VanGogh Gaming's TinyMiner EVE Online Mining Bot

VG, you'll like this.

I tried EVE Stealth Miner just for the heck of it the other day.

TinyMiner is much more stable and is faster. The other bot relies on timing too much. Time to undock, time to warp to the belts or station, etc. It doesn't sense where it is like this one does. You have to set 2 bookmarks to station, one that it warps to zero, and the other that it uses to dock. Again, you have to set times for it. So, sometimes it sits in the hangar with 10-20 seconds to waste before unloading and undocking.

You have to set 2 different tabs on your overview, too, which I think leaves more room for error. One tab is for stargates and the other for asteroids. TM uses a bookmark to gate mine which is one less step.

Also, the other bot de-selects each roid and then reselects them in case one pops. It wastes a lot of time doing that, whereas TM seems to know where the roids are. Much more efficient.

With the other bot, you can't store profiles like you can with TM. That's a big disadvantage IMO. I don't use the same belt or system each time and I like having different profiles.

The other bot doesn't let you leave your laser on on the last run, either. It sits there and turns them all off....another time waster.

A couple things I liked about the other bot over TM is that it activates the 3 lasers more quickly on the 3 roids. But I'm sure VG could easily adjust the timing on this bot to do that. But I'm thinking that he has it timed like that for those who may not have their Cap skills trained up and so it doesn't tax the cap as quickly. The other is that when you warp to the roids, the mouse cursor will position your camera so that you're looking down on the ship, thus taking any bright sun or clouds away from the clicking areas. I'm sure VG could easily write that script in if he saw it necessary.

Overall, be very happy with this bot, dudes. It's so much faster and simpler in design than the other one I tried.

Great job, VG!

ETA: The tutorial on this one is much better, too!

Yes I know the other bot that you mentioned. Relying solely on timing provides a very poor user experience not to mention predictability and looking very unnatural. Also their site is a blatant ripoff of the TinyMiner site. They copied entire paragraphs word for word and didn't even bother to rewrite the sentences. Talk about lack of inspiration but this is very unprofessional to say the least.

Also I am proud to say that many of the current TinyMiner features have been suggested by our very own users throughout the course of time. Everyone can see that the "Pilot's Lounge" section of the forum is full of feature request threads that are marked as (DONE). I haven't got around making TinyMiner start the Coffee Maker and order Pizza in the morning yet but there's still time for all that... I'm not even going to talk about the Fleshlight that someone mentioned in the same thread!:)

TinyMiner is using a rudimentary artificial intelligence that makes informed decisions based on the surroundings when it comes to taking an action. That's why everything runs much more smoothly than if it relied solely on timing. For example when activating the lasers TinyMiner will check that each laser has been properly turned on because it can happen that not all asteroids are within mining range at a certain point. So if some of the lasers haven't been turned on TinyMiner will activate them on the first targeted asteroid since that one is always the closest. This behavior ensures that your ship will always mine with all available lasers at all times.

It's all the little things that, when put together, make it so efficient. TinyMiner always knows how many asteroids are targeted and will not target any more unless the number of targeted asteroids is less than the number of lasers on your ship. Also a great time saver is the internal list that keeps track of empty belts that won't be visited again during the mining session and also the list of so called undesirable belts (belts that have asteroids very far away from the warp-in point) which are put at the end of the queue and will only be used when all other belts are empty. Also there is the "Warp from 200km" option which tremendously boosts your mining efficiency.

At the end of the day the important thing to remember is that a macro mining bot is simply a tool designed to help you achieve a more enjoyable gaming experience so have fun raking the ISK with TinyMiner!

I am still waiting for that cappuccino maker, VG!

But thanks kargo27 for the suggestion that I never thought about suggesting myself and am amazed noone else ever mentioned as it I know a lot of us work the same as I do; VG, please turn the camera away from the bright sun.

Most of us continue to work on the other pc or second screen in between the time-intervals. Some other features like TM making itself smaller or showing the timer, were suggested for that reason. Having a bright sun globe (or odd coloured clouds) aint that relaxing as it might sound. Having that solved would be a great addition to an al ready amazing program!