Fiveseven

Hi folks, first of all, I love this game I already spend dozen of hours building, exploring and fighting. But one major flaw (maybe I don't get it) is all my ships (with Captain) which have a job are being payed while I am exploring the galaxy, but they are doing nothing unless I switch to the sector where they are. Found a graet sector with tons of asteroids and built some ships for mining and some others for protecting them. This costs a load of money but mining does only happen if I am in the same sector, but paying non stop. I know I could just not pay them until I fly to the sector but thats not the right idea. Do I need to activate something special on the local server ? Thanks a lot in advance