have the ore collectors for Nividium when the time comes.

[Nanook]

I realized early on in my game that if a shipyard shows 10 "fully-loaded" TS's for sale, and I purchase only two of them, the other eight simply vanish from the shipyard's stock.

The availability of M or L equipped ships is actually randomized by time, rather than being related to a discreet inventory number.

So you can (hypothetically) buy infinite numbers of L-equipped ships when they're around, and it wont deplete the total numbers available.

It's a **bit** OT, but the reality is there. If OTAS Shipyard has 10 Mistrals of the sort I want for example, showing in their stock, and I only buy two, the other eight simply vanish. Several times I meant to buy 4, but a head full of Strongbow bought 3 instead... the rest were no longer available....

It appears that you just got unlucky with your timing. The availability of the different versions is on a somewhat random timer, as Vim Razz pointed out, so the act of buying them does not affect their availability.