Aurora 4x

New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: Lurker on July 07, 2020, 01:43:44 AM

Title: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post by: Lurker on July 07, 2020, 01:43:44 AM
Hello, I have some questions.
1)What i need to mining asteroid? I surveyed asteroid with minerals and
enough small size, moved ship with mining module to it, but I cant see mined minerals.  I do something wrong? Or where i can see count mined minerals?
2)Can i make auto order to my ship with tractor beam to support move slow ships(mining ships fore example)?
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post by: Black on July 07, 2020, 02:01:48 AM
You need to have colony on the asteroid, minerals are then stored at the colony.
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post by: Lurker on July 07, 2020, 02:22:14 AM
what about second question?

And If i need colony for mining asteroid:
a)can I make auto colonization for mining?
b)can i make auto mining order? go to asteroid not work, because mb no colony at asteroid.
c)Have mining ships any advantage against auto mine?
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post by: SpaceMarine on July 07, 2020, 02:47:57 AM
Hello, I have some questions.
1)What i need to mining asteroid? I surveyed asteroid with minerals and
enough small size, moved ship with mining module to it, but I cant see mined minerals.  I do something wrong? Or where i can see count mined minerals?
2)Can i make auto order to my ship with tractor beam to support move slow ships(mining ships fore example)?

1A - You need a orbital mining module on a station or craft and then you need to bring it to the asteroid with resources on it and make sure the asteroid is a colony, you will then need to transport the minerals from the world using a mass driver or freighter, also only certain diameter bodies can be orbit-ally mined, in system view check OM eligible and you can increase the diameter that can be orbit-ally mined through tech.

2A - You can by using the movement command "tractor any ship in fleet", this will allow you to do cycle orders, essentially allowing you to set up auto moving.
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post by: Black on July 07, 2020, 02:52:26 AM
what about second question?

And If i need colony for mining asteroid:
a)can I make auto colonization for mining?
b)can i make auto mining order? go to asteroid not work, because mb no colony at asteroid.
c)Have mining ships any advantage against auto mine?

You need to create colony manually.

There is standing order - Move to asteroid Mineral Source. So if you set up colonies, mining ships with this standing order should move to new mining site when they deplete the current one.

Ships are build by shipyards so you can use construction factories to build something else. Mining ship moves by its own engines so you do not need freighters to transfer them between mining sites.
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post by: Lurker on July 07, 2020, 03:50:17 AM
Quote
in system view check OM eligible
I don't understand where in system view i can check it?
Quote
2A - You can by using the movement command "tractor any ship in fleet", this will allow you to do cycle orders, essentially allowing you to set up auto moving.
It's simple.
But how can I make next order? As a "pull" tractored ship to his destination? Not manual selected asteroid, but tractored ship destination.
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post by: Black on July 07, 2020, 04:57:04 AM
In System Generation and Display window there is OM Eligible checkbox (right upper part of the window). If you use it, bodies that can by mined with orbital module will have letter E between Name column and Type column.
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post by: Jorgen_CAB on July 07, 2020, 06:44:26 AM
Hello, I have some questions.
1)What i need to mining asteroid? I surveyed asteroid with minerals and
enough small size, moved ship with mining module to it, but I cant see mined minerals.  I do something wrong? Or where i can see count mined minerals?
2)Can i make auto order to my ship with tractor beam to support move slow ships(mining ships fore example)?

Here is a small guide for you...

(https://www.dropbox.com/s/fwa8jdd28lz2c2h/Screen3.PNG?raw=1)

1. Select this box and the list will show which bodies you currently can mine with an Asteroid Mining ship or station.

2. This is how it looks in the list, "ME" stands for a body that is eligible to be mined with an Orbital mining ship/station, if it just says "M" the body is too big and you might need to invest more into the orbital mining technology. You can also see how big each body is and then look at the technology you have to know how much you need to expand the technology to be able to mine said body.

3. Select the body above and press this button to create a colony there. It will just be an empty colony.


Now... you need to put the Orbital Miner in place at the body and when you do it will automatically start mining it. All minerals will be left on the body itself so you either send a mass-driver to that colony or you send a freighter there once in a while and pick it up.

If you build a station you need a Tug (A ship with a tractor-beam to drag it in to place). In order to do this you select the tug and detach to to form its own fleet. You then select the fleet containing the orbital mining station and use the order "Tractor Specified Ship" and the select the station. You then select the colony and select the order "Release Tractored Ships".

Now you have the station in place mining that body.
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post by: Lurker on July 07, 2020, 07:15:25 AM
Quote
You then select the fleet containing the orbital mining station and use the order "Tractor Specified Ship" and the select the station.
So I can't order to my tractor ship auto tow many my mining stations? Each fleet\ship I must tow manualy?
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post by: Black on July 07, 2020, 07:18:45 AM
If you have fleet of only mining stations that will all go to same destination you can use command Tractor Any Ship in Fleet.
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post by: Lurker on July 07, 2020, 07:36:21 AM
Quote
If you have fleet
I can have fleetS.
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post by: Jorgen_CAB on July 07, 2020, 07:48:27 AM
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If you have fleet
I can have fleetS.

Put all mining stations in the same "fleet" and then use the order mentioned above. The tug will then select a station in that fleet and move it to the destination. The use the repeat order and it will do this until there is no more ship and it will simply tell there are no more ship to tow and you can give a new order.

I suggest that you experiment a bit to learn how the game works.
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post by: skoormit on July 07, 2020, 08:15:33 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.
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post 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.
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post 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.
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post 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.
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post by: skoormit on July 07, 2020, 09:12:32 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 (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11615.msg136168#msg136168), I look at each mining fleet and see if I need to move some ships.

Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post by: Jorgen_CAB on July 07, 2020, 09:38:09 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 (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11615.msg136168#msg136168), 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...  ;)
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post 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
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post 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.
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post by: Elvin on July 07, 2020, 12:14:19 PM
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.
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post 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
 
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post 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.
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post 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.
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post by: Jorgen_CAB on July 07, 2020, 07:03:07 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.
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post 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?
Title: Re: asteroid mining and automatization.
Post 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.