Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

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aquatica
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by aquatica » Sun, 9. May 21, 21:11

I had huge issues on miners.

But after one forum moderator here explained how resource probes boost yields... No issues whatsoever anymore.

So:
1) Spam resources probes every 40 or so km's apart
2) Also have decent amount of money on the station (don't ask me why. Drying up the cash flow really breaks the miners, even if the station is completely self sufficient. So I have to have suggested budget on the station for whatever the hell of a reason).
3) Profit

It's stupid and it's annoying, but not broken per se. Nowhere near as broken as Xenon are...

EDIT:
Clarified message about mod, as I meant a forum moderator rather than a game mod.
Last edited by aquatica on Mon, 10. May 21, 21:12, edited 1 time in total.

Dreez
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by Dreez » Sun, 9. May 21, 21:15

There's an update coming soon and i really hope one of the priorities has been to sort out station miners,
because i've seen a lot of post with people being aggravated over their station-miners mining the wrong wares.
I've personally grown a few more grey hairs watching my miners mining ICE despite the station being full on ice
and almost empty on Ore and Silicon, causing the station to slow it's production.

This needs to stop :evil: .
Of all the things i've lost, i miss my mind the most.

aquatica
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by aquatica » Mon, 10. May 21, 06:13

Dreez wrote:
Sun, 9. May 21, 21:15
There's an update coming soon and i really hope one of the priorities has been to sort out station miners,
because i've seen a lot of post with people being aggravated over their station-miners mining the wrong wares.
I've personally grown a few more grey hairs watching my miners mining ICE despite the station being full on ice
and almost empty on Ore and Silicon, causing the station to slow it's production.

This needs to stop :evil: .
I get your point. It needs to be explained and somehow visualized if no changes are made. Also the requirement to spam resource probes is stupid and shouldn't be a thing. I mean, fine - have some reasonable amount per sector sure. But hundreds? Even more so as the tooltip is not hideable (at least in vanilla)...

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grapedog
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by grapedog » Mon, 10. May 21, 09:04

Weird, out of 50 stations in my current save, only 2 have resource issues, and that is easily solved by buying a little from NPCs...

No wastee time with my station assigned miners... though i understand others are somehow someway running into galaxy wide prpblems...

Waltz99
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by Waltz99 » Mon, 10. May 21, 12:50

Mining really isn't what it should be. Yes you can add more miners to keep station supplied but this will deplete the universe just a lot faster.
The problem in mining is easily to be noticed on Xenon.
they live from the mining economy and because of the lack of resources you barely see them.

I'm using a mod to increase astroid density and there are xenon everywhere in my game.
I'm afraid if i play vanilla again I will end up having this boring game again. Mining really asks for many more adjustments at this very moment.

Raevyan
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by Raevyan » Mon, 10. May 21, 13:26

al_dude wrote:
Sat, 8. May 21, 19:13
?
Miners work fine for me as is. Just need twice number.
That alone is very questionable.

Cobra117
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by Cobra117 » Mon, 10. May 21, 14:02

I've personally grown a few more grey hairs watching my miners mining ICE despite the station being full on ice
and almost empty on Ore and Silicon, causing the station to slow it's production.
I have the exact same problem with a 500+ module self sufficient shipyard in Matrix 9(vanilla, no mods). I have 60-70 L miners now covering 2 entire sectors (matrix 451 & Hewa's twin) just to feed the station (repeat orders mostly) I'm just wondering if there's enough minerals in this part of the universe to feed my station. So far, it works fine with a little optimizing and tweaking. What is funny if that Gas and Ice mining are not a problem in my game. Just Ore and Silicon.

So there are solutions (so far, it works in my game). Maybe splitting large stations into smaller ones is an alternative.

paraskous
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by paraskous » Mon, 10. May 21, 14:45

grapedog wrote:
Mon, 10. May 21, 09:04
Weird, out of 50 stations in my current save, only 2 have resource issues, and that is easily solved by buying a little from NPCs...

No wastee time with my station assigned miners... though i understand others are somehow someway running into galaxy wide prpblems...
Have you tried Terran wares? Especially Computronic? Add a SiC line and of course you want several because you got this shipyard and want to run it as a single self-sufficient unit - voilà. Huge consumption. Bad visibility of intake per ship. We do it by rule of thumb - what the mining rework destroyed in clarity, the Khaak give it the rest. Honestly - I have no idea how I scraped together all the cash for all the miners, but it was kinda like always sitting at 15 million the rest went into L-Miners.
And fiddling with the orders of miners, miner fleets and their inventories in between.
You may not see any problems with your limited production and Si demand. You likely have overcapacity in mining power in your factories - the Terran economy has requirements that are a magitude or mor higher.

paraskous
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by paraskous » Mon, 10. May 21, 15:15

Jaskan wrote:
Sat, 8. May 21, 18:54
...

Trying to play X4 without CheatMenu is a waste of time.
...
I was expecting a much more sophisticated and useful advice.

Midnitewolf
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by Midnitewolf » Mon, 10. May 21, 19:52

aquatica wrote:
Sun, 9. May 21, 21:11
I had huge issues on miners.

But after one mod here explained how resource probes boost yields... No issues whatsoever anymore.

So:
1) Spam resources probes every 40 or so km's apart
2) Also have decent amount of money on the station (don't ask me why. Drying up the cash flow really breaks the miners, even if the station is completely self sufficient. So I have to have suggested budget on the station for whatever the hell of a reason).
3) Profit

It's stupid and it's annoying, but not broken per se. Nowhere near as broken as Xenon are...
Now that I think I it, I use that mod you mention as well. Maybe that is why I don't have the issues everyone else seems to be having. If you hadn't mentioned that the mod resolved your issues, I would never have thought it could actually fix the issues people are describing. I mean as far as I understand all it does it drop probes and assists with the miners mining at the best locations in the asteroid fields. It does nothing to change any of the interactions between the miner and the station, no special groups, commands or anything like so pretty much Vanilla functionality. It really just drops probes automatically so that the miners can find the best spot. If this mod does fix the issue, then at least we now know where the issue is. The Devs should be looking at what it does and figuring out how to implement it so that people don't have the level of frustration that they are currently experiences.

By the way the Mod is called "Improved Mining Operations" and is on steam.

As for the money at the station, that is because of the, to be blunt, stupid, decision by the devs to put absolutely everything on the trade system. Everything has to be bought and sold including your own resources and products. The station needs that money so it can "BUY" the raw resources from your own miners though no money changes hands during the transactions. It is the same with production facilities. You can be fully self-sufficient and still need to keep millions and millions tied up into the operating budget. On one run though I have, I literally import nothing from any NPC faction and have to keep something like 2 billion credits tied up in the operating budget of all my stations to make anything produce or work.

Midnitewolf
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by Midnitewolf » Mon, 10. May 21, 19:57

paraskous wrote:
Mon, 10. May 21, 15:15
Jaskan wrote:
Sat, 8. May 21, 18:54
...

Trying to play X4 without CheatMenu is a waste of time.
...
I was expecting a much more sophisticated and useful advice.
Didn't catch this when I read the original post but he is right. Just yesterday I was thinking how the game would be virtually unplayable without cheat menus and mods. Well that is going to far because my first playthrough was completely vanilla and I managed to play it all the way though but not without spending literally dozens and dozens of hours searching the internet to find guides, advice and tons of work arounds to solve ALL the damn issues Vanilla has. Anyway, the game might not be "unplayable" without cheat menus and mods but I would go as far as saying it has no replay-ability without mods. No way in hell would I put myself through another 300 hours of misery playing the Vanilla game again.

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grapedog
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by grapedog » Mon, 10. May 21, 20:43

paraskous wrote:
Mon, 10. May 21, 14:45
grapedog wrote:
Mon, 10. May 21, 09:04
Weird, out of 50 stations in my current save, only 2 have resource issues, and that is easily solved by buying a little from NPCs...

No wastee time with my station assigned miners... though i understand others are somehow someway running into galaxy wide prpblems...
Have you tried Terran wares? Especially Computronic? Add a SiC line and of course you want several because you got this shipyard and want to run it as a single self-sufficient unit - voilà. Huge consumption. Bad visibility of intake per ship. We do it by rule of thumb - what the mining rework destroyed in clarity, the Khaak give it the rest. Honestly - I have no idea how I scraped together all the cash for all the miners, but it was kinda like always sitting at 15 million the rest went into L-Miners.
And fiddling with the orders of miners, miner fleets and their inventories in between.
You may not see any problems with your limited production and Si demand. You likely have overcapacity in mining power in your factories - the Terran economy has requirements that are a magitude or mor higher.
No, i don't do much with CoH wares. It's a silly little economy they have over there. Incredibly limited demand requires very little supply. It's great for the NPCs over there i guess... but i steer clear of pretty much all CoH wares.

I do have one complex used to create a barebones amount of their shipbuilding wares to feed my shipyards nowhere near CoH space, but since i don't use many TER ships, ive more than enoigh. And i do have a couple stimulants complexes, because drugs sell well. Other than that though, i avoid CoH like the plague.

Also, non self sufficient shipyards still make boatloads of cash. And i can't say i have ever been in a position where i need 100 behemoths right now. Maybe 30 fighters... but 1 non self sufficient shipyard handles that request easily.

I also dont build mega complexes anymore. They're ugly and not needed, at least for me. Biggest conplexes i build now are less than 100 modules. My average station is around 50 modules probably. They look good, make lots of cash, and i can play with the economy, not against it.

Too many people trying to smash a square peg through a round hole.

aquatica
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by aquatica » Mon, 10. May 21, 21:11

Midnitewolf wrote:
Mon, 10. May 21, 19:52
aquatica wrote:
Sun, 9. May 21, 21:11
I had huge issues on miners.

But after one mod here explained how resource probes boost yields... No issues whatsoever anymore.

So:
1) Spam resources probes every 40 or so km's apart
2) Also have decent amount of money on the station (don't ask me why. Drying up the cash flow really breaks the miners, even if the station is completely self sufficient. So I have to have suggested budget on the station for whatever the hell of a reason).
3) Profit

It's stupid and it's annoying, but not broken per se. Nowhere near as broken as Xenon are...
Now that I think I it, I use that mod you mention as well. Maybe that is why I don't have the issues everyone else seems to be having. If you hadn't mentioned that the mod resolved your issues, I would never have thought it could actually fix the issues people are describing. I mean as far as I understand all it does it drop probes and assists with the miners mining at the best locations in the asteroid fields. It does nothing to change any of the interactions between the miner and the station, no special groups, commands or anything like so pretty much Vanilla functionality. It really just drops probes automatically so that the miners can find the best spot. If this mod does fix the issue, then at least we now know where the issue is. The Devs should be looking at what it does and figuring out how to implement it so that people don't have the level of frustration that they are currently experiences.

By the way the Mod is called "Improved Mining Operations" and is on steam.

As for the money at the station, that is because of the, to be blunt, stupid, decision by the devs to put absolutely everything on the trade system. Everything has to be bought and sold including your own resources and products. The station needs that money so it can "BUY" the raw resources from your own miners though no money changes hands during the transactions. It is the same with production facilities. You can be fully self-sufficient and still need to keep millions and millions tied up into the operating budget. On one run though I have, I literally import nothing from any NPC faction and have to keep something like 2 billion credits tied up in the operating budget of all my stations to make anything produce or work.
Sorry for misleading, I meant a forum mod, as in moderator. I run vanilla game only :)

Midnitewolf
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by Midnitewolf » Mon, 10. May 21, 21:28

aquatica wrote:
Mon, 10. May 21, 21:11
Midnitewolf wrote:
Mon, 10. May 21, 19:52
aquatica wrote:
Sun, 9. May 21, 21:11
I had huge issues on miners.

But after one mod here explained how resource probes boost yields... No issues whatsoever anymore.

So:
1) Spam resources probes every 40 or so km's apart
2) Also have decent amount of money on the station (don't ask me why. Drying up the cash flow really breaks the miners, even if the station is completely self sufficient. So I have to have suggested budget on the station for whatever the hell of a reason).
3) Profit

It's stupid and it's annoying, but not broken per se. Nowhere near as broken as Xenon are...
Now that I think I it, I use that mod you mention as well. Maybe that is why I don't have the issues everyone else seems to be having. If you hadn't mentioned that the mod resolved your issues, I would never have thought it could actually fix the issues people are describing. I mean as far as I understand all it does it drop probes and assists with the miners mining at the best locations in the asteroid fields. It does nothing to change any of the interactions between the miner and the station, no special groups, commands or anything like so pretty much Vanilla functionality. It really just drops probes automatically so that the miners can find the best spot. If this mod does fix the issue, then at least we now know where the issue is. The Devs should be looking at what it does and figuring out how to implement it so that people don't have the level of frustration that they are currently experiences.

By the way the Mod is called "Improved Mining Operations" and is on steam.

As for the money at the station, that is because of the, to be blunt, stupid, decision by the devs to put absolutely everything on the trade system. Everything has to be bought and sold including your own resources and products. The station needs that money so it can "BUY" the raw resources from your own miners though no money changes hands during the transactions. It is the same with production facilities. You can be fully self-sufficient and still need to keep millions and millions tied up into the operating budget. On one run though I have, I literally import nothing from any NPC faction and have to keep something like 2 billion credits tied up in the operating budget of all my stations to make anything produce or work.
Sorry for misleading, I meant a forum mod, as in moderator. I run vanilla game only :)
Actually I think I misread your post so no apology necessary.

Still the interesting thing is that the game mod I use and what you were doing manually, do the same thing, place out lots of resource probes and the issue other people are having doesn't exist for either of us. Maybe that is the solution and it thinking on it, it wouldn't surprise me if it does. What I mean is something I said I think earlier in this very thread. I tend to think the real issue is because they have everything tied into the trade system.

What I think might be happening is that the stations, which only thinks in terms of profit from what I gather, not need, keep sending out its miners for Ore instead of Silicon simply because it "thinks" ore is more profitable. However, if it feels Silicon and Ore are equally profitable, it will balance out the acquisition of both resources. I think where probes might tie in at is that the station looks at the data provided by the existing probes and then determines what is profitable to send its miners out to get. If you have tons of probes, the chances of it seeing multiple resources be profitable goes way up.

Obviously I don't know this is the case but I do know that having everything tied into the trade system and operating off what is profitable and what is not complicates so many other processes in this game it isn't funny so it wouldn't surprise me if it screws up mining as well.

al_dude
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by al_dude » Mon, 10. May 21, 21:47

I do not use any probes.

Just assign miners to my station and job done. I can even provide my save if you want to take a look at it. It just works.

So, I don't understand why people are saying mining is broken.

aquatica
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by aquatica » Mon, 10. May 21, 21:53

al_dude wrote:
Mon, 10. May 21, 21:47
I do not use any probes.

Just assign miners to my station and job done. I can even provide my save if you want to take a look at it. It just works.

So, I don't understand why people are saying mining is broken.
Speed increase (I think it was 50%?) is considerable for mining effective.

Kpla Keltak
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by Kpla Keltak » Tue, 11. May 21, 14:30

aquatica wrote:
Mon, 10. May 21, 21:53
al_dude wrote:
Mon, 10. May 21, 21:47
I do not use any probes.

Just assign miners to my station and job done. I can even provide my save if you want to take a look at it. It just works.

So, I don't understand why people are saying mining is broken.
Speed increase (I think it was 50%?) is considerable for mining effective.
I have dropped a lot of probes....but i don't think the miners actually use them.
they even ignore sectors next door full of them and go half way around the galaxy instead. they mine in complete void spaces sometimes.
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-=SiR KiLLaLoT=-
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by -=SiR KiLLaLoT=- » Tue, 11. May 21, 15:16

There are some fundamental rules for the correct functioning of current mining.

1) For each silicon wafer module use 1 M ship, 3 S ships (I personally use Manorina Sentinel and Tuatara).

2) Find asteroids with 500+ income, place probes yourself, place probes no more than 3km away from these asteroids. (The miners will automatically work within a 75km radius of the probe.)

3) Use ONLY ONE PROBE per sector and place them every 4/5 sectors away.

4) Having reached a certain number of silicon wafer modules (for example 12), add ONLY ONE mining vessel L.

5) Make sure there are no khaaks in the areas where your mining ships operate. The presence of khaak induces the ships to flee in the event of an attack "wasting time" and greatly delaying the delivery of raw material.
I have assigned Kuarokami (or Nemesis) escorts (one is enough) by setting the behavior to "attack" and setting the "counterattack" command on the mine ship to be defended (instead of "flee").
By doing so, whenever a miner is attacked by the khaaks, she will return fire and the escort ship will fire instantly, bypassing the current "defend" command that doesn't work.

6) Create mining ships capable of self-defense. This is why I chose the Manorina Sentinel. A Manorina with a Tau Accelerator main weapon, 2 Argon mining turrets, two Terran shields and Argon travel drive, allow her to kill 2/3 "Queen's Guard" ships on her own.
While the Tuatara is configured with 1 mining laser and 1 Tau Accelerator and Terran shields, but in this case some escort is needed.

These are my two cents and I have solved all my mining problems, even in the case of a huge HQ.

PS: Apply these rules with any type of mining, it will work the same way.
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grapedog
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by grapedog » Tue, 11. May 21, 15:40

Your stations/miners will tell you which sectors they want probes in. Look in your missions tab, under upkeep missions, and you might see a LOT of requests for probe drops. They also tell you what they are looking for.

I am guessing this is another part of the reason my miners have largely no issues. I fulfilled all but like 3 requests which i can't seem to find the right densities. But i must have had like 100 requests when i first looked at it. Though sometimes a single probe would fill 6 requests... because 6 different stations miners wanted an ore spot of 1.5 in GEIII for example.

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KextV8
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Re: Let me save you the wasted time on Miners

Post by KextV8 » Tue, 11. May 21, 16:11

I just have like 50 L miners floating around per production station. The war missions reward L miners so I didn't even buy them. And my hubs are slowly increasing in stock instead of going down.

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