Drone Mining Fleet EXASPERATION :/

[_ArkAngel_]

I made some drones yesterday that mined the asteroid field before half of them burned in the sun.

Today I made improvements, and the new drones will not mine. :/ This would be less frustrating if it never worked in the first place.

Yesterday, I discovered that the salvage units on my dead drones were accidentally not connected to storage. Oops! I connected the storage, and they came to life! Watching those drones work felt awesome!

The new drones are bigger - 10 beams of 9 salvage with 9 damage pulse, all connected to one computer. But they don't do anything.

The bobby AI on them says "Fleet" and enabled. (And "Any"). The faction modules are set. The core is connected to the salvage. The salvage is connected to the storage. The storage is connected to a bunch of cargo space.

I can order them to a sector with asteroids and they go there. And wait. And when I order them to mine? They wait some more...

If I drag them to within meters of asteroids and tell them go... nothing happens.


That about sums it up. I enjoyed moving my ships as a fleet for a little while - My non-militarized ships were defended while I attended to other things.

Until I told my fleet to fly from one end of my system to the other end. Through a star. Boom!

But I decided to try mining drones and I kind of enjoyed it for a few minutes, haha. They frustration on all this is extremely high!

Pickup points work depending on orientation, but... Sometimes that doesn't work. I've probably spent literally hours messing around with pickup points that don't pickup. Frustrating.


Any ideas about the mining drones? Other than staying away from stars?

 

[Crusade]

link pickup points to a logic clock to force segment updates, this makes docking a lot easier.
As for mining drones, make sure they're trying to mine an asteroid that isn't moving. An asteroid that's moving causes issues with drone targeting. Equip your flagship with a stop beam to solve this issue - if this IS your issue of course.

 

[J3FF3RY]

If the cargo/storage is full on the drone it will stop it from mining when you send it back out to mine.

 

[_ArkAngel_]

The drones I had working did stop collecting when their cargo was full. I witnessed that behavior.

Today, the new drone fleet wouldn't collect under any circumstances. I made it by feeding the old drones to a shipyard, then spitting out the "improved" versions. After they refused to work, I admin loaded copies of the drones that were working yesterday. That do not work today because... ?

So, I'll go be a good alpha tester and see if I can figure out if there are times when they will collect resources.

I think I'd quit like half of my life right now if I could get my hands on the AI code and start implementing some solid fleet logic. I'd like my ships to avoid other ships, avoid stars, allow me to set way points, allow me to designate targets, or to follow or defend a particular ship...

 

[_ArkAngel_]

I feel so dumb for not realizing the problem!

Monday, May 23rd was Dronedependance Day! Of course drones don't work on a Galactic Drone Holiday! It's really against their inhuman rights to force them to do so. They were justified in just sitting there doing nothing Monday.

Today, I logged in to Starmade, put in the fleet order to mine the sector, and off to work they went!

I changed nothing. :/

They were in a sector full of asteroids when they were refusing Monday. They mined the hell out of it today.

I'm not going to get too frustrated about it, because I, for one, welcome my new mining drone overlords... And I accept their wisdom.

 

[Control]

link pickup points to a logic clock to force segment updates, this makes docking a lot easier.

what are "segment updates" ? How do you use logic to force them?

 

[Crusade]

Ir forces the pickup point to rotate, and keep updating the segment it's in (16x16x16 area)