Who is the best?

[budforceuk]

It depends on your definition of "best"?

The faction I see succeed the most in terms of power, economy and military force has consistently been HOP in all my major playthroughs.

[mistervec]

My favorite faction is the Alliance of the Word because they let me refit my fleet of 'proactively-salvaged' ships with Teladi shields, Paranid engines, and Argon turrets all the same station and with a minimum of fuss.

Are these always the best options? No.

Can I get Terran or Split tech? No.

Can't I just do this myself with my own stations? Can but won't.

But it's good enough for my purposes and requires minimal expenditure of my limited brain-type resources.

[Imperial Good]

From a gameplay mechanic perspective...

1. Terran
2. Split
3. Paranid

Terran just has the tools to do everything so well. They might not be the fastest but everything about them is good. They also have the Asgard that is still unmatched by other factions and only beaten as a player XL by the unique, factionless, Erlking.

Split might be glass cannons but with exception of the Terrans they pack a real punch. Everything about them is fast and deals a load of damage. The Raptor still is a pretty mean hybrid carrier and battleship.

Paranid are the best out of the base game factions. Although their ships are mediocre compared with the two factions above, they still are better than the other base game factions with speed, fire power and even range. The Odysseus Vanguard is the easiest to obtain ship that is capable of fighting back against Xenon capitals.

[ubuntufreakdragon]

ARG they have more war fronts than any other faction and still hold the line.

[victoracer]

My favorite faction is the Alliance of the Word because they let me refit my fleet of 'proactively-salvaged' ships with Teladi shields, Paranid engines, and Argon turrets all the same station and with a minimum of fuss.

Are these always the best options? No.

Can I get Terran or Split tech? No.

Can't I just do this myself with my own stations? Can but won't.

But it's good enough for my purposes and requires minimal expenditure of my limited brain-type resources.

I can't argue with you. You made your case oustanding, good sir.

He won this discussion. Thank all the rest for trying.

[blackphoenixx]

HOP have the best miners and traders and their combat ships are at least competitive without any glaring weaknesses, so for overall best faction my vote goes to them.

From a gameplay mechanic perspective...

1. Terran
2. Split
3. Paranid

Terran just has the tools to do everything so well. They might not be the fastest but everything about them is good. They also have the Asgard that is still unmatched by other factions and only beaten as a player XL by the unique, factionless, Erlking.

Split might be glass cannons but with exception of the Terrans they pack a real punch. Everything about them is fast and deals a load of damage. The Raptor still is a pretty mean hybrid carrier and battleship.

Terran and Split have terrible miners and freighters. They're by far the worst in the game when it comes to making money.
Terran ships are also comparatively expensive when you're still buying from an NPC wharf.

Terrans also have no good S ships unless you count PIO, the Gladius and Kukri are some of the worst ships in their class.

What they do have is great M and L combat ships, a fantastic faction-specific weapon with Proton Barrage, the best shields for anything M or larger and the best engines for L & XL ships, but they fail hard at the economy aspect.

[Bastelfred]

Only superficially the best...
Teraner + Split

But if you look at every little task in the game, everyone has something there
I use the large Argon/Antigone L- Freighters+Miner
I use the large Teladi L- Miner
I use the fast Split S+M Trader a lot
I like to use the Oddy and Behemoth to snipe Xenon L-turrets at their stations
Nemesis, Dragon, Katana I do not know which one I like more
X4 without a few Pegasus.... unthinkable
Elite, completely useless, but the cheapest teleporter points you can buy.

[XIII8]

Terran and Split have terrible miners and freighters. They're by far the worst in the game when it comes to making money.
Terran ships are also comparatively expensive when you're still buying from an NPC wharf.

Terrans also have no good S ships unless you count PIO, the Gladius and Kukri are some of the worst ships in their class.

What they do have is great M and L combat ships, a fantastic faction-specific weapon with Proton Barrage, the best shields for anything M or larger and the best engines for L & XL ships, but they fail hard at the economy aspect.

You really think Split traders are bad? They got like 70% of the cargo hold but 200% of the speed. I havent really tested it, but especially considering how often transports fly around not even using the full cargo, that should be quite effective. Price is a bit more expensive, but the survivability should be better as well.

Terran fighters are also imo a bit more complicated. Takoba with Protons and Split engines is potentially the best medium fighter, and Gladius isnt that bad.

The Baldric is pretty meh tho, especially considering how damn expensive it is.

[blackphoenixx]

You really think Split traders are bad? They got like 70% of the cargo hold but 200% of the speed. I havent really tested it, but especially considering how often transports fly around not even using the full cargo, that should be quite effective. Price is a bit more expensive, but the survivability should be better as well.

Terran fighters are also imo a bit more complicated. Takoba with Protons and Split engines is potentially the best medium fighter, and Gladius isnt that bad.

The Baldric is pretty meh tho, especially considering how damn expensive it is.

I tested it ingame for both miners and freighters. Terran and Split are universally at the bottom of the pack for both.
For Split the higher speed doesn't even come close to make up for the tiny cargo hold. They're universally 15-20% worse than the HOP ships (the Plutus and Chthonios Sentinel are the best miners in their sizes, for S it's the Courier).
Terrans are just very slow with mediocre cargo capacity which obviously adds up to being pretty bad. The Bolo and Hokkaido lose 25-30% efficiency compared to a Plutus and Chthonios Sentinel with nothing making up for it.

For freighters it's similar. The Demeter Sentinel beats a Boa over any distance when it comes to throughput, same with the Helios Sentinel compared to the Buffalo.
The Baldric and Okinawa don't even have speed on their side, they're just terrible for both survival and efficiency.

If they're not using the full cargo you have too many traders assigned to the same thing or you're using the wrong size of trader.
An L trader assigned to trade food or energy cells for example will probably never do full runs (because there's almost never a customer for a full cargo holds worth).
A trader assigned to a station will only do partial runs if they're the most profitable trade available (meaning the market is saturated - you have too many traders trading that thing).
If you're trading ecells or food/medicine by all means, use a Boa (instead of 2-3 S traders which are probably the best size for those). For everything else though the Demeter is superior.

As for survivability a Demeter Sentinel still outruns MInotaur Raiders and Rattlesnakes, that's all the speed you need.

And the Gladius is that bad. It's soldily at the bottom of the pack when it comes to heavy fighters with absolutely nothing to make it stand out. They die a lot more often than even the Eclipse, let alone the Chimera.
The Theseus and Quasar may be worse but that's about it.
Takoba's are great but they're PIO, not TER. And also the only S ship build with Terran materials that's worth using from a mechanical perspective.

[XIII8]

I tested it ingame for both miners and freighters. Terran and Split are universally at the bottom of the pack for both.
For Split the higher speed doesn't even come close to make up for the tiny cargo hold. They're universally 15-20% worse than the HOP ships (the Plutus and Chthonios Sentinel are the best miners in their sizes, for S it's the Courier).
Terrans are just very slow with mediocre cargo capacity which obviously adds up to being pretty bad. The Bolo and Hokkaido lose 25-30% efficiency compared to a Plutus and Chthonios Sentinel with nothing making up for it.

How exactly did you test it? Ive checked it, and eg both on PAR travel MK2, the Boa has 50% higher speed than a Demeter Sentinel, and only 400 less freight than a Demeter Vanguard at higher speed. I find it hard to believe that the BOA has less throughput with those stats?

That the terran civil ships are terrible isnt even a question; their speed and cost is attrocious. Also, IIRC L-Traders are generally pretty useless because of their cost? They're like 5 times as much as a small freigher with hardly 2 times the freight capacity.

Still disagree on the Gladius tho. Its at least mediocre, if you use Protons. Those are like pulse lasers with 50% more damage.

[blackphoenixx]

How exactly did you test it? Ive checked it, and eg both on PAR travel MK2, the Boa has 50% higher speed than a Demeter Sentinel, and only 400 less freight than a Demeter Vanguard at higher speed. I find it hard to believe that the BOA has less throughput with those stats?

That the terran civil ships are terrible isnt even a question; their speed and cost is attrocious. Also, IIRC L-Traders are generally pretty useless because of their cost? They're like 5 times as much as a small freigher with hardly 2 times the freight capacity.

Still disagree on the Gladius tho. Its at least mediocre, if you use Protons. Those are like pulse lasers with 50% more damage.

Rumors like that are exactly why i tested it. Everyone always claims "the Boa's high speed makes up for the tiny cargo bay" but i never saw hard data on it. So i got it myself.
I started a custom game with a bunch of freighters with different engines and several stations in different sectors, ordered them to deliver wares and timed them, then took the average of three runs to calculate throughput.
The Demeter Sentinel won over any distance (up to 5 jumps, i didn't test for more). The fastest engine was ARG Travel for 0-3 jumps and TEL Travel for 4-5, with TER Travel pulling slightly ahead on distances under 150km.

The Boa's higher cruising speed is completely meaningless for efficiency because M freighters are almost always in travel drive. The stats that count are travel drive speed and attack time (TD acceleration, TEL and TER engines get a bonus on it).
SPL engines suck at both. Even with both using TEL Travel drives the Boa is only ~30% faster.
Being 30% faster does not translate into doing a trade run 30% faster. Docking, undocking, gate jumps, ware unloading etc. take pretty much the same amount of time either way (the big factor here is maneuverability, but it only really matters for L ships, for M traders the difference is negligible). That obviously benefits bigger cargo bays.

As for L vs M you pay extra for safety. For raw throughput the same credits in M freighters will always be better. Credits are easy though, the hard part is skilled pilots.
If you only have one 3-star pilot you can't buy 5 M freighters as autotraders. Same for miners (silicon mining benefits hugely from pilot skill, so a skilled pilot in an L miner is better than him in an M miner and 4 scrubs also in M miners).

You're also less likely to lose them that way and losing skilled pilots hurts a lot more than a million credits or two. At least until you get to the terraforming project to train them.

[XIII8]

Rumors like that are exactly why i tested it. Everyone always claims "the Boa's high speed makes up for the tiny cargo bay" but i never saw hard data on it. So i got it myself.
I started a custom game with a bunch of freighters with different engines and several stations in different sectors, ordered them to deliver wares and timed them, then took the average of three runs to calculate throughput.
The Demeter Sentinel won over any distance (up to 5 jumps, i didn't test for more). The fastest engine was ARG Travel for 0-3 jumps and TEL Travel for 4-5, with TER Travel pulling slightly ahead on distances under 150km.

The Boa's higher cruising speed is completely meaningless for efficiency because M freighters are almost always in travel drive. The stats that count are travel drive speed and attack time (TD acceleration, TEL and TER engines get a bonus on it).
SPL engines suck at both. Even with both using TEL Travel drives the Boa is only ~30% faster.
Being 30% faster does not translate into doing a trade run 30% faster. Docking, undocking, gate jumps, ware unloading etc. take pretty much the same amount of time either way (the big factor here is maneuverability, but it only really matters for L ships, for M traders the difference is negligible). That obviously benefits bigger cargo bays.

As for L vs M you pay extra for safety. For raw throughput the same credits in M freighters will always be better. Credits are easy though, the hard part is skilled pilots.
If you only have one 3-star pilot you can't buy 5 M freighters as autotraders. Same for miners (silicon mining benefits hugely from pilot skill, so a skilled pilot in an L miner is better than him in an M miner and 4 scrubs also in M miners).

You're also less likely to lose them that way and losing skilled pilots hurts a lot more than a million credits or two. At least until you get to the terraforming project to train them.

Thats more in detail than I expected, thanks for your work and sharing it!

Man, this just makes me feel like Ive got no clue about stuff. Even with Paranids, I was using the Vanguard all the time, rather than the Sentinel. I also wasnt aware at all that Teladi engine got a TD acceleration bonus, which sounds really powerful. And Arg engines are better than Par for traders...

Really interesting to hear, Im gonna look a lot more into my preconceptions about engines. This game has so much hidden depths and details its crazy!

Funny thing btw, Im mostly using L freighters and miners for performance reasons, when I got a shipyard with L modules. Havent ever gotten to the point where my game slowed down heavily, but Im careful as a long time X3 player...

[GCU Grey Area]

Man, this just makes me feel like Ive got no clue about stuff. Even with Paranids, I was using the Vanguard all the time, rather than the Sentinel. I also wasnt aware at all that Teladi engine got a TD acceleration bonus, which sounds really powerful. And Arg engines are better than Par for traders...

You might find this interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9l9174ZcoQ

[Imperial Good]

Terran and Split have terrible miners and freighters. They're by far the worst in the game when it comes to making money.

By worst you mean "slightly worse" then yes. I use exclusively Terran stuff an although it is not optimal my economy is huge. Completed volcano caps (without tectonic scaffolding), make hundreds of millions an hour, are running internally nearly 64 computronic substrate modules, e.t.c.

Sure I lose 1-5 Baldric an hour... But they are Terran so trivial to replace. Of course if these were Split ships I would be losing fewer (split traders are able to run from most things due to speed) but still.

[As25]

Unless you bother to change the engines to Terran (or have your own shipyard). Okinawa it's probably the best L trader. 42.000 cargo hold while being faster than every other freighter, Buffalo included. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LfH3aZukwo (video is about destroyers but still applies, since destroyers and l traders have the same engines). Now, if you bother to mix engines then I guess Shuyaku Sentinel with Terran engines it's the best (Barbarossa being the second).

As for the Gladius, I don't use it, because it's too slow for a player ship and I don't like the way it looks. But if this game had pvp, Gladius would be meta. 4 guns, 2 shields, Terran weaponry (protons and mesons). Ships like Chimeras would get straight one shotted with mesons (if they land) while terran pulses and protons are harder to dodge than any other weapon in the game except tau/shards in your face (and beams, if you want to count those). Takobas (best interceptor atm) are better for interception, but straight fighting the only fighters who have superior raw stats are the Ares and the Shih (which is just a better Ares lol).

[blackphoenixx]

By worst you mean "slightly worse" then yes. I use exclusively Terran stuff an although it is not optimal my economy is huge. Completed volcano caps (without tectonic scaffolding), make hundreds of millions an hour, are running internally nearly 64 computronic substrate modules, e.t.c.

Sure I lose 1-5 Baldric an hour... But they are Terran so trivial to replace. Of course if these were Split ships I would be losing fewer (split traders are able to run from most things due to speed) but still.

I wouldn't call a 20-25% loss in efficiency "slight". Because that's how big the gap to the HOP miners is. And they're more expensive on top of that.

Doesn't mean you can't make a Terran economy work, it's just going to take quite a bit longer. And there's no mechanical reason to.
It's going to take a lot more ships and pilots than using HOP miners to get the same materials. About 35% more ships in fact so it's not a small number.

And that's before you factor in that more ships means proportionally less pilot skill until you get the pilot academy. So your mining rates will suffer further.

As for the Gladius, I don't use it, because it's too slow for a player ship and I don't like the way it looks. But if this game had pvp, Gladius would be meta. 4 guns, 2 shields, Terran weaponry (protons and mesons). Ships like Chimeras would get straight one shotted with mesons (if they land) while terran pulses and protons are harder to dodge than any other weapon in the game except tau/shards in your face (and beams, if you want to count those). Takobas (best interceptor atm) are better for interception, but straight fighting the only fighters who have superior raw stats are the Ares and the Shih (which is just a better Ares lol).

It doesn't matter how good your stats are when you're dead. And the Gladius slow speed makes it a sitting duck to pretty much any anti-fighter weapon, so the accuracy bonus from TER weapons at best evens the field.
Except there is no amount of S shields that will turn an S ship into a tank. If you can't dodge you die even with 4 S shields.

As for Mesons they're a complete waste in fighter battles. They overkill massively (if they don't miss, which they do often) and then do nothing for 30+ seconds while costing more than an entire fighter wing.
They're good OOS if you ignore the fact that you could've bought 4-5 more fighters instead of one Meson Stream but IS they're just a waste of mats and weapon slots.

[Bastelfred]

I wouldn't call a 20-25% loss in efficiency "slight". Because that's how big the gap to the HOP miners is. And they're more expensive on top of that.

Teladi miners are so cheap that you can get two for the price of one. No matter how good a miner is, two slightly worse ones are better in total.

[blackphoenixx]

Teladi miners are so cheap that you can get two for the price of one. No matter how good a miner is, two slightly worse ones are better in total.

If you disregard pilot and crew skill, sure. But unless you're assuming unlimited high-skill pilots and crew the difference doesn't work out that way, especially for silicon. If you only have 1 skilled pilot for that you may as well not buy the second miner.
It's less bad with ore and ice but a 5-star pilot still mines those nearly twice as fast as a 1-star one. Paying a little more credits to get the most out of your skilled pilots is very much worth it.

Using less ships also helps against lag and map clutter. Paying a few more credits per ship on the other hand stops mattering very fast once your economy gets going.

If you're just starting out, have no skilled pilots anyway and only care about getting the biggest short-term profit out of your investment though you're right, Teladi miners all the way.
You'll probably want to phase them out sooner or later though if you care about optimizing your economy.

That said Teladi miners aren't that bad. They're about 5-10% slower than HOP ones (if they're mining and selling in the same sector, longer travel makes them much worse) which is about average for non TER/SPL miners but at least they make up for it with much better shields. The Crane Sentinel in particular trades about 5% in efficiency for triple the L shields which is definitely worth considering, especially if you want to mine in The Void.
It's a tradeoff instead of just a loss. Terran ones don't have that.

[Bastelfred]

But unless you're assuming unlimited high-skill pilots

And because they are not available in unlimited quantities, I certainly don't use them for miners. But they sit in significantly more expensive ships and make sure that I do not lose them. It may be that a TEL miner is 10% slower than an ANT miner, but two TEL miners together are 90% faster than an ANT miner for the same price. Why should I waste rare pilots in miners? They sit in ships where 10% of the shield generators already costs more than a miner.

[GCU Grey Area]

For me the best miners are the sort which come with a couple of higher tier ships mods (which I immediately remove & replace with basic Polisher chassis & either Reaver or Nudger engines), a semi-competent captain & crew, & about a million credits worth of nividium in the hold (my primary source for 5* pilot/marine HQ contests throughout the game). Don't particularly care which particular ship type or variant, they're all functional miners. Very rarely spend any money at all on solid miners for at least the first couple of weeks of a new game. Indeed often make a tidy profit by selling off any bits of kit they don't really need all that much (e.g. mk2 or 3 thrusters).