Mining

Mining planets is one of the most crucial aspects of the game. Doing so helps build your wealth and allows you to stake your claim as conqueror of planets you come across in your travels.

A ship's mining ability will be drastically improved by upgrading the prospecting skill.

The Mine Process

When your ship executes the MINE() function during a tic, as long as it is within range, it is added to a mine lottery for that specific planet.

Each planet has a maximum amount of ships that can mine if per tic (regardless of player). If you mine a planet with 60 ships and the mine limit is 30, it will still count as an action for all 60 ships.

At the end of the tic, all other ships which mined the same planet compete eachother for the resources based on the planet's attributes and the ship's prospecting skill. The player that mines the planet the most on a single tic conquers the planet from the previous conqueror.

The MINE(Ship ID, Planet ID) Function

The MINE( ) function can be called on its own or used in-line with any more complex query. Consider the following examples:

Ship #101 mining Planet #202
SELECT MINE(101, 202);

All Ships named "Home Miner" mining Planet #202
SELECT MINE(id, 202) FROM my_ships where name='Home Miner';

Mine all planets in range of all ships
SELECT MINE(ship, planet) FROM planets_in_range;

Using Ship State to Mine Continuesly

While the MINE function must be called every tic, if you plan for this same action to occur each tic you can use the ship's state to define that action. A ships stateful action must still meet all normal requirements including that a ship can only perform on action per tic and it must be within range of the planet.

Ship #101 mining Planet #202 Continuesly
UPDATE my_ships SET action='MINE', action_target_id=202 WHERE id=101;

All Ships named "Home Miner" continuesly mining Planet #202
UPDATE my_ships SET action='MINE', action_target_id=202 WHERE name='Home Miner';

Continuesly mine all planets in range of all ships
UPDATE my_ships SET action='MINE', action_target_id=planets_in_range.planet FROM planets_in_range WHERE my_ships.id=planets_in_range.ship;