Fleet minning not working?

[Byamarro]

Anyone have issues with fleet minning in latest Starmade version (0.198.48), or is it just me?
My ship is floating and doing nothing when ordered to mine.

 

[nightrune]

There are a couple tickets in, This one is one of the first I searched for.

T1564 Mining drones stop working after one mined asteroid

Likely others.

 

[StormWing0]

hmm strange could have sworn it was working in the current update.

 

[Jananton]

Yup, I had a perfect working mining carrier until the asteroid update. After that the miners just fly to an asteroid and either just sit there, or move a little to reposition them selves, even bumping into the rock from time to time, but that's all they do now.

And yes, I checked and tested all systems are connected correctly as from the time it did work.

Greets,

Jan

 

[Tunk]

Feels like the mining fleet AI was implemented with a cat brain, which was unfortunately damaged in the process.

 

[Andir]

Just restarted a new world this week on my server and got a simple drone that started mining. Flew over and saw it working, left to make a warpgate to another system. Logged out forgetting all about the drone. Came back the next day to see that the drone had no stocks and it was just sitting there. The asteroid had a hole bored through it, but the cargo was emptied. I'm not saying it was aliens...

 

[Bladeriker]

Just restarted a new world this week on my server and got a simple drone that started mining. Flew over and saw it working, left to make a warpgate to another system. Logged out forgetting all about the drone. Came back the next day to see that the drone had no stocks and it was just sitting there. The asteroid had a hole bored through it, but the cargo was emptied. I'm not saying it was aliens...

Is it possible that when you logged out that the salv comp got disconnected from the Storage, or the storage from the Cargo blocks?

I have had that happen in the past.

 

[Tunk]

Mining drones in a nutshell.

 

[Xacktar]

Check that they have enough cargo space. If they have no space for items, they stop mining.

 

[Inspired2150]

Well, I am necroing this pretty hard, but I guess it's still better than creating a new thread.

I am currently attempting to test things on the latest DEV build (0.199.276) but the fleet mining just doesn't work.
Sometimes the drones will fly towards the asteroid, look at it, but don't mine.
Sometimes the same drones will fly towards the asteroid and start spinning around.
Sometimes the same drones will spin around when set to "Idle in formation"
Sometimes they will actually go ahead and mine the asteroids, BUT they still mimick my (flagship) direction between beam pulses.

Sometimes closing and reopening the game helps, and drones start working mysteriously.
Most of the issues with fleet minig have been reported as far as March 2016, so I assume the developers are aware of the problems, but for the time being, does anyone have any insight on how to bypass the bugs and increase the chance of drones working?

On this screenshot you can see that one drone is mining, while 3 identical ones are just spinning around. After the asteroid was mined out, all 4 started spinning around instead.
Dropbox - minerderp2.png

 

[StormWing0]

Noticing this as well it hasn't worked in some time and no clue how to perma fix it on our end, this is a dev end thing that needs fixing badly.

 

[kurosawa]

it never worked .

nice idea thou

 

[TheGeek007]

I have been testing mining drones myself and had the following observations:

1. The mining programming doesn't know how to aim more than one output. I've had good success with a mining drone design with 100 salvage with 100 cannon slave, with a single output. 10-12 of these seem to be optimal at mining a single asteroid.

2. The pattern at which fleet miners operate is super simple. It appears to start at a fixed point, and then removes blocks all in a line. Likely just adding x+1 or somesuch. The pattern doesn't seem to care if there is a block there or not, and if the pattern is broken it seems to take awhile to restart the pattern. In fact, i'd gather whenever a drone doesn't seem to be working, its simply going through this pattern and hasn't found any blocks to mine. Relatedly, a standard waffle pattern salvage array often will mine blocks ahead in the pattern, and cause the miner to pause long enough for the pattern to catch up.

 

[kingreol]

I'm guessing the update after this great NPC update will fix these fleet ai bugs. I can hope

 

[KiloZulu]

Make sure your drone has storage blocks, and that the salvage beam computer is connected to the storage module. Without the connection, the drones will race out to a rock and then just sit and look at it.

Do not make drones with multiple salvage beams. This seems to confuse drones and can cause them to sit and spin once they get to a rock.

 

[StormWing0]

I've had drones with all they needed setup correctly stop functioning before so it's more than just that.

 

[Inspired2150]

Make sure your drone has storage blocks, and that the salvage beam computer is connected to the storage module. Without the connection, the drones will race out to a rock and then just sit and look at it.

Do not make drones with multiple salvage beams. This seems to confuse drones and can cause them to sit and spin once they get to a rock.

Nah, same drones will work and then stop working randomly, one beam or multiple. On the screenshot there are 4 drones that are identical, 3 of them don't work, while one sort of does, until the asterpoid is mined out, of course, then even that one breaks. I even made a bare minimum drone with unslaved salvager, chest, storage, power , thrusters and faction block. It just spins around and does nothing. Works perfectly when used manually. There is something horribly wrong with the AI

 

[StarWars1981]

Nah, same drones will work and then stop working randomly, one beam or multiple. On the screenshot there are 4 drones that are identical, 3 of them don't work, while one sort of does, until the asterpoid is mined out, of course, then even that one breaks. I even made a bare minimum drone with unslaved salvager, chest, storage, power , thrusters and faction block. It just spins around and does nothing. Works perfectly when used manually. There is something horribly wrong with the AI

Actually, the problem is all of the above, and none of the above. If you sneeze, the AI derps. If you mine anything, the AI derps. If you look at him funny, the AI derps.

There's no immediately obvious trigger event for the derping AI, so much !!SCIENCE!! (read Dwarf Fortress forums, lol) is needed on this topic.

 

[Inspired2150]

Actually, the problem is all of the above, and none of the above. If you sneeze, the AI derps. If you mine anything, the AI derps. If you look at him funny, the AI derps.

There's no immediately obvious trigger event for the derping AI, so much !!SCIENCE!! (read Dwarf Fortress forums, lol) is needed on this topic.

Well, dwarf fortress is some next level coding! By the way, when you get your drones to mine, do they still turn in the direction where your mothership is facing? Because they do for me. I don't think this is intended behaviour.

 

[Ezekial Alexander]

By the way, when you get your drones to mine, do they still turn in the direction where your mothership is facing? Because they do for me. I don't think this is intended behaviour.

I had that happen when I accidentally f1+f8ed a test target while in another ship. not sure if that's intended either, but I found it interesting.