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Posted by: Black
« on: July 09, 2020, 06:21:01 AM »

Do you have Cargo Shuttle Bays on your cargo ships? Your homeworld has spaceport so you don't need them there. But if colony does not have spaceport or Cargo Shuttle Station. You need the shuttles on the ship itself to transfer cargo from surface.

You can transport mass driver in 5k cargo holds it will be divided into 5 parts for it.
Posted by: Lurker
« on: July 09, 2020, 06:07:36 AM »

I have successfully mined minerals.
now i try transport it to home world by a ship.
But I have no command as "Load All Minerals" on my colonys. (but have it on home world)
I must build something in colony for transport minerals?

Can i transport mass driver by 5 times move 5k cargo? Or i must build 25k cargo ship?
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: July 07, 2020, 07:03:07 PM »

Quote from: TheTalkingMeowth on July 07, 2020, 03:36:43 PM
Mass drivers are great on remote comet mines; I don't want to be running a freighter 20 billion km round trip every couple years if I can just do a one and done with a mass driver. It's debatable from an efficiency standpoint I suspect, but worth it from a sanity perspective.

It they are travelling towards you then you could just wait 10 years when the comet is closer and collect the minerals then...  ;) ...it depends on how important the minerals from that particular comet is.

To be honest I don't tend to mine comet that are too far away, I simply wait until they get closer to mine them then.

But of course you are right and I also believe I said so above, in some cases it is not really worth it. It will depend on the type of micromanagement you are doing and how good you are at setting up automated routes. I usually take the time to calculate routes with my mineral haulers so they stay as busy as possible all the time, I then adjust them once in a while.

I usually keep my mineral haulers rather small for this purpose at around 5000t cargo holds, it tend to give them old engines too as speed is rarely an issue for them. As I upgrade other freighters with higher speed who transport more time sensitive equipment I reuse the engines for the haulers that carry minerals, components and Infrastructure.
Posted by: TheTalkingMeowth
« on: July 07, 2020, 03:36:43 PM »

Mass drivers are great on remote comet mines; I don't want to be running a freighter 20 billion km round trip every couple years if I can just do a one and done with a mass driver. It's debatable from an efficiency standpoint I suspect, but worth it from a sanity perspective.
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: July 07, 2020, 02:31:56 PM »

There might be some cases where using a mass-driver is useful but sometimes running freighters there once in a while probably is more efficient.

In many areas you will have freighters running other missions and often freighters run empty half of their travels. A small detour to pick up some minerals while empty can be a valued task for otherwise empty freighters.

If you need to carry the mass driver there anyway that is at least worth around 12500t worth of minerals hauled by freighter. So if the rock have less minerals than around 12000 it is always better to send a small mineral hauler with a smaller cargo hold to pick it up once in a while.
Posted by: sneer
« on: July 07, 2020, 01:38:08 PM »

indeed I thought about ship based mass driver module ( adding 25kt mass driver module instead standard cargohold to carry one would smooth this a lot )
to be honest in "Heavy Times " in '91 by C. J. Cherryh asteroid mining was done this way :)
I strongly recommend this book series for everybody interested in Sci Fi based in early exploration universe
 
Posted by: Elvin
« on: July 07, 2020, 12:14:19 PM »

Quote from: TheTalkingMeowth on July 07, 2020, 10:07:04 AM
You can just put a mass driver installation on the colony; in fact, you should definitely do this.

Yes, but that means having to have cargo holds get to that planet, one way or the other, which carry a mass driver. I believe sneer's suggestion is that the mass driver could be a ship-board module, so that simply having the mining station in orbit would count as having a mass driver present.
Posted by: TheTalkingMeowth
« on: July 07, 2020, 10:07:04 AM »

You can just put a mass driver installation on the colony; in fact, you should definitely do this.
Posted by: sneer
« on: July 07, 2020, 09:39:29 AM »

what is needed is mass driver module for asteroid miners
will be far easier to operate
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: July 07, 2020, 09:38:09 AM »

Quote from: skoormit on July 07, 2020, 09:12:32 AM
Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on July 07, 2020, 08:53:59 AM
It mostly is better to just move a single station with about 50 modules and put one on each asteroid to be mined.

Very much true.
Because mining ships/stations are big and heavy, it takes a long time to move them to a new location.
And when they are moving, they aren't mining. The more often you move them, the less value they provide.
So, you want to move them as infrequently as possible.

I try to keep each mining fleet small enough so that it will not deplete the source in less than 10 years.
Each year, as part of my annual checklist, I look at each mining fleet and see if I need to move some ships.

That is one of the reasons why I like to keep them spread out as much as possible. Sure... if you have a comet with allot of minerals on them or a small moon perhaps then stationing a small fleet of them makes total sense.

You can apply the same argument with auto-mines to regular colonies as well to some extent. If you are moving a mine it is not producing anything. If you move something a very long way, trips can sometimes take half a year or even longer depending on technology, you loose production.

This is why you need to make sure to have a steady stream of mined resources coming in because if you lack a specific resource you might be forced to move mines from one location to the next and that means lost production and spent fuel for simply put bad planning...  ;)
Posted by: skoormit
« on: July 07, 2020, 09:12:32 AM »

Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on July 07, 2020, 08:53:59 AM
It mostly is better to just move a single station with about 50 modules and put one on each asteroid to be mined.

Very much true.
Because mining ships/stations are big and heavy, it takes a long time to move them to a new location.
And when they are moving, they aren't mining. The more often you move them, the less value they provide.
So, you want to move them as infrequently as possible.

I try to keep each mining fleet small enough so that it will not deplete the source in less than 10 years.
Each year, as part of my annual checklist, I look at each mining fleet and see if I need to move some ships.

Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: July 07, 2020, 08:53:59 AM »

There is no command to automatically move stations around, but in many cases it can take years to mine an entire Asteroid so it's not like you will have to do this that often unless you for some reason put all orbital miners in one place to strip mine it and then move on to the next one.

It mostly is better to just move a single station with about 50 modules and put one on each asteroid to be mined.

You also have to understand that this is not a commercial product and it is in constant development as a hobby project by ONE person. There are likely to be incremental improvement of automation over time. Steve tend to add stuff as he himself see something as being burdensome when he himself plays the game.

Personally I don't find this to be super burdensome from a micromanagement perspective but I might appreciate some better automation for logistics at some point overall. There certainly could be improvements.
Posted by: TheTalkingMeowth
« on: July 07, 2020, 08:45:46 AM »

Yes, the game is lacking when it comes to automation. It is a hobby project that was then released early, with many "nice to have" features unimplemented.

That said, even commercial 4Xs have sad levels of automation (glares at Stellaris).

What you want to do is sort of possible. If you have a fleet of mining stations that cannot move on their own, the only way to move them to another mining site is to make a fleet of tugs. Then, have those tugs use the "tractor any ship in fleet" command on the mining fleet. You will need to issue that command 1 time for every tug in the tug fleet. Then, have the tug fleet "release tractored ships" at the new mining site. If there are more stations than tugs in your fleet, you can use cycle orders or repeat orders to have the tugs do multiple trips.

You will need to manually choose the new mining location. You will need to manually create a colony at the new mining location. And you will need to decide when it is time to move the stations.
Posted by: Lurker
« on: July 07, 2020, 08:30:03 AM »

Quote
Put all mining stations in the same "fleet" and then use the order mentioned above.
One fleet can't mining all resources.
One fleet need more often move then many smaller fleets.


Quote
I suggest that you experiment a bit to learn how the game works.
Mb you right.  But i'm confused: why so deep 4x game don't have some advanced tools for automatization.
At first i think i don't understand something.
But now i think game don't have advanced tools for automatization.
Yes, you can use some hints, but its don't looks good at me.

Quote
My early mining stations are these
now i understand how i can order to automine for ship.
But I don't' understand how i can order to AUTOmove station to next asteroid when it finished mining.
Posted by: skoormit
« on: July 07, 2020, 08:15:33 AM »

Quote from: Lurker on July 07, 2020, 02:22:14 AM
c)Have mining ships any advantage against auto mine?

Mining ships are much more efficient to build, and much easier to move around.
One orbital mining module does the same amount of work as one auto mine.

One auto mine costs 240 wealth and 240 corundium.
One orbital mining module costs 120 wealth and 120 corundium.

To move one auto mine requires one cargo hold, which weighs 25kt.
One orbital mining module weighs only 5 kt.


Of course, there is the cost of building a ship with the modules, and moving the ship to a colony.
But this cost is small compared to the cost of the modules themselves.
And you can use the "no armor" checkbox to make the ship cheaper, and to build it with construction factories (instead of needing a shipyard).
My early mining stations are these:

Code: [Select]
Digger class Mining Platform      254,775 tons       2,516 Crew       6,793.9 BP       TCS 5,095    TH 0    EM 0
1 km/s      No Armour       Shields 0-0     HTK 327      Sensors 5/5/0/0      DCR 1      PPV 0
MSP 16    Max Repair 120 MSP
Squire    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   
Orbital Miner: 50 modules producing 800 tons per mineral per annum


ASS AS18-R100 Anti-Ship (1)     GPS 1000     Range 18.5m km    Resolution 100
EM Sensor EM1.0-5.0 (1)     Sensitivity 5     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  17.7m km
Thermal Sensor TH1.0-5.0 (1)     Sensitivity 5     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  17.7m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Space Station for construction purposes
This station has 50 modules on it (plus some scanners, which I put only for fun). For the same cost, you can build only 28 auto mines.

But auto mines do have an advantage: they can be used on any colony. Orbital mining modules can only be used on very small bodies.