New Player... atmospheric miner always flips over while mining

[Lumpus]

Anything obvious that I'm overlooking? It just seems that with the drills hitting rock, the ship quickly starts to pitch over and even holding firm on Q/E keys can't correct the flip fast enough. I've tried three times and always end up on my back after less than 2 minutes of drilling :(

I've added extra gyros and that has helped a little bit. Another thought is that as stone, etc get mined the ship quickly gets too heavy... but adding more thrusters also adds more weight and end result is about the same.
Running out of ideas... going to try a vehicle based miner next

[Dan2D3D]

Hi, I usually add 2 Hydro thusters that I turn ON only when full load so I can return home.

Tho I saw this problem on multigrid ships using rotor and pistons where the concept was causing this kind of problems.

Share some Steam screenshots, that will help to see the problem.

[Sky.]

You could be lacking battery's,...
Look at the right corner of your HUD and it will show you your battery status of your ship in minutes, hours or days.....
Hit the throttle and if your consuming 100% of battery, then your thrusters are not at full power and will cause issues like your having

[Burstar]

Does your flying miner have any subgrids? Rotors/Pistons? Are you ejecting waste stone out of an ejector or connector? Waste boulders sitting on the ship, or sudden high amounts of weight in subgrid sections will cause this.

[Sky.]

Also adding more thrusters are not the same results, the power of a thruster can carry it's own weight and then some.....
Also look at the plum/flame of the thrusters,.....if it's big then your thrusters are at or nearing there potential lifting capability,

[Sampak]

One very easy problem to get into is losing the orientation of your ship vs the horizon once you get a little below ground. This was my #1 problem after building and using my atmospheric survival/landing pod miner (based on Splitsie's 2019 tutorials). The horizon line is very important but also very easy for me to lose track of with all the visual information and flying and watching the weight etc. I would slowly tip over as I swung the drill around trying to mine out an area and very quickly find myself at a dangerously sideways angle and tipping over permanently (lots and lots of reloading the game LOL).
My #2 problem which then became #1 was overloading my ship and running out of juice literally as I landed on a connecter (if I timed it right) hahha. Oh those were the days.


One to keep in mind is having enough SIDE thrusters (left and right strafing if you will) to help right your ship along with the Q/E keys as well as having enough REVERSE thrusters to get you back out from nose diving further into the ground once your ship is loaded (presumably, as you are mining typically down a shaft). It seems obvious to me now, but instead of just lots of lifting thrusters, remember when you're mining pointed downward a bit, you will need more and more thrust to fight gravity.

Also, your ship drill might get stuck and cause the torque to spin your ship the opposite way, if that's also part of what's happening, although it's not easy to do that (never really happened to me).

TLDR: Put enough reverse, and side thrusters (3-4 MINIMUM per side starting out) and watch the horizon line.

[EmberStar]

Something else I've seen happen in videos a couple of times is just trying to dig too fast. Especially if you have Tool Shake on, the drills bounce off and skitter around as you drill. If you haven't tried already, move forward by tapping the key rather than holding it down.

Going slower also allows the drills to create a little bit wider hole. That reduces the chance of a stray voxel particle sticking out and ripping bits off your ship.

[HighRishMan]

im having the same issues i have made new ships in creative using mirror to try and solve the issue and im going to try using an artificial mass on the opposing side to see if its a weird center of mass bug if not going to try create a new design

[Lupus]

Small Grid Drills have a weight of 1ton and can easily offset the center of mass of any build and make it harder to control if its that lightweight just a single ton would shift it. My own starting Drilling ship ive build after starting a new game just had 2 small atmo thrusters down and 1 forward and it could easily hold 18 tons of stone/ore in it without pitching in any way. Blocks used in my starting drill was a total of 2 batteries 1 staion seat 1 drill 3 thrusters 1 gyroscope 1 medium container 1 connector and that was it. but as mentioned before if the batteries on your ship cant handle thruster output it wont help to add more thrusters just add another battery untill your power consumption gets below what all batteries can mantain

[Lumpus]

Lots to think about here.... thanks!

[Sampak]

FYI, artificial mass almost has no bearing on balancing your ship in the context you're describing (or at least, not practical), because as below:

I've never had center of mass be an issue in this game as far as physics affecting flying a miner or other single 'whole' ship (meaning without something else docked or attached to it, as in a "sub-grid").

I think it's simply a matter of losing orientation and practice digging. It took me a whiiiile to use a single drill equipped basic ship and it was not a very effective design due to the narrow hole it dug, requiring lots of side to side widening the hole every so often. Once I got two drills, it solved that problem a bit, along with paying attention to weight and the horizon.

[Karmaterrorᵁᴷ]

Originally posted by HighRishMan:

im having the same issues i have made new ships in creative using mirror to try and solve the issue and im going to try using an artificial mass on the opposing side to see if its a weird center of mass bug if not going to try create a new design

Like Sapak says centre of mass shouldnt effect hw your ship flies. The dampners will always compensate.... unless another grid is attached using rotor/piston. Then theres two center of mass for the ship and one will effect the other when flying.

A little side note artificial mass dosent work inside natural gravity so you only get the dead weight of the block itself. Because of that i use heavy armour to move CoM if needed. I dont think it weighs quite as much as arti mass block, but it dosent draw any power so i feel its a better option :)

[EmberStar]

Originally posted by Karmaterrorᵁᴷ:

A little side note artificial mass dosent work inside natural gravity so you only get the dead weight of the block itself. Because of that i use heavy armour to move CoM if needed. I dont think it weighs quite as much as arti mass block, but it dosent draw any power so i feel its a better option :)

I've seen Splitsie use artificial mass blocks to attach to scaffold levers when he needs to flip a rover back onto its wheels. They don't function as "artificial mass" inside a natural gravity well. But they're just really heavy, even as unfinished scaffold blocks.

That said, I don't think filling the drills should flip even a small ship by itself. I have a little mining drone that I named the Mole Cricket. Four small grid drills attached to a medium cargo with a connector port on the bottom, and two large atmospheric thrusters to hold it up. As long is I keep it mostly upright, I can fill the drills almost clear full of stone and it won't flip over by itself. *However,* I don't have enough thrust for it to fly sideways or upside down.

Especially when flying via remote control and the camera, it's *super* easy to lose track of the horizon line and end up tilting too far. I've never completely crashed it, but I've dropped the Mole Cricket on its side a few times hard enough to partially crush some of the armor. Almost all the storage space is in the four drills, so if the center of mass shifting was a problem then it would nose down and drill to the center of the world. O.O