Is there a cap on mining rates? Version 4.10

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Drylce
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Is there a cap on mining rates? Version 4.10

Post by Drylce » Fri, 26. Nov 21, 23:31

So I conducted an experiment on whether certain ship mods effect mining rates (specifically the "Digger" Weapon Modification and the "Garage" Hull Modification with additional mining drones) and I noticed something once I started collecting my results;

Once my pilots and ship crews reached a certain point in experience they appeared to cap out on how much they could mine (depending on resource density - I was using ice mining as a baseline)

Specifically, my results were;
4 Star Pilot/4 Star Crew in 2.33 Star yield (.52)
~612 Ice/Minute
5 Star Pilot/4.66 Star Crew in 2.33 Star yield (.52)
~610 Ice/Minute

Doing further testing in a different field gave me a possible error result (theory: resource probes give an average for the "nodes" in it's range, these can be higher or lower than stated values?)

4 Star Pilot/4 Star Crew in a 2.66 Star yield (.66)
~550 Ice/Minute
5 Star Pilot/4.66 Star Crew in a 2.66 Star yield (.66)
~553 Ice/Minute

Finally, I moved to another different field to check if I was encountering a bug (probably not a bug)

4 Star Pilot/4 Star Crew in a 4.33 Star yield (8.10)
~868 Ice/Minute
5 Star Pilot/4.66 Star Crew in a 4.33 Star yield (8.10)
~869 Ice/Minute

So my results appear to show that there's a cap on how much you can increase your mining rates depending on the rating of the area you are mining in. Not so great for figuring out if ship mods effect mining rates but it's good to know that I shouldn't bother with applying ship mods to ships in certain areas once the crew is skilled enough?

Xeon
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Re: Is there a cap on mining rates? Version 4.10

Post by Xeon » Sun, 28. Nov 21, 06:52

It makes me wonder if this is true for non modded game and if there have been others that have seen similar stats without the mods.

Drylce
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Re: Is there a cap on mining rates? Version 4.10

Post by Drylce » Sun, 28. Nov 21, 17:16

Ah, I see the confusion. Yes this is with an unmodified game - the ship mods in question are those that you can install on a ship to make them more effective. (they do require parts to install like weapon chambers, ship nanoweave, high energy catalyst, ect).

In this case the digger modification gives a single weapon/turret +425-500% more mining damage and the garage modification gives +1-4 more "unit" capacity (or in this case drones, ore collectors).

Testing also suggests that the digger mod seems to improve low-attention or OOS mining by 40±10% when mining silicon at least (again up to a cap - ~525/minute for 4 Star Pilot and crew with no ship modifications and ~700-780/minute with digger applied to a L mining turret but only up to the same ~700-780 with a 5 Star Pilot and the digger+garage modification - this was not really rigorously tested but the semi-depleted field I was using capped out at a 2 Stars rating and was down to a .14 density according to the resource probe).

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Xkuka
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Re: Is there a cap on mining rates? Version 4.10

Post by Xkuka » Mon, 29. Nov 21, 04:19

The problem of your test is that mining results depent on more than just yield and crew stats. Since you are looking for the effectiveness of the mining laser, you should do a manual firing test on similar rocks first to get an idea what the numeric perfomance increase on dps results in reality. Simple as that. But then you have to average it out with the time the laser is not used on a mining run, to find an effective benefit value you can use later. Then you should work out if AI really makes use of the lasers IS and OOS. IS certainly, but there the totals rather depend on how the AI manages to navigate rather than the effectiveness of the laser. OOS, i dont know. I would suggest that 3 samples are way too little to create a baseline in such changing conditions. Hardly possible to make out any average for anything. And you dont even know if OOS mining outcomes are generated in a linear way and are therefore dependable...
I know, it sucks, thats why i dont do it... just build more miners.... Dealing with the upgrades is more time consuming than earning the money for moar miners anyways...

But i adore the curiosity. Heads up 8)
If i am bullshitting and you find meaningfull results i'd love to read them.
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Imperial Good
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Re: Is there a cap on mining rates? Version 4.10

Post by Imperial Good » Mon, 29. Nov 21, 08:05

Drylce wrote:
Fri, 26. Nov 21, 23:31
Once my pilots and ship crews reached a certain point in experience they appeared to cap out on how much they could mine (depending on resource density - I was using ice mining as a baseline)
That is because only Silicon is highly dependent on crew skill to mine. 0 star pilots without crew probably mine ice within 95% of the speed of a 5 star perfect miner with same equipment. Repeat the test mining silicon and you will notice a large difference between the 4 star and 4.66 star ships.

From my own tests so far.

2.3 star -> 28 silicon per tick.
5 star -> 380 silicon per tick.

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