I know at least one of these is planned but I'm going to post up an idea anyways to see if it'd work.
For mining in nearby sectors the Mine Sector command would work like it does now except the ships would hunt down any salvageable/mineable target in the loaded sector range. In this case they wouldn't go into unload sectors to mine.
For unloaded mining I'm thinking the sector to be mined in while unloaded would have to have been discovered first otherwise it is an empty void with nothing in it as far as the AI is concerned. When discovered the game knows what is in it and in this case any mineable targets in it can be mined at a set rate but blocks are taken randomly instead of things in the path of salvage beams.
In this case we'd have a new command (Hopefully not needed if the devs know what they are doing. :P ): Mine Discovered: This lets Miners mine in unloaded territory as long as the sectors have been discovered and the miners will automatically seek out things to mine on their own starting with the closest target and working outward from there.
Also this lets players send out huge fleets of miners into a system that they've scouted and mostly ignore what's going on unless those ships get into unloaded firefights. It also means that players might get a tad lazy but with people trying to poach their miners while they aren't paying attention it could get them up to check what's going on.
In any even any ideas?
For mining in nearby sectors the Mine Sector command would work like it does now except the ships would hunt down any salvageable/mineable target in the loaded sector range. In this case they wouldn't go into unload sectors to mine.
For unloaded mining I'm thinking the sector to be mined in while unloaded would have to have been discovered first otherwise it is an empty void with nothing in it as far as the AI is concerned. When discovered the game knows what is in it and in this case any mineable targets in it can be mined at a set rate but blocks are taken randomly instead of things in the path of salvage beams.
In this case we'd have a new command (Hopefully not needed if the devs know what they are doing. :P ): Mine Discovered: This lets Miners mine in unloaded territory as long as the sectors have been discovered and the miners will automatically seek out things to mine on their own starting with the closest target and working outward from there.
Also this lets players send out huge fleets of miners into a system that they've scouted and mostly ignore what's going on unless those ships get into unloaded firefights. It also means that players might get a tad lazy but with people trying to poach their miners while they aren't paying attention it could get them up to check what's going on.
In any even any ideas?