Asteroids and comets are good sources of minerals with great accessibility. In the early game it’s feasible to micromanage these since they are essential and picking specific minerals is important. Later on it becomes hard to find time to micromanage all my orbital mining ships. However it’s painful to see systems full of valuable asteroids going to waste.
For a mining ship with a cargo hold, orbital mining in a system could be automated with standing orders:
LD: Orbital Mining Source (until full) (S)
UL: Minerals (S) Cargo: 100%
For mining ships without a cargo hold I believe it becomes a lot harder to implement, it would require a separate cargo fleet to collect the minerals but require more checks if there are minerals to collect in the body, etc
I always design my OM without cargo hold and with slow engines to be independent, then I group them in fleet of 5-10.
If I have several bodies in a system with several OM fleets operating, I have 1-2 small cargo with a standing order to visit all the bodies where the OM are operating, collect the minerals and unload.
In this way once all the OM fleets are positioned, I have to just periodically launch the standing order from the cargos.
The point is to automate the mining groups moving to orbital mining bodies. I often miss the event about minerals exhausting so the fleet stands there doing nothing until I notice.
About the cargos, I assume you don’t mean Standing Order but Template Order? Again the point would be to remove the need to do this manually.
Sounds like it could be useful. I know what I did was just strip-mine a spot or two at a time, with dedicated freighters to move the resources. It wasn’t too much micro, but any orders that make it easier would be great.
This is what I do. But, alas, I have never expanded more than 1 or 2 systems beyond Sol. I’m not very good at managing large numbers of ships and planets.
