How Drone Mining Works

[kurosawa]

It seems the new update has improved fleet mining quite a lot, accuracy of the mining drones have increased a lot except for the 21x21x21 drone.

How ever it was just 1 run, so need more testing

 

[MacThule]

It seems the new update has improved fleet mining quite a lot, accuracy of the mining drones have increased a lot except for the 21x21x21 drone.

Same thing here and - wow.

They mine faster, more consistently, less "rest breaks" (guess their union got busted). So now I'm very curious to see if this will improve the results for those players suffering from stubbornly broken drones.

Grab a drone miner (shameless plug) and test it out, folks. The fleet bumps in the new release seems to have improved drone mining by a lot.

 

[splatthecat]

I have yet to try as I was working on something else but I watched 3 NPC faction miners working on an asteroid. It was fascinating to watch and they did seem more "organized".

I may develop a new fleet miner, utility ship and cargo transport for this new update and maybe have a small drone mining system available too.

 

[MacThule]

Update regarding the update: It typically seems to be enough to get the drones mining a new sector to take 10 seconds to exit the server and immediately continue last play, but they then have to be called into the new sector using carrier recall most times. Once I did get them to mine a new sector after sending them off and they unloaded before I called them back so maybe that's it. Anyway... more testing due.

Plus side is that on a busy MP server using 3 simple 650 mass miners on my enhanced Vau Monk I was able to passively mine 37K cargo of materials, including 1/4M each of Rammet & Sertise, and 100K each of Parseen & Sapsun. That was over about 30 minutes with checking in every 5 minutes and moving through 3 sectors while I did laundry and made lunch.

I could never have gotten half that in that time from drones before this update.

 

[cubesteak]

Funny, I was wondering the same thing (if the update fixed drone mining at all) so I tried again and couldn't get known good drones to do anything. Sooo buggy. SIGH. I will persevere!

 

[kurosawa]

Drone accuracy is up, but the still move around for some reason. I would just code them to approach, slow down and then complete stop.
Now they sometimes zoooom from side to side at full speed.

But once they do start to mine it works much better, far from perfect, but better. It can actually be used now, so now we just need a mine system command

 

[Byamarro]

I had a dream that one day minning fleets will not require list of workarounds to get them work.

 

[Ezekial Alexander]

I had my mining fleet fail to respond, then ordered a change sector > idle > change sector (different sector) > mine and they flew back to the first sector and started up again.

I deleted the fleet and re-fleeted them and the worked perfectly fine with a change sector > mine.

My only guess is that the fleet had the sector stuck in its commands and kept derping because of that.

Any one else have luck with refleeting?

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

I've not yet reached the point of needing to re-fleet.

I have, however, occasionally had to recall and tell 'em to mine again.

 

[Madman198237]

You can use slaves with mining drones. I have a drone that has had a cannon slave (100%) on it since it was built. It works. Once I fixed the cargo issue (It had no storage space, since I had improperly linked the logic) it worked fine. It will mine asteroids just as it is supposed to. These workarounds are likely partly superstitious, and partly truth. Sorry, but that's my perception through experience.

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

Aye, some of it is superstition.

On the other hand, I literally gave a BP of a perfectly working drone (had just demonstrated it) to a friend, and the little shit refused to even attempt to work.

Finally got sick of fucking with it, built a new one by hand in the exact same pattern, and it worked just fine.

Superstitions get started for reasons man. Usually, it's because they seem to make a difference, in spite of logical reasoning saying they can't.

 

[DrTarDIS]

Shameless idea: Use Alt account dual-window. Have alt account "sit" in the fleet command ship. order ship around with prime account while you're doing stuffs. alt-tab occasionally to check on progress. Multy-monitor bonus points.

 

[splatthecat]

As I have said before, I must be incredibly lucky with mining fleets as I have almost never had any issues with them. True, I have had the odd drone to inexplicably refuse to work, despite being identical to the others in the fleet, but with a few minor exceptions most of my issues have been my fault. Flagship in wrong sector, storage not connected to salvage computer, salvage modules not connected to salvage computer, etc.

People will try anything to make them work properly but, touch wood, I have never resorted to lucky charms or superstition LOL

 

[MacThule]

I had my mining fleet fail to respond, then ordered a change sector > idle > change sector (different sector) > mine and they flew back to the first sector and started up again.

I deleted the fleet and re-fleeted them and the worked perfectly fine with a change sector > mine.

My only guess is that the fleet had the sector stuck in its commands and kept derping because of that.

Any one else have luck with refleeting?

I like this information because I've had similar behaviors since the patch that really make me feel like the fleet entity itself - not the miners - is now getting stuck on one sector and no matter where you send it it continues to reference that first sector for mining. Currently out of state on "holiday" and unable to test, but I'm guessing that re-fleeting would help a lot in most situations. It'd be pretty seamless for me in MP as well, since when I AFK mine with drones I typically hide by creating several decoy fleets with similar names and moving them randomly around the system. So I could just mine a sector, delete the curent fleet when done and immediately dump my miners into one of the decoys and continue mining in an adjacent sector, then spam a couple more decoys to send out while they work.

Also this would be nice to verify so we can start giving them proper bug reports and get it fixed, stat. With the new mining, if the fleet would simply move from sector to sector properly it'd save everyone's RMB a lot of mileage.

Then we just need a command to mine all that will get them to mine every loaded asteroid they can see (and maybe eventually the ability to set drones to mine a whole unloaded system, if they intend for players to be able to do that, perhaps at the cost of effeciency to represent paying overhead to mining crews, supervisors, etc, or some technical pre-requisite, or whatever).

 

[splatthecat]

Just for information, I have never been able to have multiple fleets mine the same sector. I don't know for sure but I think the AI is unable to cope with this and so neither fleet works. As soon as you remove all the extra fleets the remaining fleet will begin to operate as normal.

 

[Ezekial Alexander]

Just for information, I have never been able to have multiple fleets mine the same sector. I don't know for sure but I think the AI is unable to cope with this and so neither fleet works. As soon as you remove all the extra fleets the remaining fleet will begin to operate as normal.

Interesting...I wonder how new fleets would interact with the malfunctioning fleets...

 

[splatthecat]

Interesting...I wonder how new fleets would interact with the malfunctioning fleets...

That is a good thought. I have tried mining the same asteroid as NPC miners in one of my Hyenas and they just carried on.

NPC miners do tend to become VERY erratic when approached so I guess the two fleets would interfere with each other. Certainly worth experimenting with them.

 

[MacThule]

I use my Monk miner as a hybrid, so actually I quite often actively mine the same field and even the same rock as my drones. It doesn't cause any real problems. If you mine exactly the point of the rock your drones are currently mining they just stop and pick a new point to mine and keep going with very little slowdown (still it is best not to overlap because even a little slowdown is undesirable).

Supplementing your drones with your own active mining seems to actually improve efficiency if done right. In my experiences, because drones shoot at single-block targets and the majority of their array hits only by chance, they mine the first 3/4 of a rock pretty quickly, but as less remains of the rock it is often scattered and it takes them as much time to chew through the last 10-20% of the rock as it did the first 80-90%.

My technique for hybrid mining is to set the drones on a field, and go to work myself on a rock they are not shooting, keeping an eye on their progress. When they get 70-80% done with their rock, I swing around and help them finish, saving them a substantial amount of time, then return to the rock I was on if any are left at that point. It should also be possible to set your drones to work on a field and then move your own mother ship miner to an adjacent field and start work actively. I haven't tried since the big update, but I know before I could sick the drones on some rocks, then fly to the shop in the sector next door do some trading and work on my ship and the drones would continue working as long as I didn't go far or exit my core. So it might be possible for 2 players each with drones and miner motherships to parallel mine up to 4 fields at once or have their drones double team a field while the players melt roids in the surrounding sectors while keeping the drone sector visually loaded.

I am keen to try actually test multiple drone fleets mining the same field. My guess is that if they have different numbers of drones they should be fine because their members will take up different position layouts. I do worry that if both drone fleets had the same number of members they would probably try to take up the exact same positions around their target and spend the whole time jostling for position.

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

The miners absolutely interfere with each other. The fleets go after the same asteroid, and attempt to mine it from the same positions, resulting in a very great deal of collision checks, followed by a great deal of collisions.

Inevitably, they'll manage to get the asteroid moving, and then they all panic harder. (they basically can't mine it if it's mobile, but they'll try to take up positions anyway)

Now, I hadn't tested with different amounts in the fleets, that might make a difference.

 

[MacThule]

The miners absolutely interfere with each other. The fleets go after the same asteroid, and attempt to mine it from the same positions, resulting in a very great deal of collision checks, followed by a great deal of collisions.

Inevitably, they'll manage to get the asteroid moving, and then they all panic harder. (they basically can't mine it if it's mobile, but they'll try to take up positions anyway)

Now, I hadn't tested with different amounts in the fleets, that might make a difference.

Visualizing 2 fleets of drone miners acting like minions and jostling each other stupidly until they bumped the rock then mass chaos ensuing got me laughing so hard I had a coughing fit (currently very much enjoying cold season).