The question on how to AutoMine has come up so often in the Forums that I decided to make this guide as I myself learn what is working and what is not. This guide will grow as I learn more. And also give you some tips and tricks.
Other X4: Foundations Guides:
- X4: Foundations – Controls
- X4: Foundations – How to hack Data Vaults
- X4: Foundations – Trading Wares and Player Inventory Items
How to Set Up Auto Miners In X4
So my first miner set up in argon prime is working flawless. Already made me 250000 in 4 runs.
All you need to do is
1. Go to Map view (M Key), Than Property owned Tab. Select your Mining vessel and right click, than select information.
2. Two tabs show up. Information and Behavior. Go to Behavior tab.
3. Go to middle of Behavior Tab and select Defualt behavior. Choose AutoMine. Automine will Automatically choose where to mine, and where to sell. Nothing else needs to be done. The captain will take care of the rest! Read below for extra importtant stuff.
4. Below this you have two choices Gate Distance and Wares.
Wares allows you to select which Ores your Captain will grab. Select which one you want this vessel to mine.. You can do up to three I belive.
For the gate Distance thats pretty simple.. how many jumps do you want the AI to go to sell its Ores onces filled? Keep in mind the farther he has to go, the longer it takes to make money!
5. When all done Select Confirm to make all the changes Stick.
6. your pilot will wait for you to contact him to start his mission. Comm him and select option for him to start. And your done. He will go off and make you money passively. You can do whatever you want now. Good luck.
Tips and Tricks
Things Ive noticed.
1.. Your pilot will sometimes wait with a full load for a few minutes. He is looking for somewhere to sell his Ores.
2. Having Satellites around all local Stations will help speed this up. If you don’t have satellites he will eventually find something. But it will take forever. (not sure if this is cause maybe you passed by something and updated it) but yeah satellites are key to fast service.
3. Do not follow your AI pilot and watch him work. The AI while being rendered is garbage and he will crash into things and all kinds of strange things. Basically making the whole process extremely long. Try to be OOS (Out of System)
Vessel Set Up.
Of course to mine you need a vessel. You can buy good mining vessel Medium size at a Warf. Warfs sell Small Vessels and Medium Vessels.
1. You only need 1 Mining laser on your vessel.
2. If you have turrets use those for Defense Guns. Your foward facing guns can be used for mining and you will be all set.
3. Do you need crew? If your vessel is attacked and survives they will help with repairs and I believe give a bonus for turrets.
4. Faster your vessel the quicker it will go back and forth from Mining and Selling.
5. So far the best medium miner is the Argon Drill.. (thats the name of the ship Drill) Both Argon Miners are known to work correctly. Some of the other miners for the other races have been reported to have problems with selecting them as Autominers.
6. When buying your ship manually make sure you select captain. You need a captain on your ship to automine.
7. All the software you need is bought and included in game. You can’t really mess it up, the game won’t let you purchase the ship without the software requirments. There is no Mining Software to buy its included in the ship. Thats why its called a Mining vessel!
8. You have to buy a ship that is a mining vessel. Regular transports won’t do it. (they don’t have the built in software. They have the built in TradeWare)
9. Large miners have the benifit of having larger cargo holds. So they gather more ores in a single run. Meaning they will give you more money when the Captain turns in his haul.
10. Large miners have the negative effect of being so large they might get stuck! Don’t be in sector with them!
11. Large miner have the positive benifit that they are much more powerful than mediums and will survive pirate attacks a lot better. But they are much more expensive!