Question About Remote Mining
 

I created a ship with Robo Miners I and sent it to an un-colonized planet. Except I can not figure out what to do now. I can not find an order that makes any sense and it just sits there. I am playing with JLS AI Campaign mod. Am I doing something wrong?

I put it on a small transport 300kt with 7 cargo I.

[ March 08, 2003, 00:22: Message edited by: HercMighty ]

Re: Question About Remote Mining
 

Select the ship, and look at the bottom the the portrait window.

You should see the maintenance costs, and an additional line (very similar in format) showing you the mining rate of your ship.

[ March 08, 2003, 00:34: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: Question About Remote Mining
 

You do not do anything but leave the ship in the sector to remote mine. It is handled automatically.

If you send a ship into a sector with a planet with moons, the ship will remote-mine the planet and all moons at the same time. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Question About Remote Mining
 

The economics of doing this depend on your empire's maintenance costs. With a decent maintenance bonus remote mining can pay off. The downside is that the value of the object decreases by 1% for each turn you mine it - the upside is that this does not increase with the amount of mining components - so having a ship with several remote mining components is a good idea. If it's a really excellent site, and you don't plan to colonise it, you can even build a base there to gain more maintenance benefits.

Re: Question About Remote Mining
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This does not sound like you put a Robo-Miner on the design HercMighty...
Small transport, Basic Bridge, Life support, 3 Engines, one supply bay and the ROBO-MINER component...

There would be no be no room for 7 Cargo Bay I...

OK?

Then like SJ,Fryon and Rigelian, said, bring it to the ASTROIDE or planet and it will mine automatically for you. Remember, this will permanently deplete targets resources.

However level one ROBO will not yield much profit.

I recommend you design a Mining Outpost. This done by F-3 [Create] satellite and design and launch as you would a satellite however only one per Asteroid or planet…

EDIT: WOW, you guys type fast http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ March 08, 2003, 00:56: Message edited by: JLS ]

Re: Question About Remote Mining
 

can you get the AI to use remote mining? this would be pretty cool, if you could. I dont remember a ship type for remote mining, so i kind of doubt it.

has anyone ever tried this? is it possible to instruct the AI to deploy bases or build sats anywhere besides a planet? if you could somehow tell it to build a base or deploy a sat at a minefield, you could make sure that the base type was a miner...

Re: Question About Remote Mining
 

I tried to get the AI to use Robo- Mining, briefly with no luck…

There is no minister for this task.

I designed and built a robo-mining ship and gave them control, and that ship just stayed over the home world and looked pretty http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Is their any one else that had more luck?

Re: Question About Remote Mining
 

Probably a better idea to have it place a satellite at an ASTEROID field, rather than a MINE field, but anyway...

I'm at the end of a 100+ turn (devnull mod) game, and as I'm going around conquering the galaxy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif , I've discovered that nearly every other empire made pretty liberal use of mining ships for asteroid fields. I never did it for mine because I was under the impression that it was pretty much a waste of time and energy.

My question is: is remote mining really worth it?

The answer may vary stock game vs mod. I know that DevNull mod has specially-designed ships with a 80% penalty to combat, max 2 or 3 engines, but also a 90% reduction in maintenance that may make the whole mining thing worthwhile.

Re: Question About Remote Mining
 

If you look at my earlier post... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
It's all a question of maintenance as you say, if devnull does that (90% reduction) then it would definitely pay off. I have used it extensively in stock 1.49, but then I always max my maintenance reduction.

Build a decent-size ship with stellar harnessing panels on board and it will sit there making a profit until some rude stranger comes and shoots it. If you use ships and not bases you can of course run away, or, in a long game, move it on once the resources run out.