Drone Mining Behaviour

[elfin anchor]

Just a small item, can change the drone behaviour so that they always mine the next avaible chuck in the proximity to avoid time and battery wastage (they are driving all over the site at the moment)

[radiant valley]

yeah i remind that problem 6 month ago (on the steam fest in january)... one of dev's says that elevator is the central reference marker for drones (instead of last finished drill/work position) to drill... but this thing still didn't resolve as i can see...

[neat stirrup]

We discussed changing this algorithm today and will implement it in future updates, diggers will look for the highest priority cells closest to them

[elfin anchor]

This is great news @neat stirrup thank you for looking into this 🙂

[radiant valley]

Ура, это случилось 😂🤌 на старте игры меганужная вещь)

[elfin anchor]

what was the outcome? Was is found to be needing a change?

[calm copper]

I think best is to have the algorithm do A* to the nearest mineable block, with priority mining blocks that are blocked/surrounded by normal mineable blocks also be a priority. This helps forcing the diggers to mine a path to the priority block.

[neat stirrup]

We made a new algorithm that after digging up a cell looks in the next 8 cells around it for a new cell, then if it doesn't find one it looks in the next 16, so it digs up the nearest next cell, the highest in priority.

The idea about aiming for prioritized ones if they are covered by regular ones is also good, it's a bit of a complication, but we'll think about that after the new algorithm is implemented.

[calm copper]

That way you can select a location that is needed as "high prio", and let the diggers dig a path to them.

[glacial vale]

Any idea when this might be implemented? I'm mining out a large square around my elevator and still seeing the mining drones mine 1 block then run to the next closest highest priority block from the elevator, leaving them bouncing all over the map instead of mining several before relocating...

[neat stirrup]

Hi, it's pretty easy to implement, 1 day + a couple of days for testing. But the task is not a priority, because now we are very busy fixing bugs found at EA launch. Robots can be easily controlled with priority digging (red color on ALT key), but we'll get to that soon enough

[glacial vale]

ty for the response!

[leaden swift]

This is why i mine just one side for now