Mining Adjustment request

[The_Exile]

So i was just hoping the devs would read this and do a small change to the way mining works. could you try and make it so ships don't target the same asteroids (fighters would all Target the asteroid their mothership is targeting). it's kinda fustrating sometimes when you jump a fleet into a system and set them to mining or salvaging and they all target the same asteroid or ship. it tends to make multiple mining ships fairly useless. you either have to manually move ships to different points to make them mine most of the sector without sharing roids, or send them off into different sectors to mine seperately, and thats not always convenient, or safe, especially in higher tier sectors. I really hope the devs take this into consideration.

[rickcarson]

I think (though I don't have any special insight) that the logic is to have them target the closest asteroid and then move towards it, rinse and repeat.

I've done an 'analysis' (implied massive air-quotes) where I tried to show that even if you did have ships and send them to opposite ends of the sector and set them mining that they would eventually end up tag-teaming everything, just because of how a random walk like that works.

I don't know if the logic can be changed ... however that said there was a mod where you could set priorities for miners - e.g. tell them to ignore iron and only gather titanium.

I don't know if that's still working though, since I use the (vanilla) mining missions to do exactly the same thing, for exactly the same reasons.

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Honestly if I wanted the devs to tweak the AI the big one would be "when escorting me don't stop shooting the pirate just because they're down to 2-4% health". :D

But that might be due to a bunch of other things, I don't know

[rickcarson]

Also, on higher difficulty levels you kind of do actually want your ships to cluster up, because when random attackers spawn then your fleet is cohesive, and the odds of them ganking a straggler go down.

At least that's the case for me with a recent game, after a few battles I decided I didn't mind the clumping and it was actually helping. On lower difficulty levels I probably could just send them to separate sectors and not worry about it. Especially if there's some locals handy to be cannonfodder. *discrete cough* I mean 'lend a hand'

[The_Exile]

Well to be fair some people might like that, but i play on pretty high difficulty, and i also have random events turned up to max, so i be getting attacked by pirates and xsotan every 5 minutes minimum. i've been playing like this for a long time. most of my mining carriers are strong enough to solo a massive xsotan invasion by themselves so i don't really need clumping. especially if some of my miners are drawing some of the xsotan or pirates away making it so one ship doesn't get ganged up to much. and i know its supposed to be a slower paced game sorta, but when i got the resources to build enough ships to mine an avorion level sector in like 10 or 15 minutes but they clump up and all target the same roid and it instead takes 45 minutes to an hour, thats kinda annoying. i mean maybe they could add an option for mining teams in ship stats. so that people who still need their ship clustered together can have their ships mining the same roid, and turning it off means ships won't target the same roids. idk. i'm just trying to get a bit of improvement to mining

[rickcarson]

I hear what you're saying, but _for me_ the 'improvement in mining' was _me_ figuring out how mining missions work and adjusting my strategies accordingly.

But I understand not everyone is onboard with them, so hopefully someone in a more similar position can share some tips or something that will help you out. Or maybe dig up that mod I talked about and try to figure it out.

Maybe ... make a new carrier command for 'spread out'? I dunno.

[Blueberry Muffins!]

From some quick checks on the modding docs, how about: add a sector script that tracks targeting penalties for asteroids, probably by player id, add that penalty to the calculated distance. When mine.lua(?) picks a target, set a penalty for it. For missions you could maybe even key the penalty off mission safety, or use a player safety setting. Small penalty, ships won't be driven to look too far.

[Blueberry Muffins!]

No need for the sector script, just adding some entity values to track current targets does it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3241346920

[The_Exile]

Thx. i'll definitely give that a shot. i prefer playing Avorion unmodded but i might give this one a shot

[Blueberry Muffins!]

I just now added salvage-fleet ops to it.

[The_Exile]

yea i noticed when i exited the game for a moment and came back. thx. this is amazing and exactly what i've been wanting

[Blueberry Muffins!]

The feedback got in, made my day, thanks for that, really.

Been playing with the behavior, don't really know how to test with more than just me, I've uploaded a tweak with the ships behaving more fleet-y, staying generally in each others' vicinity. It looks good on the strategy display, you can watch them act like a mining fleet, clean the sector out in swaths. It's not necessarily pure upside so I figure, especially since I wrote the mod at least as much for you as for me: if you want I'll very happily revert the change.

With the new version, ships will travel a little farther to get closer to fleetmates, and are a little more willing to gang up on the last remaining asteroid in the local area so they can all move on together. One result is that pirates are much less likely to jump in near your ships, so any gank losses feel more like they do with the vanilla behavior, your fleet's at risk if you get unlucky but even with half a dozen ships you've got a good chance of losing nothing in a defended sector. On higher difficulties I think my usual way is still best: one mining ship per sector, so it's unlikely to be near wherever the pirates jump in, and if I get unlucky it was just the one ship.

[rickcarson]

Originally posted by Blueberry Muffins!:

I've uploaded a tweak with the ships behaving more fleet-y, staying generally in each others' vicinity. It looks good on the strategy display, you can watch them act like a mining fleet, clean the sector out in swaths.

This sounds awesome. You rock! (pun intended :D :D )

[The_Exile]

The mod is perfect. i really don't mind if the ships are clustered or seperate. i just wanted to stop having my dozen mining carriers mining the same asteroid and you did that perfectly. so thank you very much. i would recommend leaving the adjustment you made for others. some people may still like the clustering for protection, especially newer people or people starting a new campaign. But again i really appreciate you making this mod. you are the best