Miner mercs won't mine.

[Origin of Storms]

^That's it. Worked earlier when I had one miner and one recon, but now, with three miners, they don't do anything when flanking me as I mine. They also fly away from/off the map whenever I tell them to auto mine. Their cargo holds are empty, they all have mining equipment. Changing tactical stance makes no difference.

Am I screwing this up? Is anyone else experiencing this?

EDIT: Seems they won't assist with mining that is associated with a mission. The autotask still has them flying off into deep space, though, after filling their cargo hold once and not depositing it anywhere.

[Daering]

I've never had problems like this with vanilla or mod mining ships. Usually, when they fill the load with minerals they return to formation with me or unload their cargo to my mining silo if there is any in sector.
One thing you can try is to leave them in station and then get them back on duty. Not sure if this will help, but it worth to try it.

[Origin of Storms]

I've tried out some stuff since my first post. It seems mercs simply won't touch material associated with a mission. I suppose this is so they don't mine everything and break the mission. That's fine. They've mined everything else I've actively taken them to and mined with them.

I built a silo in the middle of Void Starcross and sat next to it ready to empty it when they drop off. I set three miner specific mercs to auto mine. They fill their holds once, drop off once (which I promptly emptied), fill their holds again, then fly out into deep space without a course change or turn, never returning so long as they are still set to auto mine.

[momoguru]

i will prevent them from automining if there are no (valid non mission) rocks to mine.
also, transport mercs will move the ore from the silo to the nearest station for you ;)

[Origin of Storms]

Another update...
I got three new mercs, two miners and one transporter. I set them up to do their thing and left for a couple hours. When I returned, the two miners had mined and deposited everything in the vicinity of the silo (but not in the entire sector) and were again outside the map in deep space. The transporter was still working hard moving rock into the nearest station.

Notes:
The miners without a transporter, even if I am clearing the silo, went off the map after the second time they filled their cargo holds.

Without the silo, they filled their holds once and went off the map.

With the transporter, the miners do their job within a some radius (I assume) of the silo.

So afk automining requires at least level 1 structure build operation skill, the platform to build a silo on, a miner merc, and a transporter merc.
Thanks for the response, Momo. I'm really enjoying the game so far.

[Spoopy Owl]

i hope this sort of gets corrected later, i haven't got to the point of doing mercs yet, but I hope to get there eventually. I'm up to a mining carrier now and am making over a million per cargo load. so only a matter of time.

at least the, running off into deep space. you would think if they get full they should come back to either you, or to a station. I wonder if they're just trying ot get to a different silo or something to offload, but for some reason don't know ot take the warp gate

[Origin of Storms]

In my case, I only have one silo. I left the game running overnight to level the mercs again, this time with two miners, one transport, and one pirate merc set to patrol. In the morning, the miners and pirate were outside the map, and the transport was going back and forth, but not picking up the crates left around the silo by the miners.

The system is a great idea, but the execution seems a little confused for now. I intend to build a station in a zone without any default stations and see how it goes there.

[Daering]

The way I set my mercs is like this.
I have a station and a silo built in WH. I have two mining ships and one transport ship, all the rest are warships. All ships are placed on an auto-task, my personal ship is with modules turned on, "attacks the current target" from top down panel (the hidden one under the modules) and with only to target he Raiders, nothing else - no loot or stations, just raiders.

The miners do exactly what they should - mining like crazy, drop the cargo around silo and continue until I stop them. Transport ship just can't keep whit two of them, but it also just transport minerals from droped cargo to my station. Everything else patrol the sector and engage incoming raiders. My ship is fully autonated that way - just have to be sure I don't have anything in target list except for raiders.

Don’t know if the fact that there is no other stations around or there are plenty of resource or anything, but the things seems smoot and corect in my game. Also, my mercs are custom one, they are most from Dreadnought class with good passive range and this way they have minerals in their target range most of the time. Maybe that's the thing too

* edit - i think there's one thing that should be mentioned - i start new game and import my pilot after every patch, this way I am sure that the new stuff and improvement over the old stuff is applyed to my game. Atleast with some of the old patches there was requirement for new game for some of the improvements to work. Maybe, just maybe this can fix it for you if you didn't start new game after the last patch.

[Origin of Storms]

I see... Is the custom mercs thing a mod? I've been thinking it would be cool to equip my own ships and have mercs pilot them.

[momoguru]

Originally posted by Origin of Storms:

In my case, I only have one silo. I left the game running overnight to level the mercs again, this time with two miners, one transport, and one pirate merc set to patrol. In the morning, the miners and pirate were outside the map, and the transport was going back and forth, but not picking up the crates left around the silo by the miners.

The system is a great idea, but the execution seems a little confused for now. I intend to build a station in a zone without any default stations and see how it goes there.

if you get the mercs and game in that state of 'confusion' again, please save and email me the pilot save folder. it will let me track down the issue much faster than trying to replicate. jace at astrox imperium tot corn

[Daering]

Originally posted by Origin of Storms:

I see... Is the custom mercs thing a mod? I've been thinking it would be cool to equip my own ships and have mercs pilot them.

I use my ATC NPC ship pack mod most of the time, so I can test how well or bad I equip them, so I can improve them and make changes if necessary.

You can use existing npc mods or you can make your own ships and with little .txt edit to make merc to use them. Astrox is rather mod friendly game even for beginners (like me, for example). And if you need any help, there's Discord chanel with ppl willing to help and answer any question.

[Origin of Storms]

Originally posted by momoguru:

if you get the mercs and game in that state of 'confusion' again, please save and email me the pilot save folder. it will let me track down the issue much faster than trying to replicate. jace at astrox imperium tot corn

You got it. Pilot save folder zipped and sent, with a little more explanation in the email.

[Origin of Storms]

Yeah, the miners mine, but the transport doesn't empty his cargo into the station. Kind of derails the whole thing.

[El Capitan Kirk]

I hope no one minds the necro, but this is the only post that comes up using Google that includes info about what I'm asking...

EDIT: for clarity, I am using eXperimental mod with added ship mods.

So Mercs WILL NOT mine mission asteroids? I'm having trouble getting a hired merc to do this, so I'm assuming this is true. The ship I chose has no active slots so I'm not about to be able to do these missions myself, and half the missions for the faction I want to focus on first have been to mine or scan.

Anyone know of something I can edit to undo this, or will it break mission progression?

[momoguru]

I made it so mercs DO NOT complete mission mining. the issue was that the merc would mine the rock, trigger mission complete. then the merc dies and you can turn in the ore. after a few complaints, i made it so the mercs will NOT collect mission rocks.

The other issue was multilple mercs grabbing bits of the mission ore, then struggling to compile the ore back in one spot to turn it in.

i think i need to make t so that the merc CAN mine the mission rock, but if killed, the cargo will persist , allowing you to go get the mission ore from the dead merc. perhaps preventing multiple mercs fro harvesting at the same time. i think that makes more sense.

[El Capitan Kirk]

Originally posted by momoguru:

I made it so mercs DO NOT complete mission mining. the issue was that the merc would mine the rock, trigger mission complete. then the merc dies and you can turn in the ore. after a few complaints, i made it so the mercs will NOT collect mission rocks.

The other issue was multilple mercs grabbing bits of the mission ore, then struggling to compile the ore back in one spot to turn it in.

i think i need to make t so that the merc CAN mine the mission rock, but if killed, the cargo will persist , allowing you to go get the mission ore from the dead merc. perhaps preventing multiple mercs fro harvesting at the same time. i think that makes more sense.

Ah, thx for confirmation and explanation. Makes sense, and sounds good. Cheers