Programming Limpet Drone, Prospector Limpet Failed, Prospector Limpet Engaged

90% of the time I launch a Prospector Limpet I hear the warning "Prospector Limpet Failed".
Then it launches, engages and successfully scan the asteroid...

Sooo... What's the point of this "Fail Message"?

Because there is an annoying Bug since 3.3 that kills your Prospector Limpet when you launch one.It seems it collides with your Ship after the launch.
 
The previous one which was working fine attached to an asteroid, was disabled because you launched the new one. Do you mean why bother having a message when that happens?

Ah ok, so it refers to the previous Prospector Limpet (I also have active collectors).
Ok, I was confused. Yeah then the message is very miselading.
It should be something like "previous prospector limpet disengaged".
 
90% of the time I launch a Prospector Limpet I hear the warning "Prospector Limpet Failed".
Then it launches, engages and successfully scan the asteroid...

Sooo... What's the point of this "Fail Message"?

Flying the Krait Mark II and I would say the failure rate is 50%.

Tried launching prospector whilst slowing down, whilst accelerating, and whilst stationairy. Same failure rate.

I started doing thrust-up during launch to try and increase the relative speed between the launched limpet and my ship... would this increase the success rate? It resulted in the same failure rate from what I can tell.

Sure, perhaps this should happen randomly from time to time but if you EXPECT this problem and adjust ship trajectory to avoid a hull collision... this failure should be avoidable. Pilots that understand how to avoid hull collisions by adjusting trajectory prior to launch should be able to avoid this problem.

Prospector limpet failure is just a broken part of the game right now.
 
Flying my (rather more sedate) Beluga for the CG I unexpectedly lost .... zero prospectors. Just the usual expiry messages from old prospectors that exceeded the module support level.

OTOH I have seen it on other ships doing 'new skool' mining, as there's more incentive to fly long distances to distant targets, hance higher speeds and 'self-ramming' does seem to happen. I'm sure someone will have raise this as a bug and it can be sorted. But not the one Matty raised, that's just not paying attention to which prospector died.
 
Flying my (rather more sedate) Beluga for the CG I unexpectedly lost .... zero prospectors. Just the usual expiry messages from old prospectors that exceeded the module support level.

OTOH I have seen it on other ships doing 'new skool' mining, as there's more incentive to fly long distances to distant targets, hance higher speeds and 'self-ramming' does seem to happen. I'm sure someone will have raise this as a bug and it can be sorted. But not the one Matty raised, that's just not paying attention to which prospector died.

It is definitely not a "self-ramming" thing. There is some kind of glitch going on. From a stationary position thrusting slowly up when launching a limpet... and I get a prospector failure due to collision with my hull?

No. Glitchy game.
 
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In my Python, I only get collisions with prospector limpets when I'm either maneuvering during deplyoment, flying too fast, or either slowing down or speeding up.

It's important to keep a steady speed and not pitch or roll until the limpet appears in front of your ship. It's easiest to just put the throttle into the blue when firing a prospector limpet.
 
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It's because your controller can only support a certain number of limpets. If a previous limpet is still active, and you launch another one, the last one will deactivate, triggering the message.

Can you even fire a 2nd when one is supported? If I have 2 collector limpets active, I can't fire a 3rd. Not sure about prospector limpets though...
 
Flying my (rather more sedate) Beluga for the CG I unexpectedly lost .... zero prospectors. Just the usual expiry messages from old prospectors that exceeded the module support level.

OTOH I have seen it on other ships doing 'new skool' mining, as there's more incentive to fly long distances to distant targets, hance higher speeds and 'self-ramming' does seem to happen. I'm sure someone will have raise this as a bug and it can be sorted. But not the one Matty raised, that's just not paying attention to which prospector died.

I'm not sure I it's a bug. I'm flying a Krait, doing both new and old mining, and I'm seeing <5% PL failure (they consistently fail when moving to fast or sudden pitch down movements when firing them). As for losing CLs during core mining... losing very few of these as well which may be down to flight path (mine) - I only use vertical thrusters to orbit cracked asteroids and keep my cargo hatch facing the loose fragments, and limpet approach vector.
 
Can you even fire a 2nd when one is supported? If I have 2 collector limpets active, I can't fire a 3rd. Not sure about prospector limpets though...

You can only have as many limpets flying as your controller can, control. Once a PL has latched on to an asteroid, it is no longer flying, so you can fire another one. This is pretty much a necessity for PLs, or once you had one locked onto an asteroid, you'd then have to sit there and wait for it to expire. So firing the next one (beyond the controllers stated limit) destroys the one engaged with an asteroid - ergo the fail message the OP was asking about.
 
I'd say that's just one of the many ambiguous messages the game likes to befuddle us, especially inexperienced players but betimes even veterans. Would it be so hard to change this message into something like "previous prospector limpet deactivated" or what am I missing here?

They may as well remove the audio. For a size 5 prospector it can have 3 active limpets, so the message would have to be 'the prospector three before the one you just fired is deactivated'. Or something. Really not worth it.

... and then in a month's time you'd get the forum posts "I just fired four prospectors, but I can only find three"....
 
I'd say that's just one of the many ambiguous messages the game likes to befuddle us, especially inexperienced players but betimes even veterans. Would it be so hard to change this message into something like "previous prospector limpet deactivated" or what am I missing here?

Is it really that befuddling though? No disrespect to the OP, but the first time I heard that message, I immediately thought "OK, what did I do wrong, wait a second, it's right there flying towards an asteroid, oh right the previous one has deactivated because I launched a fresh one". I suppose they could tweak the message, if most people get confused?
 
Is it really that befuddling though? No disrespect to the OP, but the first time I heard that message, I immediately thought "OK, what did I do wrong, wait a second, it's right there flying towards an asteroid, oh right the previous one has deactivated because I launched a fresh one". I suppose they could tweak the message, if most people get confused?

No, it's pretty obvious if you think about it, but different people get confused by different things.

Kinda like the new POI count - if it says 2 Human POI for a planet and there's a surface base and an outpost orbiting I think it's pretty obvious that 2 = Settlement + Outpost. But other come on here asking how to find the POI, so there are definitely different types of thought processes going on.
 
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When you launch a prospector the previous one expires ofc, but is a notice that just confuses most of the people. It should be gone long ago.
 
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