Ejectors

[Lee Enfield]

I have a dirty great drilling ship but it's all big block and can't utilise ejectors and my station is now crawling through the huge stash of rock I've been drilling and processing over the past few days.

I decided to build a smaller craft, small blocks, conveyors, sorters, medium cargo containers and linked it all up to the drills after following a video tutorial from an experienced Space Engineer. I did everything by the book, started drilling but nothing was being ejected. After a while of head scratching I gave up trying to understand.

So I thought let's try putting the ejectors more directly connected to the drills, just one line of conveyor blocks and tubes connected to 3 drills. I went in the control panel and turned on "throw out everything". It started pumping out rock like no ones business..brilliant. So I stepped up the drills, adding 6 more, and 4 more ejectors along with the conveyors tubes and blocks, turned on "throw out everything" on the new ejectors and went off to do some drilling. But nothing is happening now, the stone isn't being ejected, it's stuck in the drills and now my little ship is struggling to lift off the ground due to the weight, but the main issue is, why are my ejectors not doing anything. I have a battery and 2 reactors with fuel, the power is fine.

Has anyone got any answers or could offer some tips on ejectors, sorters etc

Thanks.

[Spaceman Spiff]

I suspect you're playing in multi-player mode. Very recently I had the exact same question come up for one of my planetary miners...the ejectors weren't ejecting. The player tested it in single-player mode and everything worked fine, but not in multi-player mode. Sadly, everything had worked before the update. Perhaps the latest update broke something.

[Lee Enfield]

Originally posted by Spaceman Spiff:

I suspect you're playing in multi-player mode. Very recently I had the exact same question come up for one of my planetary miners...the ejectors weren't ejecting. The player tested it in single-player mode and everything worked fine, but not in multi-player mode. Sadly, everything had worked before the update. Perhaps the latest update broke something.

Thanks for the reply. I'm playing in SP survival mode based on the moon. It's one of those bafflers, it worked fine once with 3 drills and 2 ejectors but stopped when I added more drills and ejectors.

[Kenton]

Use a sorter and a Connector as an ejector for your large grid ship.

For your small ship, its hard to tell without examining your ship directly. Sometimes a conveyor is damaged or not hooked up properly, who knows. But its not a multiplayer issue, since you say you tested it directly on the drill and that worked fine. Just try making a more direct route for the ejectors.

[Namaride]

Use a sorter block with "drain all", place it before a connector with "trow all" and stone at whitelist. It should drain your ship empty.

Why it works with the simple build, your drills push their contents away to anywhere where is room to store it. Cargo, connectors etc. If connector is at "trow all" it appears working like normal.
The cargo wont get emptied because the connector only trows out what is in its own storage.
Thats where the sorter helps the connector with pumping the stone into it.

[Rox]

Reduce the limit for the number of 'floating objects' in the world / save. The default setting is 56 which is a lot of blobs of stone if you're ejecting waste material during mining. It can be set as low as you like down to the minimum of 16*, the only disadvantage is if you accidentally destroy a loaded cargo or grind more than you can carry then you can lose some items.

The setting is in the options for the savegame, it's not global, so needs to be changed on any existing or new save to be effective. It is in the 'Advanced World Settings' page : https://i.imgur.com/y96jr52.jpg


* It can be set as low as zero by hand-editing the save files, which makes for a good hard-core mode - hand mining is still possible by either spamming the 'F' key or just using the hand drill auto-pickup by pointing the drill at the chunks as they are produced. Ship mining is not affected.

[Lee Enfield]

Originally posted by Kenton:

Use a sorter and a Connector as an ejector for your large grid ship.

For your small ship, its hard to tell without examining your ship directly. Sometimes a conveyor is damaged or not hooked up properly, who knows. But its not a multiplayer issue, since you say you tested it directly on the drill and that worked fine. Just try making a more direct route for the ejectors.

Thanks Kenton, I didn't know I could use a connector to eject objects on a big craft, I'll definitely try that. I'll also check for any damaged conveyors and ejectors on the smaller craft. Much appreciate the advice 👍

[Lee Enfield]

Originally posted by Namasteride:

Use a sorter block with "drain all", place it before a connector with "trow all" and stone at whitelist. It should drain your ship empty.

Why it works with the simple build, your drills push their contents away to anywhere where is room to store it. Cargo, connectors etc. If connector is at "trow all" it appears working like normal.
The cargo wont get emptied because the connector only trows out what is in its own storage.
Thats where the sorter helps the connector with pumping the stone into it.

I will give that a try also Namasteride, thank you for your concise explanation 👍

[Lee Enfield]

Originally posted by Rox:

Reduce the limit for the number of 'floating objects' in the world / save. The default setting is 56 which is a lot of blobs of stone if you're ejecting waste material during mining. It can be set as low as you like down to the minimum of 16*, the only disadvantage is if you accidentally destroy a loaded cargo or grind more than you can carry then you can lose some items.

The setting is in the options for the savegame, it's not global, so needs to be changed on any existing or new save to be effective. It is in the 'Advanced World Settings' page : https://i.imgur.com/y96jr52.jpg


* It can be set as low as zero by hand-editing the save files, which makes for a good hard-core mode - hand mining is still possible by either spamming the 'F' key or just using the hand drill auto-pickup by pointing the drill at the chunks as they are produced. Ship mining is not affected.

Thanks Rox, I will look into this advice too, anything that helps is worth a try. Really appreciate all your advice on this issue 👍

[JIKOSU]

Just to let you know, you want the stone. It is refined into iron, silicone, nickel, and gravel, the basic materials you need.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Originally posted by 💥Taiidan💥:

Just to let you know, you want the stone. It is refined into iron, silicone, nickel, and gravel, the basic materials you need.

Yes, refining stone is useful in early gameplay, but refining ore produces significantly greater output and you don't end up with a lot of extraneous gravel that you can't even use to pave a road.

[JIKOSU]

yeah

[JIKOSU]

I am new to lots of play in one level, even after 4 years

[JIKOSU]

so I always like stone

[Spaceman Spiff]

A true stoner then!

[JIKOSU]

yeah