Which drones for L miners?

[Comander-07]

So I am wondering, what do mining drones actually do? Same with cargo drones. I thought cargo drones might get used if a station has no L/XL docking space, but they all do anyway usually. So do you just max out on mining drones, maybe throw in a repair drone or two?

[T600_Mod]

Mining drones... well mine... I find Large miners work the best with A ton of miner drones.... speeds up mining a ton.... Huge benifit to using large miners..... so many lasers to mine with.

Cargo drones are used often in stations I equip trading ships with them automaticly...... As I usually build stations with them.

later when your building stations you will need the cargo drones....

[Tommytools]

1 Cargo drone, the rest mining drones.

The one cargo drone in case the ship decides to sell at a station that doesn't have cargo drones (yet).

[T600_Mod]

Good Point Tommy

[Comander-07]

Originally posted by T600_Mod:

Mining drones... well mine... I find Large miners work the best with A ton of miner drones.... speeds up mining a ton.... Huge benifit to using large miners..... so many lasers to mine with.

Cargo drones are used often in stations I equip trading ships with them automaticly...... As I usually build stations with them.

later when your building stations you will need the cargo drones....

Do cargo drones have a purpose in case you know you can dock?
Just trying to understand the mechanic.

Do they gather the ore mined by the ships/drones mining drill?

[T600_Mod]

Cargo Drone Unload from Piers to docks or to stations that have no cargo drone.....
They gather nothing just transport between ship and station.
they speed the time trading with stations
They are needed on ever ship that Is large or XL to trade with stations as I understand
Miner drone mine... and fast

[Geist]

Cargo drones speed up the transfer of the wares with the station. Lets say the station only can assign 5 of them and you have addditional 5 the transfer is speed up. Maximum 10 drones are used for the transfer at the same time. But its usualy fast enough anyway to not be important.

If you fly the L ship yourself cargo drones also will deploy to pick up spacefly eggs and other stuff. Also if you order a manual ware transfer from one of your M miners to an L miner the drone is used to pick up the container with the ore in it. But thats also just an edge case if you mine manualy.

If you don't mine yourself and only use automining you idealy use many mining drones.

[T600_Mod]

Originally posted by Geist:

Cargo drones speed up the transfer of the wares with the station. Lets say the station only can assign 5 of them and you have addditional 5 the transfer is speed up. Maximum 10 drones are used for the transfer at the same time. But its usualy fast enough anyway to not be important.

If you fly the L ship yourself cargo drones also will deploy to pick up spacefly eggs and other stuff. Also if you order a manual ware transfer from one of your M miners to an L miner the drone is used to pick up the container with the ore in it. But thats also just an edge case if you mine manualy.

If you don't mine yourself and only use automining you idealy use many mining drones.

So Wait.. I am using too many drones if my ship has 30 cargo drones for a trade ship? should I Switch to defence drones?

[Geist]

Originally posted by T600_Mod:

Originally posted by Geist:

Cargo drones speed up the transfer of the wares with the station. Lets say the station only can assign 5 of them and you have addditional 5 the transfer is speed up. Maximum 10 drones are used for the transfer at the same time. But its usualy fast enough anyway to not be important.

If you fly the L ship yourself cargo drones also will deploy to pick up spacefly eggs and other stuff. Also if you order a manual ware transfer from one of your M miners to an L miner the drone is used to pick up the container with the ore in it. But thats also just an edge case if you mine manualy.

If you don't mine yourself and only use automining you idealy use many mining drones.

So Wait.. I am using too many drones if my ship has 30 cargo drones for a trade ship? should I Switch to defence drones?

You only need a maximum of 10 for the ware transfer on a pier. So if the station is busy and only assigns 3 to unload your ship it will use 7 of your own drones.

Defence and repair drones are much more valuable for your L Trader.

[Comander-07]

Originally posted by Geist:

Cargo drones speed up the transfer of the wares with the station. Lets say the station only can assign 5 of them and you have addditional 5 the transfer is speed up. Maximum 10 drones are used for the transfer at the same time. But its usualy fast enough anyway to not be important.

If you fly the L ship yourself cargo drones also will deploy to pick up spacefly eggs and other stuff. Also if you order a manual ware transfer from one of your M miners to an L miner the drone is used to pick up the container with the ore in it. But thats also just an edge case if you mine manualy.

If you don't mine yourself and only use automining you idealy use many mining drones.

so if a station had no drones and my ship had no drones no wares could get transfered? How long does the process usually take? I never saw a timer for it

[Geist]

Originally posted by Comander-07:

Originally posted by Geist:

Cargo drones speed up the transfer of the wares with the station. Lets say the station only can assign 5 of them and you have addditional 5 the transfer is speed up. Maximum 10 drones are used for the transfer at the same time. But its usualy fast enough anyway to not be important.

If you fly the L ship yourself cargo drones also will deploy to pick up spacefly eggs and other stuff. Also if you order a manual ware transfer from one of your M miners to an L miner the drone is used to pick up the container with the ore in it. But thats also just an edge case if you mine manualy.

If you don't mine yourself and only use automining you idealy use many mining drones.

so if a station had no drones and my ship had no drones no wares could get transfered? How long does the process usually take? I never saw a timer for it

If the station has no drones (for whatever reason) and your ship has no drones the ware transfer will fail yes. But only happend to me a few times.


Unloading takes only half a minute or so. You can watch the unloading process. Your L ship will dock and then you can see the little drones fly out and enter the pier (and drones from the pier will enter the ship.) They even have little containers on them when they are filled. Love the detail they put into this.

[Geist]

And while we talk about drones. The hull mod "Garage" will increase your drone capacity by up to 4 additional drones. Which is very valuable for L miners because they usualy only have space for 10.

[T600_Mod]

There also Is a mod that doubles Miner drone capacity on all vannilla large mining ships

[Comander-07]

Originally posted by Geist:

Originally posted by Comander-07:

so if a station had no drones and my ship had no drones no wares could get transfered? How long does the process usually take? I never saw a timer for it

If the station has no drones (for whatever reason) and your ship has no drones the ware transfer will fail yes. But only happend to me a few times.


Unloading takes only half a minute or so. You can watch the unloading process. Your L ship will dock and then you can see the little drones fly out and enter the pier (and drones from the pier will enter the ship.) They even have little containers on them when they are filled. Love the detail they put into this.

But does the number of cargo drones matter for the speed? Because it sounds to me like using 9 mining drones and 1 cargo drone just in case the station has none is the optimum.

[Gibbo]

Originally posted by Geist:

Originally posted by T600_Mod:

So Wait.. I am using too many drones if my ship has 30 cargo drones for a trade ship? should I Switch to defence drones?

You only need a maximum of 10 for the ware transfer on a pier. So if the station is busy and only assigns 3 to unload your ship it will use 7 of your own drones.

Defence and repair drones are much more valuable for your L Trader.

Huh good to know. I had 20 I think? Drones do my head in. I have trouble working them out?

[Doom]

Originally posted by Comander-07:

Do cargo drones have a purpose in case you know you can dock?
Just trying to understand the mechanic.

Do they gather the ore mined by the ships/drones mining drill?

When L ships "dock", they just float next to stations, and have no actual connection to it. Cargo drones transfer cargo. If there are no drones, you can't transfer cargo. You might be able to see it from external view.

Mining drones haul rock chunks to you. If you go to dock area of the L ships you'll see how they fly off and bring rocks back. In some ships you can see it from the bridge.

Defense drones are not that useful on a L miner, because they're tough (if you equipped them well), and typically can fend off Kha'ak by themselves. And if they run into something bigger, defense drones won't be a whole lot of help.