Best mining ship?

[Gurith]

Hello,

I have seen a few post about best mining loadout but can't see any discussion about the best ship for this task.

What is you prefered mining ship type? Do you prefer largest capacity as possible or fastest travel speed? (or a middle ground?)

What do you think abot the new split mining ships? worth it or other race ships are still better?

Thank you,

[Playbahnosh]

Well, I never do manual mining because it's just an exercise in frustration for very little profit. For OOS automated mining, all the miners are pretty much interchangeable. I've seen no significant difference between their performance, so I guess you should pick your favorite color or something.

[ExavierMacbeth]

As Play said they are pretty interchangable in the grans scheme of things so it really comes down to which one you like the looks of the best. I am partial to Teladi M & Argon L.

As to the question about Cargo vs Speed.
- I prefer cargo on the M sized ships because once you unlock the 8M dock for your station (or get enough 3M6S docks) you can more or less spam them until your station stays full of resorces.
- For L sized ships I prefer speed + top end thrusters. Makes them expensive but goes a long way to helping them with gate alignment & docking manuvers. Which speeds up how fast they get back to mining.

[Malkuth]

Well I’m going to switch it up. The best miner if you have expansion is the alligator 🐊 split.

It’s speed alone is worth it. We’re not talking a 25-50 speed difference either. It’s faster than some frigates.

When your mining for ores speed is better than storage.

[Philonious Rex]

Yeah the major differences are really between the M and L sized ships. The individual characteristics between races and etc are whatever, you'll probably end up with several different types.

The limitations are more on finding good sectors to mine in and station capacity.
But Malkuth made a good point, if you are friendly with split that would be a great choice.

[Gurith]

Is L miner really more productive than M?
Or does it depend on situation like sector mining L>M but for more distant mining then M>L? (as then the ship would spend more time travelling than mining)

(currently using split miners as I started a split rebel game, I like the look and speed but really small cargo)

[ExavierMacbeth]

Honestly my stations seem to stay full more reliably with a 30+ horde of M miners (and enough docking pads to keep them out of internal storage) than occurs with 15 L Miners. Mostly i think because even though they mine less it turns into a constant stream of resources that works better at keeping the factory cycles working... and this is with a mega factory.

I have found that L miners work better on single resource "Automine" (Using a global restriction if you just want it to sell to your stations) to handle bulk loads. Station Managers tend to do some odd things with L miners often leaving their cargo holds partially full (tells it to mine Ore, Silicon, & Ice but only buys the silicon before sending miner back out again reducing capacity for the next run). I leave the hordes of M Miners under station control though and they seem to work fine.

EDIT: I will say that L miners are more resistant to Xenon fighter patrols which often makes them more efficient in contested or border areas..