I have made a couple of ships in my plug collect asteroids. I would very much like them to stay in system and dock when they are finished collecting... Instead when they are filled they run to system edge and jump out. Despite only having 90 fuel units... Does anyone know of any solutions by any chance?

QUOTE (Sp3cies @ Oct 7 2009, 01:26 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I have made a couple of ships in my plug collect asteroids. I would very much like them to stay in system and dock when they are finished collecting... Instead when they are filled they run to system edge and jump out. Despite only having 90 fuel units... Does anyone know of any solutions by any chance?

I don't think they're are any because AI ships don't have the same limitations as human ships, they don't even jump out in the direction of neighboring systems

That's odd for two reasons. First, ships that are marked "economy at work"/"collect asteroid bits" should never jump in the first place; I believe they're just supposed to either pick up 'roid bits or go between planets if they can't. Second, ships with < 100 energy shouldn't jump under any circumstances. I've actually made quite extensive use of such ships before and have never seen them attempt to jump; they either buzz other ships, go between planets, attack enemies, or simply drift.

I am quite befuddled.

Asteroid miners might have separate scripting that makes them jump after a while.
But you could try giving them 'Interceptor AI' as that AI type doesn't jump out of system.

The interceptor thing doesn't seem to work either.
Thanks for the suggest though. I guess I will try to fiddle with it later.

It'd be resource-intensive, but if they only jump when they're full, you could give the AI version of the asteroid miner 9999 tons of cargo space. Hopefully the player wouldn't wait around long enough to see them do it.

I've seen my own asteroid collectors collect more bits than the free space they have.
They might be hard-code to jump after a pre-determined time.