How to make a mining loop. ("mine > refine" loop. FOR R-MINING TURRETS ONLY.)

Examples for setting up automated mining > refining loops.

Minimum requirments

You'll need:
1) A crewed ship controlled by a captain. The ship must have at least one "R-Mining turret" and "Mining System" installed.
2) Explored sectors with asteroids (the more - the better) and at least one resource depot nearby to refine raw ore.

Basic loop.

Everything is done in the galaxy map interface.

1) Open the map and find an asteroid-rich sector with a resource depot either in it or in one of the connected sectors.

2) Bring the ship to the sector with asteroids and make sure it doesn't have any commands queued - the queued commands are listed in the bottom left corner of your screen.

3) With the ship selected first click on the "Mine" button. Then, while holding the SHIFT button throughout the rest of the process, right-click on the sector with resource depot (this will queue the ship to move there when its cargo bay is full), press the "Refine" button (this will queue the ship to dock at the depot and refine whatever ore it has in cargo), right-click on the sector with asteroids again (this will queue the ship to go back there again) and press the "Loop" button.

In short, your loop order should look like this:

(1) MINE > (2) MOVE > (3) REFINE > (4) MOVE > (5) LOOP > (1)


If everything was done right your ship will be doing mining and refining over and over again unless you stop it yourself...

...Or untill the sector gets dried up, in which case you will start recieving messages about your ship not being able to find resources and not being able to refine (If you ignore it, the ship will keep on jumping between two systems untill the asteroids respawn again after some time and the loop starts working again). You'll want to set up more complex loops.

Complex loop example

The goal here is to make sure your loop keeps running and provides you with steady income of resources. That way you won't have to set up new routes at new coordinates every 5-10 minutes.

Example:

You find few connected sectors with asteroids and at least one depot.
Say it's 3 sectors with asteroids: A, B, C
And 1 sector with depot: D

You could plot mining route like this:

A_MINE > jump > B_MINE > jump > C_MINE > jump > D_REFINE > C > B > A_LOOP... !

What will happen:

Ship will mine in "A" till cargo is full. Then it wil jump to "B" to mine again but the cargo is full so it will jump to "C" and finally to "D" where it will refine the ore. Then It will head back to "A" and start over again. When "A" depletes, it will leave to "B" and mine there, pass "C" and refine in "D". Then "B" depletes - it will mine in "C" and refine...

By the time "C" depletes, "A" will probably have it's resources respawned so the loop goes non-stop!
(Unless, of course, those sectors have low amount of resources and/or your ship is equiped with a lot of good turrets and a lot of cargo bays, then you'll have to add more sectors into the loop).

Also note: when/if one of the sectors gets depleted you will recieve the message from the ship.

You can add as many sectors as you want. You can add as many depots as you want: on the edges of the loop, in-between mining sectors of the loop...
! THEORETICALLY ! you can make a loop running from the edge of the galaxy to it's core with pit-stops at depots, if you have the patience.

Most important part - you have to always make the loop closed. A >...>A_LOOP !

#MININGLOOPLENGTHCHALLENGE

[Lord_Nico]

Tu mate

[Gregarius]

Direct link to the mod that re-enables queued orders/looping: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2565262170

[Gregarius]

I see you've been away for a while :)

They got rid of queued orders for ships. BUT - there's a new mod that re-enabled it, so this guide is still useful for those people. There was a huge stink about it, including lots of negative reviews on the Avorion store page. More here: https://forum.avorion.net/index.php?/topic/7704-some-background-on-the-new-map-commands

[Mr.Freud]

And also another reason was to set up long routes with many sectors to mine and refine so you didn't have to waste time to give new orders every 5-10 minutes.

[Mr.Freud]

@Gregarius
In your first example (A_MINE > jump > B_MINE > jump > C_MINE > jump > D_REFINE > jump > C_MINE > jump > B_MINE > jump > A_LOOP... !) There is only one refining point (D_). Your ship would spend more time traveling then mining and refining. (After refining at D it wil mine again in C BUT THEN it will travel > B > A > B > C > D to refine again. So it will waste a lot of time not making a profit for you.

But if you can find a place where BOTH A and D have refining stations you will make more money per hour compared to your example.

The main point of this guide was to explain how to use LOOP Order when mining. I'm not sure if they have made changes to remote mining or the Loop Order in 2.0 so I'm not sure if this guide is still relevant.

[etopsirhc]

@Gregarius i'm guessing he means you have to close the loop in reverse so it's a line too and from and not a circle around. gonna test this out later with both an ABCDA and an ABCDCBA setup. but it kinda makes sense to use the latter as it will keep from emptying both out as fast while keeping B as a backup.

[Gregarius]

I'm a bit confused by the " > C > B > A_LOOP" section of your complex loop. Are you suggesting the ship, after refining, travels back to C to mine, and then to B to mine, and then to A to mine, reversing the previous sectors from A>B>C to C>B>A, and then loops?

If this is the case, would it be more accurate to write it like this?:

A_MINE > jump > B_MINE > jump > C_MINE > jump > D_REFINE > jump > C_MINE > jump > B_MINE > jump > A_LOOP... !

Or are you explaining a possible travel route back to A by including C and then B even though A might be closer? If that's the case, this might be a bit clearer:

A_MINE > jump > B_MINE > jump > C_MINE > jump > D_REFINE > (travel back to A) > A_LOOP... !

[Yeppermint]

Thanks a bunch dude. This helped a lot lol I was really lost when I got tossed that free extra ship from the tutorial quest.

[Gregarius]

Great idea. It was getting hectic having to redo all my routes each time a sector was empty. I didn't realize they respawned. Thanks for this.