Factors that influence mining efficiency

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Falcrack
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Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by Falcrack » Thu, 22. Jul 21, 01:09

I decided I would do some systematic tests to see what factors made a difference in terms of mining efficiency. This is done using the 4.1 beta 4, in a vanilla game. I tested a variety of factors, trying to control for as many variables as possible. I tested this by starting a mining command in a given location, and the moment any resources started getting collected, I started my stopwatch, recording the amount in the cargo bay every 15 seconds. I did linear regression in excel, calculating the slope and R square value. The R square value in all cases is excellent (>0.996), so I am pretty confident in the results. If the ship was interrupted say by a police scan, I discarded these results and started over. I used a Magnetar Vangaurd mining ship. Everything was done out of sector. Here are my results so far:

Local resource yield: I tested using the same ship and crew in two locations, one at 0.041 km3 silicon, and the other at 4.4 km3 silicon. The ship had the identical 5 star captain and all 4+ star engineering service crew in both cases.
0.041 km3 silicon: 47.1 silicon/minute, time to full cargo hold 84.9 minutes
4.4 km3 silicon: 462.5 silicon/minute, time to full cargo hold 8.6 minutes
Effect of local yield on mining efficiency: ~10X

Captain skill level: I tested using the same ship in a single location (4.4 km3 silicon), keeping the crew (all 4+ star engineering) the same but changing out the 5 star captain and <1 star captain
<1 star captain: 171.1 silicon/minute, time to full cargo hold 23.4 minutes
5 star captain: 462.5 silicon/minute, time to full cargo hold 8.6 minutes
Effect of captain on mining efficiency: ~2.7X

Crew skill level: I tested using the same ship in a single location (4.4 km3 silicon), keeping the captain (5 star) the same but changing out the crew (no crew, all <1 star engineering crew, all 4+ crew)
No crew: 332.7 silicon/minute, time to full cargo hold 12.0 minutes
<1 star crew: 343.4 silicon/minute, time to full cargo hold 11.6 minutes
4+ star crew: 462.5 silicon/minute, time to full cargo hold 8.6 minutes
Effect of crew on mining efficiency: ~1.4X (no crew vs fully crewed)

Number of mining drones: I tested using the same captain (5star) and crew (4+ star) in a single location (4.4 km3), with one ship that has 1 mining drone and another with 6 mining drones
1 mining drone: 182 silicon/minute, time to full cargo hold 22 minutes
6 mining drones: 462.5 silicon/minute, time to full cargo hold 8.6 minutes
Effect of 6 vs 1 mining drones: ~2.5X

Service crew converted to marines: I tested using the same ship with the same captain (5 star) and crew (4+ star) in the same location (0.041 km3), with the crew either acting as service crew or marines
Marines: 32.3 silicon/minute, time to full cargo hold 124.3 minutes
Service crew: 47.1 silicon/minute time to full cargo hold 84.9 minutes
Effect of service crew as marines: ~1.5X (similar to having no crew at all)

Here is a link to the raw data if anyone is interested:

https://1drv.ms/x/s!AkeIryqhP6qUlCXLKFw ... l?e=KqIiey

When I feel so inclined and have the time, I will test other variables, such as:
Captain and crew effect on transit speed
Captain and crew effect on docking/undocking speed
Cargo drone effect on executing trade speed
Captain and crew effect on choice of mining locations (assigned as a station subordinate)
Captain and crew effect on choice of mining locations (sector automining)
Number of mining turrets effect on mining speed
Quality of mining laser (MK1 vs MK2) effect on mining speed
Ship size (S, M, and L) effect on mining speed

Are there other pertinent variable you think I should test?

By the way, I thought it was interesting to see the difference between the very best condition tested, and the very worst:
1 star captain, 1 star crew, 0.041 km3 silicon: 3.47 silicon/minutes, time to full cargo hold 1153 minutes (19.2 hours!)
5 star captain, 4+ star crew, 4.4 km3 silicon: 462.5 silicon/minute, time to full cargo hold 8.6 minutes
The difference? 134X!!!!
Last edited by Falcrack on Thu, 22. Jul 21, 07:03, edited 2 times in total.

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Erqco
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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by Erqco » Thu, 22. Jul 21, 01:17

Thanks a lot!
These kind of things are very helpful.

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oddible
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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by oddible » Tue, 10. Aug 21, 17:38

Falcrack wrote:
Thu, 22. Jul 21, 01:09
Falcrack wrote:
Tue, 10. Aug 21, 15:52
Yes, but since it was almost completely ignored at the time I posted the results, I won't be bothering with further tests!
I wouldn't take the lack of comments here as an indication of this being ignored. When I read it I found it incredibly useful and informative but I just didn't have anything to say to contribute to the conversation. I was also a bit overwhelmed by the thoroughness of it! I see now that that could be discouraging.

THIS DATA IS AWESOME and confirms my suspicions but also helps me better design my ships. I never knew how big a factor mining drones were for instance. However now I wonder what the right balance between Mining and Cargo drones should be since the cargo drones will be fetching the chunks (right?).

Seriously awesome work and very valuable.

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alessandrofavero
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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by alessandrofavero » Tue, 10. Aug 21, 19:01

oddible wrote:
Tue, 10. Aug 21, 17:38
Falcrack wrote:
Thu, 22. Jul 21, 01:09
Falcrack wrote:
Tue, 10. Aug 21, 15:52
Yes, but since it was almost completely ignored at the time I posted the results, I won't be bothering with further tests!
I wouldn't take the lack of comments here as an indication of this being ignored. When I read it I found it incredibly useful and informative but I just didn't have anything to say to contribute to the conversation. I was also a bit overwhelmed by the thoroughness of it! I see now that that could be discouraging.
@ Falcrack you're right .... they don't frequent the English forum much I had completely lost this post ...

actually failing to respond to a demanding job like the one you have done can be depressing.

I agree with @oddible's judgment on the goodness and completeness of the work done ...

i think i will link this post in the italian forum and ask the local moderators to stick it in the guide posts ...

if you authorize me I translate it (with google transalte) to post it in Italian.
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Imperial Good
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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by Imperial Good » Wed, 11. Aug 21, 04:07

Crew and captain get combined into a single "skill" value listed in the ship info window. When all crew slots are filled with 5 star service crew and the captain is also 5 star then the ship will have the maximum value for service crew.

Marines do not count as service crew. This is (should be...) common knowledge. As such turning all 5 star service crew to marines will drop the ship skill contribution from service crew to 0.

Placing a resource probe within 50 km of the ship mining silicon can drastically increase its mining speed as it counter acts the difficulty mechanic affecting silicon. The increase can be as much as almost double the mining speed when dealing with max skill mining ships. This logic technically applies to all mineables, except due to all others being easy to mine the value boosted by the resource probe is very small and so the resulting gains are as good as insignificant.

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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by Zloth2 » Wed, 11. Aug 21, 06:10

I wonder how the number of docks on the ship change that? If 6 drones are all trying to go through a single dock, they'll line up waiting to land. Does the Magnetar use two or three docks?
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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by waynetarlton » Sun, 15. Aug 21, 04:53

Wow!
I have been trying various things to improve silicon mining. Far less analytical and far less successful than yours. This is amazing and very helpful data; particularly the star level and marines details. Great job!!

foxxbl
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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by foxxbl » Sun, 15. Aug 21, 09:43

This is really useful analysis, thank you Falcrack, great work! I missed it before, one could say it Fell between the cracks :)

Related to the analysis suggestions, I can only suggest one minor analysis, for example it would be useful to see a difference between the 3 star captain and 1 star captain when mining in the ideal conditions (max yield, fully crewed) .. 5 star captains are hard to come in shorter games, while 3 star captains can be obtained much sooner.
Last edited by foxxbl on Sun, 15. Aug 21, 10:08, edited 3 times in total.

xant
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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by xant » Sun, 15. Aug 21, 09:49

There are only few sectors that have a silicon density of 4/km³ and more, most are half or quarter of that, which doubles or quadruples the mining time even with otherwise ideal conditions. That means in a silicon field of around 1/km³ (i.e. Asteroid Belt, Savage Spur II) a Magnetar Sentinel will bring around 10k silicon per hour. And the more ships you use, the less the density gets, so the mining time doubles again.

No wonder that everything is running dry on silicon. I really hope something gets done about this.

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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by snwboardn21 » Sun, 15. Aug 21, 13:07

Imperial Good wrote:
Wed, 11. Aug 21, 04:07
Crew and captain get combined into a single "skill" value listed in the ship info window. When all crew slots are filled with 5 star service crew and the captain is also 5 star then the ship will have the maximum value for service crew.

Marines do not count as service crew. This is (should be...) common knowledge. As such turning all 5 star service crew to marines will drop the ship skill contribution from service crew to 0.

Placing a resource probe within 50 km of the ship mining silicon can drastically increase its mining speed as it counter acts the difficulty mechanic affecting silicon. The increase can be as much as almost double the mining speed when dealing with max skill mining ships. This logic technically applies to all mineables, except due to all others being easy to mine the value boosted by the resource probe is very small and so the resulting gains are as good as insignificant.
How does that work? Because from what I can tell auto-miners don't seem to prefer mining next to probes... Are you supposed to just fill the sector with mining probes, what is the radius that mining probes have?
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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by Tempest » Mon, 16. Aug 21, 12:37

Thank you, for putting time into this, certainly worth trying to reconfigure/double-check some miners.

i wish i could wrap my head around the resource probe thing, i'm inclined to snipe/disable all the low-yield probes now as per your findings, but field depletion seems to be an issue long-term.

- do we have any control over what spots the mining Ai chooses to mine in? i see my mining fleet moving into a high-yield area, seemingly stripping it almost barren, and then migrating to another area.

my go-to solution so far is was to throw more miners at it, not the most intelligent solution, but seems to work ( a fleet of ~20L+100M seemed to have zero issues fulfilling Terraforming's "import 2M units of water" mission.

i've already started setting up an "all-star bus" for storing 4+ captain's, i had originally planned to re-assign them to the 80+ Asgard fleet, but perhaps putting them into L-miners would be better.
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Falcrack
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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by Falcrack » Mon, 16. Aug 21, 13:05

Tempest wrote:
Mon, 16. Aug 21, 12:37
- do we have any control over what spots the mining Ai chooses to mine in? i see my mining fleet moving into a high-yield area, seemingly stripping it almost barren, and then migrating to another area.
I'm not sure how to do this with miners assigned as subordinates to the station. For example, there are many very high ore yield regions in The Reach. I have a refinery/hull parts factory there, but the miners only seem to go to the region's on the periphery of the ore fields, which are the most mined out, not the pristine. extremely ore rich regions in the middle, despite plentiful resource probes revealing many better spots than the ones they seem to choose.

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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by grapedog » Mon, 16. Aug 21, 13:27

I'd also be curious to see how Turrets affect the L mining speed. Say and L miner with 6 mining drones, but has only turrets for defense(for example only using Bolt Turrets) versus another same L mining ship with 6 mining drones, and a full loadout of mining turrets. I typically use Cranes for my L miners, and they have a fair amount of turret slots. I usually just throw mining turrets on them anyhow since I don't really need them shooting other things... but I've no idea what the actual increase in productivity is, if any at all.

I'm curious if running a mining ship full of marines is the same as running a mining ship with no service crew at all.

I'd also be curious to see the results with a 3 star captain, as those are much more common. I don't understand all the terminology that you used in your opening paragraph, but I imagine you were saying the results were fairly linear? So for a captain of 1 star to 3 stars to 5 stars... it was predictable. If the difference from 5 to 1 was 2.7, then a 3 star would sit right in the middle of that value? Around 1.9ish?

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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by alessandrofavero » Tue, 17. Aug 21, 00:39

Falcrack wrote:
Mon, 16. Aug 21, 13:05
...
translated and posted here.

Hello
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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by Falcrack » Tue, 17. Aug 21, 01:47

grapedog wrote:
Mon, 16. Aug 21, 13:27
I'd also be curious to see how Turrets affect the L mining speed. Say and L miner with 6 mining drones, but has only turrets for defense(for example only using Bolt Turrets) versus another same L mining ship with 6 mining drones, and a full loadout of mining turrets. I typically use Cranes for my L miners, and they have a fair amount of turret slots. I usually just throw mining turrets on them anyhow since I don't really need them shooting other things... but I've no idea what the actual increase in productivity is, if any at all.

I'm curious if running a mining ship full of marines is the same as running a mining ship with no service crew at all.

I'd also be curious to see the results with a 3 star captain, as those are much more common. I don't understand all the terminology that you used in your opening paragraph, but I imagine you were saying the results were fairly linear? So for a captain of 1 star to 3 stars to 5 stars... it was predictable. If the difference from 5 to 1 was 2.7, then a 3 star would sit right in the middle of that value? Around 1.9ish?
I am curious too as to how mining turret number, mining turret quality, and whether weapon turrets contribute to mining efficiency, so I'll probably do some more testing one of these days.

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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by Imperial Good » Tue, 17. Aug 21, 03:35

snwboardn21 wrote:
Sun, 15. Aug 21, 13:07
How does that work? Because from what I can tell auto-miners don't seem to prefer mining next to probes... Are you supposed to just fill the sector with mining probes, what is the radius that mining probes have?
The ship checks for resource probes within 50 km I think (been a while, not sure of number off top of my head). As such a resource probe should cover a couple of resource chunks.

Ships will prefer to mine near resource probes but only if the resource probe is covering chunks of above average yield. As such you will need to mine in sensible locations with a high yield and to cover the fields with probes as they deplete and miners travel further out.
Tempest wrote:
Mon, 16. Aug 21, 12:37
- do we have any control over what spots the mining Ai chooses to mine in? i see my mining fleet moving into a high-yield area, seemingly stripping it almost barren, and then migrating to another area.
So far the best approach I have found is to only try and mine good areas. Sectors like Asteroid Belt might look good on paper, but their per resource chunk yields are abysmal. Instead you want to mine Ore from a place like The Reach which has fantastic per chunk Ore yield. Similarly for Silicon you should rather use Family Zhinn. Higher base yield means faster mining to begin with, and also faster per chunk resource replenishment rate. Result is you need fewer mining ships with fewer resource chunks covered by resource probes.
Falcrack wrote:
Mon, 16. Aug 21, 13:05
I'm not sure how to do this with miners assigned as subordinates to the station. For example, there are many very high ore yield regions in The Reach. I have a refinery/hull parts factory there, but the miners only seem to go to the region's on the periphery of the ore fields, which are the most mined out, not the pristine. extremely ore rich regions in the middle, despite plentiful resource probes revealing many better spots than the ones they seem to choose.
I think there is a time/cost calculation done when choosing a site to mine. 10 yield vs 8 yield is not that much of a difference where as moving an extra 200 km might be. As long as they are not trying to mine chunks with <<1 yield you can generally consider it working.
grapedog wrote:
Mon, 16. Aug 21, 13:27
I'd also be curious to see how Turrets affect the L mining speed. Say and L miner with 6 mining drones, but has only turrets for defense(for example only using Bolt Turrets) versus another same L mining ship with 6 mining drones, and a full loadout of mining turrets. I typically use Cranes for my L miners, and they have a fair amount of turret slots. I usually just throw mining turrets on them anyhow since I don't really need them shooting other things... but I've no idea what the actual increase in productivity is, if any at all.
This has already been answered in the past. Yes it does make a difference. The difference suffers diminishing returns. Reasonable mining DPS will get you most of the way to min-maxed mining DPS mining rate however more mining DPS is always better.

Issue with the Crane is that it has no L mining turrets and L mining turrets are a lot better than M Mining turrets so to maintain comparable mining rate to other L mining ships with L mining turrets you pretty much need to max out all the turrets with mining turrets. That said even 3 should get you most of the way while not leaving the ship defenceless.
grapedog wrote:
Mon, 16. Aug 21, 13:27
I'm curious if running a mining ship full of marines is the same as running a mining ship with no service crew at all.
This has also already been answered. Marines do not count as service crew and count the same as if there was no service crew in that crew slot.

Since there is currently no way for the NPCs to board player assets, it is entirely pointless for the player to keep marines on their ships other than those they intend to use aggressively for boarding operations. Even then they only need to be marines during the boarding operation, and can be turned to service crew in-between boarding operations.
grapedog wrote:
Mon, 16. Aug 21, 13:27
I'd also be curious to see the results with a 3 star captain, as those are much more common. I don't understand all the terminology that you used in your opening paragraph, but I imagine you were saying the results were fairly linear? So for a captain of 1 star to 3 stars to 5 stars... it was predictable. If the difference from 5 to 1 was 2.7, then a 3 star would sit right in the middle of that value? Around 1.9ish?
I recall from looking at the data files that it is exponential, especially for Silicon since crew skill heavily combats the difficulty penalty of Silicon. If you have a perfect 5 star mining ship then it will mine Silicon roughly half as fast as ore, or as fast as Ore if near a resource probe.
Falcrack wrote:
Tue, 17. Aug 21, 01:47
I am curious too as to how mining turret number, mining turret quality, and whether weapon turrets contribute to mining efficiency, so I'll probably do some more testing one of these days.
It is based on mining DPS. People already did research into this. Normal weapons do contribute to mining DPS but due to the lack of a mining damage modifier even the most powerful military weapon contributes very little. It also suffers from diminishing returns so having 5 L mining turrets would only be slightly better than 1 L mining turret.

Since people are trying to reinvent the wheel here... Flight speed of the ship plays a huge part in the mining speed calculations. Ironically this means that Combat Engines are better for mining rate than Travel Engines, although they will get the ship to the mining site more slowly. For L mining ships this means that SPL L All-Round engines mine the fastest. Although using this logic it would be reasonable to assume that SPL M Combat Mk4 would be the best for M miners, they are among the worst, with the SPL M Combat Mk3 variant being the best likely due to internal overflow (too fast).

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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by grapedog » Tue, 17. Aug 21, 04:31

Imperial Good wrote:
Tue, 17. Aug 21, 03:35
This has already been answered in the past.
This has also already been answered.
I recall from looking at the data files that it is exponential
Yes, those questions of mine have been answered, but I haven't actually seen numbers before. I prefer to see the numbers, the math. Then I can make decisions based on those numbers. If someone is doing research, and doing math, then I'm going to ask for some of those items that I've been wanting to see.

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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by grapedog » Tue, 17. Aug 21, 04:33

Falcrack wrote:
Tue, 17. Aug 21, 01:47


I am curious too as to how mining turret number, mining turret quality, and whether weapon turrets contribute to mining efficiency, so I'll probably do some more testing one of these days.
If you do test it, I'd love to see both an L ship with no main mining laser and only using mining Turrets. But also the math for ships that do have a main mining laser, but also have turrets that could be used/would not be used.

I appreciate your time doing those tests, these numbers are helpful!

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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by Imperial Good » Tue, 17. Aug 21, 04:40

grapedog wrote:
Tue, 17. Aug 21, 04:31

Yes, those questions of mine have been answered, but I haven't actually seen numbers before. I prefer to see the numbers, the math. Then I can make decisions based on those numbers. If someone is doing research, and doing math, then I'm going to ask for some of those items that I've been wanting to see.
I would suggesting looking at the older threads in case they answer some of your numbers questions.
viewtopic.php?f=146&t=435620
Large turret: 1x mining mk1 - 100%; no - 29%.
ARG Drill tests..
Weapon: mining mk2 - 100%; mining mk1 - 78%; no (only turrets) - 57%.
Turrets: 2x mining mk2 - 100%; 1x mining mk1 - 99%; no (only weapon) - 98%.
Different L ships with only one variant - native (i'm very tired).
TEL Crane - 78%: no large turret; medium turrets - 9x mining mk1; 3x TEL all-around mk1; 8 drones.
PAR Chthonios - 118%; large turret - 1x mining mk1; medium turrets - 6x mining mk1; 3x PAR all-around mk1; 8 drones.
SPL Wyvern - 126%; large turrets - 2x mining mk1; medium turrets - 8x pulse mk1; 3x SPL all-around mk1; 8 drones.
TER Hokkaido - 77%; large turret - 1x mining mk1; medium turrets - 8x pulse mk1; 1x TER all-around mk1; 8 drones.

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Re: Factors that influence mining efficiency

Post by Falcrack » Tue, 17. Aug 21, 05:11

Imperial Good wrote:
Tue, 17. Aug 21, 03:35
Since people are trying to reinvent the wheel here... Flight speed of the ship plays a huge part in the mining speed calculations. Ironically this means that Combat Engines are better for mining rate than Travel Engines, although they will get the ship to the mining site more slowly. For L mining ships this means that SPL L All-Round engines mine the fastest. Although using this logic it would be reasonable to assume that SPL M Combat Mk4 would be the best for M miners, they are among the worst, with the SPL M Combat Mk3 variant being the best likely due to internal overflow (too fast).
I had no idea ship flight speed had an effect! I would not have thought to test that.

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