Salvage + Cannon Efficiency Question

[KiloZulu]

My best salvaging ship was built with lines of 15 salvage units. They were attached to one of two computers that were turned on/off with logic. Each line was laid out in a checkerboard pattern, and there was an entire second set of lines behind the first set. In this way, I created a large mining area of solid coverage and no gaps. There were an equal number of cannon blocks so that the beam remained continuous. I've seen others describe this set up on the forums before, so hopefully my description is common enough to make sense. The mining area was probably about 30 blocks in diameter, and could consume an asteroid within ten seconds or so.

My main question is whether or not my setup would be considered overkill? Would I have achieved the same result with fewer blocks per line, or could I speed up the process even more? Using logic means that I have to turn the ship to adjust the beam's path, so my goal is to make a ship that efficiently dispatches asteroids while being small enough to maneuver. Thanks for your input.

 

[MrFURB]

Your system isn't wasteful, really. You can speed up the salvage time with more blocks per group/line if you don't mind the added mass. The only way to really increases your mining efficiency is to ensure that your beams aren't wasted into empty space... Which is hard.

 

[Panpiper]

I have a roughly similar number of beams on my miner, but each beam consists of 100 salvage modules and 100 cannon modules. It forms a cylinder 200 blocks long and ~30 blocks in diameter. (My server has an enforced limit of no more than 700 salvage beams active at any one time per player.) It is 100 block length lines in a checkerboard pattern switching between salvage and cannon modules, and behind that the mirror of that checkerboard again in salvage and cannon, all attached to the same computers. One beam array.

This represents the maximum possible beam strength. More than that and you are simply pouring excess 'damage' onto already mined blocks. (Some have reported the maximum effective line being 91 blocks, but this may be due to a bug, it may not be correct, and even if it is correct, the bug may get fixed one day and I want to not have to then fix my ship.) For constant fire, the salvage beams are paired, one for one, with cannon modules. There is some evidence that mining may be faster using solely two sets of salvage beams and alternating between them. If true however, it is likely only true for smaller modules sets.

As MrFurb said, mining effectively is half the trick. I made my mining array into a cylinder, the beam is circular. This because I don't want square edges firing needlessly into space when I am mining edges, circles are vastly less wasteful of their beams than squares versus irregular shapes. I have a camera mounted above the beam array so I can see the beam beneath. I line up the top of the beam with the top of the asteroid, so the topmost beams are eating the topmost of the asteroid. As I cannot effectively see the bottom of the beam due to the density of the beams, I simply don't concern myself with what is happening at the bottom. By the time I've eaten the top, the bottom is if not eaten, almost so, and I will find out soon enough as I move the beam to the section uneaten.

I have also learned that jump is your friend when mining. I like being able to maneuver effectively so my battleminer has a two to one thrust to mass ratio. Despite this, the thing still moves like a slugboat. I also fortunately don't like waiting for jump recharges and have nearly 15% of my mass in jump modules. This means I can recharge my jump in 12 seconds. I can live with twelve seconds. I have found that traveling to the next set of asteroids with thrusters is both time consuming and frustrating. However eyeballing the sector coordinates, opening the map, moving the sector highlight to the correct sector (wasd keys) and then plotting a jump, gets me there 'much' faster. Once I learned that trick, I realized I could up my rotation ('R' on a thruster) to a full 75% and feel substantially less pain.

Now when I am mining, I spend substantially more time digesting asteroids than I do moving towards and aiming at them. The time I do spend mining I have maximum strength, maximum coverage mining beams.

 

[Malacodor]

Currently, adding cannon slaves is very wasteful, but that's probably a bug.

 

[Panpiper]

Currently, adding cannon slaves is very wasteful, but that's probably a bug.

Could you be more precise? In what way are cannon slaves 'wasteful'? One cannot get a maximum strength beam with less modules, else that most emphatically IS a bug. One could theoretically get the same level of effective mining running two separate sets of salvage beams and switching between them as the other cools down. However the constant switching is both tedious and introduces the inefficiency of the manual switching, which is almost certainly going to result in minute moments of no beam active.

The only way in which I see such an array as being inefficient is that cannon modules are harder to come by than salvage modules, quite a bit so when starting out. For a player just starting out, seeking to build their first megaminer for harvesting in secure space, all they really need is power, thrust and salvage modules and they can create for themselves a beast of a harvester. However once they have worked that beast for a little while, they'll almost certainly be wanting a miner that isn't going to simply die when jumped by pirates. (My pirates have jump inhibitors, you aren't getting away that way unless you've got a LOT of jump modules.)

When time comes to build that battleminer that fears no pirate and is no sitting duck for casual griefers, using cannon modules is no longer an issue. A quick tour of the shops revealed in your system selling off manufactured 'carved' stuff and shards you don't want will easily net you all the cannon modules you might need for that new miner. I find the convenience of a constant beam well worth the small extra expense (relatively speaking by that time).

 

[Malacodor]

If you have so many groups of 91+ salavgers, that the beams can cover an entire cross-section of an asteroid, then cannons are probably a good way to increase effectiveness. But for smaller miners it's usually better and cheaper to add more salvage beam groups instead.

My tests had the following results:
A group of 91 salvagers can mine 101 per burst, with one burst every 5s. Adding 91 cannon slaves allows for firing twice in 5s and results in 135 mined blocks during that time. Burst duration should be 2.5s, but it's more like 3.5s or maybe 3.75, which would fit to the numbers. If you fire a burst with a short click instead of holding the mouse button down or via logic, the duration is 2.5s, but then you only get 68 blocks per burst, which is about half as much as the 135 from above.

 

[Lukwan]

Mining is about more than just ship-design. Technique plays a big role. My Diamond Pickaxe is deluxe, medium sized miner with many inefficiencies but it has a slew of useful features and is fun to fly. (for Reference: Diamond Pickaxe by Lukwan) I will describe it's unique features.

Duty cycle: I use a little bit of cannon to get a 'peek-a-boo' duty-cycle. I don't want the beams to be 'on' all the time because they block my view of the asteroid. The beams blink out just long enough for me to re-aim the next burst.

Shape of array: Literally the beams form a classic diamond shape with the point at the bottom (just above the view-camera) It has some of the advantages of a round array but the great thing is that the beams don't block much sight-line. *This is only useful because this ship is not a giant asteroid-eater...more like a decent nibbler.*

Coverage: This is not a checker-board array...The Pickaxe has full blanket coverage (the two checker-boards are staggered front/back so the black and the white squares of the checker-board both get coverage).

Agility: This is where the Pickaxe shines. I use a powerful push-drive (set up like a cruise-control) to make the ship comparatively nimble even when full of ore. There is a modest jump-drive with a single-module emergency jump. This is more than adequate as most of my mining is done close to home. Anti-Grav system to make planet-mining effortless.

Versatility: Need extra capacity? Dock the sister-barge in the Keel-slot for more cargo handling. Got a small fighter pestering you? Hit & run with on-board Sniper-missiles. ( Not a battle-miner, but not a pushover either.) Some 'better-than-nothing shields. A transporter & a shuttle.

Technique: The DPA was not fine-tuned for maximum efficiency of it beam-arrays. I am sure other builders have much better salvage arrays than mine so I am not suggesting that this is an powerful or super-efficient miner. Using beam-groups that overkill the block-harvest are wasting resources and having groups that are too small will leave unharvested ore-blocks. Moving around during a burst will move the beams off a block before it's consumed so you generally want to stay still until the beams have cleared their rows. Just for fun I like to make it a mini-game to try to align two asteroids in front of one another so that spill-over beams will harvest the second rock when I miss or blow clean through.

 

[Panpiper]

If you have so many groups of 91+ salavgers, that the beams can cover an entire cross-section of an asteroid, then cannons are probably a good way to increase effectiveness. But for smaller miners it's usually better and cheaper to add more salvage beam groups instead.

My tests had the following results:
A group of 91 salvagers can mine 101 per burst, with one burst every 5s. Adding 91 cannon slaves allows for firing twice in 5s and results in 135 mined blocks during that time. Burst duration should be 2.5s, but it's more like 3.5s or maybe 3.75, which would fit to the numbers. If you fire a burst with a short click instead of holding the mouse button down or via logic, the duration is 2.5s, but then you only get 68 blocks per burst, which is about half as much as the 135 from above.

Well, I mine with the button depressed all the time. In order to constantly mine, I would need two groups of salvagers for a total of 182 salvage modules worth of mass/volume, each mining 101 blocks per five seconds. Alternatively I could have 91 salvage modules and 91 cannon modules for the same total mass/volume, have the convenience of a single beam AND be mining 135 blocks, as opposed to 101 blocks per five seconds. The salvage/cannon array is the clear winner here as far as I can see.

It is also clear that salvage beams and their slaves are 'not' working as intended. They are supposed to be equally effective (as I understand things) regardless of what you marry them up to. Personally I think this is a suboptimum design strategy, where while the maximum potential output/mining speed for any given slave option should remain the same, there should none the less be pros and cons. Cannon should give the convenience of a single uninterrupted beam but otherwise require the same number of modules as a pair of unslaved salvage arrays. Beam should do the same, same mining speed, same module count, but have greater beam range. Pulse should permit a smaller array module/mass to achieve the same maximum mining speed, but at a cost of six times the power. Missile, I'm not sure what to do with.

 

[Malacodor]

Moving around during a burst will move the beams off a block before it's consumed so you generally want to stay still until the beams have cleared their rows.

According to my tests moving the beams around or not doesn't make a difference. Apparently the game tracks the damage done by a beam rather than the damage done to a block.

 

[KiloZulu]

The reason for this thread is that I'm looking to build a new miner, and was hoping to learn best practices that may have been discovered since my previous one, which is probably close to two years old at this point (although it has had some refits over time.) Thanks to everyone that has provided insight so far, and I hope to learn more.

About the ship that was: my Deepcore Miner had defenses to allow it to escape if it was ambushed while out mining. It had enough shielding and missile defense to protect it while it charged its jump drive (it also had a couple back-up drives for this purpose.) Part of the reason for a new ship is that it also relied heavily on docked reactors. This is because of its salvage output. The ship was built when one million was the soft cap for energy recharge, so it had a million energy of its own and two docked reactors feeding it an additional million energy each. With that three million, it still drained its five million capacitor in about 15-20 seconds. It could finish most asteroids in half that time, so the drain was acceptable.

I already described the array, but perhaps a little more detail. I used two salvage computers so that my checkerboard, rather than alternating salvage and cannon, alternated salvage and salvage. Thus, not only did I have full coverage, all beams fired out to the same length rather than being staggered. The arrays were only twenty blocks long so that I could repeat the checkerboard a second time behind the first. This second array made my range twenty blocks shorter, but still allowed a comfortable range where I didn't have to face-hug rocks. Behind it all were the cannons. All told, this made the entire salvage portion 80 blocks deep and 30 blocks in diameter (an octagon.) A massive storage "bin" was added after the changes to the storage system.

My hope, when I built it was that having two separate beams hitting the same squares at the same time might speed up the mining process faster than a single beam. It was completely untested, however, so I don't know if it actually provided any efficiency benefit. I was satisfied with the result, however, such that it was the mining mainstay of our faction until now, used widely by the players.

The new ship will be modular, something I've been doing more frequently with my ships. A combination of docked entities that allow me to easily un-dock any system that I feel would benefit from an upgrade. The crew cab has been completed, and I'm moving on to the salvage module now. Once I know its mass and power requirements, engine and power modules will be created. I expect that I'll make alternative versions of these modules after the first has been tested and approved. There will be an economical "starter" version that relies on grey hull and has fewer salvage arrays, growing into larger versions that will be easier to manufacture once my production levels have expanded. The modular nature will also allow for the addition of weapon systems, should I need to work in more..."active" systems.

 

[BDLS]

Just go bigger with more salv modules and array amount. They are dirt cheap compared to cannon barrels.