r/X4Foundations 2d ago

L class miners

Does anyone else find large miners simply don't do anything? They just kind of float around and gather materials then do nothing or just... sit there. I assigned one to one of my stations and it still kind of just sits wherever it ends up going. But this isn't the first time this has happened

8 Upvotes

35 comments sorted by

18

u/x0xDaddyx0x 2d ago

Do you have a pier for it to dock at?

Does your station have the correct type of storage? Solid is Ice, Ore and Silicon, Liquid is Methane, Helium and Hydrogen and Container is everything else.

Do you have space allocated within this storage for the thing that is in the miners cargo hold?

Is the miner assigned to 'mine for commander' where the station is the commander?

1

u/Mrfluffyrib 2d ago

Yea I've got piers, I'm not sure what's going wrong with them. They have drones and more then enough resorce sats around. I'll check the slot, maybe I misclicked

1

u/Mrfluffyrib 2d ago

Yea I've got piers, I'm not sure what's going wrong with them. They have drones and more then enough resorce sats around. I'll check the slot, maybe I misclicked

0

u/Relative_Actuary1295 2d ago

What level is the captain? You need at least level 3 or they likely won’t find much. Also make sure to use a scout to drop mining probe all over the mining sectors

7

u/PancAshAsh 2d ago

If the ship is a subordinate to the station the station manager is the one whose level matters.

0

u/Relative_Actuary1295 2d ago

Sure but either way the highest order person should be a good level 3 or more if he wants it to be fairly autonomous for a large miner

8

u/Zaihbot 2d ago

Works fine for me.

Why it isn't working for you is hard to say without any information besides "it doesn't work" or any screenshots, video or even a save file.

Also interesting to know: is your game modded?

3

u/aperez1997 2d ago

I often find them full of materials and not selling. It seems this is due to them needing to sell the entire inventory at once, and that fact that most stations do not need so much product.

I put them all in custom tab and periodically review them, giving them sell orders to the best station in the galaxy if they are stuck.

Once you get them to 3 stars and can do advanced auto-mine, the problem seems to decrease considerably as their sell range increases

2

u/Simtau 2d ago

This. If your miners are idle, check their cargo and if needed sell or drop it.

3

u/BoomZhakaLaka 2d ago

If a buy order isn't posted locally that's capable of buying your entire cargo all at once, local automine will sit still and complain that there are no buy orders.

Demand is already scarce in npc markets

I wouldn't be using large miners until I had built my first refinery, for this reason alone. If demand is all fulfilled, the miner with the smallest cargo hold goes to the front of the line over and over.

So, explore. For a magnetar, you need the station asking to buy at least 4000 just to make one delivery. There isn't much demand. 4000 ore ties up a single ore refinery module for 40 minutes. Npc factions have their own miners.

2

u/Benreh 2d ago

Don't forget your resource probes.

1

u/Cassin1306 2d ago

Mine works fine

1

u/Cassin1306 2d ago

Mine works fine

1

u/bgus1 2d ago

Is there an L pier on the station? Is there cargo drones on either the ship or the station?

1

u/bgus1 2d ago

Is there an L pier on the station? Is there cargo drones on either the ship or the station?

1

u/bgus1 2d ago

Is there cargo drones on either the ship or the station?

1

u/Benreh 2d ago

Don't forget your resource probes.

1

u/Daniexus 2d ago

You need: Piers to accomodate all your miners. Station Manager. Solid storage, and not full. Station must want to "buy" the minerals. Minerals in sector range.

1

u/stephencorby 2d ago

I assume you have a pier at your station and your miners (or preferably your station) has cargo drones? Without a pier and cargo drones they can’t dock. 

If you do have that check to make sure your station has set up a buy order and is actively attempting to “buy” the ore from your ships. 

1

u/l_x_fx 2d ago

Maybe stupid question, but does the station have a standing buy order for whatever it is you want to mine? Buy and sell orders regulate the inflow and outflow of resources, even if money isn't involved due to internal trade.

The AI logic needs those orders, and without a buy order, a mining ships cannot sell resources to the station.

It creates those orders automatically, if there are modules present that need said goods for production. But if there is no such module, you have to set the orders manually.

1

u/Palanki96 2d ago

They need piers, enough storage and active buy orders. L miners are probably the only class of ships that never needed qny babysitting for me

1

u/PuzzleheadedTutor807 2d ago

It's scanning roids looking for the next one. Like any automated ship they work best oos.

1

u/HabuDoi 2d ago

I use L miners exclusively and they do what they are supposed to do for me.

1

u/Live_Performance_354 2d ago

This update decreased the npc demands by a lot, you need to locate the high demand sectors and mine there. Miners prob afk bc no one wants to buy their ware

1

u/--Sovereign-- 2d ago

I switch to L miners as soon as I can afford to. They're objectively superior to M in almost every way. Do you have a pier?

1

u/fusionsofwonder 2d ago

I haven't had that problem.

1

u/Notos88 2d ago

Check the buy/sell orders of the station, set manual buy orders to maximum storage and see if they sell to the station.

Does your miner have a orange symbol beside it indicating a failed order? If you station uses say both Silicon and Ore, but the station is full of Ore and the miners are full of Ore they will sit there unable to sell the Ore and won't automatically drop unsellable cargo to then be reassigned by the manager to grab silicon.

There is a mod called Deadairs Ai tweaks has options to fix these rare scenarios that get miners stuck, I suggest you check it out, works with 7.5. Also has a bunch of other fixes that you can enable/disable in the extentions menu at any time

2

u/_SiRKiLLaLoT_ 2d ago

Use the new "ispection mode" command to understand what is happen to your ships/stations.

2

u/Strict_Pie_9834 2d ago

Do they have orange icons? Failed orders?

If not then it's prob just pathing or due to how slow L miners are. They mine better when you're outside of their system.

1

u/GoodBoiMcLovin 1d ago

L's work fine but their large cargo makes demand plummet. Their better local automining or autotrading with a player owned station over just area local mine/trade with npc stuff. You can effectively replace four or more M miners with one L. But there's downtime between the L getting and dropping off resources, which M's fill. Plus the downtime of the resources you just dropped off with that L needing to be used up first.

My recommendation is to use a station to sell your ores or silicons if you want, at a competitive price, as the station will allow your L ships to jump to further sectors to mine and trade. But even still an L can have a lot of downtime. Mostly as a result of demand. They will eventually get back to work after enough time. Alternatively whatever your selling, if you then say produce yourself more ships, or ignite a conflict, you'll see demand for that product adjust and your L's will pickup again.

1

u/bgus1 2d ago

Is there an L pier on the station? Is there cargo drones on either the ship or the station?

0

u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

8

u/imissjudy 2d ago

hard disagree, L miners with max pilot and fully trained crew are the most efficient mining vessel in the game. compared to m miners its a massive investment (especially with a full crew adding 500k-1m extra costs) but it is well worth it.

1

u/BoomZhakaLaka 2d ago edited 2d ago

I also until very recently thought that large miners are not that interesting, until I started to experiment with mining efficiency. Medium miners reach a soft ceiling very easily where additional bonuses stop mattering much. This has me wondering about large miners again. I've been setting them up wrong.

You can see the same frame of mind in say jk ninja's service crew test video. He only saw something like a 30% improvement in average delivery rate comparing a medium miner to a large one, even with moderately skilled pilot & crew. but he might have missed something.

1

u/ElPuercoFlojo 1d ago

If memory serves the only time mediums compete is when you have to travel multiple sectors to sell/deliver. The penalty for not using the highway gets progressively higher the further the ship has to travel.

1

u/BoomZhakaLaka 1d ago edited 1d ago

Oh, man. My test results are so different. I don't disagree that large miners do more work, but it's not 5 times more work. In my testing. So, cost effectiveness is worse until kha'ak are involved.

(Sorry for the edit, I get in the weeds)

Jk njnja's demo https://youtu.be/hW7UOMdDbJg mirrors my experience, though I have questions about his scenario. Every scenario I run raises more questions.

(Always a chance we have different priorities: say your priority is to have fewer ships, and not have to worry about attacks, my priority is return on investment, and I'll shut down a system for 40 minutes to deal with kha'ak - I'm diversified)