How to deal with Khaak attacking miners?

[foxxbl]

Hi!
Any tips how to deal with Khaak attacking M miners, especially in Nopileus Fortune II?
Switching all miners to L miners is currently slightly expensive for me, and maybe I am a bit too stubborn
I have 4 wings of 4 Chimeras and some Dragons on patrol, but they don't 'see' the whole sector situation (because it's huge), and do not come to help miners under attack. I scouted whole sector and neighboring sectors, and I can't find any Khaak installations.

Any tips to improve patrols or to find the source (Khaak installation)?

See here, 5 Queen Guards attacking my single miner, nearest patrol (all captains 2* - 2.5*) is 140km away and do not see them:

[Tempest]

if you have spawns pouncing your mining fleet, there is a station in sector somewhere. your own patrols will rarely find it, NPC patrols might but you will have to keep an eye on outgoing traffic seemingly heading nowhere. (NPC patrols can "see" everything)

depending on the sector visibility itself you might be able to Mk.1 eyeball it.

your best option is the "explore" command, widen the range to max and pick the 6 corners of the Hex. installations CAN be really far out , 300-400Km from center isn't unusual.

as for a solution for M-miners, if your mining operation is still somewhat small, setting a pair (or more) of escorts might be the way to go, maybe some TER shielding for a bit more endurance.

[Ragnos28]

Hi,

From my experience the most reliable way to deal with Khaak attacking miners, IS to switch to L miners.

As for improving patrols...I do have some Katanas on patrol who get some of the Khaak, but must of the time I just check the "problem" sectors from time to time and give some "atack targets in range" orders to clear the clusters atacking my L miners. Also, you can try the "police" command for finding the installations, I had use it in Nopileus Fortune II as well and the ships had found all stations in the sector, no sure if will do the same for installations, but should work. As for me, I did the kill the installations thing, but that only gives you about 2 hours of quiet, so I quit doing that.

I agree with the solution given in the first reply with assigning some escorts to defend your M miner, but I do encourage you to switch to L miners as soon as possible, or else you will keep seeing that message with "your M miner has been destroyed by.... ".

[Panos]

Hi!
Any tips how to deal with Khaak attacking M miners, especially in Nopileus Fortune II?
Switching all miners to L miners is currently slightly expensive for me, and maybe I am a bit too stubborn
I have 4 wings of 4 Chimeras and some Dragons on patrol, but they don't 'see' the whole sector situation (because it's huge), and do not come to help miners under attack. I scouted whole sector and neighboring sectors, and I can't find any Khaak installations.

Any tips to improve patrols or to find the source (Khaak installation)?

See here, 5 Queen Guards attacking my single miner, nearest patrol (all captains 2* - 2.5*) is 140km away and do not see them:

L miners for minerals. You get L miners for free as bonus, even second war mission to deliver a fleet, they are modded too. Just equip them for mining with drones, full service crew etc. They will deal with the KHK on their own even with the mining drills, if you do not want to change some to guns.

Alternative corvettes, they are your best friend. You need 3 per sector.

Also have a destroyer near by and a scout ship too.

With the scout ship search the edges of the map to find the KHK station, destroy it with the destroyer and few hours later there will be another station spawn. Rince and repeat.

Personally the L miner option is the chepest most efficient (as it boosts silicon mining too) and requires less maintance.

[Eyeklops]

Like others have said large miners are the way to go. There is a caveat here: Use a miner that has a very fast non-travel speed. Why? If the ship cannot outrun the Khaak they will harass the miner constantly and it will never get into travel mode. If the mining area is far from the gate/station the mining yield/per hour will get decimated. Split Wyvern's with All-Round engines can outrun the Khaak and get into travel mode consistently. Yes I loose a bit of throughput to slower miners with larger holds but I gain consistency regardless if the Khaak are around or not. Just my 2 cents.

Note: The only place I deviate from this is when I force mine the hazard zone in The Void. For that I use Teladi Cranes to tank the hazard zone damage. I don't worry about Khaak there because they get nuked by the hazard zone relatively quickly.

[Imperial Good]

Heavily patrolled sectors like Asteroid belt which can end up with KHK outposts (even though they should not be able to?) are usually still safe enough for M ships due to police patrols. So far I have only lost poorly equipped M ships (<300k from NPC to replace, not even worth building yourself) and even that is infrequent as TER wastes no time sending 70+ ships to kill each KHK that shows up. Strangely they entirely ignore the outpost itself, which sadly means player intervention is required for a longer term solution.

The more densely mined an area is, the less likely you are to lose M ships due to the Khaak being indecisive with their targets. If there are 10 miners at the point and only 5 KHK spawn then statistically there is a good chance that each ship will be hit only part of the time, so infrequently their shield regeneration can likely cope at least long enough for help to arrive.

[Raevyan]

As others already pointed out, I just use L miners and don’t care about khaak. Khaak also only attack silicon and ore miners. Miners for the other resources are safe.

[foxxbl]

Thanks for all the suggestions, until I eventually switch to L miners, I will set my patrols to "Police" and not to "Patrol", maybe that will be more effective, and send my scouts again to explore the whole sector to find their installations.

[foxxbl]

Like others have said large miners are the way to go. There is a caveat here: Use a miner that has a very fast non-travel speed. Why? If the ship cannot outrun the Khaak they will harass the miner constantly and it will never get into travel mode. If the mining area is far from the gate/station the mining yield/per hour will get decimated. Split Wyvern's with All-Round engines can outrun the Khaak and get into travel mode consistently. Yes I loose a bit of throughput to slower miners with larger holds but I gain consistency regardless if the Khaak are around or not. Just my 2 cents.

This is interesting also, I have travel engines for M and some L miners, need to switch them to All-Around.

[Eyeklops]

This is interesting also, I have travel engines for M and some L miners, need to switch them to All-Around.

I think the key here is the Wyvern. It's the fastest large ship in the game and with the Split All-Round engine it can cruise at 416 m/s. The next fastest is the Paranid Chthonios at 340 m/s. That's quite a difference. To be honest I don't know exactly what speed is needed to regularly outrun the Khaak but I do know I've never seen a Crane or Hokkaido pull off a speedy getaway.

[dtpsprt]

What I usually do is have the M Miners equipped with Mining Lasers, but their turrets (preferably) Flak or, if not in the required rep with either ARG or FRF that have them, Bolt. Also either Paranid M shields MK or Terran MK3 helps a lot.They will mine a bit slower but you'll not be losing them, at least not that much...

[-=SiR KiLLaLoT=-]

Hi!
Any tips how to deal with Khaak attacking M miners, especially in Nopileus Fortune II?
Switching all miners to L miners is currently slightly expensive for me, and maybe I am a bit too stubborn
I have 4 wings of 4 Chimeras and some Dragons on patrol, but they don't 'see' the whole sector situation (because it's huge), and do not come to help miners under attack. I scouted whole sector and neighboring sectors, and I can't find any Khaak installations.

Any tips to improve patrols or to find the source (Khaak installation)?

See here, 5 Queen Guards attacking my single miner, nearest patrol (all captains 2* - 2.5*) is 140km away and do not see them:

In my experience of hundreds of hours played in beta 4.10 I can give you some definitive suggestions.

1) Even if you use L-size miners and you will be attacked by the Khaaks, they will be slowed down in their work. This will make you think that the amount of miners is not enough by adding other miners, while instead they must be configured so that they respond to enemy fire in case of aggression. Also it is good to use the M size turrets with Flak weapons and leave only the L size turrets with laser miner. This way they will easily get rid of Khaak midges. It may sound risky but it isn't.

2) Manorina Sentinel with TER travel engines, x2 TER MK3 shields, x1 Tau Accelerator, x1 Flak turret and a single mining turret (TER shields and Tau Accelerators are key).
Also in this case it is preferable to use the "counterattack" command in case of aggression. Believe it or not, this mining ship can disintegrate fleets of 10 Khaak ships as if nothing happened.

In both cases, this may not be enough.
If you want to optimize perfectly, use a single Nemesis (or Katana, or Kuraokami) with TER combat engines, x2 TER shields and x5 TER/ARG pulse lasers. Create an escort with "attack" command on the ship to be defended, which in turn has the "counterattack" command in case of aggression. In this way, both in the case of L-size and M-size ships, the escort ships will attack the enemies along with the mining ship, eliminating any kind of Khaak aggression that I have been able to experience in a few seconds.

[NightmareNight91]

Dont use M miners...thats what I do atleast lol. My entire mining fleet is L size so I dont have to protect them.

[bubbabenali]

The Reaction Force Mod is what you need.
Don't dream on fixing that problem with the vanilla game.
I mean, why would your patroll ships automaticly react to distress calls...

[-=SiR KiLLaLoT=-]

The Reaction Force Mod is what you need.
Don't dream on fixing that problem with the vanilla game.
I mean, why would your patroll ships automaticly react to distress calls...

I can assure you that my solution also works with vanilla

[af_2017]

Once I set up L with "aggressive" response to attacks and assigned attack subordinates with several M ships. And forgot about further problems with the miner.