Automatic mining with the MMBS? (TC)

Helios01 · Post by **Helios01** » Sat, 28. Mar 15, 13:31

I am trying to get my Mobile Mining Base-Ship to automatically mine silicon, which I so much need for the last Hub part, and 6 scripted CLS freighters just aren't enough for that.

My MMBS has 4 installed mobile drilling systems on front and upper turret pods, and an integrated ore collector. However, after I command it to mine silicon in Gunne's Crusade for example, either with no station to unload or hub, it just flies to the asteroid field and after some time it tells me that the task is completed, even although it's away from any asteroids (sometimes even in a different sector, if it started elsewhere, before reaching Crusade), and the cargo bay is still empty of silicon.

I have all the asteroids scanned in there and I am OOS when trying it. When I was inside the sector, it just flew next to one asteroid and kept flying around it, until it gave up again. The closer it is to the asteroid field, the sooner the task ends.

I have never remote mined before in X3, do I have to put some mining ships in it's hangar or something?

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Sat, 28. Mar 15, 15:06

This thread might help.

Even with MDS, an AI ship cannot break a full-size (map-shown) asteroid. The player needs to do the very first break using MDS or a high-yield missile. After that the AI ship will carry on breaking large rocks and collecting minerals remotely (which doesn't *need* to use MDS but can use any damage laser), but a TL is not the most effective ship to use in that exact role.

Moving to X Trilogy Universe (gameplay) forum as this is not a Tech Sp topic.

Helios01 · Post by **Helios01** » Sat, 28. Mar 15, 15:34

Thanks for the suggestion. After breaking one silicon asteroid with the ship's MDS, I was able to finally get the mining started. The OP in there, however, states that he has been able to do such mining even without breaking the asteroids, although I don't mind that much if one asteroid will last for long enough. Just two more things I'm concerned about:

The MMBS mines very slowly, is there any better solution? And if so, which ship do you prefer?
And secondly, will the asteroid respawn later, with the same yield, or should I save high-yield asteroids for future mines?

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Sat, 28. Mar 15, 15:41

TSs are better miners - and you do not need to use the miner variants as they do not need to have MDS. Any fast cheap TS with a turret and a largish cargobay is good (ie not a Dolphin!) and you can use several at the same site. Give each at least 3 x 25MJ shields and weapons such as PACs.

TMs make great miners, but need to be emptied more often because of the smaller cargobay.

A broken asteroid will respawn eventually in the same place with the same mineral and similar yield. The only way to stop an asteroid respawning if lost is to build a mine on it.

I don't think the OP in that thread was actually talking about full-size asteroids even though he thought he was - your (and my) experience shows that the AI doesn't break them. There were probably already-broken large rocks around that he was mining.

Helios01 · Post by **Helios01** » Sat, 28. Mar 15, 16:36

Okay, I'll probably try Caiman SFXL and Pleco. Does the speed of the craft really matter and help me mine faster?

Maybe I could get the Pleco to unload on the MMBS to save travel time, if that's possible

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Sat, 28. Mar 15, 16:53

If you give the miners a base to move to unload at then having better ship speed helps profits IS or OOS, while having a better turn rate and agility helps movement and avoiding collisions while mining IS.

You can set up a CLS to empty the miners as they work and unload onto the TL, all using a transporter device. There are quite a few TC mining advice threads such as this. Then ship speed is not so important.

Helios01 · Post by **Helios01** » Sat, 28. Mar 15, 19:20

Thanks for the link, interesting strategies mentioned in there.

So I woke up my Baldric Miner that I still have from the Aldrin plot, and also a Chokaro. After homebasing them to the TL, they can automatically unload to it, which is quite neat- it appears that the cargo space doesn't even matter that much since the TL always stays quite close, because it gathers the resources aswell. I just don't understand why the Chokaro sometimes ends it's task, even although the two other ships can still mine, but that is probably because of the mining laser it doesn't have.

I think that if I use a CLS ship (the Angel for ex.) for unloading, as mentioned in the threat, I'll save a few seconds of travel time. I'm also considering a fleet of 5 Falcon Haulers, so that I could park them inside the MMBS when changing sectors.

Today I've also passed the 200k silicon wafers mark, which is half of the total ammount, yay

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Sat, 28. Mar 15, 20:47

The command always stops on the miner unloading after getting completely full, so your Chokaro is filling right up before it transfers stuff into the TL or is otherwise emptied - probably because of the smaller cargo capacity. It is nothing to do with the lack of MDS, I think.

Tip: Set the 'Report on completing command' option and it will tell you whenever it stops mining.

sithneverdiealone · Post by **sithneverdiealone** » Sun, 29. Mar 15, 00:40

incidentally, one of luckies' scripts....Prospector i think its called will enable the AI to brake up mappable asteroids. its un-signed, but this is the guy that made CLS

Helios01 · Post by **Helios01** » Sun, 29. Mar 15, 01:54

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm playing a vanilla game. The asteroid seems to last for damn long (the MMBS is filled up for the second time and it's still mining from the first one), so I won't have problems with that.

I am now trying to get a ship to transfer the silicon from all my miners, and unload it on the MMBS, so that I won't get the task completed message so frequently and the process will be fully automatized, until the MMBS is full.

Started with the Angel, equipped it with CLS2 and nav software, but then found that the external logistics command is grayed out. Tried purchasing trading softwares or homebasing it to the MMBS, but no help. What's wrong?

ancienthighway · Post by **ancienthighway** » Sun, 29. Mar 15, 10:22

Does the Angel have a pilot? Dock at a station, preferably the Trading Station in Herron's Nebula. If you do dock there, you can hire and fire pilots until you get a Cargo Messenger, any other station and you get a brand new rookie.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Sun, 29. Mar 15, 11:15

Does the TP have a transporter device? Otherwise it may not recognise a TL as a waypoint.

Helios01 · Post by **Helios01** » Sun, 29. Mar 15, 15:43

I forgot an important thing- it has to be docked at a station to get a pilot...

So I reassigned a Cargo Messenger to it as you suggested (thanks for the great tip), and now I can set waypoints for all my ships. Will it level up on itself? Or does it need a station where to dock and train up? That would make me able to buy more Falcons

Monkeyfister · Post by **Monkeyfister** » Sun, 29. Mar 15, 18:28

I'm pretty sure it will fly off on its own to the nearest station to take training, and then return to work. I remember my Xfer pilot stopping my mobile Mining in Ore Belt, docked at the Mining Corp. on Standby.

You can tell the pilot to NOT take training in the pilot settings panel in the CLS UI.

Helios01 · Post by **Helios01** » Sun, 29. Mar 15, 19:45

Monkeyfister wrote:I'm pretty sure it will fly off on its own to the nearest station to take training, and then return to work. I remember my Xfer pilot stopping my mobile Mining in Ore Belt, docked at the Mining Corp. on Standby.

You can tell the pilot to NOT take training in the pilot settings panel in the CLS UI.

So it won't work if all his flight plan is inside Gunne's Crusade, which is empty of stations.
I know how to stop the trainings, but I want it to level up.

Now I have 8 falcons, MMBS, Baldric miner and a Chokaro, all doing their mining. Angel unloads all of them to the MMBS, but it appears that it just isn't fast enough. Even after removing weaponry and installing 25MJ shields so that 5 of my falcons can fit 19 wafers, they mostly finish the task, with the Angel not being fast enough to unload them all.

I'll probably have to replace my falcons with TS ships, any suggestions? Would 10 Mistrals be good enough?

ancienthighway · Post by **ancienthighway** » Mon, 30. Mar 15, 05:18

Mistrals are too much money for the task. For that matter the Angel is, too.

Buy 2nd hand transports (make sure the price is right though) but if you must buy new, the basic Demeter or Mercury will do just fine collecting the ore. For the CLS ship, consider using a Mercury Hauler or a 2nd hand ship with 7,000-10,000 cargo hold.

Why? When the MMBS fills up, you need to get the ore to the Hub. If the MMBS takes it (make sure the CLS picking up from the collectors doesn't follow), then there's no place to drop the ore. Bigger holds are better. With what you have right now, all the ships will be sitting idle when the MMBS gets back with the exception of the Baldric and maybe the Chokaro.

The alternative is to set up another CLS, this one moving ore from the MMBS to the Hub. Again, a large capacity ship is recommended. I've even used a TL for the task.

---

In doing the Hub plot, I've used up to 40 ships collecting the ore, 3 CLS ships filling up the TL, and 2 Mistral Super Freighters or a TL to deliver the ore and later silicon to the Hub. This was augmented by several ore and silicon mines I'd continue to use, and buying both when the price was right.

Helios01 · Post by **Helios01** » Mon, 30. Mar 15, 17:30

Price is of no concern to me. Although Hub takes all the income from my 40 factories, the 15 UTs are doing their job quite good in keeping my cash from disappearing and currently I'm on 600 million credits. By 2nd hand you mean looking for those purchase ship "missions"? That would take far too much time. I don't mind ordering a fleet of 10 factory new freighters, I just need to pick the right one.

I think that buying 10x Mercury from the start could be a good idea. And as for the Angel, it fills up to 1000/1600 cargo space on my current squad of miners so I'll probably keep it for now, at least until I add more traders and replace it by a Caiman Hauler I guess. But I think that even a Mistral could handle up to 20 miners without a problem.

I don't know how to make the CLS not follow the TL after it's full and is jumping to the hub, is there any way to do that? Or I could just get a second CLS as you suggest, a TS ship could be enough if I told it to make more frequent runs.

ancienthighway · Post by **ancienthighway** » Mon, 30. Mar 15, 19:50

I believe there's a setting under Supply Conditions about following a ship to a different sector for dropping off wares. If it's not there, keep looking, it's in once of the CLS options.

Helios01 · Post by **Helios01** » Mon, 30. Mar 15, 22:53

Dock with ships only in the same sector - that should be it.
Is the delivery target a ship, and this jumps away right before the CLS-pilot reaches it, the pilot will skip his current job.

Or there's also another option:

Wait for request signal
Is delivery target a TL, CLS pilot can wait for a request signal, telling the pilot if the target needs his products.

How do I know if a TL needs the CLS's products? By not being full? Does it mean that in my case, it'll be the same as the first one, except now it would rather wait instead of collecting minerals from the miners until the TL gets back?

And there's one last thing I need to know how to deal with, as it's only 70k silicon left for my Hub (and then the painful microchips part...). How will I manage to trade it? Is the best way just to set a CLS to fill up at the MMBS, and then pick from a bunch of stations defined as waypoints? With some minimum transfer ammount on delivery, making sure that I won't sell for minimum price?

Sinxar · Post by **Sinxar** » Tue, 31. Mar 15, 01:24

What I always did was just leave the TL in the mining sector as a drop off point then use a few large capacity TSs to shuttle the freight to the hub. It avoids the entire situation where your loaders will try to follow the TL.

There are several options for selling the Silicon after that part of the plot.

One is to keep loading it into the hub and use a few CAGs to sell it across the universe for you. This will cause a backup as it generally cannot be sold fast enough.

Another involves placing a Silicon mine on a barren asteroid and loading the Silicon into it and using it as a point of sale and freight pickup for a few CLS guys. This could cause a backup but it is more expandable.

What I usually do is use the CAG method from the hub and take a portion of it to feed other stations that need it such as crystal fabs and microchip factories. After the plot I generally scale back the mining operation so it has a nice balance and my miners don't sit around full.

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Automatic mining with the MMBS? (TC)

Automatic mining with the MMBS? (TC)