slight revision of minerAI
Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 9:08 am
The other day I was doing a little asteroid mining. As I don't have a mining laser myself I grouped up with a native mining ship in a very profitable co-operation: I let him shoot up the asteroids and boulders, and then scooped up the splinters before he could do it. 
So he had to turn to the next asteroid. Rinse, repeat.
Now, accompanying this miner I found one thing odd. After cleaning out a big part of the asteroid field, the remaining asteroids were scattered in the distance. So the miner targeted an asteroid about 15 to 20 kms away, went into state BREAK_ROCKS, and approached the asteroid with a breathtaking speed of 37.5. It took quite some while to get into firing distance. Remarkably, once in firing range, the speed went a little up, only to slow down again once the asteroid was hit.
What I would suggest is another state, probably APPROACH_ROCKS, that brings the miner into his target's vicinity first (let's say 5 km) with a higher speed (speedFactor of at least 0.5, perhaps?), before setting the state to BREAK_ROCKS on DESIRED_RANGE_ACHIEVED.
Am I making sense here?
So he had to turn to the next asteroid. Rinse, repeat.Now, accompanying this miner I found one thing odd. After cleaning out a big part of the asteroid field, the remaining asteroids were scattered in the distance. So the miner targeted an asteroid about 15 to 20 kms away, went into state BREAK_ROCKS, and approached the asteroid with a breathtaking speed of 37.5. It took quite some while to get into firing distance. Remarkably, once in firing range, the speed went a little up, only to slow down again once the asteroid was hit.
What I would suggest is another state, probably APPROACH_ROCKS, that brings the miner into his target's vicinity first (let's say 5 km) with a higher speed (speedFactor of at least 0.5, perhaps?), before setting the state to BREAK_ROCKS on DESIRED_RANGE_ACHIEVED.
Am I making sense here?