autominers

[Dex]

So I've just started messing around with autominers and from what I can tell, the tier 3 miner gives 400 ore per hour. I'm going to assume that's 60 minutes real time. Now, I need to get to level 20 to even unlock the autominers and the resources required to build a single tier 3 miner is pretty high.

To compare, at level 10 I can have a very cheap HV equipped with drill modules that can gather 400 ore in under 30 seconds.

Am I missing something here? Is the ore magically transferred to my base? Because in the time that it would take me to actually go around and gather the automined ores I could have gathered the same amount with a level 10 HV.

Is this intended or is there something in the works for the future?

[grrantu]

There are quite a few threads on autominers you might want to search for, but here are the basic reasons to use autominers:
Autominers work best on dedicated servers because they mine whether you are online or not if the server continues to run.
Autominers don't deplete the resource. So if you plop down an autominer, and then remove the resource with your HV, the autominer continues to gather that resource until the autominer is removed or destroyed.

[Jubilum]

When you use autominers the deposits do not deplete...ore forever. When you use a HV with drills you get the instant stacks of ore but that is it, when you drill out the deposit the ore is gone. If you live on a planet the resets every week then the HV is better, but if you aren't you will eventually run out of ore to build with.

[ZomBeGone]

Most planets there are plenty of ore, so the HV makes sense, however on Ningues the ore deposits are tiny so it make sense to use the autominers. The depostis ranged from about 150 to about 600 in size, so you can go though that quickly. I would use a HV to mine out about 80% of the ore, then drop an autominer in the hole. Only time I have ever used them so far.

[Dex]

I guess on multiplayer it would make sense, but for single player it's completely pointless. It would take me 100s of hours of playtime to gain the amount of ore I can gather in an hour of dedicating HV mining. It just seems like the autominers are a dev joke for us daring to ask for an automining solution. 400 ore an hour? And you have to constantly fill it up with energy? that's ridiculous lol.

For something so expensive and so far down the tech line they're just silly currently. Bring it up to 800 or 1000 and then you'd have something.

[Undead Rufus]

Originally posted by Dex:

I guess on multiplayer it would make sense, but for single player it's completely pointless. It would take me 100s of hours of playtime to gain the amount of ore I can gather in an hour of dedicating HV mining. It just seems like the autominers are a dev joke for us daring to ask for an automining solution. 400 ore an hour? And you have to constantly fill it up with energy? that's ridiculous lol.

For something so expensive and so far down the tech line they're just silly currently. Bring it up to 800 or 1000 and then you'd have something.

I think all three tiers of autominer should collect more, but they're far from useless. Even if they aren't efficient in absolute terms (other than preserving deposits), you're still free to go do something else while they work. Just dedicate a set of deposits for auto-mining, set and forget, and then go clear out every other node as needed with your HV. Best of both worlds.

[grrantu]

Originally posted by Dex:

I guess on multiplayer it would make sense, but for single player it's completely pointless. It would take me 100s of hours of playtime to gain the amount of ore I can gather in an hour of dedicating HV mining. It just seems like the autominers are a dev joke for us daring to ask for an automining solution. 400 ore an hour? And you have to constantly fill it up with energy? that's ridiculous lol.

For something so expensive and so far down the tech line they're just silly currently. Bring it up to 800 or 1000 and then you'd have something.

The game isn't just about single player though. The autominers are very useful in multiplayer. A T3 on a good deposit of ore produces a tremendous amount of ore every day they will totally fill up without even using all the power. It only takes about 20 seconds to empty it out and refill the power.

[Merricat]

Originally posted by Dex:

I guess on multiplayer it would make sense, but for single player it's completely pointless. It would take me 100s of hours of playtime to gain the amount of ore I can gather in an hour of dedicating HV mining. It just seems like the autominers are a dev joke for us daring to ask for an automining solution. 400 ore an hour? And you have to constantly fill it up with energy? that's ridiculous lol.

For something so expensive and so far down the tech line they're just silly currently. Bring it up to 800 or 1000 and then you'd have something.

The amount of ore you receive per hour is dependent on how large the deposit is and what ore you are mining.

And I would say it takes more like 10's of hours of using a single autominer to replicate the results of an hour of HV mining.

However, there is only one of you and you can drop as many autominers as there are active deposits on the playfield you currently are in.

And unless you are deliberately installing the lowest tier energy container, you aren't constantly refilling them unless you are just one of those folk who have to top off every time you visit. Fusion cells don't require that much infrastructure to reach and an autominer full of them will run almost 30 hours without needing refilling.

Realistically speaking, they don't replace HV mining for single player games. You'll still want to kick start your 'economy' by clearing out a few deposits. But once you've done that - use the five mining cores the default scenario gives you to build a T3 miner for each ore type and drop them on the largest remaining deposits of the same. Fill them with fusion cells and forget about it.

Especially if you are playing normal SP - i.e. aren't running a dedicated 24/7 server and you aren't so into the game that you are playing unhealthy amounts of time on it - then those miners are going to be able to run for weeks in real-time without refilling. Just hit them up when you need to top off or replenish your ore stores after a build and except in the most extreme cases you'll probably only ever need to mine again when you leave the planet.

[Dex]

Originally posted by Merricat:

Originally posted by Dex:

I guess on multiplayer it would make sense, but for single player it's completely pointless. It would take me 100s of hours of playtime to gain the amount of ore I can gather in an hour of dedicating HV mining. It just seems like the autominers are a dev joke for us daring to ask for an automining solution. 400 ore an hour? And you have to constantly fill it up with energy? that's ridiculous lol.

For something so expensive and so far down the tech line they're just silly currently. Bring it up to 800 or 1000 and then you'd have something.

The amount of ore you receive per hour is dependent on how large the deposit is and what ore you are mining.

And I would say it takes more like 10's of hours of using a single autominer to replicate the results of an hour of HV mining.

However, there is only one of you and you can drop as many autominers as there are active deposits on the playfield you currently are in.

And unless you are deliberately installing the lowest tier energy container, you aren't constantly refilling them unless you are just one of those folk who have to top off every time you visit. Fusion cells don't require that much infrastructure to reach and an autominer full of them will run almost 30 hours without needing refilling.

Realistically speaking, they don't replace HV mining for single player games. You'll still want to kick start your 'economy' by clearing out a few deposits. But once you've done that - use the five mining cores the default scenario gives you to build a T3 miner for each ore type and drop them on the largest remaining deposits of the same. Fill them with fusion cells and forget about it.

Especially if you are playing normal SP - i.e. aren't running a dedicated 24/7 server and you aren't so into the game that you are playing unhealthy amounts of time on it - then those miners are going to be able to run for weeks in real-time without refilling. Just hit them up when you need to top off or replenish your ore stores after a build and except in the most extreme cases you'll probably only ever need to mine again when you leave the planet.

Great points, thanks a lot, I'll check that out.

[infernaldragon5]

Autominers are OP as heck. Say you have 3 people in your faction. You can set down about 3 T3 autominers on each node. Have 6-7 iron deposits you get set up on with 3 autominers each.

Each autominers produces about 10 stacks on iron ore per day. You heard me right. 10k iron ore = 20k iron ingots PER autominer. And you have about 20 autominers total set up. So you are getting about 200k iron ore = 400k iron ingots per day! All with very little work.

As you can imagine autominers scale up very nicely and are very important.

[Dex]

Do autominers continue to run if no one is online currently on the server? Or on the planet?

[Greenman]

Autominers are the most overpowered item in the game at the moment. You think 400 an hour isnt much, but you leave it overnight every day and you end up with 3-6k or so every 12 hours, for only the effort it takes to collect and refuel, also don't forget you can put as many down as you own, ie you can have 20 on a planet and it gives 50-100k of minerals... in around 12 hours or so.

At present I feel autominers are one of the most detrimental aspects of the game, it kills mining, removes incentive to do things in the game and makes it stupidly easy to make a massive battle cv or base every day of the week if you want. Coupled with the fact that they do not deplete resource nodes (ridiculous this hasnt been fixed yet) and you have almost got yourself a free item menu and never have to leave the planet you are living on.

You get to a point where autominers is all you use, as it makes no sense to waste your time doing anything else when you get all these minerals for free pretty much.

[nowhere man]

Originally posted by Murder Boner:

Autominers are the most overpowered item in the game at the moment. You think 400 an hour isnt much, but you leave it overnight every day and you end up with 3-6k or so every 12 hours, for only the effort it takes to collect and refuel, also don't forget you can put as many down as you own, ie you can have 20 on a planet and it gives 50-100k of minerals... in around 12 hours or so.

At present I feel autominers are one of the most detrimental aspects of the game, it kills mining, removes incentive to do things in the game and makes it stupidly easy to make a massive battle cv or base every day of the week if you want. Coupled with the fact that they do not deplete resource nodes (ridiculous this hasnt been fixed yet) and you have almost got yourself a free item menu and never have to leave the planet you are living on.

You get to a point where autominers is all you use, as it makes no sense to waste your time doing anything else when you get all these minerals for free pretty much.

Not overpowered at all. They're in a good position because from what i understand from the design decision regarding mining, is that it is meant to be a thing only for the beginning of the game. When you get your resources together and set up auto miners, you have plenty to do and mining becomes managing your autominers and less hassle. Sounds absolutely fair imo.

[Dex]

So, again, do autominers work only when someone is online on the server? Or do they work regardless of the zone being loaded?

[infernaldragon5]

autominers work as long as the server is up.

[Kryzzk]

Originally posted by Murder Boner:

Coupled with the fact that they do not deplete resource nodes (ridiculous this hasnt been fixed yet) and you have almost got yourself a free item menu and never have to leave the planet you are living on.

This isn't a glitch or bug that needs to be fixed, they work this way by design because of busy servers that run out of ore, not as big an issue now that you can have an istance playfield but it was an issue on some servers like the one I play on where all the resources had been mined out so the Server owner and staff were having to manually reset playfields and add new ones.

Originally posted by Dex:

So, again, do autominers work only when someone is online on the server? Or do they work regardless of the zone being loaded?

Originally posted by infernaldragon5:

autominers work as long as the server is up.

Could be a bug on the server I play on due to the age of the server, but when a playfield unloaded, (had no one on it) the autominers stopped, no power use, no ore collection. But again, could be a bug becuase of how old the server is.