[TESTREQUEST] Mining and Prospecting

[ubuntufreakdragon]

Hewa's Twin III looks so empty some Ice/Gas deposits would look nice and Hewa's Twin V should have higher yields, currently only Hewa's Twin II has deposits worth noting, but it's close to Xenon and Ring systems so it shouldn't be the primary deposit of this system.

[ajiuop]

Memory of Profit IX has 700k Ore in its best days. You set up a fleet of 250 Miners with mimic command to a Local Autominer command. This means these ships wont leave this system ever and they will make short work of the minerals there in no time. This is a case of less is more. It would have been much better to just have 20 M miners for example with Advanced Automining (3 jumps radius) then 250 fighting from scraps.
...
MFG

Ketraar

That was my goal: eat all resources and look what they will do next. It's a typical case when you are mining nividium and station has its own mining fleat which works where you told. But I didn't understand why they stay in a square corners, where 3 corners without recources. I expected that they will stay in asteroid belt and will wait available resources.

[HeinzS]

Placing probes in good spots still has an impact on mining efficiency.

If you want to mine efficiently, you have to constantly monitor the probes, which means that if you have several mining areas, you won't be able to get to anything else.

[Ketraar]

If you want to mine efficiently, you have to constantly monitor the probes, which means that if you have several mining areas, you won't be able to get to anything else.

That's the nature of micro management no? I mean its now much better to set automated mining where ships will relocate on their own even outside of own sector. That is a rather strong increase in efficiency that doesn't require ANY managing after exploration and set up. The probes is for micro managing and pushing even more out. Arguably the most efficient mining would be if you would do it yourself as that has the best outcome, which would be also the most micro intensive approach.

So you don't HAVE to place probes at all, but you can and it has some impact.

MFG

Ketraar

[FatalKeks]

How much of a difference do the probes make now? Like 10% more/faster yield or like 50%?

[HeinzS]

Mining ships will decide where to mine based on which spot is the best, within the restrictions set by their parameters.
Placing probes in good spots still has an impact on mining efficiency.

Suggested improvement:
Have the miners throw out a probe before they start and collect it again when he is full.

[Ketraar]

Have the miners throw out a probe before they start and collect it again when he is full.

Might as well just not have the bonus from probes then no? I mean if they get auto added why the hassle? As mentioned before, its not required unless you want to make the extra effort and if so you get rewarded for it.

MFG

Ketraar

[Pejot]

From my part i can add that changes to mining in 5.0 greatly influence XEN population and ability to build ships. This is additional heavy punch for already weakened ZYA.

[Thurak]

Suggested improvement:
Have the miners throw out a probe before they start and collect it again when he is full.

I basically do that manually. I just equip my miners with 5 probes from the get go, and from time to time just manually drop a few of them while miners are mining. It does not interrupt any commands.

[Scoob]

The changes to mining seem to be working rather well. I mean that I'm not having to worry about it too much. Station miners, assuming there's something in range of course, just go mine stuff. They also seem to be working fairly well when I'm personally in-sector, which wasn't consistent previously - though, to be fair, that might be linked to how far away from me there in the sector.

Adding Resource Probes now appears to act as a "bonus" rather than a necessity. All in all, mining - for a station at least - seemed to provide a more consistent income or ores - I've not personally tested gas mining yet.

[Scoob]

I basically do that manually. I just equip my miners with 5 probes from the get go, and from time to time just manually drop a few of them while miners are mining. It does not interrupt any commands.

I do that too usually, just equip each miner with 5-6 Resource Probes, then deploy them where the miner thinks there's a good location to mine. I do sometime manually deploy them from other ships too, but the prior method works well.

[Thufar]

In the 4.xx patches, my mining operations worked like a charm. My HQ is in Getsu Fune and my mining operation is set up mainly in The Void. Mining worked, it just took a lot of mining ships to get the job done. With the 5b3 patch, mineral mining has improved greatly. It seems I need a fraction of the miners I used to. However, my gas mining has dropped significantly, especially methane. Methane has become in short in my trading post in The Void and HQ in Getsu Fune. My gas miners cluster in places in The Void where the gas clouds aren't. They mine horribly. Needs a serious fix, please.

My save is here.

Regards,
Thu

[Miravlix]

It seems like it mostly work well, but that a mining "field" has zones, so if I only remove the fog from some of the field, my miners can't access the entire field only the mined out parts of it.

Uncovering an entire field to get full access to a sectors mining riches, doesn't seem like good game play.

If I try to do it manually I keep getting those spawns of hostiles and it would be hours of non enjoyable gameplay.

Seems to me like miners need to be able to see the mining field in the fog or we need an order that explorers mining fields.

[wilsonlaizo]

One thing that I noticed on Beta 4 that wasn't occurring in Beta 3 is that the choice for mining location is a bit weird.

I say that because I usually create a Mining Station on Nopileos' Fortune 2 and associate a bunch of solid miners, in Beta 3, the miners would mine in Nopileos' Fortune itself, as Silicon and Ore yields are at 3.6 according the the probe, in the beta 4 instead of staying in NF, they are deciding to mine 2 maps away in Pious Mist 4, which have an yield of 1.8 and make my miners need to travel way more.

My save with this behavior is here: https://easyupload.io/6cceo7

One thing to notice is that the ability to have the station mining multiple minerals is way better than it was before, so thanks on improving that.

[wilsonlaizo]

One thing that I just noticed is that I just got a HAT quest to identify resource areas. It's asking for Hydrogen 0.10 and Ore 1.69. The probe I placed says Hydrogen 0.14 and Ore 3.6, which should be enough to complete the quest, but only the Hydrogen part is complete which makes me assume that the number on the Probe is wrong and because of that both the questline is not completing and the mining ships are going to other maps with better resources.

Although it's the same save as the previous message, I'm providing a new one with the quest and the probe in place:
https://easyupload.io/mxvhzx

[ubuntufreakdragon]

Zya really needs a safe Resource source.
A system neighbouring Zyarth's Dominion IV e.g. another subsector within the accretion disk would be eye candy.

[nflszhu]

Hi,

It seems that after updating to Beta 5, the mining problem has returned: I've about 80 L Gas miners assigned to my Family Zhin shipyard and the map shows there is plenty of Methane (433K) and Helium (323K). However, my shipyard is running out of Methane and low on Helium. When I go into logistics view, I don't see any incoming ships for methane and helium. I don't think this was an issue for Beta 4 so something might have changed.

Save: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AoT6Nmg1pfdysnnKCMK ... u?e=Vrh6qL

Please advise if you need any additional information.

Thank you!

[nflszhu]

Hi,

It seems that after updating to Beta 5, the mining problem has returned: I've about 80 L Gas miners assigned to my Family Zhin shipyard and the map shows there is plenty of Methane (433K) and Helium (323K). However, my shipyard is running out of Methane and low on Helium. When I go into logistics view, I don't see any incoming ships for methane and helium. I don't think this was an issue for Beta 4 so something might have changed.

Save: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AoT6Nmg1pfdysnnKCMK ... u?e=Vrh6qL

Please advise if you need any additional information.

Thank you!

Updated save link: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AoT6Nmg1pfdysnnKCMK ... u?e=u8JVpR

[Ketraar]

Please advise if you need any additional information.

As your resource probes indicate Family Zhin is not very good for mining Methane, your probes show range from almost 0 to less then 1 star for Methane, so it will be slow to mine and just adding more L Miners wont do the trick. In addition you are blocking Travel for your miners to avoid enemy owned sectors so they are trapped in Zhin to all sides except "north" to Kritt which has no gas at all. Once that blacklist was removed most of your L miners in Zhin flew off to mine "south" which I grant might be less safe as they traverse a Xenon owned sector but that is just life I guess.

Hope that helps.

MFG

Ketraar

[nflszhu]

Please advise if you need any additional information.

As your resource probes indicate Family Zhin is not very good for mining Methane, your probes show range from almost 0 to less then 1 star for Methane, so it will be slow to mine and just adding more L Miners wont do the trick. In addition you are blocking Travel for your miners to avoid enemy owned sectors so they are trapped in Zhin to all sides except "north" to Kritt which has no gas at all. Once that blacklist was removed most of your L miners in Zhin flew off to mine "south" which I grant might be less safe as they traverse a Xenon owned sector but that is just life I guess.

Hope that helps.

MFG

Ketraar

Hi MFG,

Thank you for your response! Not sure if this is relevant but it seems that my shipyard in Eighteen Billion and Pious Mists IV don't have this issue, and they are both exactly the same size. Note that those sectors all have similar amount of Methane system wise (300 - 400K as shown in sector info page) and resource probes show similar level of Methane (1 star or less, 0.005 - 0.007 / km3). It seems that apart from some Terran sectors, Family Zhin should be one of the best commonwealth sectors for Methane.

Also note that I didn't encounter this issue in Beta 4 so not sure why it appeared in Beta 5 within a day of game running.

Thank you!