Sit and Spin Mining Drone?

[Edymnion]

Okay, so I finally got around to building a test mining drone, and its a little... derpy.


Okay, a lot derpy.

It has power, lots of thrust, properly linked cargo space, and as you can see it (usually) will start mining just fine. Sometimes it'll do nothing but sit and spin, but usually it will fire at least one salvage burst at an asteroid before going into it's helicopter impression.

Sometimes it will give me a good three or four bursts before going into a tailspin.

Build is pretty simple. Core and salvage computer in the back, waffled salvage arrays and cargo, then box reactor and thrusters around that. Bobby AI in the front.


And yeah, it will just sit and spin all day until I give it a command to come back, then I can tell it to mine the sector again and it'll usually get at least one shot off before going back to helicopter duty.

---

So, question.

Is there some part of the build I've done wrong, or is the mining AI really just this poor at this stage in the game?

Was wanting to build a full on mining carrier with a couple dozen of these drones, but don't think I'm going to bother for a while if this is the best they can do right now...

 

[nightrune]

Is there some part of the build I've done wrong, or is the mining AI really just this poor at this stage in the game?

I'm pretty sure it's just poor right now. Which makes it basically useless.

 

[Wolflaynce]

I wonder if it's size? I've used Tshara's Canary mining drones, and they are pretty small. They sometimes act derpy.

Or it could be something with the roll keys (x/y) that have been derpy for quite some time.

 

[Edymnion]

I'm pretty sure it's just poor right now. Which makes it basically useless.

Yeah, I was afraid of that. Fact that it would fire at all means my build must be right, I was just hoping that maybe somebody would say otherwise...

Oh well, I suppose I can keep building a carrier for it anyway and just never actually place the build command on it.

I do chuckle at that first recording though. Its like "Yum yum yum, I like eating asteroids. Yum yum *BLECH* OH DEAR GOD WHAT WAS THAT?!? NOOOOO!!!!"
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I wonder if it's size? I've used Tshara's Canary mining drones, and they are pretty small. They sometimes act derpy.

Overall length on this should only be around 30m or so. Half powered 25m salvage arrays.

Or it could be something with the roll keys (x/y) that have been derpy for quite some time.

Thats the odd thing, look at the spin. Its not actually rotating on the center of mass, nor is it rolling. It looks like its chasing it's tail.

 

[terra mining corp.]

my mining fleet works just fine , I think the trick is to have more then one(I have 5 400 block miners)

 

[Wolflaynce]

I do chuckle at that first recording though. Its like "Yum yum yum, I like eating asteroids. Yum yum *BLECH* OH DEAR GOD WHAT WAS THAT?!? NOOOOO!!!!"

That got quite a chuckle from me. Thank you.

Thats the odd thing, look at the spin. Its not actually rotating on the center of mass, nor is it rolling. It looks like its chasing it's tail.

True, but the rolling issues seems similar in how it goes all around. Wonder if someone can test that on a multiplayer server?

 

[Hidden Porpoise]

It's trying to get to an exact spot and being fairly long is tripping it up. Smaller drones tend to be shorter and wider and so they have less troubles like that. Moving the AI to the center of mass can also help.

 

[kiddan]

Moving the AI to the center of mass can also help.

You don't even need a Bobby AI Module to use fleet functions, are you sure this even impacts anything? :p

 

[Hidden Porpoise]

You don't even need a Bobby AI Module to use fleet functions, are you sure this even impacts anything? :p

With how temperamental mining drones are I've just been pretending that what has worked for me follows clear logic.

 

[kiraen]

I wonder if it is a targeting issue.
My drones tend to move around a bit and re-target at random.
I use smaller drones, but they look to be of similar design.
But a see a bit of black in the center, does your waffle array cover the center of the cylinder?
Have you tried re-spawning the design? Sometimes that helps reset the AI.

 

[Adonis0]

It's trying to get to an exact spot and being fairly long is tripping it up. Smaller drones tend to be shorter and wider and so they have less troubles like that. Moving the AI to the center of mass can also help.

Perhaps a fix to this without redesigning is to up the rotational thrust?
(I haven't played in a while, but keeping track of updates, and from memory you can adjust the proportion of thrust?)

 

[Jananton]

Just a thought, I wonder if the rotation behavior is due to the changed center of mass because of the load of the initial burst and the AI that fails to compensate or even is not able to handle this....

Greets,

Jan

 

[kikaha]

I had that happen qhuite a lt with my first ming ship (the spining). My first ming ship is a ball (its pacman, really, no joke).

When i tried usind another design, more shiplike i still had the spining trick but a lot less.

 

[Edymnion]

Really not wanting to redesign these things into being more ship-like due to how I intend to store them.

On the carrier they're going to fit into recessed grooves so that only the wide end pokes out above the surface (with some plex or blast doors closing around them to make for a more solid sheet fit) so that they look more like hull decoration until I hit the launch button and they shoot out as the longer rods.

 

[splatthecat]

I have a carrier and 8 mining drones. The drones are small 5x5x5 but between them they can reduce a small cluster to nothing in about 20 minutes.

My original set up was 6 drones to 2 pick-up rails but I now have individual pick-up points for each one. Occasionally they get into a fit or dock but are magically transported to about 1200m away but then will launch again when required.

I have a single button launch system that works 95% of the time. Sometimes I have to do an EVA and manually launch one or two stuck ones but I think it is just server lag rather than game or logic faults.

 

[reptillianstew]

I have smaller drones and they do the same thing so its not a size issue. It seems to happen for me every time they finish mining an asteroid but also randomly during the mining and recall process. I just re-order whatever command they were supposed to be doing and they get back to it but its still really annoying

 

[Edymnion]

I have a carrier and 8 mining drones. The drones are small 5x5x5 but between them they can reduce a small cluster to nothing in about 20 minutes.

Yeah see thats way too long for me. 20 minutes I can clear half a ring with my current miner.

I'm oldschool from when the only way to get an asteroid to respawn was to exploit a glitch where you had to eat the entire sector between server saves, so I learned to build miners that could eat two sectors between saves (which are every 5 minutes).

If I can't get a non-server-breaking number of drones to completely wipe a sector clean in under 2 minutes (3 tops) they're not really worth the effort to me.

 

[Keptick]

Submit a bug report if you haven't already, that bugs is making me cringe.

 

[StormWing0]

hmm I'm using a carrier with 60 drones and about the only issue I've seen is they hate moving asteroids and also tend to get stuck on each other's tails where all the storages are.

 

[lupoCani]

I notice that drone has lots of outputs. This is really quite redundant, I've found. The AI aims fast enough to keep up with a single, big beam doing all the mining, rapidly swtiching from block to block to block in the split-second it takes to mine. It's really quite beautiful to watch.