This mod does not affect behavior in any way, it simply modifies the ranges. Make sure you have resource probes in the areas nearby. Also, the resources in that sector might not be depleted, but might be low-density, and your miners will seek out fields that have enough of a density to make mining efficient.

While you cannot limit the ranges of ships assigned to stations, there is a workaround that allows you to have more control over where they mine. It's been awhile since I last played so my memory of the exact UI is hazy, but you can make a blacklist (whitelist) and allow only the sectors you want those miners to mine in (and their home station). Assign that blacklist to the station. You may also need to add sectors that station's traders need access to, as IIRC that blacklist effects all ships assigned to the station.

For this reason I use mining outposts for my mining, then have factories buy the mined resources from the mining outpost, rather than running their own miners.

my miners are mining all over the universe. they're assigned to a station but mine 6 sectors away. There are massive undepleted ressources in the same sector, yet they travel all over the universe. I tried turning this mod off and will see how they behave

With 5-star captain the maximum distance is 7 jumps, is that correct?
Will you ever make a version that takes it to 15 jumps? With VRO it is almost a must.
Thank you

The max distance is based on their skill level, either piloting OR management. Management will grow fairly quickly for an autotrader, so if they are mimicing a more experienced autotrader, their range will grow automatically. Those asssigned to stations have their range dictated by the station manager. Station managers management skill will grow decently fast if the station is doing a lot of trading, but my recommendation is to take a semi-experienced captain from one of your autotraders and reassign them as the station manager.

I also recommend occasionally stopping at station trade kiosks and grabbing a bunch of the basic piloting/management seminars and giving them to brand new traders, as this should increase their range by 1-2j, allowing them to have enough range to at least get started, and basic seminars are plentiful and cheap.

Any way to increase the max distance my autotraders will trade?
Max distance buy and sell when assigned to a station as a trader

I would recommend making sure each pilot has at least 1 full star in piloting or management (basic seminars are plentiful in station traders), and the lead ship being mimic'd to have its anchor point within 1 jump of the mining location, increasing the sale range as needed. This should prevent low-skill pilots from being unable to perform their job.

Hm... maybe what I was seeing is that the Pilots were unable to Mine because their range was so low that they had nowhere to mine based on the Original Sector.
Maybe it does work then... I will test is next time I play.

I played on the 7.10 patch and everything was working correctly. They should be able to start the mimic job just fine, with the individual ship's ranges determined by the skill of the pilot. If you are unable to mimic, make sure there isn't another mod conflicting with it.

Pilots can't Mimic without enough Skill anymore :(
7.10

Seems like subordinate Mining Ships still need about the same Pilot Level in order to mimic the Auto Miner command

If you have an update on the comfirmation let us know. thanks )

It seem to work fine for me on 7.0 without Timelines.

Need more times to confirm range is indeed increasing with skills tho

I'm unlikely to play X4's new patch for awhile yet, so I don't know myself; can someone confirm that it isn't still working on new patch? If so I'll get it updated.

7.0?

Does this work with 7.0?

update?

Use TaterTrade. https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2082610969

I wouldn't recommend trying to modify the files unless you are already familiar with X4 modding. If you are, just extract the file in the workshop folder for this mod and the text file is pretty self-explanatory.

Hello, how would I modify this mods files to get a max range of say 15 jumps?

as i said i dont know what caused it but removing all assignments and re assigning the fleet to the station seems to have fixed it

dong know if its this mod or the last hotfix from the game but my mining ships suddenly dont seem to be able to find anything to mine. They were all doing fine then suddenly today they just hover saying they cant find anything

I've been playing 6.0 and honestly forgot i had this mod installed, this would explain why i could use it xD

Can confirm it still works, all as described,

Fellow Captains,
Any field tests done or in-progress for 6.0x?

Luca,
Love your mod and respect your time, when able please post when 6.0x has been vetted.

Luca, and Fellow Captains,
On a side note and if/when time permits, looking for mod suggestions,
QoL, Common Sense, Immersion and other mods that make the game better for you?

TIA,
Cheers

Probably. I haven't jumped into the new release yet, probably will sometime in the next few days, but unless the skill and/or trade system is fundamentally changed in a patch, this will continue to work.

Does this mod still work?

The mod does reduce the range which "advanced autominers" can have about 50 percent (e.g. from 4 sectors max range to 2 sectors).

Thanks for the response. Like your workaround. I used a "whitelist" method to fix it but it's tedious to manage.

This mod doesn't affect autominer/autotrader or station based variant decision making, that is vanilla behavior. This will simply increase their available range. Make sure you have sufficient resource probes in the location you want your miners to be mining, and stations will still send miners out some distance if the yields in their own area are low, which could be your problem here.

There is aalso a workaround you can use. You can set up the buy orders on the station to accept only from player owned ships, then set up your miners in a mimic fleet anchored in the sector you want them to mine in with 0 max gather range, but with enough sell range to reach the station they are to deposit their wares into.

Makes my station miners automine like 10 jumps away instead of nearby sectors for some reason.

miners aren't mining?

Nvm actually found the link lmao

What exactly is the difference between this and tatertrade? On Egosoft's forum I can't find a good description of what tatertrade really does lol

Thanks....I'll try just this one then. Dont want to have too many scripts running in my game.

Why would you need this if you're using Tatertrade? You can't run both Autotrade and TaterTrade simultaneously, and TaterTrade already requires 0 skill to start it and allows higher ranges. You can however use both mods as mine will still apply to Autominers while you use TaterTrade for trading.

Does anyone know if this mod is compatible with TaterTrade?

You are so cool, Thank you Luca!

Small update, autotrader skill requirement changed from 1 star to 0. You will still have the minimum range of 1 on your autotrader when under 1 1/3rd stars, and 0 on autominers under 1 star, but can at least start the command. Also fixed a small bug with the max buy range on autotraders, as well as incorrect text. Further, small QoL change to make the starting default range be the maximum allowed by pilot's skill instead of starting at 0.

Thanks for the great mod :)

Okay so when I said this weekend I actually meant in one hour. Had a bit of time, and it was easier than I was expecting, so here you go. Should be working fine. I let a few autotraders run for about 15 minutes to make sure the range reset bug didn't reappear and it didn't in that time frame, but let me know if it does over a longer period.

The latest update broke this mod because the devs separated the old autotrade behavior into Local and Adv. Autotrade (now similar to how mining is handled). I'll try to update this as soon as I can, but that might not happen until next weekend, just an fyi.

Awesome.

Finally had some time to get to work on this, and so it's finally been updated. The increase in range has come back for 4.2 finally. Range based on Management skill has also finally returned. Max ranges are now based on EITHER piloting OR management skill (only management if assigned to a station manager, same as vanilla), whichever is higher. A 3-star piloting, 2-star management pilot will have the same range as a 1-star piloting, 3-star management pilot. This will allow the traders to increase their range gradually on their own (mgmt skill will increase faster than piloting, especially past 3 stars), as well as be increased via seminars. Can be useful for using 0 and 1-star seminars on starting pilots to get a few jumps of range, and then let them grow their management on their own to get higher.

The previous bug with range being reset when using mgmt skill is also finally fixed.

Thank you for all of your hard work. This is one of my favorite must have mods

I think that is why they switched to Pilot Skill lol

so any news regarding the fix ?

Yes, I already fixed that in the patch I've been working on, and have -partially- fixed the range being reset, but not fully. It is becoming increasingly frustrating as I have spent a frankly ridiculous amount of time trying to solve it. I may reset to piloting skill for miners or both miners and traders instead of management skill because of it. I've held off on doing so thus far because I didn't want to mess up people's games that are currently running off management skill (and thus higher ranges), but it may be unavoidable.

Concerning the double "Max gate distance to sell", it's because the text is wrong on line number 4, it should be:

text="{1041, 10057}"

I'll be fixing it sometime tonight or tomorrow evening fyi.

@arshiba Thanks, I did not know that. It makes sense now. It is just strange that you can increase the value up to 7, only to see it revert back to 5.

@jan.panek, Train the piloting skill (along with the management skill) of the miner's pilots.
There is another check deep into aiscript (not in order parameter limits) that the max range can't exceed the number of stars in the piloting skill.
In addition, unlike traders, miners don't level up management skill.

Yup, and the range still keeps resetting. Any update, Luca?