S, M or L ships as miners?

[Maniac]

Not sure whats the best, smaller ships are of course faster and cheaper but also have less storage, i have like 40 ships harvesting stuff but its still not enough

[eMYNOCK]

The decission is only yours to make.

Small Ships = fast

M Ships average on time spent Mining vs. time Spend Delivering

and finally L Ships can haul a lot but also take their Time


You should always opt for matches your needs... and only your own experience can tell what you need at any given moment of your Game.

[wildblu]

Although I'm still early in this playthrough, I use the small miners to train pilots and crews for the larger ships. They appear to advance in rank quicker than their peers in larger ships.

[Wraith]

I mix them and use all.
1. it save on docking space.
2. it keep the station supplied at all time.

I highly recommend instead of spamming more miners to fill the production you alternatively use skilled pilot and mining laser modification to increase mining effectiveness.

[McMuffin]

Depends on the context you want to use them in.
I started in asteroid belt with a few Ms and added Ls later but in my experience Ls are so much slower when mining silicon I will phase them out soon and run solely on Ms in asteroid belt because there are no Khaak to bother them.
In commonwealth sectors in use more Ls then Ms because they can ignore khaak and don´t need as much silicon. Ls mine ore just fine.

EDIT: forgot S Miners :D
honestly I never used them because their storage is so low that you need multiple ships/runs to power even one production cycle, especially for terran stuff.

[blackphoenixx]

S miners die like flies to the slightest hint of khaak aggression.
M miners will usually survive if there's a station nearby for them to flee to.
L miners can outright ignore khaak, you just want to sent some patrols by so they can use travel drive when they're done mining.

Originally posted by McMuffin:

Depends on the context you want to use them in.
I started in asteroid belt with a few Ms and added Ls later but in my experience Ls are so much slower when mining silicon I will phase them out soon and run solely on Ms in asteroid belt because there are no Khaak to bother them.
In commonwealth sectors in use more Ls then Ms because they can ignore khaak and don´t need as much silicon. Ls mine ore just fine.

EDIT: forgot S Miners :D
honestly I never used them because their storage is so low that you need multiple ships/runs to power even one production cycle, especially for terran stuff.

Silicon mining speed depends on pilot and crew skill, not ship size. The reason your M miners are doing better is probably because they're more experienced vs your newer L miners being pretty green still.

As for S miners i actually did some testing on that, they're doing about half the hourly throughput of an M miner - depending on the model - which is in line with their buy price (though the Tuatara is much worse than the others and the Kopis barely acceptable).

Their only real downside is their fragility, but that's obviously a big one.

[Gregorovitch]

I've never had the patience to systematically test this, so here is my question:

Does an L miner miner equipped with a full complement of mining drones etc mine ore faster or slower than an M miner assuming all else is equal (i.e same pilot/crew skills, same mining location etc)?

[blackphoenixx]

Haven't gotten to L miners yet, sorry. I'm still on M miners (which takes a bit more setup than S miners to keep testing conditions as even as possible) and testing takes some time to gather the necessary data.

Though from my - very rough - preliminary data (which is basically putting the ship on automine in a sector with enough demand and using the transaction log to calculate hourly average after 20+ hours, so not very accurate) L miners get about 2-2,5 times the hourly throughput that M miners do, or at least that's how it is for Chthonios Sentinels vs Plutus Sentinels.

All of this of course only applies to same-sector mining, i haven't even started on testing for 1+ jumps yet.

Edit: so far i have tested S miners and both Drill variants.
The setup is repeat order mining at a yield of 6.3/km³ and selling to the same refinery in the same sector, 2 star pilots, full 2 star crew.
All ships have their racial Mk2 combat engine, Mk2 all-around thrusters and Mk2 mining drills (and mining turrets where applicable).

Ratios are calculated by using the transaction log to calculate average time between deliveries and cargo capacity.

S Miners:
Courier: 260 ore/~ 7 min = ~2229 ore/hour
Kopis: 548 ore/~ 19 min = ~1731 ore/hour
Magpie: 350 ore/~ 11 min = ~1909 ore/hour
Tethys: 210 ore/~ 7 min = ~1800 ore/hour
Tuatara: 172 ore/~ 7 min = ~1474 ore/hour

M Miners:
Drill Vanguard: 980 ore/~ 15 min = ~3979 ore/hour
Drill Sentinel: 1176 ore ~ 16 min = 4410 ore/hour

The problem i've run into is that the refinery is getting full too fast on M miners, so now i'm building a station for a mission with a ton of Refined Metal production that'll hopefully be able to take deliveries from multiple L miners forever if i keep emptying it via freighters and hacking.

[eMYNOCK]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

I've never had the patience to systematically test this, so here is my question:

Does an L miner miner equipped with a full complement of mining drones etc mine ore faster or slower than an M miner assuming all else is equal (i.e same pilot/crew skills, same mining location etc)?

basic loadout will work fine... means you only need the Mining Laser on the only hardpoint that can fit it.

beside the mandatory mining drones and cargo drones thre are not many differences in speed... it just takes longer because they can stuff more into their belly.

though, if you ask me... unless you really need a L miner, either for its durabiity or because your station eats a lot per cycle... i would prefer M miners.

[Daddy Shark]

So really an L miner should come out on top because it's spending the most time mining and the least time travelling.

[eMYNOCK]

they equal out at some point... be it monetary or volume wise.

[Gregorovitch]

Were I come from on this is from observing my four metal/wafer refineries over many hours. The facts here are:

* the refineries have different distances between the refinery location and their mining fields ranging from one sector to three.

* they all have about the same number of miners overall, a mixture of L and M now, previously just Ms.

* stocks of ores never seem to max out

* stocks of ores never seem to run out

* stocks of refined product stay fairly steady swinging around mid point of stock allocation

* profits are consistent sometimes dropping on economic downturn (which is then reflected in higher stock readings for refined products i.e. reduced sales). They all make 1.75-2.25m per hour average long term on two refined metal and two silicon wafer production modules.

I believe my replacement ratio of Ls for Ms is about 1-for-2, maybe a bit higher than that, but I haven't bothered to record these details accurately. I've just added miners until the ore stocks are observed to rise above empty consistently.

All these refineries started with 8 M miners. They got pegged back a bit by kha'ak attrition. When they got down to about five I started adding Ls to replace them. Most have got about 3 or 4 M and a couple of Ls now. The ore gathering, production and sales seem to have been barely affected.

I've probably bought about 40 M miners and maybe 10 L miners for these four refineries over the course of 100 hours or so which very roughly adds up to about 40-50m Cr. The total profit made by these refineries during that period is about 800m Cr.

My conclusions from these observations are:

* that there is very little meaningful difference between different types of miners, they all end up performing roughly the same when all is said and done, albeit you need at least twice as many Ms vs Ls for the same job.

* that the cost of miners is chickenfeed against the overall profits made over time except....

* ..... in the early game when you are strapped for cash, but then the decision is made for you anyway, you buy Ms 'cos that's what you can afford.

* the performance of a refinery or mining station is affected far more by the yields of the asteroids it mines and it's location with respect to customers (how many of them there are in range and how starved of the products they are) than what miners it uses.

Or put another way, IMHO so long as your miners are getting enough ore to keep your station in full production continuously it really doesn't matter what miners you use because in the long term the cost of miners is a small fraction of total earnings from them. Ls are just a whole heap more difficult to kill so in the long run they offer greater reliability of supply and far less hassle.

[blackphoenixx]

Originally posted by Star Trucker:

So really an L miner should come out on top because it's spending the most time mining and the least time travelling.

Only for same-sector mining. The more travel distance you have the more the equation favors M miners. Or speed vs cargo bay in general.

Even then the Chthonios seems to outperform the Crane and Magnetar despite its smaller cargo hold, though i don't have hard numbers on that yet and for the Crane the lack of L turret is definitely a factor.

Gate jumps are especially bad for slowing down L miners because they take much longer to get their travel drives back up to speed, where on an M miner with combat engines (especially TER ones) the time loss is significantly smaller.
In theory at least. I haven't gotten around to testing that yet so all i have are observations.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

Only for same-sector mining. The more travel distance you have the more the equation favors M miners. Or speed vs cargo bay in general.

I think it may be the other way round actually. M miners typically carry 1/4 of what an L can carry. M miners are definitely not four times faster than L's except on certain routes that involve mostly highway travel. Otherwise the difference in travel drive speeds is not significant. This means generally speaking an L miner will spend more time mining versus travelling.

[blackphoenixx]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

I think it may be the other way round actually. M miners typically carry 1/4 of what an L can carry. M miners are definitely not four times faster than L's except on certain routes that involve mostly highway travel. Otherwise the difference in travel drive speeds is not significant. This means generally speaking an L miner will spend more time mining versus travelling.

The difference in travel drives is not just about speed.
An M combat engine has zero travel drive charge time and takes 15 seconds to reach max speed (12 seconds for TEL, 2 seconds for TER).
An L all-around engine takes 20 seconds to charge up the travel drive, then 75 seconds to reach max speed (60 for TEL, 15 for TER).

Maneuverability is similar, with L miners having a turning speed of 6-10°/sec vs M miners 20-30°/sec (with Mk2 all-around thrusters), so every time the ship has to do significant turns (like if a station is behind the gate, for example) the M miner pulls ahead a little.

So the more often your ship needs to reengage their travel drive or change direction the better M miners get in comparison.
I'm not saying that an M miner will ever deliver more ore/hour than an L miner - that would indeed take some very special circumstances - but considering the L miners costs at least 5x as much they don't have to.

[SpaceToast]

Originally posted by Maniac:

Not sure whats the best, smaller ships are of course faster and cheaper but also have less storage, i have like 40 ships harvesting stuff but its still not enough

I use strictly L for station miners, and M for sector auto miners. never found any real reason to use S miners as split M miners are faster.