TGFT is in the process of organizing hardy miners and combat defenders to attempt mining expeditions into bot infested sectors.

While we have been able to mine in the relative safety of a station's shadow it has become increasing more difficult to find cool asteroids to mine. Our mining areas have been over run with claimjumpers.

To stay ahead of the competition Council Member Obsidian is funding a mining expedition for TGFT guild members, probationary members, and other willing pilots.

Our goal is to explore some of the sectors currently avoided by most human players due to the hive bots and map out the ores present in these sectors. Also we will mine ore from sectors that contain hive bots to practice self-defense techniques and group mining techniques. Hopefully the cooler asteroids will allow us to mine larger amounts of ore and we will yield larger profits in exchange for the increased risks.

For these preliminary expeditions:

*Miners are required to have a strong constitution, hard head and determination. You will be paid 10,000 credits in addtion to a % of value of the ore you mined

*Defenders are required to have a fast ship and even faster reflexes. You will be paid 20,000 credits in addtion to a % of the value of total ore mined.

*If we find ourselves in a sector of extremely agressive hive bots all expedition members will receive an additional 10% hazard pay bonus, plus bonus combat XP.

*All ore must be turned over to TGFT at the end of the expedtion for payment. The ores will be sold by the guild and profits divided up as described. Any remaining profits from the sale of the ore goes to the Guild to fund future expeditions .

**XP bonuses are available to all participants who are registered with the expedtion leader, and fully participate in the event as determined by the expedition leader**

Please respond to this thread and I will contact you with further information.

The event will start at 00:00 hrs GMT in AZEK i-4 (Fenhall mining station).

AFTER ACTION REPORT – TGFT MINING EXPEDITION

This expedition provided intelligence and experience for the participating pilots in mining sectors infested with hive bots.

The expedition was headed by Obsidian. The pilots were divided into two squads, each composed of miners, defenders, and spotters. Obsidian led one squad. As no qualified TGFT pilot was available, Broma-Ba Slick was selected to lead the other.

The squads initially warped to a sector infested with Tycorp Assaults. All pilots soon discovered that the tactics commonly employed to defeat Tycorps did not necessarily translate into successful defense of miners. Under withering fire, the squads retreated and regrouped.

Obsidian then redirected the squads to a sector infested with Artemis collectors. The defenders were able to successfully defend the miners, and the sector was soon littered with botscrap. Rich deposits of heliocene and pentric ore were located and extracted.

Approximately 900,000 credits of ore was collected, all of which was paid out to the participating pilots. All participants gained experience in combat, weapons, trade and mining.

Recommendations:

1. TGFT should continue to sponsor similar expeditions on a regular basis.

2. The ratio of defenders per miner should be increased.

3. Specific tactics should be developed to maximize ore extraction by miners.

4. Comments should be solicited from participants for the purposes of improving the expeditions.

5. Thanks should be expressed to all those who participated.

Broma-Ba Slick
Lieutenant, TGFT

Sorry I missed it. I'll definately try to make the next one.

Question: Why can't one defender just shoot all the bots in the sector and lure them all into deep space? Admittedly, it isn't nearly as glamorous to intentionally not kill bots, but one or two defenders could completely clear a sector for as many miners as your could assemble.

we didn't think about that :D

900k credits, woah which sector was that? Thats alot better then I get for the van Azek ore i mine from to time.

I'll hope I can participate somewhere in the future in one of your mining expeditions.

Klox's tactic will work, but in my experience, only the two most recent bots you shot will actually follow you. Once you engage a third, the first bot you engaged will go back to its routine. So you need to have half as many defenders as bots in the sector.

And you don't need to lure them into deep space. You can just circle an asteroid. They will ignore other targets and follow only the most recent aggressor. You could even circle the same asteroid as the miners. (But then the miners might get a little nervous.... hehe)

But, I hear that there have been recent changes to the BOT AI which allows them to shoot at you while crackbotting. So perhaps other changes have been made. I'll have to investigate.

Ah, thanks LeberMac. I haven't actually tried this tactic since the beta (or so), where I would get an entire sector of collectors to follow me around. I'll probably do some testing next time I'm on.

As for circling a roid, there's a risk that the bot will loose sight of you and give up. I haven't expierimented with this in detail, but I know it happens. (Get a collector to attack you, then hide on the other side of a roid, where another collector is mining. Since the first collector can't "see" you, the mining collector will attack instead.)

Also, I don't believe that the new bot behavior has been released yet (I've still read chatter on 100 from players crackbotting).

I'll try to test some of this, but I may need to recrute someone to act as the "miner" while I test.

Next expedition is forming. We will continue exploration in AZEK system.
Date is set for Friday May 20th. 7pm CT
Final time to be determined based on registration

me me! i wanna mine heliocene too!

I'll try to make it. If it's 7:00 CST like last time, I may miss the beginning. (So I guess my vote's for a little later.)

I just did a little test (thanks to Mecha Touriuas for being the "miner") and sucessfully lured a sector of Tycorps and A-47s around the sector and they never fired at Mecha. I even went on the far side of a roid and they didn't attack Mecha (and he was closer to them than me at the time too). It looks like one "defender" should be able to draw an entire sector of bots away from the miners. (If you're going to lure them into deep space, make sure to loop around the group every once in a while to keep them together.)

Yes, as soon as you shoot at a bot it will follow you forever even when you you already have some chasing you. I thought that was common knowledge O.o

If I don't fall asleep I might come too.

I had assumed this as well, but LeberMac threw some doubt on the common knowledge, so I wanted to test it before the next expedition.

Yeah, I'm not sure anymore on the bot behavior. Apparently they have recently updated the AI, I need to test out the theory.
I will try to test it out tonight. Been a tough week for me :(

Indeed, you CAN get every bot in a sector to follow you. Even if there are others in the same sector. Just go shoot each one, and then lead them around like the pied piper.
So only one person is required to lead the bots away. Klox is right.

The Pied Piper tactic should allow for much greater ore recovery with much less risk. But will it have the same fun factor as charging in and shooting it out with the bots?

Broma-Ba Slick

The event will go on as planned. See you at 7pm CT!

Okay, now that we've tested the "Pied Piper" tactic, I realize that new bots enter the sector as new players enter, so you can't just lead the whole group into space.

So the strategy that I ended up doing was guarding a roid (with one or two miners) and just let the bots follow me. Any bot that didn't look like it wanted to kill me got shot. We were up against collectors, so I could virtually ignore them after they were attacking me (I orbit the roid, so they have trouble shooting me). At one point, we ended up with one defender (me), one or two miners, and a whole lot of bots, all circling the roid. The bots would fly right by the miners, trying to kill the defender.

An important rule: DON'T KILL THE BOTS! At one point I was following mr_spuck around (with my attackers in tow) and there were no new bots attacking spuck. I noticed that Mecha also had a big entourage, so I'm guessing that all the defenders has properly distracted all of the bots. Unfortunatly, some of the other defenders were killing bots, so the peace didn't last.

A comment on minering ships: This expedition had two miners: mr_spuck in a moth and Obsidian in a centaur. Although a centaur allows for a scanner, in a hostile environment the extra armor of a moth is more important than a scanner (this is from a defender's point of view -- I don't know what spuck and Obsidian would have to say on the subject). If a bot got in a shot or two on spuck, I didn't feel as bad as when they went after Obsidian. mr_spuck seemed to do fine without a scanner, quickly mining roids to see what was in them.

Does it make sense to have a defender sometimes break away from the activity and act as a scout (with a scanner)? Probably makes more sense to scan the sector before the miners get to work.

Just my 2c right after the expedition. I'm sure I'll refine my thoughts later.

[Edit] I think the expeditions should be 2 hours long. I was just getting into the grove when Obsidian announced 20 minutes left. Based on how long people hung around the station after, plus some players' comments, I'm guessing everyone would have stayed around for 2 hours.

I plan on being there on the 27th. My moth and I will be ready. :-)

I'll try helping out if it's on a Friday night. I can either mine or lead bots around asteroids.
Let's do it somewhere extremely dangerous, with Prosus Asssaults or something.
Everyone jump in at once and let the defenders peel the attacking bots off of the miners. That way, no "new" bots spawn as new miners trickle in.
Having one of the escorts be a scanner would work well. Just follow the bot train to the good 'roids like a conga line!