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Author Topic: Nexerelin mining guide  (Read 44860 times)

King Alfonzo

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Re: Nexerelin mining guide
« Reply #15 on: March 05, 2017, 03:23:00 AM »

All in all i definitely would NOT recommend you start out as a miner (currently no option to spawn as such, although i'm sure i could tweak settings?) because of one thing:  'Opportunity Costs' : bounties start out easy and over time become increasingly difficult regardless (i think) of your activity as a bounty hunter...plus pirate activity becomes increasingly powerful over time; You're effectively hobbling your initial chances to gain easy credits and experience vs the early game pirate activity by ignoring that in favor of a highly inefficient mining career.

That's...kind of the point. Mining is very grindy, very slow, low risk / low reward sort of playstyle for those not really confident enough with their frigate game. The aim is to earn enought money mining to eventually get a destroyer or two, as that particular playstyle is easier for some people. Consequently, you'll need to grind for a long, LONG time before you scrape into something useful.

Also: if you have crew in storage, you're still paying them.

Question is...where's the sweet spot? At what point in your gameplay can you turn swords into plowshares and make as much revenue mining as you would bounty hunting low end pirates?

You need to have a pretty sizeable fleet dedicated to mining to start bringing in ridiculous amounts of money (and believe me, it can get ridiculous). And even then it's defined a lot by chance - one good run can catapult you into destroyer territory, or a couple of bad runs can leave you with half your fleet mothballed while you struggle to put together money for supplies. Depending on how good you are with a frigate, it may be worth it to go after bounties, particularly if you're in a faction. If you're independant with no commision, or you just suck with frigates, then mining becomes a useful alternative.

majorfreak

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Re: Nexerelin mining guide
« Reply #16 on: March 05, 2017, 10:05:43 AM »

All in all i definitely would NOT recommend you start out as a miner (currently no option to spawn as such, although i'm sure i could tweak settings?) because of one thing:  'Opportunity Costs' : bounties start out easy and over time become increasingly difficult regardless (i think) of your activity as a bounty hunter...plus pirate activity becomes increasingly powerful over time; You're effectively hobbling your initial chances to gain easy credits and experience vs the early game pirate activity by ignoring that in favor of a highly inefficient mining career.

That's...kind of the point. Mining is very grindy, very slow, low risk / low reward sort of playstyle for those not really confident enough with their frigate game. The aim is to earn enought money mining to eventually get a destroyer or two, as that particular playstyle is easier for some people. Consequently, you'll need to grind for a long, LONG time before you scrape into something useful.

Also: if you have crew in storage, you're still paying them.

Question is...where's the sweet spot? At what point in your gameplay can you turn swords into plowshares and make as much revenue mining as you would bounty hunting low end pirates?

You need to have a pretty sizeable fleet dedicated to mining to start bringing in ridiculous amounts of money (and believe me, it can get ridiculous). And even then it's defined a lot by chance - one good run can catapult you into destroyer territory, or a couple of bad runs can leave you with half your fleet mothballed while you struggle to put together money for supplies. Depending on how good you are with a frigate, it may be worth it to go after bounties, particularly if you're in a faction. If you're independant with no commision, or you just suck with frigates, then mining becomes a useful alternative.
i did some testing with my current mining fleet that has a skeleton crew of 177 orbiting Jangala for 3 months doing diddly squat, plus extra crew either onboard (4000cr in october), in storage (2600cr in november), or sold (i tried to space them. lol. game doesn't allow it. lol; just above 2700cr in december)

i assume my officer XP i got in battle with a piddly little pirate who jumped me to be the cause of the jump in salary. It possibly may have skewed the data completely, but, as you can see, from what i'm seeing it seems to me that either crew in storage aren't paid. period...or, they're paid so little it's not noticable.
I could try and nitpick and test again. But, for my purposes, all i needed to confirm was whether i could save money by offloading extra crew for shore leave and R&R
BTW, i got about 30,000cr salary income from the faction in nexerelin each month.

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I'll go about testing for the sweet spot once i get a fleet in orbit around nortia. I do prefer the larger fleet though, because it seems as though - when you do have an accident - they seem to only get one ship affected. Not really worried about mothballing anyone...and besides, i learned early on that you don't have to mothball a ship in order to store it away at a market. much much cheaper to store than mothball. So, sorry, but i'll have to take your 'advice' with a large grain of salt
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EDIT: 2 hours later (mar 1, 207; 1 month report)
Monthly salary report: ~48,000cr paid; 83,000cr received
  • 400 crew onboard beginning of the month; mining vessels in front of fleet list (elite crew only) with 237 veterans and 27 regulars in the cargo haulers, tugs and surplus; lost 52 veteran crew; ended up with 171 extra elite end of month
  • occasional damage inflicted solely upon a few mining ships - no haulers/tugs were injured; strange that the elite crew escaped death but veterans died exclusively...i'd consider that a personal exploit of the mechanics. take it for what you will...i'll probably test using skeleton elite crew (as i was) then round out the compliment with raw recruits and see how that cookie crumbles
  • experience was gained by both crew and player character, but not even a single drop of experience was shared with officers crewing the mining vessels...a shame that. But, beggars can't be choosers.
  • three Telchine at 100% CR, and four Shepherds at 80% CR boasted 5600-5800 ore and 590-590 rare ore. came ahead 100 supplies and 150 fuel, plus assorted extra commodities. even a flight of xyphos fighters (luck there. lol)
  • i've got five Kentaurus (just amazing cargo capacity), four Atlases, and their 4 attendant ox tugs...seems like overkill, but i figure if i add a 1/3 more mining ships i'll fill up within a month easily
yet, is it worth it? the ore i got each month sold for about 9-10cr for plain ore and 50-60cr for the rare stuff, plus if i was lucky maybe 25k worth of other loot market was willing to give me a decent price for. Total haul was at least 100,000/month, add in the salary net income of 35,000 means i met my sweet spot needed to make mining seem worthwhile compared to low end bounty hunting.
Yet, one realizes that without the omnifactory, my chances of collecting such a force is pretty slim even for the mid-game. My PC is currently almost level 80, so definitely end-game roleplaying.

I recommend the automated repair (i assume it helps non-combat repair times), logistical conservation &/or minimal preparation on all your ships (although minimal only consider for your haulers/tugs if you have the spare points), plus having insulated engine assembly might help hide your fleet (my current fleet, all with insulated as an option, has a sensor profile of 42)
  • interestingly enough, the atlas with insulated has 4 profile yet the Kentaurus has 3. So it would probably be better for me to drop all the latter
  • dropping the Kentaurus and dropping down to just under 9000 cargo space, allows me to have 27 profile which translates, stationary in a belt, to 500su detection range for a 10 sensor strength fleet...which is pretty damned awesome if you consider that a fleet would have to have 40 strength just to see me at 1 map grid range.
  • i have my radar mod set to 6000su so each ring means 1000su, so if some piddly little *** pirate frigate wanders into range i may be able to actually hide from it. lol. we'll see
  • shoving a couple of high resolution combat ships into the mix might increase the sensor strength to 30 from 18, but doesn't increase the range by even +10%, which is surprising, so i belayed that idea.
  • testing again...this time moving away from the station a bit so i can try going dark...i wonder if that'll pay off?
  • plus i could switch the shepherds for another Scyan miner, that'll make it even harder to spot me. five of those, plus dropping the tugs (Atlas now with base 6 burn and no modifiers; i believe a drop of 2 burn units to be worth it) gives me a profile that can only be detected at 1710su (stationary in belt; 110su by going dark) or less by a sensor str 10 fleet
  • BTW, i also added a few mining drones to my fleet once i got to the omnifactory, but they really didn't seem worth the trouble? +10su detection by enemy range, +0.08supplies/day, and each was half the mining capability of a shepherd (extra mining laser/elite/no officer), so i scrapped them
EDIT: 3 hours later
so i screwed up that test run because i ran over my cargo space and drained supplies. so i actually need one atlas per telchine it seems. will try again. Salaries didn't change much so i might try selling my stored crew to see if that affects it (i earlier claimed it didn't...but, try try again to eliminate all doubt). The neat thing was that almost all my green crew became elite during that time (although i did lose 76 crew after month end)

success! kind of. Good news is one Atlas to one Telchine is just about perfect, with 90 elite crew plus 210 green (ends up with 227 elite and less than a dozen veterans after a month) i got 8333 ore and 830 rare (didn't luck out though with extra caches)
1) i think there's a trick to lying doggo in the belt while still being able to mine an asteroid that drifts by, but it's tricky to do and i haven't quite mastered the technique (if one tags behind the roid you lose the staying still in a belt bonus of x.25 plus the scy tech bonus as well)
2) i still need to fire the rest of my crew on R&R to confirm they don't incur salary fees (completed: no perceived difference in salary incurred; about 6000 crew plus 666 marines)
3) i'll also test dismissing my idle officers to see how low my salary fees gets then. (completed: massive drop in salary from 47-49,000/month to 18,000/month)
« Last Edit: March 05, 2017, 04:55:41 PM by majorfreak »
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majorfreak

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Re: Nexerelin mining guide
« Reply #17 on: March 11, 2017, 02:44:17 PM »

errata:  I seem to have been mistaken about bountied pirate fleets increasing in size and value linearly from initial starting time. I recently dropped down to my mining fleet (storing all combat vessels as detailed above) and spotted a new bounty notification of 30,000cr - that never happened while i was running amok in my 300 supply limit fleet (tweaked settings/config)
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