Remote mining

[dogscoff]

Hey. Could someone please check this: http://wiki.spaceempires.net/index.php/Remote_Mining_%28SEIV%29 over for accuracy? I'm pretty sure it's correct, but I'm not an expert on the subject so some reassurance would be appreciated.

[Suicide Junkie]

Looks good.

Just some typoes like "hgh maintenance costs" near the end, and "or uninhabitted planet" at the beginning

[dogscoff]

Thanks SJ, fixed now.

[Captain Kwok]

I wasn't aware there was a problem with reported remote mining income - are you sure you're not getting crossed up with the point generation abilities that don't show up in game?

[Wenin]

uncolonised = uncolonized?


but only ships and bases can do this. (Only because of size restrictions right?)

[dogscoff]

uncolonised = uncolonized?




no, uncolonized = uncolonised. You guys in the colonies ought to know that=-)



but only ships and bases can do this. (Only because of size restrictions right?)




I'm not sure, but I don't think so. I've very little personal experience to back this up, which is why I asked for help. From what I read in the original FAQ text, however, it would appear that although up to three robominers in a stack will work together, they will only do so if they are of different resource types: >1 robominer of any given type in a stack (or on a single sat) will only yield the output of one single miner.



I wasn't aware there was a problem with reported remote mining income - are you sure you're not getting crossed up with the point generation abilities that don't show up in game?




There was definitely a problem at one point where remote mining income wasn't showing up on the income screen. Whether it's been fixed or not I couldn't tell you.

Thanks for you vigilance everyone.

[Alneyan]

dogscoff said:
no, uncolonized = uncolonised. You guys in the colonies ought to know that=-)



Bah, like England isn't a colony herself. Granted, that's a colony that went loose a few centuries ago and that worked up a lot of mischief. Still, you owe us allegiance, obedience, submission, respect and so on and so forth. Trust me on that one.

Something actually productive: there is an extra "you" near the end of the text (last paragraph but one), where you speak about maintenance on remote-mining not mining anything. Still in that area, you might also wish to add something about checking once in a while whether the miners actually produce more resources than they use up.

You may want to add that supplies are irrelevant for remote-mining, even when used on ships. It will drain supplies from the vessel, but not having any supply does not prevent remote-mining from working.

[dogscoff]

Alneyan said:

dogscoff said:
no, uncolonized = uncolonised. You guys in the colonies ought to know that=-)



Bah, like England isn't a colony herself. Granted, that's a colony that went loose a few centuries ago and that worked up a lot of mischief. Still, you owe us allegiance, obedience, submission, respect and so on and so forth. Trust me on that one.




LOL! You're right, of course. Apt that a frenchman should dive into this particular discussion: The reason the brits use -ise at the end of verbs like "colonise" and the yanks use -ize is that the -ize was the original spelling, and the americans took it over the pond four score and quite a lot more years ago, there to nurture and preserve certain archaic sillinesses while at the same time inventing lots of stupid new words like "incentivize". Us Brits however, left within sniffing distance of our dear and beloved neighbours the French, started to pick up their habits and began using -ise in imitation of all their -iser verbs. So there you go, once again we can blame everything on the french=-)



Something actually productive: there is an extra "you" near the end of the text (last paragraph but one)




Fixed, ta.



You may want to add that supplies are irrelevant for remote-mining, even when used on ships. It will drain supplies from the vessel, but not having any supply does not prevent remote-mining from working.



Done.



There was definitely a problem at one point where remote mining income wasn't showing up on the income screen. Whether it's been fixed or not I couldn't tell you.




Actually, I could. According to SE4's version history, it was never fixed. But then again, it doesn't appear to have been reported, so maybe I'm dreaming the whole thing. Does anyone else remember a remote-mining-income-not-reported bug or am I hallucinating again?

[bearclaw]

And you CAN have different types of miners on the same vehicle producing. As long as they are all on the same vehicle.

I don't recall an issue with remote mining not showing, just with Point Generation Ability not showing.

[dogscoff]

bearclaw said:
And you CAN have different types of miners on the same vehicle producing. As long as they are all on the same vehicle.




That's what the wiki page says- do you read it differently? If so, I need to revise it.



I don't recall an issue with remote mining not showing, just with Point Generation Ability not showing.



OK, I'll take that line out. Thanks.

[Fyron]

"It allows you to save facility slots for other uses (spaceyards, research/ intel point production)."

I'm not sure what this means. You can't use remote mining on a colony, so how does it save facility slots?

[Alneyan]

That would mean "resources gained from remote-mining don't have to be produced on colonies, hence allowing to build more non-resources facilities on the colonies without sacrificing resource production"... okay, my phrasing is about as clear as mud stuck in a red nebulae.

[Fyron]

Wouldn't you have more resource production if you did both though? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[PvK]

I thought remote mining worked from satellites, as long as you could fit a remote mining component on a satellite, no?

[Fyron]

Which part says you can't?

[Parasite]

My requested modifications and/or items for discussion...

Why Mine...
I would add "It allows you to make use of unusable asteroids and planets. Especially when playing with no Stellar Manipulation or with restricted colonization."

Mechanics....
"but only ships and bases can do this. " good, but I would put "but only ships and bases have room for multiple mining components"

This is incorrect. "If there is more than one mining ship/base/sat stack in a sector then only the first one placed will mine." It is the LAST one built at least for bases. Very possibly it is last shipID number. I would not even include the "sat stack" here. It is very hard to get multiple stacks and it doesn't matter which sat of each type produces. You may mean a stack and base/ship combo. Sorry, I have no experience here.

I would say something like... "as the percentage of the mined resource drops, the mine will produce less and less resources. It will finally stop producing when the percentage gets to zero. If maintance is being paid on the miner, well before the zero point the mine will start to become a loosing proposition." and not just say it is zero at zero as appears in a few places.

Other thoughts....
In the remote mining fest of HomeworldWars, a strategy of a spaceyard ship building a shipyard base then moving on. The shipyard base building, and if needed, retrofitting the mining base seemed to work well. It was free to build other things after the construction was complete and while waiting to retrofit the miner to a new resource.

Mining Sats can be used to reduce the production percentages of planets destined to become enemy enclaves.

[Fyron]

Parasite said:
It is the LAST one built at least for bases. Very possibly it is last shipID number.

Really? In my experience, it always seemed like it was the first built item that did the mining. Definitely never seen a situation where I could build a base in a sector where another empire was already mining and take over. This bears testing.

[Alneyan]

Imperator Fyron said:
Wouldn't you have more resource production if you did both though? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif



The efficient Empire produces as many resources as needed (and to have full storage), and not one unit more. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif I know I just love to flirt with bankruptcy around turn 10-15, at the apex of the early expansion wave... erh, I digress.

I guess the point could be phrased more generally.

[Parasite]

In HWWars I build a mining basestation then when the tech appeared built mining starbases over them. I am 90% sure that the new base would produce and the old one would then be locked out. This even needed to be optimized in the case of a SB replacing a battlestation to have the SB mothballed until the retrofiting could bring it up to par with the old instillation.

[Glyn]

In one PBW game, I had a system with one habitable planet and a ring of asteroids. I had stealthy remote miner battle-stations on almost every asteroid when I lost control of the system to another empire. Because the invader was not using any stealth sensors, it was nearly 20 to 30 turns before he found my mining operations! By then most of the remote miners were doing poorly due to reduced resource value.

Best defense for a remote miner base is stealth armor or cloaking.

[Alneyan]

Glyn said:
Because the invader was not using any stealth sensors, it was nearly 20 to 30 turns before he found my mining operations!



Heh. That will teach said invader about not cross-checking resource values between turns. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif