Miner testing data

[blackphoenixx]

Everyone who's been lurking here for a while knows there's a lot of hearsay and stuff "everyone knows" flying around regarding which is the best miner and/or loadout for it.

Since i was curious, had some time free and wanted to know for sure i did some testing. Mostly for myself, but why not share it? So here it is.

The setup is the same for all ships - i started a custom game in The Reach with a miner in every configuration i wanted to test, a bunch of combat ships to remove all other ships from the sector (stupid Argon police kept interrupting my tests) and a mining station.

All miners have 5-star pilots and elite freighter crew.
I performed three runs per miner to eliminate any outliers and averaged the time of those, rounding the final results to the nearest hundred.
All miners were ordered to repeat order mine at the resource probe (2.6/m³ ore, 138km away from the station) and sell to the trade station.
TIme taken was between undock (orders given while docked & paused) and completion of ware transfer.
All tests performed while OOS.

S Miners:
All ships equipped with their native Mk2 combat engine, Mk2 mining laser(s), Mk2 all-around thrusters

Courier: 260 ore/~ 6min = ~2500 ore/hour
Kopis: 548 ore/~ 10min = ~3500 ore/hour
Magpie: 350 ore/~ 7min = ~3000 ore/hour
Tethys: 210 ore/~ 6min = ~2300 ore/hour
Tuatara: 172 ore/~ 6min = ~1800 ore/hour

M Miners:
All ships equipped with their native Mk2 Combat engine, Mk2 all-around thrusters, Mk2 Mining laser(s), no mining turrets

Alligator: 700 ore/~ 6 min = ~7000 ore/hour
Bolo: 880 ore/~ 8 min = ~6800 ore/hour
Drill Sentinel: 1176 ore/~ 9 min = ~8100 ore/hour
Drill Vanguard: 980 ore/~ 8 min = ~7400 ore/hour
Manorina Sentinel: 1200 ore/~ 10 min = ~7600 ore/hour
Manorina Vanguard: 1000 ore/~ 9 min = ~6900 ore/hour
Plutus Sentinel: 1152 ore/~ 8 min = ~8800 ore/hour
Plutus Vanguard: 900 ore/~ 7 min = ~7500 ore/hour

After that i tested for different engines (this was a different start so the values are not directly comparable since i didn't hit the same spot with my probe):

All ships are Plutus Sentinel with Mk2 thrusters, Mk2 Mining Lasers and no mining turrets
All engines are Mk2.

ARG Combat: 1152 ore/~ 7min = ~9900 ore/hour
PAR Combat: 1152 ore/~ 7min = ~9500 ore/hour
SPL Combat: 1152 ore/~ 7min = ~10000 ore/hour
TEL Combat: 1152 ore/~ 7min = ~10000 ore/hour
TER Combat: 1152 ore/~ 7min = ~9900 ore/hour

ARG Travel: 1152 ore/~ 6min = ~11200 ore/hour (just for comparison even if it's not practical)

L miners:
All ships are equipped with SPL all around engines (previous testing confirmed it outperforms all others by a significant margin), Mk2 thrusters and mining turrets in the slots that don't accept anything else (2 L for Wyvern, 3 M for Crane, 1 L for everyone else)
All ships have 10 mining drones.

Magnetar Vanguard: 4000/~13min = ~18800 Ore/hour
Magnetar Sentinel: 5040/~16min = ~18500 Ore/hour
Chthonios Vanguard: 3200/~10-11min = ~18600 Ore/hour
Chthonios Sentinel: 3840/~11-12min = ~20300 Ore/hour
Crane Vanguard: 4800/~15min = ~19000 Ore/hour
Crane Sentinel: 5760/~18min = ~19200 Ore/hour
Wyvern: 2000/~7min = ~17100 Ore/hour
Hokkaido: 3800/~15min = ~15000 Ore/hour

Then i equipped the Chthonios Sentinel with mods just to see what impact they have:
same as above but with Drag mod (16.69%), Digger (487.40%) and Nudger (+40.12%/-29.96%/-30.00%)

Chthonios Sentinel 3840 ~8 min = ~28100 Ore/hour

Conclusions:
- HOP miners are the best, generally outperforming the competition by anywhere from 5-25% (with the exception of S miners where the Kopis rules).
- SPL miners suck.
- SPL combat engines may have the fastest mining rate but lose any advantage to travel time even for short distances.
- The Hokkaido is trash.
- Modding your miners is very very worth it, a ~40% increase just for three green mods.
- The Crane is not nearly as terrible as people think.


I also tested which engine is best for L traders. The results can be summarized pretty easily:
TER All Around wins. Over any distance. The faster travel drive acceleration gives them a huge headstart and every gate jump just extends it.

In theory some of the other engines should catch up on long straight-line flights, but in practice even going gate-to-gate in the larger sectors was not nearly enough for that to happen.

[Pilot Error]

Good to see my fondness for the Crane vindicated! But, guess i may have to rethink the Manorinas...
Thank you very much for this. Much appreciated.
(Since i've not long restarted it will be put to good use....)

[blackphoenixx]

Just go for the Sentinel variant. It may be slightly worse than the Plutus in pure efficiency but the two shields are a fair trade off imo. I've only considered mining rate for this.

The Bolo definitely needs a buff though (but not as much as the Hokkaido).

[ZombieHunter]

Thanks for testing all of this. But it doesn't matter how much per hour is mined if the station manager doesn't know how to manage bringing it all in and using it. My station manager is so dumb that I have full miners just sitting in sectors saying failed orders b/c there is nowhere to sell it yet my station is empty.

[Puppet #7]

This is useful enough to be a guide or reddit post just so it doesn't fade off to the forum depths in a couple weeks.

[blackphoenixx]

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

Thanks for testing all of this. But it doesn't matter how much per hour is mined if the station manager doesn't know how to manage bringing it all in and using it. My station manager is so dumb that I have full miners just sitting in sectors saying failed orders b/c there is nowhere to sell it yet my station is empty.

That sounds like your station doesn't have a buy order or it isn't configured right.

Originally posted by Puppet #7:

This is useful enough to be a guide or reddit post just so it doesn't fade off to the forum depths in a couple weeks.

I'm not active on Reddit (or registered at the Egosoft forums or i would have posted it there) but if you want to share it there feel free.

As i said i mostly did this for myself, i just figured it'd be a waste not to share it.

[D3st]

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

Thanks for testing all of this. But it doesn't matter how much per hour is mined if the station manager doesn't know how to manage bringing it all in and using it. My station manager is so dumb that I have full miners just sitting in sectors saying failed orders b/c there is nowhere to sell it yet my station is empty.

That sounds like your station doesn't have a buy order or it isn't configured right.

Originally posted by Puppet #7:

This is useful enough to be a guide or reddit post just so it doesn't fade off to the forum depths in a couple weeks.

I'm not active on Reddit (or registered at the Egosoft forums or i would have posted it there) but if you want to share it there feel free.

As i said i mostly did this for myself, i just figured it'd be a waste not to share it.

Thanks a lot for sharing your work,really appreciated.

[ZombieHunter]

I'm not sure what is going on. I see she is telling them to find resources within 2 gates but the sell is at 0 gates. So when they get to Black Hole Sun IV and mine gas when they get full they just get stuck b/c the manager isn't allowing them to come back. But I don't know if a ware transfer requires a sell gate distance or if that is implicit.

[blackphoenixx]

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

I'm not sure what is going on. I see she is telling them to find resources within 2 gates but the sell is at 0 gates. So when they get to Black Hole Sun IV and mine gas when they get full they just get stuck b/c the manager isn't allowing them to come back. But I don't know if a ware transfer requires a sell gate distance or if that is implicit.

The gate distance is from the station, not the miner, so a sell distance of 0 is normal.

Can you post a screenshot of your station config and the miners behavior tab - or even better a savegame? It's much easier to troubleshoot this stuff when you can look at it directly.

[ZombieHunter]

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

I'm not sure what is going on. I see she is telling them to find resources within 2 gates but the sell is at 0 gates. So when they get to Black Hole Sun IV and mine gas when they get full they just get stuck b/c the manager isn't allowing them to come back. But I don't know if a ware transfer requires a sell gate distance or if that is implicit.

The gate distance is from the station, not the miner, so a sell distance of 0 is normal.

Can you post a screenshot of your station config and the miners behavior tab - or even better a savegame? It's much easier to troubleshoot this stuff when you can look at it directly.

Nope. I'll figure it out. The fun of the game. If she continues to be stupid I'll just fire her.

[Daddy Shark]

. . out of an airlock.

[ZombieHunter]

Originally posted by Daddy Shark:

. . out of an airlock.

Haha. If only.

[seePyou]

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

All miners were ordered to repeat order mine at the resource probe (2.6/m³ ore, 138km away from the station)

I'm sorry, I did not know this was possible. How do you accomplish this? Is it as simple as right clicking on the probe and selecting Mine?

[Azrelus]

I highly doubt that guy is still around to reply

[Ketraar]

Mining has undergone many changes best to open a new threat if there are questions.

MFG

Ketraar