Miners not selling

[Steve_xD]

I don't really know how to explain my problem. I bought this game a few years back when i played on 5.something, then all the way into 6.2 with no issues with any part to the game. Now the game is on 7.1, ever since 7.0 and starting on the Terran start a few times and saving up for a miner or 2. I get the miners set them up to do stuff and no matter how long i wait they sell nothing, whether its Asteroid Belt or down in the Oort Cloud. Even after using the seminars to get them up to 3-star. Does anyone else have this issue of not selling what you mine?

P.S. I do use a few mods, mostly QOL and extra/new ships. Might start a vanilla run and see if the same issues show up.

[mystery]

Would say, see if it persists in vanilla & check if all mods are up to date.
That said, do check if there are stations they can sell to as they won't sell if the stations are full. In such case, it can be more beneficial to get a trader to move things around instead of another miner ship.
Last bit, make sure the mining ships are assigned to mine, not purely trade (the mine command includes selling)

[blackphoenixx]

Are their cargo holds full? They don't sell but do the mining?
Switch on trade filters and check if there are any actual buy offers they should sell to.

Do the miners have mining lasers (minimal loadout doesn't provide them by default)? Buyer stations have updated trade data?

There might also be an issue with conflicting blacklists so i'd check those too.

[Steve_xD]

yes holds are full and have mining lasers, i only have 3 M Miners so far on my newest run. I have no blacklists set up yet and I have satellites at stations to check what they buy/sell but not a single station is buying what i mine for some reason.

Maybe i've managed to get the miners too quickly after the the run started?

[zpc]

The most important thing here to understand is that if a miner isn't selling anything than there is simply no demand. (same is also true if a miner doesn't work for your own stations - than the single most reason is user error as in station setup done wrong)

The second important thing to understand is that the terran sectors are very saturated and stable. To make credits here through trading is _VERY_ rare. The simple reason lies in the foundations of X4: where there is no conflict, there is no demand. You need a faction loosing things (ships, stations, traders). Without conflict, the main syphons of the economy (which ultimately creates demand) have full storages (shipyards, wharfs, equipment docks) which in turn means they and their production chain don't buy materials. (which leads to my point 1)

So the very simple solution to your problem: go elsewhere. I usually buy 1-2 L miners and let them mine silicon in the ARG area. This is safe (for miners) and they regularly bring in 600k per trip. They do so because they have both mining grounds and a lot of different consumers in range.

[Steve_xD]

@ZPC i might just continue the game for now and see what happens after moving the M Miners to another system and setting up shop there, maybe move closer to the Split Sectors or something

[blackphoenixx]

Pious Mists IV is a pretty good bet too. You get BUC protecting your miners from Khaak and plenty of buyers with the conflict between HOP & PAR, the Khaak and the pirates.

[mystery]

Originally posted by Steve_xD:

yes holds are full and have mining lasers, i only have 3 M Miners so far on my newest run. I have no blacklists set up yet and I have satellites at stations to check what they buy/sell but not a single station is buying what i mine for some reason.

Maybe i've managed to get the miners too quickly after the the run started?

Sounds like the AI has trouble moving goods, in such case, it is better throwing some traders in the mix, so the stations can make room for new products.
Check what goods the stations buy/sell that buy ore/silicon & assign traders to those goods. Once they start producing & moving stuff again, they can buy up the ore/silicon.

[Steve_xD]

Thanks, i'll try and buy a trader and see if it helps, but for now i'm just gonna play for a bit and see if anything changes/fixes itself

Also - side question - Does anyone know how to keep a ship on the highway? i remember being able send a ship into a system and then cancel it''s job and it'd stay on the highway but it doesn't seem to work anymore, they just stop and get off and sit there.

[zpc]

Originally posted by mystery:

Originally posted by Steve_xD:

yes holds are full and have mining lasers, i only have 3 M Miners so far on my newest run. I have no blacklists set up yet and I have satellites at stations to check what they buy/sell but not a single station is buying what i mine for some reason.

Maybe i've managed to get the miners too quickly after the the run started?

Sounds like the AI has trouble moving goods, in such case, it is better throwing some traders in the mix, so the stations can make room for new products.
Check what goods the stations buy/sell that buy ore/silicon & assign traders to those goods. Once they start producing & moving stuff again, they can buy up the ore/silicon.

This is an excellent point as well. Bolstering a faction economy consists of all aspects - make sure they get raw material, provide them with the most lacking goods (usually high-tier wares), make sure their station construction sites are finished and keep their shipyards / wharfs well stocked. Eventually one will notice a growth in both civil and military ships. One can substitute for both of those with own stations and ships (both civil and military) to provide both distribution power and safety - but that's a huge commitment. Also, the more the factions are stabilized the lower the demand for goods go - and thus the player profit shrinks.

A lot to keep in mind here X4 is definately different from other games - where you'd e.g. reach the "have an own miner stage" and the game artificially keeps your miner profitabel. That's not the case in X4. Everything is really simulated, not cheated.

[phylumt]

Originally posted by zpc:

The most important thing here to understand is that if a miner isn't selling anything than there is simply no demand. (same is also true if a miner doesn't work for your own stations - than the single most reason is user error as in station setup done wrong)

The second important thing to understand is that the terran sectors are very saturated and stable. To make credits here through trading is _VERY_ rare. The simple reason lies in the foundations of X4: where there is no conflict, there is no demand. You need a faction loosing things (ships, stations, traders). Without conflict, the main syphons of the economy (which ultimately creates demand) have full storages (shipyards, wharfs, equipment docks) which in turn means they and their production chain don't buy materials. (which leads to my point 1)

So the very simple solution to your problem: go elsewhere. I usually buy 1-2 L miners and let them mine silicon in the ARG area. This is safe (for miners) and they regularly bring in 600k per trip. They do so because they have both mining grounds and a lot of different consumers in range.

If there is conflict in the system, how do you mine and keep your ship from being attacked/destroyed? Also; how do you identify which systems this would work in?

[Geist]

Originally posted by Steve_xD:

I don't really know how to explain my problem. I bought this game a few years back when i played on 5.something, then all the way into 6.2 with no issues with any part to the game. Now the game is on 7.1, ever since 7.0 and starting on the Terran start a few times and saving up for a miner or 2. I get the miners set them up to do stuff and no matter how long i wait they sell nothing, whether its Asteroid Belt or down in the Oort Cloud. Even after using the seminars to get them up to 3-star. Does anyone else have this issue of not selling what you mine?

P.S. I do use a few mods, mostly QOL and extra/new ships. Might start a vanilla run and see if the same issues show up.

Terran and Pioneer space should be ideal areas to sell Ore and Silicon and Gases. While Commonwealth space usualy is better for trading other stuff than large mining operations.

If your miners do not sell their stuff there could be several reasons. Local automine command for example only sells in the same sector they mine, if there is no station buying in this same sector the miner will do nothing.
Same applies for the 3 star auto miner command, if they cant find a station offering to buy they will do nothing.
First you should do is explore PIO and outer Terran systems to find the stations that buy minerals and gases. And while PIO or Terran economy at the game start usualy is fine wares wise, I have not yet seen a gamestart where there is no demand in minerals. But who knows, in the future we might see that because 7.5 Beta introduced station subordinate miners while before they had to rely on free miners only.

[blackphoenixx]

Conflict doesn't have to mean conflict with you.
HOP are at war with ARG and PAR so the border systems between them have regular skirmishes and pirates go after trade ships but leave miners alone, so there's a regular demand for resources to build replacement ships.

The only real threat to your miners are Khaak and Xenon, and the latter can be mostly avoided just by not mining in the few sectors they tend to heavily attack.

The non-terran NPC factions also lose miners to Khaak which does double-duty on increasing demand by decreasing their income and requiring new mining ships.

Terran space is just unique in that it doesn't have pirates and Khaak only in a few sectors, so there simply isn't much to destroy their stuff.
That lack of ship drain and their simplified economy means that they're pretty capable of supplying themselves without player help.

As for identifying where to mine your best bet is trade filters. Filter for minerals and gasses and see where stuff is needed, then pick a sector from those that also has the resource in question and set up your autominers there.

[Steve_xD]

After some troubleshooting, I’ve find the cause of my issue, it was a mod conflict/out of date mod.

[phylumt]

*updated info at bottom*
Adding to this, vs starting a new thread.

I have a Large Silicone Miner in Antigone Memorial, it appears to have 5.760 Silicone and while it looks full to me it is still showing like its still mining? I have another large silicone miner elsewhere that seems to mine and sell in around a 1 hour time interval, while I don't expect the one in Antigone Memorial to mine and sell in an hour... I'm starting to wonder if its 'stuck' or something else is wrong?

Ship has been stuck on "Searching for trades" because there is no "buying" in this area... I don't see options to tell the miner to go elsewhere to trade then come back.

[blackphoenixx]

Originally posted by phylumt:

Ship has been stuck on "Searching for trades" because there is no "buying" in this area... I don't see options to tell the miner to go elsewhere to trade then come back.

The basic automine command only considers buyers in the same sector. If you want your miner to operate over several sectors you'll need a 3-star pilot at least - on the upside that's not that hard a task to accomplish and it'll also vastly increase your silicon mining speed (a 5-star pilot & crew in an L miner delivers every 10-15 minutes or even faster).

To get your pilot to 3-star level you could scour the traders corners on stations for 1-star seminars, but i'd suggest skipping that because it's slow and tedious and you'll get more than enough from running trade guild missions, so it's better to just jump into that.

Fly to Antigone Memorial, land on the equipment dock and talk to the trade guild representative there. He'll let you join the trade guild for a small fee (50k or so iirc) which opens up new quests in ANT sectors that can reward 1- & 2-star seminars.

Those missions are all easy stuff you can do in a starter ship - satellite placing, satellite repair, getting ships out of minefields, placing resource probes and mining some mineral (that one requires an S miner at least), stuff like that.

The most important part is that multi-step missions can reward seminars for every sub-step (you can see if they do in the mission briefing window).
So a satellite repair mission to repair 3 satellites might get you 2 or 3 seminars instead of just one.

Feed those to your miner pilot and you have your first 3-star (nearly 4-star if you pick a pilot close to his next star) which lets you use advanced automine and makes them mine silicon much faster.

Segaris ALSO has a trade guild with pretty similar conditions, so if you join both you can pretty much just hop between ANT and PIO space in a fast fighter farming quests for pilot and manager seminars while managing your empire on the map in between.