TER doesn't like my miners ¬¬ - Probably explained.

[GReaper]

Hi everyone!

I have a small (big) problem with TER and maybe you can help me. I'm playing the same game from vanilla and I have good relations with all factions (except Xenon, which don't like me). I recently built a factory+wharf at Mars and assigned it some miners and traders. Then I drop some resources probes at the Asteroids Belt. And here is my problem: I receive very frequent messages about Kukri police detecting illegal cargo in my miners. I check them but they are only mining and I don't see they have gathered anything illegal. That's my doubt. Is there something I'm missing which may cause that TER police don't like my miners?

Any help will be very appreciated

As a side note: this TER police problem becomes a snowball really fast. Police detects illegal cargo. Temporary rep loss. Police detects more illegal cargo. Rep loss. Police as enemy. MIner retaliate. Miner heads to my station. Station retaliates. WAR!

So far I've removed all defense turrets from miners/merchants and disabled my station turrets to keep the problem at bay, but it's a bit frustrating to be continuously pending on rep losses before the problem escalates.

[Alan Phipps]

If your miners are set (global or individual ship settings) to collect floating items then they are probably collecting the unstable crystals and spacefly eggs that are released when certain asteroids are broken by your or other miners. That would be illegal inventory rather then illegal wares - these have different and separate local authority scans (cargo and inventory) but both can be embarrassing to you and your ships. (You can tell them to comply with police scans and drop illegal cargo/items when scanned - that may stop the issue too.) Just a theory.

[GReaper]

If your miners are set (global or individual ship settings) to collect floating items then they are probably collecting the unstable crystals and spacefly eggs that are released when certain asteroids are broken by your or other miners. That would be illegal inventory rather then illegal wares - these have different and separate local authority scans (cargo and inventory) but both can be embarrassing to you and your ships. (You can tell them to comply with police scans and drop illegal cargo/items when scanned - that may stop the issue too.) Just a theory.

Hi Alan,

Thank you very much for your help. I checked my global settings and all miners are set to comply with police but I didn't know there was an option to avoid them collecting illegal wares Tomorrow I'll take a look at it and let you know if disabling auto-items collect solves my issue!

Also, if it helps, I've been pending on the "Ships with items" section and only two of my ships were shown, but no miners.

Also, I transferred all miners to Segaris sector and not a single issue on PIO space :/

[KextV8]

You sure its not your station creating illegal wares like stimulants?

[Imperial Good]

This could be a case of stations randomly getting illegal wares. Some people report they end up with stimulants and the like, possibly from pirate activity.

[Alan Phipps]

.. but how would stations accumulating illegal wares (I can confirm that my PHQ sees a lot of those appear out of the blue) affect police scans of mining ships? Most gas or mineral miners cannot even carry illegal container wares - but they can carry illegal inventory.

[GReaper]

Hi again,

First of all, thank you very much for your help. You've given me insights I didn't consider

I'll get first to the funny part: my Mars station has stimulants production modules! I feel SO stupid. I didn't notice they were illegal wares. I thought they were used for TER habitats (and they may, but as drugs..). I checked the forbidden wares list for TER and I don't see stimulants as an illegal ware  I'm playing the spanish version. Maybe an encyclopedia bug?

I imagine the TER police like "omg, just in our faces! ¬¬" . In fact my Mars station is just in front of one of the gates, continuously facing traffic and all angry Syns and Tokyos.

Furthermore, I've checked my miners and traders and they aren't configured to auto-pickup wares, so I assume that the problem may come from the stimulants I produce.

That leads me to the same as Alan pointed out: how can stimulants affect my scanned miners? My best guess is that my traders are distributing stimulants, police scans them, temporary rep loss, more stimulants scanned, more rep loss, police becomes enemy, it starts targeting my ships (including miners) and station, war snowball... Maybe I mixed the police scan messages of my miners with the stimulants production problem, which lead me to think that mining was the problem, but maybe stimulants are the root problem.

I'll delete stimulants production modules and wait for a while to see if the problem persists. Then I'll let you know what happened!

Side note for further laughing: my PHQ and my Segaris stations also produce stimulants like crazy!

[KextV8]

.. but how would stations accumulating illegal wares (I can confirm that my PHQ sees a lot of those appear out of the blue) affect police scans of mining ships? Most gas or mineral miners cannot even carry illegal container wares - but they can carry illegal inventory.

It wouldn't impact scans of mining ships. But the log entries wouldn't tell you that the cause of the rep drop is actually police scanning your station. The miners get scanned a lot and on some settings will comm you. The station won't notify you its being scanned, but it is being scanned, and often is the one actually pissing police off.

Just a case of miners being scanned and notifying while simultaneously the station is being scanned and causing rep drop.

[GReaper]

I've just deleted all my stimulant production modules and also dropped all existent ones to space (about 15k, a lot of money). Since then, it seems that no more police scan + rep loss has happened. I'll continue to be pending tomorrow too but I think the problem may have been solved Thank you very much everyone! What maybe I'm missing is Stimulants as an illegal ware in the Terran Protectorate Encyclopedia entry.

Last, I also checked my station's transactions logs and it was selling a lot of stimulants (mainly to PAR). As you pointed out, it seems that the station or some trader was being scanned, then temp rep loss, then another scann, more rep loss, and then some TER ships became enemies and might target the poor miners

Thank you very much again for your help and your time!

[GReaper]

Last confirmation: few hours later, no more rep loss due to police scans. It seems it was due to the stimulants problem Thank you very much for your help!