Initial test data from downsizing miner

[Casual Gamer]

Since I'm looking to improve some late game performance by downsizing surplus stations, ships and crews. One of the targets were early generation of miners in TER areas.

So I used the data from:- https://steamcommunity.com/app/392160/discussions/0/3164335875700229650/
as an assumption to replace the inefficient miners (credit to blackphoenixx for the great work).

The 1st resource I focused was 79,200 Silicon/hour required for stations in Neptune. I choose Chthonios/Plutus Sentinel as a base model for further min/max sizing test. I built mining station in Oort Cloud and use repeat order to mine 100km from the station near 2.1/m³ silicon resource probe then sell it back at the station.

Base line setup were the usual stuff in late game:-
Modifications: Digger > 475%, Nudger forward > 42% / travel > -28%, Polish > 16.5%
Mk3 thruster. 10 mining drones. L mining turret. M all flak. (Mining Mk2 for Plutus)
Five stars skill captain and crews with low moral. Final crew skill was shown in 4 1/3 stars.

The result time per trip (from undock for mining to undock after selling) took me for a little surprised, so I want to share it:-

Chthonios:-
SPL all-round (Cruising 534 m/s) : ~261 sec = 13.79 trip/hour = ~52,954 silicon/hour
TER all-round (Cruising 331 m/s) : ~207 sec = 17.39 trip/hour = ~66,777 silicon/hour

Updated 1: As pointed out by blackphoenixx, changed above ships Nudger to Reaver >43% and I tried to mine roughly at the same spot:-
SPL all-round (Travel 6,426 m/s) : ~249 sec = 14.45 trip/hour = ~55,488 silicon/hour
TER all-round (Travel 11,148 m/s) : ~200 sec = 18 trip/hour = ~69,120 silicon/hour

Added another ship to test 14 drones which rolled a little better mods than the 1st group since it have Digger 492%, Nudger 340 m/s cruising, Reaver 11,197 m/s travel:
TER Nudger (14 drones) : ~194 sec = 18.55 trip/hour = ~71,232 silicon/hour
TER Reaver (14 drones) : ~200 sec = 18 trip/hour = ~69,120 silicon/hour
All TER results were within measurement error with the better one came from Nudger that rolled both cruising and travel in relatively good range. Otherwise Reaver was mostly better and more than 8-10 drones may not help much.

Updated 2: Added Crane Sentinel and Donia. Also tested for influence of digger and L/M mining turrets. It made me even more surprised than last time.

Crane sentinel : Cruising 139, Travel 6,622, 10 drones, 3M Mining, 6M Flak
A) No Digger ~242 sec = 14.87 trip/hour = ~85,651 silicon/hour
Time spent break down:-
Travel to resource probe 50 sec.
Gathering command 118 sec. with 3 ticks of 1: 30,310 , 2: 56,510 , 3: 57,600 (Chthonios Sentinel only used 1 tick to filled 38,400 storage)
Travel back + unload 74 sec.
B) 3 M Mining Diggers ~220 sec = 16.36 trip/hour = ~94,233 silicon/hour
Gathering command was reduced to 95 sec with 2 ticks of 35,370 then 57,600
C) 9 M Mining all Diggers ~207 sec = 17.39 trip/hour = ~100,166 silicon/hour
Gathering time was reduced to 85 sec also using 2 ticks.

Donia : Cruising 256, Travel 12,145, 10 drones, 2 L Mining, M Flak
A) No Digger ~209 sec = 17.22 trip/hour = ~58,548 silicon/hour
Time spent break down:-
Travel to resource probe 41 sec.
Gathering command 65 sec. With 1 tick to full 34,000.
Travel back + unload 103 sec.
B) 2 Diggers ~191 sec = 18.84 trip/hour = ~64,056 silicon/hour. Gathering time was reduced to 61 sec. Other phases were somewhat within measurement error.

Nudger Plutus:-
SPL combat mk3/4 : Both more than 5 min and I forgot the exact result.
TER combat mk3: ~279 sec = 12.9 trip/hour = ~14,860 silicon/hour
TER travel mk3: ~272 sec = 13.23 trip/hour = ~15,227 silicon/hour (relatively safe in Oort Cloud)

Reaver Plutus:-
SPL combat mk4 : ~280 sec = 12.85 trip/hour = ~14,803 silicon/hour
TER travel mk3: ~260 sec = 13.84 trip/hour = ~15,943 silicon/hour
TER travel mk3 with all mining turrets and diggers: ~267 sec seem worst than mining drill + flak but within measurement error.

Reaver Manorina : Cruising 335, Travel 5,803, Mk2 Drill, M mining turrets all Digger.
TEL travel mk3: ~305 sec = 11.8 trip/hour = ~14,160 silicon/hour

Test Distance #2 190Km 3.0/m³ Silicon in Oort Cloud. It seem the chunks here were not as good as the 1st spot. Diggers also help here for M turrets.
Chthonios : ~250 sec = 14.4 trip/hour = ~55,296 silicon/hour using 1 tick
Crane 3 Mining: ~316 sec = 11.39 trip/hour = ~65,606 silicon/hour using 3 ticks 28,580 -> 56,470 -> 57,600
Crane 9 Mining: ~276 sec = 13.04 trip/hour = ~75,110 silicon/hour using 2 ticks.

I also tested on transport side which Chthonios/TER all-round win over Plutus/TEL travel (both Reaver+Polished) by some margin on volume/hour. Around 6.92 trip/hour/L from Oort Cloud to Neptune.

The next test will be various crew sizes for transporting side if I have time. After 2nd updated, M miner was even more irrelevant for downsizing now.

But based on initial test alone, I could use only 1 L to mine the required amount of silicon. Too bad that the transport side was require around 3 Ls. A lot better than the current 2-3 stars 20+Ls which lazed around hogging CPU resource and mine few hundred of each resources per station manager order.

TL:DR
- For late game, L miner was worth more than M if you considered/have fun in downsizing.
- Baseline to aim for L miner load out is : 475%+ Digger mods on all mining turrets especially M turrets that have more benefit from it, 16.5%+ Polished chassis, 42-43%+ Reaver TER All-round. 10 mining drones. Diminishing returned applied in many areas.
- Don't use TER 4-Dock pier, it had terribly long transfer time. Aim for 3 or 6 pier. 10 cargo drones per pier.
- I knew that five star staff was really good but I didn't think that it will be this good. Even on low moral. Area yield also more or less as important.
- SPL engine was not that good for mining. May help in Kha'ak areas but I can't find method to systematic test this. Use it if you could reach 500+ m/s cruising speed or mining in very short distance from your station.
- Crane is not just good. It's SPACEFLYING CAVIAR GOOD. Especially in safe area. I may observe its performance in Kha'ak area and update later.

Minor Updated for TL:DR
- You don't need more than 15 Cargo drones per L dock in your station. Since 1 drone carry 4000 units of cargo, 15 of them could accommodate Crane Sentinel which largest storage of 57,600.
- You need 500+ shield regen rate to mine in The void.
- Mining in Avarice still need Tenacity modded from BUC. Since AI will always flee without it regardless of shield regen rate.
- Plan location to build a station according to desired resources. Use resource probes and individual blacklist accordingly is a must. Or you could go mining station route.

For Crane (Updated number of turrets above from mistyped last time):
1) 3 diggered mining turrets on M4-6 slots is enough for most cases. Fill the rest with flaks.
2) With 3 shield slots of TER mk3, there is no need to mod them before using in The void like the other 1 slot L miners. It could endured KHAs while Flaks killing them. And with green regen modded, I never lost them to XEN P.

*I'm waiting for KE sale and more major bug fix/rebalance before testing new miners. Not so excite with BOR travel attack time though.

[blackphoenixx]

Nice to see my tests helped someone. I keep meaning to redo them to include the Donia and Chthonios E but i haven't had the time yet (you basically need an entire day free to do it properly).
But yeah, optimising your miners can let you save a whole lot of ships at endgame. Or get there a lot faster.

I started a new game recently and putting to use all the things i've figured out on how to get the most out of every ship makes a BIG difference.

As for the SPL engine on L miners i believe the difference in our test results comes from your use of the Nudger mod - which mitigates the TER engines weak cruise speed compared to the SPL one. The SPL engine on the other hand already has a relatively high cruise speed so it'd probably perform better with a Reaver mod for more travel speed.

I also assume that using the Garage mod for +4 mining drones instead of Polisher for drag on your chassis (or Lubricator for both) and Reaver instead of Nudger may be more efficient in general, but i haven't tested that yet either (my previous tests were all unmodded aside from that one "let's see what happens" run).

[Casual Gamer]

Since the 331 m/s TER engine could beat 535 m/s SPL one in overall operation. And the whopping 930-990+ m/s mk3/mk4 SPL combat on Plutus also didn't help them much. I suspected that the cruising speed was hard capped at one point for mining efficiency. So if it reached that speed, Reaver and more drones should squeeze for even more efficiency unless that also got cap at some point. Which unfortunately may required some skill in reading the game script.

I may took another Chthonios that lazed around and re-model them for the drone/Reaver test though since it seem interesting.

[blackphoenixx]

Originally posted by Casual Gamer:

Since the 331 m/s TER engine could beat 535 m/s SPL one in overall operation. And the whopping 930-990+ m/s mk3/mk4 SPL combat on Plutus also didn't help them much. I suspected that the cruising speed was hard capped at one point for mining efficiency.

It's not necessarily a cap. In fact i doubt it is since it's not necessary.
Even if we assume that higher cruise speed increases mining rate linearly you'd still get diminishing returns on the speed increase - the more % of your cargo hold you fill per tick the more of an increase you need to reduce the number of ticks further. It's softcapped by default.

And it's not like mining rate is the only thing that matters for how fast your miners do a round trip. Getting back to the station to unload does too.
And Nudger has very little effect on travel speed, which the TER engine beats every other engine by a landslide in. It's low cruise speed is pretty much the only drawback it has.

So since you lessened the only advantage the SPL engine has it's only natural that the TER engine would pull ahead, cap or no cap.

Now i wonder how the Crane is affected by mods. They're already pretty close unmodded, but since it has three M mining turrets instead of 1 L one, does it get more benefit from Digger than a Chthonios or less?

[Casual Gamer]

Edited 1: As pointed out by blackphoenixx, changed above ships Nudger to Reaver >43% and I tried to mine roughly at the same spot:-
SPL all-round (Travel 6,426 m/s) : ~249 sec = 14.45 trip/hour = ~55,488 silicon/hour
TER all-round (Travel 11,148 m/s) : ~200 sec = 18 trip/hour = ~69,120 silicon/hour

Added another ship to test 14 drones which rolled a little better mods than the 1st group since it have Digger 492%, Nudger 340 m/s cruising, Reaver 11,197 m/s travel:
TER Nudger (14 drones) : ~194 sec = 18.55 trip/hour = ~71,232 silicon/hour
TER Reaver (14 drones) : ~200 sec = 18 trip/hour = ~69,120 silicon/hour
All TER results were within measurement error with the better one came from Nudger that rolled both cruising and travel in relatively good range. Otherwise Reaver was mostly better and more than 8-10 drones may not help much.

Interesting part is time spent during 'Gathering resource' command were around 60-65 sec on both TER Nudger and Reaver so the cruising speed may not have influence on 4-5 stars crew while mining that much. More time was spent on travel.

SPL got better result with Reaver but still can't keep up with TER within tested distance.

Coming next is Donia and Crane Sentinel with Digger, Polish, Reaver and 10 drones.

[🎮 PalkoVvodets 🔑]

I'm far of diving into all that math. But I assume SPL engine benefits only during Kha`ak attacks. Thereby if you have small mining fleet hardly attacked by Kha`aks (which prevent using travel engine) and without patrol forces SPL is better.
But I admit there's might exist hidden mining rate boost depend on cruise speed.

[Casual Gamer]

From the gathered data, cruising speed only matter when:-
1. It's more than 500 m/s to help for easier starting of travel charge in Kha'ak sector. I also found that they use boost often before travel charge+attack time was reached. To reach this speed with only Nudger may sacrificed much of travel speed.
2. You mine in shorter distance that you could reach before entering the travel phase. Which can happen with repeat order and manipulation of mining station location. If you didn't mind resource dried up or more ship names in un-attached list. The 'mine for station' put miner in various spots sometimes longer than that distance.

For the actual mining phase in 'gathering resource' command, L beat M thoroughly with the same 4-5 stars crew. Time spent during this phase was around 60-65 sec on L and 2.5-3 times that on M regardless of cruising speed. It's actually surprised me that the 38,400 L storage (235/331/534 m/s cruising) was filled up much faster than 11,520 on M (930/990 m/s). So I assumed that because L has access to mining drones, L mining turrets and has more service crews / ship which should increase advantage in moderately dense resource area.

[blackphoenixx]

Originally posted by Casual Gamer:

2. You mine in shorter distance that you could reach before entering the travel phase. Which can happen with repeat order and manipulation of mining station location. If you didn't mind resource dried up or more ship names in un-attached list.

You can actually set up a repeat order and still have a ship assigned to a station.
1. pick an unassigned ship, select the "repeat order" default behavior but DON'T hit confirm yet
2. Assign the ship to a station (the role doesn't matter afaik)
3. Hit Confirm on the repeat order default behavior
4. Your ship is now assigned to whatever commander you choose while still doing its repeat orders as normal

It's very useful for removing clutter.

Originally posted by Casual Gamer:

For the actual mining phase in 'gathering resource' command, L beat M thoroughly with the same 4-5 stars crew. Time spent during this phase was around 60-65 sec on L and 2.5-3 times that on M regardless of cruising speed. It's actually surprised me that the 38,400 L storage (235/331/534 m/s cruising) was filled up much faster than 11,520 on M (930/990 m/s). So I assumed that because L has access to mining drones, L mining turrets and has more service crews / ship which should increase advantage in moderately dense resource area.

That kind of surprise is why i did my own testing in the first place.
Because the common opinion before that was that the Alligator is great because it's fast and has two mining beams and that the Crane sucks because it doesn't have an L turret, but nobody actually checked. It was all based on gut feeling and hearsay.
Both turned out to be quite wrong.

Also good to know that more than 10 drones might be overkill. And it seems i've overvalued the SPL engine quite a bit,

[Casual Gamer]

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

You can actually set up a repeat order and still have a ship assigned to a station.
1. pick an unassigned ship, select the "repeat order" default behavior but DON'T hit confirm yet
2. Assign the ship to a station (the role doesn't matter afaik)
3. Hit Confirm on the repeat order default behavior
4. Your ship is now assigned to whatever commander you choose while still doing its repeat orders as normal

It's very useful for removing clutter.

Didn't know that repeat order could be used for station ships too. Thanks, even after all this time I can still learned something new.

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

Also good to know that more than 10 drones might be overkill.

10 mining and 4 cargo also help a little during unload. But it's very diminishing if you already have enough drones in station.

Updated 2: Added Crane Sentinel and Donia. Also tested for influence of digger and L/M mining turrets. It made me even more surprised than last time. Also added Reaver for somewhat irrelevant M miners.

I didn't know who gave me the award but thank you very much :)

[Ioulaum]

Great thread, now I'm replacing Donia with Crane to see how things going, hope you have time to test the new Boron Rorqual:)

[Raven]

Great info. I'm still learning as well. Thanks

[Ariki]

I am currently on the process of modifying all my L miner with digger and reaver mod to increase their productivity, and it was all because I read both your and blackphoenixx thread about the topic (and also because I don't want to make my save even more laggy by having even more ships). it is a tedious work and I havent finished with all the modding yet, but I've made an OCR macro that can tremendously help me with the task. I just wanna say thank you both for giving me the inspiration to do it in the first place! thank you!

[Humble]

Is Crane best in not so safe sector to handle Khaak and Xenon?

I'm sick of losing my miner L to Khaak and Xenon, then I found out Terran L Miner had only one shield spot, but most faction had 2 to 3!, Terran ship's stats do need buff. I love that look of Terran L miner, it's look awesome but wasn't happy to losing once a while to Khaak, I was thinking How did they manage to destroy my L Miner, that should not happen but it's did, I was thinking about Crane replaced my fav looking Terran L miner, to ensure I don't had to keep replaced whole time because Terran L Miner's one spot shield.

[Ioulaum]

Ok I observed some ice mining runs with both fully modded Rorqual and fully modded Crane S.(Ter All Around), OOS, deposit at mining depot in the same sector in Second Contact II Flashpoint. Both wiith 5 star captain and 4.67 star crew.

They seems to have similar (Crane S. might be slightly better) performance in terms of cubic per second, calculated by cargo/time per trip.
When factoring the cost (also crew efficiency) and the traffic (cargo size), I'll say Crane S. is better, especially in safe zone.

I tested both normal time flow and SETA, the result seems to be inline with each other.
I'll test other L miner to see how things going.

Update 1: Donia is not as good as I perceived before, Crane S. is around 70% to 20% better, varied by the distance of mining spot.

[Humble]

What do you mean safe zone? Do you mean Faction's Core sector that had resource? Even Safe zone, Khaak can attack and destroyed L Miner for some factions like Terran, I had not test Crane still alive under attacked. but I already brought Crane to see if it work, not to destroyed by Khaak or Xenon for that matter (assumed it's not destroyer but I do make sure sector safe due I set up heavy defense platform near gate but it's still not stop Khaak, only Xenon.

[Ioulaum]

Originally posted by Humble:

What do you mean safe zone? Do you mean Faction's Core sector that had resource? Even Safe zone, Khaak can attack and destroyed L Miner for some factions like Terran, I had not test Crane still alive under attacked. but I already brought Crane to see if it work, not to destroyed by Khaak or Xenon for that matter (assumed it's not destroyer but I do make sure sector safe due I set up heavy defense platform near gate but it's still not stop Khaak, only Xenon.

Crane with full mining turret is defenseless, it won't die most of the time when facing khaak, but it can't kill them on it's own.

I usually clean Khaak outpost and the hive near it if I do spot khaak in a sector.