[X3LU][Script] Mineral Exploitation Pack (Mineral Courier + Nividium Miner)

[all_other_names_taken]

Don't be fooled by the pompous title, it's just a couple of simple scripts. Still, I hope someone finds use for them. This is my first attempt at making a script for a game, so be gentle.

Mineral Courier

Why?
I've seen quite a few people (myself included) asking if there was an easy way to automate collection of minerals from a mineral carrier and the answer was - not really. You could use the normal courier, but the setup (and adding new carriers to the list) is a bit tedious. After all, there are 17 types of minerals to setup the collection and drop-off of. Also, manual labour in LU is a heresy. So I've created...

What?
Mineral Courier. In fact, it's not just a courier, but an 'agent' as well.

How it works?
It collects minerals from a mining carrier and then sells them, then proceeds to the next carrier in the list. The list is setup much like the normal courier (I ripped off the menu from the Courier script(s) and removed unnecessary options).
When initiated, the courier will first sell any minerals it may have in its cargo hold, then proceed to watch carriers and make runs. It will make a run when one of the following conditions is met:
1) The total volume of all the minerals in the carrier is greater than 90% of the free cargo volume of the courier.
2) The total volume of all the minerals in the carrier is greater than 80% of the free cargo volume of the carrier.
3) One hour has passed since the last run and carrier has at least some minerals in the cargo hold. (This is especially useful for the case if both courier and the carrier are TL)

When selling minerals, if the courier is homebased to a station, the money will go to the station account, otherwise it will go to the player's account. The homebase setting has no other influence on the courier's operation.
When looking for a station to sell, the courier considers sector security complaints. The range of search is its jumpdrive fuel auto resupply minus 10 jumps (so it doesn't run out of fuel completely), so set the auto refuel to a reasonable number (30-50 at least).

Ship requirements:
- TS or TL ship (I don't think anything other than those is reasonable)
- Trade Command Software MK1
- Trade Command Software MK2
- Transporter Device.

Slots taken:
Text file ID 9080
Command ID 423 (COMMAND_TYPE_TRADE_23)


Nividium Miner

Why?
I was wondering if maybe mining was more profitable than SCHs (for same investment). My preliminary findings show that they are roughly on par, though mining requires much less initial investment (can begin earlier in the game) and also scales much more easily (you can add as many miners homebased to a mining carrier as you want, regardless of how many docking slots the carrier has).
However, I noticed, if the miners stumble upon Nividium, the competition is over. Miners easily make twice the money in the same amount of time for same investment as SCHs.
So, first I went and manually scanned for Nividium debris and sent my miners there, but then someone yelled 'Heresy!' so I quickly equipped my miners with Mineral Scanners and gave them new instructions in the form of...

What?
Nividium Miner.

How it works?
The behavior is exactly the same as the regular miner (the script is a carbon copy with only one modification), except it disregards the junk debris (Ice, Ore and Silicon Wafers) and looks exclusively for Nividium.
There is also the accompanying script for mining carriers 'Nividium Mining Fleet: Carrier'.

Ship requirements:
- Any miner ship (hint: TS miners are inefficient when compared to fighters)
- Mobile Drilling System in laser slot(s)
- Special Command Software MK1
- Mineral Scanner

Slots taken:
Text file ID 9081
Command ID 522 (COMMAND_TYPE_SPECIAL_22) Nividium Miner
Command ID 523 (COMMAND_TYPE_SPECIAL_23) Nividium Mining Fleet: Carrier

Downloads:
Mineral Courier

Nividium Miner


Instructions:
Copy the 'addon' folder from the archive(s) to the root folder of LU. Doesn't overwrite existing files.


Permissions:
Anyone can do anything they want with my portions of the scripts. For the rest, ask LitCube.


Looking forward to your comments.

[OneOfMany]

Thanks for thse scripts, I'll give them a try in my new playthrough.

[lilbean]

This looks awesome and should save me some carpal tunnels syndrome around configuration of couriers! You should get it added to the Litcube mod list here - viewtopic.php?t=380168

[all_other_names_taken]

This looks awesome and should save me some carpal tunnels syndrome around configuration of couriers! You should get it added to the Litcube mod list here - viewtopic.php?t=380168

Thanks!
I'm glad someone found it useful.
Before adding it to the list, let's first get some feedback about the functionality and eventual major bugs and stuff.

[Daniel95H]

Hio, first of all thanks for the mod.

I am new to X3 and X3 LU, currently playing a round with the star wars conversion and encountered an issue. When I try to set p Galofree transport (my big transport hauler, 95 m/s, 6500 storage) for the mineral courier, I can say "courier minerals" but in the following menu I can only press "clear queue". The add queue button is there, but grayed out.

My overall setup is 2 TS Mining vessels, shooting up rock and extracting minerals and 1-2 TS sized transports (the galofree). I tried adding them to a wing, removing them all sorts of stuff.

Now I am new to X3 and LU and I know it is very in depth, but after googling for a while I couldn't find any other way (aside your mod) to setup what I wanted. I am in Rolk's Legacy, with my miners working only a few hundred km away from a mining outpost. So far (for the past 7 hours of gameplay since start), my gameplay was:

1. transfer resources over from the miners until my transport is full.
1.1. Tell the miners to mine again because everytime they fill up, I have to give the mine command again which is really annoying (any idea how to change that?)
2. fly over to the mining outpost (not owned by me cause I don't have a big enough ship, nor the funds to buy a station and transport it over).
3. Sell the minerals.
4. Fly back.
5. loop.

My hope was to use your mod/script (cause I didn't find any other solution, other than maybe courier) to automate this loop so I can take my other ships for a ride exploring the galaxy.

Now, like I stated above, when I enter the mineral courier interface, I don't see anything other than clear queue and add to queue (which is grayed out). So currently it means more hours of blandly sitting in SETA while the world gets overrun by borg and a shadow organization.

The last post on this script was back in 2018, but I hope you might still be around and could shed some light on this.

Thanks in advance,

Daniel

Edit: I'm a numbtie that can't read. The Mineral Courier only works at selecting Carriers with mining ships and not any mining ship. Sadly I can now mark the Carrier for pickup, but the pluton mining outpost around the corner is not visible in the list. So I assume I will have to continue manualing it until I have my own station.

[Hector0x]

@Daniel95H: I haven't used this mod before. It sounds like a dock agent has been mixed with a courier here.
But as i understand the description, this script can sell without any player owned station. And i'm pretty sure you don't need to add the sell location into the courier list. Litcube Couriers could never be set to interact with NPC's in any way. This one seems to just add a functionality for bulk loading all minerals from carriers you designate (instead of 17 orders for each carrier) and that it has an automated sell order at the beginning of it's queue. (Basically after the "loop" task). I bet you also need satellite coverage over a mining outpost.

As the courier needs a transporter device and not docking ability with the mining carrier, you should be able to have a TM ship as an early game mobile mining base with fighter mining ships (M3-M5) homebased to it.
You don't have to limit your mining fleet size to the carriers docking port capacity. So a TM with 4 fighter slots can perfectly act as a mining base for hundreds of ships. This hourly restriction for the courier could be a problem though (small cargospace)

[otto_deluxe]

Hi,

the download links are broken. Could you (or anyone who still has it) reupload the scripts please?

Cheers,
Otto

[all_other_names_taken]

@Everyone, sorry for not replying sooner. I watched this thread for several months and since there was no interest in the scripts, I stopped watching.
Also sorry for the broken links. They are now updated and should be working.

@Daniel95H
Mineral Courier doesn't pick up minerals from miners directly (this would be cumbersome to setup and would kind of defeat the point), it picks up from the Mineral Carrier(s). Also, you don't need to own any kind of station or dock in order to do mining operations.
It was great from Litcube to create the Mineral Carrier script in the LU, I think it's the most efficient way to do mining operations. All mining ships are very slow, so having a near by drop-off point in the form of Mineral Carrier saves a lot of time. Also, Mineral Carrier can issue the mining command to all its workers at once, so that also saves time on initiating the mining command.
My script comes to fill the part after mining the minerals - selling them at mining outposts.
So in order to use this script, you need at least one Mineral Carrier (a TM will do the job for the start, although they don't have big cargo capacity. They can often be found abandoned after an NPC battle, or you need to improve your relations with a race and buy it (although you might as well save a bit more cash and buy a TL right away)).
2 miners are too few, look to increase that number to at least 50 per mining sector as soon as you can. With this many miners, a TL is basically a must as a Mining Carrier.
Like I said in the script description, fighter miners (m3, m4, m5) are more efficient than TS miners as they can mount more Mobile Drilling System lasers and thus mine faster.
I also recommend you use my other script (Nividium Miner), it increases the income from mining significantly.

@Hector0x
Thanks for helping others use my script in my absence.
Why do you think 'hourly restriction could be a problem'?
First, it is not a restriction. That condition is there because the first two conditions would not be met by the time you 'finish' the game (in the case that both Mineral Carrier and Mineral Courier are TLs).

[Bladerunner1971]

Thank you for these.

[Havok1o1]

I was having a bit of an issue with this script and I was wondering if anyone could assist with it.

I have a bunch of miners and a mining carrier set up. I have the courier set with the carrier as a waypoint. It picks up the minerals from the carrier but than the courier just sits there on "checking cargo hold" while its hold is full instead of selling.

I am wondering if I am perhaps doing something wrong?

[Drimmadeeve]

Hi,

the download links are broken. Could you (or anyone who still has it) reupload the scripts please?

Cheers,
Otto

Just wanted to say i just tested the download link and it works fine. If your using Chrome you have to right click link save link as function.

[KTV]

Great, thanks

[Lenivets74]

Sorry! How this script, "Nividium Miner", connect to X3-TC . I am installed X3UPGRADE MOD 4.0.3 and Bonus Pack for TC only. I unpacked the script files to game dir. From game Script Editor this script present, but i don`t see menu command for Nividium Miner/

[X2-Illuminatus]

The LU in the title stands for Litcube's Universe, a mod for X3AP. Since X3AP adds scripts commands which are not present in X3TC, and LU again adds script commands of its own to X3AP, there's a chance that this script won't work at all or require adjustments to work in X3TC due to the missing script commands there.

[Lenivets74]

Litcube's Universe, a mod for X3AP...

I understood. Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation.

[Indy]

Hello!,

sadly the links are down. Has anybody still the data and could re-upload them? Thank you very much.