Mining Tractor Beam
- Thread starter Bryan
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Lestat
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I really hope this is a troll thread, otherwise its just sad. Limpets ftw
Sounds like you need help with setup - often I have problems keeping them all busy
Post your build!That's the point.
How many tons per hour can you mine? I suspect it can be dramatically sped up with some training and practice.
That is one mode of using the limpets
When i'm doing hostage rescue i have to use targeted mode limpets since they are faster and most of the time they manage to avoid enemy PDT fire.
In the no target mode, my limpets do not manage to rescue a single hostage if the kidnapper has PDT
If we talk about mining... cutter, 512t cargo, 3 medium lasers, 12 limpets (no target mode obviously) - omg, such a frenzy to pick that painite avalanche
Limpets are dumb as hell. I've seen so many of them do their "swoop" as they grab a chunk, and slam straight into a slowly rotating piece of rock.
Or, they scrape along a rock, just barely avoiding it. And if they bump it at all, they instantly die. This is poor path-finding, it's like self-driving cars that navigate by touch, but are made of glass and shatter when they actually hit anything.
You just got to be smarter than your limpets and position yourself in a place where that's not going to happen. For the record this is not intended to be an insult. Please take no offense.
I would really like to see a fairly weak, short-range "tractor beam" tool made available as a default feature for all ships. Not for mining, but for picking up Engineering components after blowing up ships or dropping into signal sources.
The only compelling argument I've seen against it is lore-based; we don't have artificial gravity in this setting. However, we could consider it as a powerful electromagnet instead - short range, but plausible. The ability to approach a cluster of material canisters and suck them up instead if making multiple passes at crawling speed would go a long way toward making the mat grind less irritating.
Limpets still work, but they really get in the way while in RES sites or Conflict Zones... And you have to jump through a lot of hoops to avoid picking up unwanted cargo.
The only compelling argument I've seen against it is lore-based; we don't have artificial gravity in this setting. However, we could consider it as a powerful electromagnet instead - short range, but plausible. The ability to approach a cluster of material canisters and suck them up instead if making multiple passes at crawling speed would go a long way toward making the mat grind less irritating.
Limpets still work, but they really get in the way while in RES sites or Conflict Zones... And you have to jump through a lot of hoops to avoid picking up unwanted cargo.
If you consider variable speed of tractor, range, and number potentially on a ship it's not a bad idea. Limpets would still be faster or have longer range. In fact tractors could be used to get those pieces that get stuck in an asteroid. Or they could be made to work in conjunction with the limpets and the could drop them off into the beam and it could slowly tractor them in. Might be fun if multiple items can be pulled in at once. Might only need one tractor beam and some time. It could be a turreted item in the weapon hardpoint that automatically aims to collect items on it's beam until it reaches your cargo.
Either way, I see no reason they cannot be balanced. It would be easy actually.
Either way, I see no reason they cannot be balanced. It would be easy actually.
There is literally no way to control limpets. They pick targets, pick path, and occasionally, pick a path that intersects asteroid mesh. And they pick paths far FAR too close to objects which can kill them.
And meshes are cramped. I've also seen one asteroid clipping through another, since core asteroids move, and seem to occur near regular asteroids. Near enough to clip through each other.
Yep, you are 100% correct you can't control limpets. What you can do though is make the path the limpets must follow a lot easier by moving your ship. Heck even coming to a dead stop helps considerably, yet there have been complaints from Commanders who still insist on flying at full throttle then complaining about limpets crashing. I rarely loose a limpet, I move my ship so the limpets aren't impeded by obstacles and have as much as a direct run to and from the ship as possible.
And how do you prevent them from choosing a target behind a chunk of exploded core asteroid rock? I would also LOVE a quick easy way to pin down every single fragment at once, so I know precisely which angle to approach at, to provide this magical assistance to limpets. And how do you prevent the limpet from picking a collision swoop on a fragment stopped nearby an asteroid?
Well I tend to move my ship so there isn't a big chunk of exploded asteroid between the fragment and the ship. Maybe I am more patient that others, I have used the nose of the ship to 'nudge' a fragment away from an asteroid so the limpet can have a clear run at it.
It could just be a simple as I am not in a mad race to collect every fragment as quickly as possible. I use a single 5A collector so I only have a maximum of 3 limpets going at once. But especially with core mining I find that way fast enough.
Yeah, it's not hard. I generally just fill up on limpets because they're cheap as dirt, and end up jettisoning quite a few. Better to have them and not need them than the opposite, right? Heck, I'll scrape a rock and kill all the deployed limpets, just to make the flashing proximity stop.
But it just feels like a sloppy system. They have basic collision avoidance, which would be okay if they could deal with rotating objects. But the "grab" mechanic doesn't seem to avoid anything, and only works because objects to grab are usually not near obstacles.