Mining fleet behavior

[Edwyndham]

Loving the game so far.

Been working on the mining in the game and have set up a Mule (that I control) and also a small fleet of smaller shuttles/yachts with mining equipment, but I'm running into some small snags with their behavior, wondering if this is just a design thing or if I've missed something:

- Despite having cargo space / collector beam, they will not actually collect anything (which is why I've mostly switched them to just shuttles, no point giving them anything larger) and I just hoover everything up with my Mule

- Regardless of how I've tried to set up their behavior, the ones using mining lasers do this really inefficient method of mining where they sweep the laser back and forth - I say inefficient because most of the time their sweep is so wide that they're mostly just shooting off into empty space rather than hitting the rock. (I haven't tried the mining missile, maybe this works better?)

- It's so far been *way* more efficient to just give them their own mining drones, which do a lot better at cutting rocks up (I can get my fleet throwing out like 12 drones right now, and also use a custom heavy mining laser on my mule). But I've noticed that (1) they won't use the mining drones unless they have a mining laser equipped in a weapon slot, and (2) even then, they will use *just* the drones and ignore the laser completely.


Am I missing something buried in the UI here or is this just stuff that needs to get tuned up in a patch at some point?

[Ironcinder]

- At the moment, mining fleets will only burn rocks, nor collect not refine them.

- To mine well, the captain ideally has both Gunner and Pilot. I've found it hard to get a crew member that useful, so I've been putting Diversified or Balanced (not Specialised) Gunner crew of very low level as captains. In short enough order they learn Pilot then they can both fly to and shoot a rock. It does take a minute.

[pedrofrigoli]

wait... mining fleet use mining drones?
I'm pretty sure I tried this and it didn't work...
I'm not 100% sure I put a mining laser on it... maybe I have to try again...
Anyways, In my experience, a single purple heavy drone mines way faster than my purple PCM refinery can refine ore... so unless you are willing to have a lot of equipment space dedicated to it, and use multiple refineries, even if it looks like you are mining really slow with a single drone, you won't be able to refine faster than that...

[skunkmonkey]

Get the flux turbo refinery (can't recall the name exactly). It spends 1 flux to instantly process 10 ore. You get that with the flux batteries (again not sure of the name) and you can instantly process all your ore

[Edwyndham]

Some new info I found playing around ...

So, as I said, fleet ships won't use both the mining laser and mining drones, BUT ... they WILL use both the demolition mining missiles and the drones at the same time, which is great.

Only minor problem is that the missile, erm, push the rocks away, so I need to be quick at micromanaging my tractor beam.

[CattMeister]

It's way faster to have a mining fleet than doing everything yourself.
I did it on the dominance and carrying the shuttles on the ship whenever I didn't need them out or a threat was inbound.

Especially with dreadnoughts you really don't want to mine everything yourself.

Flux refinery is pretty speedy but with larger ships the flux generates incredibly slow. I personally found it to be faster with 5 PMC refineries though this does take up more space and energy.

Early on it's a bit of a trade-off between efficiency and user input... and risk.
A couple of times I lost my shuttles because enemy dropped on me and just one shot obliterated a couple of my shuttles.

[Edwyndham]

Originally posted by KamikazeTMX:

i know a way betta solution.. im a 1 man mining fleet and my own made mining beam super upgraded splices everything so fast im done in a few min with a big asteroid cluster field.. then up to the next... lol

I'm doin' both :>

[Bullhammer]

I am not a fan of the mining A.I.
If you take a dreadnought, cruiser, or fregatt and give them enough mining lasers you can laterally "hoover" alongside an asteroid field while firing the mining laser straight ahead and clear everything in no time.

[pedrofrigoli]

Originally posted by Bullhammer:

I am not a fan of the mining A.I.
If you take a dreadnought, cruiser, or fregatt and give them enough mining lasers you can laterally "hoover" alongside an asteroid field while firing the mining laser straight ahead and clear everything in no time.

well, that involves changing all your gear every time you want to mine something, or dedicate a significant portion of your gear constantly to that, even if you are not mining all the time...
If you already have a dreadnaught, you can just equip a corvette in your hangar, filled with mining drones, a good armor and emergency warp and it won't be killed easily and it will mine just fine, while you dedicate your main ship 100% to battle.

[cdplayer906]

i just run 6 mining drones and scroll on my phone for a couple minutes

[Zarinthal]

Originally posted by cdplayer906:

i just run 6 mining drones and scroll on my phone for a couple minutes

Exactly, if I were an actual spaceship owner lasering rocks all day, I'm sure I'd be watching TV or something on the console of my space ship. Nothing wrong with doing it in games too, its never been immersion breaking for me to have some second screen on for passing time

[Dix Dark]

So, they do not unload the stuff they mined, just collect it, and then I have to manually unload it to station and load to my main ship for processing... that's kinda tedious and not fun... why fleet ships can't unload stuff into the main ship?

Also, why can't they mine rocks and not the space around them? Why that sweeping motion?

[Origin of Storms]

Instead of all that, you could try mining like real man by taking your Cerberus with legendary impact booster into an asteroid rush zone and go to the right until your hold is full. No messing with fleets necessary, unless it's another Cerberus.

Edit: When I wrote this comment, I was joking, but then I found Thraknar: Red Skull Pilot, who gives plus 60 percent impact damage.... So I tried it. It really is much faster than any other mining method I've tried. It took me about three minutes to fill Cerberus' cargo hold.

Smaller asteroids are destroyed on first impact, larger ones bounce forward and as often as not hit another incoming asteroid and bounce right back into Cerb's spikes and are destroyed. Many do fly off without breaking. I think this is my new mining method...

Edit 2: With Thraknar, purple impact booster, and +10% impact dmg X3 ship enhancement, most asteroids simply break on impact. It took me less than two minutes to completely fill Cerb's cargo hold (with syndicate expansion).

That said, I haven't tried outfitting the Cerb with 10 refineries to keep up with ore. The constant traveling back and forth to unload could be annoying. Still, this seems like the fastest mining method by far.

[Gottchar]

With the latest patches, does the issue still persist?

[Spud the Spud]

I just do the mining with a laser on my main mining ship, as well as the processing, and have the other ships follow and dump my processed inventory to them from time to time. The mining part is fast, the processing is slower (but I could carry more refineries, it's fine) but still manageable and fine.

The problem is transferring it to the other ships to carry around for me until we return to base. The best I've been able to come up with is to have them close to 20 range, while I turn off my collection, and slowly fly in some random direction (ideally toward the next asteroid field, in practice doesn't happen like that too often). As I'm flying, I'm jettisoning stuff for the other ships to pick up with their collection beams.

This would be SO MUCH EASIER if I could just tell them not to collect ores. I need to keep them farther away when I'm mining or they just scoop up everything they can, which includes a lot of ore. Or if there was some easier method of transferring the stuff from ship to ship that didn't involve doing it in a station. I don't have a solution, really, but it more or less works as is I suppose.

[Gottchar]

Originally posted by Spud the Spud:

I just do the mining with a laser on my main mining ship, as well as the processing, and have the other ships follow and dump my processed inventory to them from time to time. The mining part is fast, the processing is slower (but I could carry more refineries, it's fine) but still manageable and fine.

The problem is transferring it to the other ships to carry around for me until we return to base. The best I've been able to come up with is to have them close to 20 range, while I turn off my collection, and slowly fly in some random direction (ideally toward the next asteroid field, in practice doesn't happen like that too often). As I'm flying, I'm jettisoning stuff for the other ships to pick up with their collection beams.

This would be SO MUCH EASIER if I could just tell them not to collect ores. I need to keep them farther away when I'm mining or they just scoop up everything they can, which includes a lot of ore. Or if there was some easier method of transferring the stuff from ship to ship that didn't involve doing it in a station. I don't have a solution, really, but it more or less works as is I suppose.

I just let them collect if they happen to fly into it, but they have a refiner running, too. As they are a good bit slower, by the time I unload they barely still have ore, and what they have I just grab myself. My mining ships are big though and have plenty of space for one refinery.