X3 AP | Mobile Mining, crushing asteroids automatically?

[EdenAlliance]

Hey guys,

I was planning to mine Nividium in perpetual sin on a large scale and therefore ordered 10 Mistral superfreighter to each of the two expanses of rubble. Each location is also secured by a zentaur sector guard and marked with four extended satelites each. While earlier thinking "earning a lot means investing a lot before", I bought an equipment dock and placed it next to on of the mining claims.

The freighters are currently running on Special commands > Collect minerals in sector... which worked good until the deposits seem to have been exhausted during the last ingame hours. Theres still some debris flying around, mainly the smaller asteroids which can be crushed into three collectible ore boulders each. I tried to crush all of those but it needs a loot of time and I can't get rid of the feeling that they start to ''fuse'' once I leave the sector (This shouldn't happen since my PC has no problems on running more debris). Both Mistral groups are meanwhile curving on the same spot while their cargo holds won't fill up. This behaviour can be obersved when OOS. Jumping IS, I can watch both mining fleets flying to a distant position.

While I never experienced such a stupid situation before in X3 Terran Conflict, it seems to be rather common in X3 Albion Prelude. Therefore my questions are: How long does it take asteroids to respawn? Will I have to clear all debris before? Is the demolition expert from X3 Reunion no longer avaiable? Is there any other way to automatically crush larger asteroids into colelctible boulders pieces? How would you save my investments? Collecting silicon instead, filling it into captured Terran & Yaki TLs and trade them at shipyards? Any way to move my equipment dock which I'd like to have in a more busy and bustling sector?


Thanks in advance!


Regarding hisazuls answer:

Sounds like a good idea to move on to a new sector. What's your recommendation to start? Which of the four sectors would be a good start-up? As you already mentioned: I'd prefer a non-Xenon sctor for mining operations (:

And as stated above: I'm not sure whether I have to clean all Perpetual Sin mini asteroids before a new one can spawn?

If something is still missing or unclear, don't hesitate to ask me (:

[hisazul]

To "my" knowledge asteroids respawn anywhere from few days time to a week+. But they do respawn. Only exception is when a mining station was build on asteroid and later destroyed in that case asteroid is gone forever and will not respawn. It's due to asteroid being replaced by a station rather then destroyed.
Small rocks, the ones that don't show up on map do not respawn as far as I know. But broken asteroid chunks do not prevent respawning.

UFJD sectors on top of spawning tuning crates, xenon, space flies and 1 time aran offer also spawn asteroids which include nividium but I do not recall maximum yields, oddly enough UFJD sectors do not spawn ice asteroids... go figure.


As for where I think the best place to base your nividium mining I guess CEO's Wellspring. Sector has 3 adjacent sectors north, west and east and all 3 also have nividium. So basically you have A LOT of it to collect.

As for salvaging deployed operation... well... you can just leave ships doing mobile mining for silicon or ore. While the command doesn't deal with nividium it works fine with silicon and ore. Nividium mining isn't per say needed past making money. Nividium itself isn't needed or used for anything... hell there are only 2 ways to sell it and the only station that actually buys it... buys very little. So you make it fill ships and sell ships. Or play stock exchange.

But equipment dock in vanilla game is basically a storage station that stores a specific amount of each ware with inifnite cargo hold. So it can be used for some later endeavor. Something like build a big complex and use eq dock as selling point so npcs can't buy too much stuff and leave nothing to you.

[Nanook]

I can't get rid of the feeling that they start to ''fuse'' once I leave the sector (This shouldn't happen since my PC has no problems on running more debris).

This has nothing to do with computer performance. It's a feature of the games, and has been since X2, as I recall. The lore puts it down to gravitational attraction (don't overthink it).

And regarding the respawning, in AP, those small asteroids do not respawn. Only map-visible asteroids will respawn, and it does take several game days.

[Alan Phipps]

You don't *have* to crush asteroids into lots of small pieces - which might trigger the re-amalgamation of them. Just break a sector map full asteroid with the MDS or a high yield missile. Remote miners (mine xxx command) will break down the larger appropriate mineral rocks (in scanner range of the miner) automatically as long as they have a (any) laser mounted somewhere. Collect rocks will not break larger rocks and will only collect the smallest size rocks (in scanner range of the collector) so you have to arrange yourself for some of them to be present. You don't need too many all at once though.

X3AP mining is different in behaviour to X3TC. In X3TC later patches, if you (mined and/or) collected all the rocks from an outcrop (ie all from the next rock size up) then that outcrop respawned nearby. Hence you could mine and/or collect in the same place forever OOS without running out of minerals. Being IS and shooting rocks to oblivion usually broke this cycle, as did any re-amalgamations.

X3AP does not have the rock respawn, just full asteroid respawn (like in X3TC, in a few game days and as long as no mine was built on it). You then have to break the respawned asteroid at least once to continue remote mining and you have to break down *a few* of the resulting rocks to the smallest size for just collectors to start work again.

[Nanook]

Problem is, he's mining nividium. Unlike for the other minerals, there's only way to do that in AP (unless using a mod or script). And that's to manually break up the nividium rocks and then give the 'collect minerals' command. Once the 'roids start recombining, the miner's can't collect them, and he has to jump in and break them up again.

[ancienthighway]

If a modified game is being played, the Prospector mod should work with AP. At least that's the gist of what I've seen on the forums. If it does, a pilot with a high enough rank can automatically break up rocks and even asteroids.

DrBullwinkle's Mobile Mining Mk2 should do the same, but I've never used that one.

[EdenAlliance]

I can't get rid of the feeling that they start to ''fuse'' once I leave the sector (This shouldn't happen since my PC has no problems on running more debris).

This has nothing to do with computer performance. It's a feature of the games, and has been since X2, as I recall. The lore puts it down to gravitational attraction (don't overthink it).

And regarding the respawning, in AP, those small asteroids do not respawn. Only map-visible asteroids will respawn, and it does take several game days.

"Feature"^^

Well I know that the respawn is only working for the asteroids that are large enough to house an own mine. Hope it won't take to long

You don't *have* to crush asteroids into lots of small pieces - which might trigger the re-amalgamation of them. Just break a sector map full asteroid with the MDS or a high yield missile. Remote miners (mine xxx command) will break down the larger appropriate mineral rocks (in scanner range of the miner) automatically as long as they have a (any) laser mounted somewhere. Collect rocks will not break larger rocks and will only collect the smallest size rocks (in scanner range of the collector) so you have to arrange yourself for some of them to be present. You don't need too many all at once though.

That's what I'd do if I wanted to mine silicon or iron ore. But as mentioned later by Nanook, we're talking about Nividium. Autocommands do not work here unfortunatelly.

X3AP mining is different in behaviour to X3TC. In X3TC later patches, if you (mined and/or) collected all the rocks from an outcrop (ie all from the next rock size up) then that outcrop respawned nearby. Hence you could mine and/or collect in the same place forever OOS without running out of minerals. Being IS and shooting rocks to oblivion usually broke this cycle, as did any re-amalgamations.

I know and that's exactly what I hoped for^^

X3AP does not have the rock respawn, just full asteroid respawn (like in X3TC, in a few game days and as long as no mine was built on it). You then have to break the respawned asteroid at least once to continue remote mining and you have to break down *a few* of the resulting rocks to the smallest size for just collectors to start work again.

Problem is, he's mining nividium. Unlike for the other minerals, there's only way to do that in AP (unless using a mod or script). And that's to manually break up the nividium rocks and then give the 'collect minerals' command. Once the 'roids start recombining, the miner's can't collect them, and he has to jump in and break them up again.

Exactly, as suggested by hisazul, I'll move on to other sectors with my mining fleet and will later come back to Perpetual Sin to see whether my lovely asteroids are back. (And hey, there's still one waiting in PS to be crushed and mined, so that's where I'm going to start)

If a modified game is being played, the Prospector mod should work with AP. At least that's the gist of what I've seen on the forums. If it does, a pilot with a high enough rank can automatically break up rocks and even asteroids.

DrBullwinkle's Mobile Mining Mk2 should do the same, but I've never used that one.

Thanks for your advice ancienthighway, but I'd like to play vanilla.
(I'll keep both options in mind in case that changes,)

[EdenAlliance]

[ external image ]

Good news everyone!

The first Nividium asteroid in Perpetual Sin has already been replaced by a new one. Respawn didn't take as long as feared. This means the use of 2 mining fleets are perfect for that sector with its three asteroids.

[hisazul]

Welp... guess you don't need to "fix" anything lol
Also props for futurama pic lol

Also... I just realized half my rambling on this topic ended up in german forums