Automate miners?

[Guedez]

I was expecting to make a miner and automate it, but it seems I need to do all the work all the way down to targeting ore?

[CptnRedstone]

You still need to move mining ships around manually, but you can click drag or click multiple times using the salvaging tool to speed things up a lot.

[joemama1512]

Right. Hit the scavenge button and draw a big box around your general area and your dudes will go to town, as well as mining lasers.

There is an official mod that boosts the mining laser range to 400 which I'd highly recommend. They are energy hogs and block each other so you wouldnt really want to use them offensively much, but the mods makes mining much better.

[Guedez]

No, I wanted a miner to go around collecting resources as I fight and complete quests with the other ship. If I have to mine manually, then it's a pointless feature as I can get much more money through fights unless it's a diamond vein or something.

[joemama1512]

You are out of luck then. Keep in mind that you generally only do mining early game anyways for safe income. Lack of dudes becomes the blocking factor pretty soon and you can get more money by killing stuff.

Guess that is why all those rocks are just sitting out tehre in space...

[RED-Life]

Originally posted by Guedez:

No, I wanted a miner to go around collecting resources as I fight and complete quests with the other ship. If I have to mine manually, then it's a pointless feature as I can get much more money through fights unless it's a diamond vein or something.

The best way to make money is mining copper and setting up production for coils and hyper coils, at least from my experience. 180 hyper coils sells for 27,000 which is pretty profitable with 2 miner ships with 4 of the biggest storage bay, 2 mining lasers and 42 crew size (not necessary but makes hauling faster).

My advice? Make your main ship have a hyperdrive beacon, then make mining ships that consume at most 2-3 fuel per hyperdrive jump and use it to jump to and back from stations, makes mining and salvaging pretty easy, you could also transfer the minerals to your manufacturer ship, then transfer it back and have the miner jump to the station to sell your product, then jump back and begin production again. You'll make way more cash this way than you could ever make destroying pirates.

[joemama1512]

Whuut? A hyperdrive beacon?? Ok, interesting. Ill check that out.