Hi all!
I’m trying to figure out how to use orbital mining. I’ve readed the wiki but I don’t what order(s) set. I want that OM will automatically start to search surveyd asteroids and start minig.
Do I need to set an asteroid as colony?
When OM is doing its job, minerals will be picked up by cargo ship? What orders need to be set for that cargo ship?
That’s the things I’m currently struggling with.
I appreciate any suggestions and solutions.
Hi,
1a) just move a ship/station equipped with OM modules to an OM-eligible asteroid/comet/moon. It will start mining on its own once in orbit (i.e. just left there with no orders).
1b) Unfortunately I found no way to make miners to search for eligible asteroids automatically. It seems you’ll have to give the “Move to Location” order every time your miners exhausted the body they were panning gold on.
Yes
There are two ways:
3a) give a cargo ship a set of orders “Move to Location (asteroid_1) → Load All Minerals → Move to Location (asteroid_2) → Load All Minerals → … → Move to Location (Earth/minerals_destination_colony) → Unload All Minerals” and check “Cycle Moves” checkbox. Please, note that each mineral weighs 2 tons, so pick a cargo ship capacity accordingly.
3b) Deliver a Mass Driver onto the asteroid, have a second Mass Driver on Earth/destination colony, and in the Mining Summary Tab (mining cart icon) set the destination via Mass Driver Destination drop-down. Also note, that mass driver has a capacity of 5k tons per year. So, you may want several of those on the asteroid. It is enough to have only 1 on the destination planet though.
I usually opt for a Mass Driver option, and deliver it with the mining ship itself. The miner is huge anyway, additional 25k tons of a cargo bay and 500 tons of a shuttle bay make no difference. But that is just a personal preference, delivering minerals with a dedicated cargo ship may may make few great RP moments, or a mini heart attack when it reports “New Combat Contact” 
It really is that simple once you break it down. I prefer to use mining stations and move them with tugs. I mine one body at a time and I collect the minerals when the body is empty with freighters, that way I don’t have to fiddle with massdrivers. But that’s because my OMs are a supplementary mining income, not my main one. If there are no feasible manned mine/auto-mine planets to use, then the way you use OMs will change as they will become your primary source - but I’ve never been that unlucky.
Thank you both.
I wasn’t sure if I’m doing everything alright.
Hi Humani.
I think there isn’t an absolute right or absolute wrong way of doing things in Aurora.
As said in different discussions, someone prefers orbital miners or fuel harvesters with engines or without, and uses tugs to move them, or mass drivers or cargo ships, or again survey ships with both geo and grav sensors or using just one of them.
Because every match is different from the others, we can try the same approach each time or explore a new one, and we can have fun from this (also a frustrating fun, sometimes, as Aurora really helps in this… always thank you Steve for your game! 
).
What makes the tanker a tanker classed ship?
I don’t know what the requirements are. I select tanker from the list and add large fuel storage. Is it the engine power?
In the Class Design window, on the right side, you can assign three roles to a ship.
One of these is Tanker (the others are: Collier, to carry the missiles and replenish the missiles ships, and Supply Ship, to move MSP).
A tanker needs also at least one Refuelling System, to transfer the fuel from it to the receiving ship. More Systems, more litres per hour it can transfer.
One correction - only one refuelling system is needed. The volume of transfer depends on your tech level. If you add more systems, the tanker can refuel multiple ships at the same time but it does not increase the refuelling volume/rate.
Actually, this changed in 2.6, so now the refueling rate is additive per refueling system on the tanker.
I don’t believe adding multiple systems ever allowed refueling of multiple ships at once. That was the function of the now-defunct Refueling Hub system, the excessive cost and size of which motivated this change.
Yikes, how did I forgot about that change? Thanks slurpee.
Too distracted micromanaging a thousand fighter-sized colony ships?
Scientists can be ground troops and survey planet on foot? Or they can only be recruited as teams?
In wiki there is: Teams assignments are accessible from the Teams/Academy tab located within the Population and Production window F2. When assigning teams only those leaders with the relevant bonus will appear in the list. Their ‘Team rating’ affects it performance and is equal to the sum of the appropriate bonuses of its members.
I can’t find the teams/academy tab either.
Please help.
It sounds like that page has not been updated since the C# 1.0 release in 2020 - Teams are from an old version of the game and don’t exist anymore. They were replaced with the various ground unit types for geosurvey and xenoarcheology, and with ship modules for diplomacy and espionage. The Teams/Academy tab was removed with them.