Skilled pilots

[BGratz]

Whats the best you can do with them ?
Specially if you have only a few ?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2551316843

This moment i would say, i make .....him/her the Admiral of my warfleet and make him/her a Asgard. (Since when is Ulla a mens name ?)

And for the 3 Stars i guess i would place them into L Miners and Gas Collectors

Anyone good reasoned suggestions ?

Btw to answer that, This pilot was for arround 20 Hours, 8 Hours Sinza, 10 Hours, 8 Hours Sinza my haticvah Collector in a very fast scout set to escape on every enemy contact. means he Collected most of his time and spend a huge part of his time fleeing.

[blackphoenixx]

Best use for skilled pilots is in (silicon) miners because they increase mining efficiency.

You don't really need autotraders (trading stations do it better) and ice/ore/gas miners don't benefit much from higher pilot skill aside from getting access to the Advanced Automine order (which you also don't need, mining stations do it better).

Sticking them into your capital war ships is only worth it if you actually use those a lot, and most of the time not even then. For the Asgard specifically it's really not necessary since it'll easily kill most things just with its turrets, no skill required.

[Kajar]

So far as i know the Piloting Skill only affects two things - Reaction time and available commands.
Its kind of hard to test in combat, but for mining a 5-star pilot is about 25% better than a 0-star pilot. IF he is mining independently. If the 5-star pilot is assigned to a station for mining, all bonuses seem to be lost and a station full with 5-stars mines as much as a station full with 0-stars.
I personally don't bother with crew skills at all. Only thing i care about is getting at least 2-star managers. Everything else is completeley irrelevant to me. Either them skills are too hard to get and not worth the effort because... i can just buy more ships. Or i can just assign them to stations and the manager takes over.

[BGratz]

From a other thred

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

...
Where it gets tricky is silicon because crew skill matters a lot more for that.
A miner with 2-star average crew skill mines silicon more than twice as fast as one with 1-star, a 3-star one is again more than twice as fast as a 2-star one.
It slows down a little after that but from 3 to 4 stars is still roughly a third faster.

If you just assign miners to a station that needs both you'll have high-skill ships mining ore and low-skill ships mining silicon which kills their efficiency, making you need more miners overall.
Your best bet is having separate stations for ore and silicon and only assigning high-skill miners to the latter to make sure your skilled crews mine only silicon.

Takes a bit of work to set up but it'll help you supply your stations with way smaller mining fleets.

This means
1 Star = 100%
2 Star = 200%
3 Star = 400 %
4 Star = 500 %

Considering that a L miner is equal 5 M miner thats
5 one star M Miner
10 one star M Miner
20 one star M Miner
25 one star M Miner

If thats true i would name a huge difference.

[Kajar]

Yeah, i did not see that much of a difference in my testing. I only saw a 25% difference of 0-star vs 5-stars. And only if the 5-stars weren't assigned to a station. When i had them assigned to a station, they performed the same as the 0-stars.

Also one L-miner is equal to 0.3 M miners. L Mineral miners suuuuuck for mining. If you get 15 million worth of M miners, those will have mined 3 million units of Ore when 15 million worth of L miners have mined 800k units of Ore.

[blackphoenixx]

Originally posted by Kajar:

Yeah, i did not see that much of a difference in my testing. I only saw a 25% difference of 0-star vs 5-stars. And only if the 5-stars weren't assigned to a station. When i had them assigned to a station, they performed the same as the 0-stars.

Also one L-miner is equal to 0.3 M miners. L Mineral miners suuuuuck for mining. If you get 15 million worth of M miners, those will have mined 3 million units of Ore when 15 million worth of L miners have mined 800k units of Ore.

Do you not give your L miners mining drones or something? They're 2-3 times more efficient than M miners in my experience. Well, unless you're using Crane's, those do suck.

Of course they also cost 10x as much, so credit for credit the M miners bring in more, that's correct. L miners are much more survivable and need less skilled crew though so it evens out.

[BGratz]

Well i made my tests (and wrote about it in a other thread) I must say i cant understand the outcome of your tests

Originally posted by BGratz:

Since there are so many opposite Statement here a small test
(Edited this during WIP)

Me out of sector
Automine Silicon

I calculate the 10 000 Volume aka 1000 Silicon units from the time it needs to Mine
arround 5000 Storage units aka 500 Silcicon. This should be a amount that reduce
sideffects good enough and deliver comparable Values

I reloaded the same savegame for these tests, so every testrun has the same start situation
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2551468887


1 Star Pilot M Drill Vanguard (Argon model)
5180 Volume = 27:20 / 1620 Seconds
3166 seconds for 1000 Silicon

3 Star Pilot M Drill Vanguard
5500 = 7:20 / 440 Seconds
800 Seconds for 1000 Silicon

5 Star Pilot M Drill Vanguard
6400 = 3:20 / 200 Seconds
312 Seconds for 1000 Silicon
------------------------------------------------------
1 Star Pilot L Magnetar Sentinel (7 mining Drones) (Antigone Model)
5000 Volume = 30:30 / 1830 Seconds
3660 Seconds for 1000 Silicon

3 Star Pilot L Magnetar Sentinel
5170 Volume = 8:45 / 525 Seconds
1015 Seconds for 1000 Silicon

5 Star Pilot L Magnetar Sentinel
5420 Volume = 4:55 / 295 Seconds
544 Seconds for 1000 Silicon
------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------- And now some L Miner only with 3 star testet -----------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
3 Star Pilot L Crane Sentinel (8 Drones) (Ministry Model)
5050 Volume = 8:35 / 515 Seconds
1020 seconds for 1000 Silicon

3 Star Pilot L Chthonios Sentinel (8 Drones) (The not paranide paranides its HOP in german)
7060 Volume = 10:40 / 640 Seconds (sorry was distracted ^^)
906 seconds for 1000 Silicon (Since i mined 7k instead if 5k the first 50 Seconds are weighted less, so its more like 930)

3 Star Pilot L Hokkaido (8 Mine Drones)
5040 Volume = 9:08 / Seconds
1087 Seconds for 1000 Silicon

3 Star Pilot L Wyvern (8 Mine Drones)
5190 Volume = 7:42 / Seconds
890 Seconds for 1000 Silicon

Keep in mind that mining is a mix of many things,
between 200m in front of the station in a rich Asteroid field (what is comparable to this test) and 5 Sectors and hundrets of kilometers until the ressource poor Minefield with Pirate and Khaak activity on top

This was the result of automine tests without a base. Not so easy to archive comparable tests with a station

But it shows that the Pilot skill is definatly far more important than the ship iself

[BGratz]

And now a theorie
I made a additional test about travel speed.
As result the Argon L Miner need 3 Times so long for the same Distance (good mix only 20-30% Highway) as the Argon M Drill

So as rough theorie if the Ressources are 4 Minutes far away from the Mining base
The M Miner (with a 3 star Pilot) need for 50K Storage (aka 5000 Silicon)
4 Minutes to travel there
13,3 Minutes to Mine
4 Minutes to travel back
1-2 Minutes to unload at station
x5
Thats rough 23x5 Minutes aka 115 Minutes

The L magnetar will need
12 Minutes to travel there
84 Minutes to Mine
12 Minutes to travel back
Thats rough 108 Minutes

So the difference between a M and L is not that huge. And its arround 2000 Silicon per hour.
(on that distance, L are better if you need to travel further, M is better if you mine nearby)
So the real difference is the amount of Ships and pilots you need and the survivalability of the ships.

[BGratz]

Long story short
I stay with the Argon Drill as startship. Then most of them i turn into Antigone Magnetar.
And where i want to use M Ships in endgame i will use Split Alligators, they have a better survivalability because of their speed, even if that means they need to make a few moure tours to deliver the same amount of ressources. Sadly ALL M ships have all Turret slots used by mining turrets.

And on topic, my Medium Skilled pilots i will definatly use in my L Miners

[Kajar]

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

Do you not give your L miners mining drones or something? They're 2-3 times more efficient than M miners in my experience. Well, unless you're using Crane's, those do suck.

I actually tested both and that had zero difference in mineral miners. They only use the lasers to mine and the drones to collect it seems.
L Gas miners though do use the gas drones and they collect insanely fast.