Useless Robo-Miner component

[geoschmo]

Actually you are incorrect. I wasn't sure if it had been changed by 1.19 so I just tested it. I built a small transport with 5 sat bays and loaded it with 5 large sattelites; 2 miners, 2 farmers, and 1 extractor. Went to an asteroid field and dropped all five at once. As before all five were considered 1 "sat group" and I got the mining production from all five sats. Got all three resource types. The only limitation is how many sat bays you can put on one ship. That is the limit imposed by the 1.19 mod. Try it Todd249, you will see.

[DirectorTsaarx]

From history.txt, under the "1.14" set of fixes:

4. Fixed - A satellite group cannot remote mine with all of the satellites present.

Sounds like they didn't completely fix this. (The intention was that ONLY ONE satellite could mine an asteroid field at the same time, since ONLY ONE ship can mine an asteroid field). BTW - anyone try putting multiple types of remote miners on a ship?

[Todd248]

I think you just found a way around the intended effect. If you transfer the satellites one by one you only get one working. Obviously something is wrong when using differment means of deploying produce different results. I bet if you use 'I' to remote deploy you'd be able to get unlimited sat's in the group all mining.

[geoschmo]

Well, I think if they ever do "fix" that, then the robo-miner really will be a useless component. The piddling amout of resources produced by a single robo-miner sattelite in an asteroid field won't be worth the time and effort required to research the large sattlite. Usually by the time I get to large satellite, resources aren't much of a problem anyway. About the only use for it I could see would be a kind of low-tech "resource converter". You could put a robo-farmer or robo-extractor in a frigate and park it over a organic or radioactive rich asteroid or planet. You would be spending minerals in maint on the ship, but if you have an abundance of those and need the others, it could possibly be worth it. Not too likely though. Maybe change the miner component size so it fits in a small sattelite. Then it would be available early in the game when resources are scarce.

[geoschmo]

Not "unlimited sat's" Todd, it would still be limited by the number of sat bay's in your ship that you are deploying them with. That's better than only 1 though.

[AJC]

Actually if you launch the satellites remotely you can add more satellites to the same Sat group. (btw- this goes for mines and fighters too.)

Although the ability to remote mine with more than one satellite was supposed to be "changed" in v1.19, it doesnt appear to be changed after all.
Truth is As a tester I didnt like the change anyway and commented to Aaron on it.

I tend to agree that the remote mining components are a bit pointless if you cant use more than 1 satellite at a time to remote mine an asteroid or planet. But at the same time it is important to have the asteroid or planet run out of resources as you remote mine it. Especially for game balance- if you could stick lots of remote mining satellites in one sat group over an asteroid field or a very choice planet without consequences, such as the resource availability limit - then you could very easily abuse the system and put hundreds of remote miners around a single very nice asteroid field and any valuable planets you cant currently colonize and remote mine all your resources and never really have the need to build extraction facilities.

[Atrocities]

AJC is correct. It works. I also launch my Sats in Groups of 100. Thats for Baseships with 25 sat launchers each. You only get two engines with the BS, so I do this:
1. Computer
2. 2 Engines
3. 25 Sat Launchers
4. Ship Yard component
5. Quatum Reactor
6. Balance filled up with Solor Sailes to add movements.

I then design 3 types of Resource Sats.
# 1
Mineral
1. Computer
2. Mineral Miner

I design one sat for each of the mineral types based upon # 1. Farmer, and Rad.

I then move my 4 BS's into location and construct 25 of the type of sat I need on each ship. I then remote deploy them. I have had up to 500 mineral Sats on one asteriod. I know that a tad excessive, but I wanted to see how many I could deploy.

I think they have a great use, and they do add up the minerals over time and in great enough numbers. They are worth the time and expense of producing and deploying.

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"We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats! They invade our space and we fall back -- they assimilate entire worlds and we fall back! Not again! The line must be drawn here -- this far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done!" -- Patric Stewart as Captain Picard

[Todd248]

I'd have to agree there. If you could deploy an unlimited number of satellites and have them all mine at the same time then having a planet or asteroid field lose value makes since. It also becomes worthwhile to create ships that can build and launch mining satellites. As a field/planet is depleted move onto the next one.

[Todd248]

I just tried deploying multiple sat's on the same field. I can get each type of satellite to generate resources from the same field if I use deploy to create a group. If I add more sats to that group I only get the resources from 1 satellite. Not useful for v1.19.