@Egosoft Too many mining ships in the game, Preformance is bad

[Bastelfred]

X4 is barely playable with 4.0. The preformance is totally screwed up.
I have an i5 10600k, 32GB, 2080S yet X4 is in some sectors no longer playable. These sectors all have one thing in common, there are a lot of active mining ships.
There must be drastically fewer ships, but in 4.0 there were drastically more. Makes mining ships much more effective, and increases their price by the same factor. So that the number of ships again reduces significantly. Or find the reason why these ships need so much computing power and fix the problem. You can't play at 20FPS.

I'm currently playing something else, since I can't play X4 in more and more sectors.

[CBJ]

Providing your savegame would give us a much better chance of working out what the problem is.

[Artean]

My performance id better in 4.0, as long as you dont combine volumetric fog with MSAA.

[Bastelfred]

Providing your savegame would give us a much better chance of working out what the problem is.

Asteroid Belt is the worst
https://filehorst.de/d/dHlEkmll

[Baconnaise]

Performance is hit or miss. Turning off filters such as show orders and other various tweaks does seem to help.

[Imperial Good]

Asteroid Belt is not a very good mining spot due to its low average yield per zone. Not only will mining ships take longer to fill up, but they will spread out more due to zone depletion.

To combat having huge numbers of miners, some people recommend using L miners with highly skilled crew. If mining Silicon then placing a resource probe within 40km will nearly double the mining speed.

[Midnitewolf]

On the other side of the issue is that in my experience one of the reasons NPC factions economies falter is that they don't have enough miners and transports so what they really need is more ships, not less.

Still making L miners more efficient and able to carry more raw resources would go a long way to solving the issue. The problem right now, at least for the player is that M miners are much more efficient. They are so much faster at traveling to and from the resources to station that L miners can't even come close to being as efficient. L ships just take way to long travel and dock not to mention just making small movements in the Asteroid fields. To compensate, L miners need to be able to harvest resources much faster and carry maybe 2-3 times what they currently can.

Also the AI would have to prioritize L miners as well but considering they have trouble keeping enough resources available to even produce S ships let alone L ships, I think them prioritizing L ships would just make their economy falter faster and harder.

[KextV8]

The problem right now, at least for the player is that M miners are much more efficient.

M miners die a lot more tho. So to me L miners are more efficient since I can set it and forget it

[Raptor34]

The problem right now, at least for the player is that M miners are much more efficient.

M miners die a lot more tho. So to me L miners are more efficient since I can set it and forget it

Not that much. And less if you use Alligators. But even Bolos take awhile to attire. Though I think it probably helps that the L miners are drawing aggro.

[GCU Grey Area]

The problem right now, at least for the player is that M miners are much more efficient. They are so much faster at traveling to and from the resources to station that L miners can't even come close to being as efficient. L ships just take way to long travel and dock not to mention just making small movements in the Asteroid fields.

Not in my experience. Travel mode speeds for L miners tend to be significantly faster than for M's. If you race them the M's have an initial advantage setting off but L's can often catch up (& sometimes overtake) by the time they reach the next gate on a multi-sector journey. In practise there's not all that much difference if they're travelling say 2-3 sectors to get to where they need to mine (e.g. fetching Methane from 18 billion for an HQ in Grand Exchange). M's only really have a noticeable edge if they get to use highways, but those are not always available. If not, their effective speeds are a lot closer than you might think. Meanwhile L's advantage is they can load up with more, so a greater proportion of their time is spent mining, rather than travelling back & forth.

[Raptor34]

Ls also have higher mining speeds.
The problem with Ls is that they are heavily reliant on crew skill. Which wouldn't be that much of a problem if your M miners levels up faster. Or even at all sometimes. That way you have a clear upgrade pipeline.

[Ehli]

L miners with good/ok crew are quite easy to get, too. Just do those war missions for ARG or TER!

[Fenris321]

I use a mix of M and L miners. M Alligator miners are rarely if ever lost, especially with Terran shields, they simply outrun everything. They do like to flee and sometimes will go right back into danger as soon as they are safe though, so there will be some losses. I do a lot of sector mining so the Alligator miners perform just as well as the L miners, sometimes better. I've just gotten into the habit of mining a spot until the Kha'ak show up, then switching all miners in that sector to L miners and ignoring the Kha'ak. Since the Kha'ak only spawn in a set number of sectors and cant kill L miners this pretty much lets me mine without fear of losing any ships. In my game the Xenon are pretty much confined to the "south east" of the map, away from all my operations, so no fear of Xenon fleets destroying them.

I also have a few construction ships which build a lot of stations. When the service crew ranks up to specialist (which doesn't take long) I transfer them to L miners. The L miners then mine faster and fewer of them are needed.

[capitalduty]

I understand mining changes, but right now having a massive fleet of L miners to get silicon just drops badly performance!

[Midnitewolf]

The problem right now, at least for the player is that M miners are much more efficient. They are so much faster at traveling to and from the resources to station that L miners can't even come close to being as efficient. L ships just take way to long travel and dock not to mention just making small movements in the Asteroid fields.

Not in my experience. Travel mode speeds for L miners tend to be significantly faster than for M's. If you race them the M's have an initial advantage setting off but L's can often catch up (& sometimes overtake) by the time they reach the next gate on a multi-sector journey. In practise there's not all that much difference if they're travelling say 2-3 sectors to get to where they need to mine (e.g. fetching Methane from 18 billion for an HQ in Grand Exchange). M's only really have a noticeable edge if they get to use highways, but those are not always available. If not, their effective speeds are a lot closer than you might think. Meanwhile L's advantage is they can load up with more, so a greater proportion of their time is spent mining, rather than travelling back & forth.

This depends on a lot of factors but I am seems to recall another thread where someone did some extensive research and found that M miners were more efficient over all. I know observationally, the fact that M miners use gates correctly, can use superhighway and have a much faster docking/undocking and load/unload procedures seems to make them better. Also you have cost to think about as well. If I recall correctly, you can buy something like 5 M miners for the cost of a L miner which gives you greater transport capacity for the same costs. Eventually when you got more credits coming in than you can spend, there are a lot of reasons to go L but early on I would say, M are much better.

[GCU Grey Area]

This depends on a lot of factors but I am seems to recall another thread where someone did some extensive research and found that M miners were more efficient over all. I know observationally, the fact that M miners use gates correctly, can use superhighway and have a much faster docking/undocking and load/unload procedures seems to make them better. Also you have cost to think about as well. If I recall correctly, you can buy something like 5 M miners for the cost of a L miner which gives you greater transport capacity for the same costs. Eventually when you got more credits coming in than you can spend, there are a lot of reasons to go L but early on I would say, M are much better.

Sorry, going to take my own research over a vague mention of someone else's. Have done my own tests & have been using L's pretty much exclusively for mining since then. As for cost, really don't mind paying a bit more for a better ship. However that's not to say I don't have a use for M miners. Since 4.0 made it viable to use miners to transport resources I am using M's in that role. They're relatively short journeys (at which M miners with Combat 3 engines excel) between well defended stations so the vulnerability of M ships is pretty much a non-issue. Essentially they're either moving too fast to be shot at or, if waiting to pick up cargo, there are several dozen station turrets in close proximity to protect them. Also find it useful to have different icons on the map to make it easy to distinguish between miners & ships which handle internal logistics. I do a similar thing with my freighters - L's handle sales to NPC stations, M's transport stuff between my stations.

[grapedog]

In my longest game, a 1.0 save that i have been playing since the game released... i went and upgraded the vast majority of M miners to L miners.

I can't say performance improved at all, but that save already has me at over 2k ships probably. Where i had two M miners I now have one L miner.

L miners do offer way more piece of mind. It pretty much takes a rattleanake now to bother them. So i lose miners a lot less often overall to xenon, kha'ak, or pirates.

[Midnitewolf]

This depends on a lot of factors but I am seems to recall another thread where someone did some extensive research and found that M miners were more efficient over all. I know observationally, the fact that M miners use gates correctly, can use superhighway and have a much faster docking/undocking and load/unload procedures seems to make them better. Also you have cost to think about as well. If I recall correctly, you can buy something like 5 M miners for the cost of a L miner which gives you greater transport capacity for the same costs. Eventually when you got more credits coming in than you can spend, there are a lot of reasons to go L but early on I would say, M are much better.

Sorry, going to take my own research over a vague mention of someone else's. Have done my own tests & have been using L's pretty much exclusively for mining since then. As for cost, really don't mind paying a bit more for a better ship. However that's not to say I don't have a use for M miners. Since 4.0 made it viable to use miners to transport resources I am using M's in that role. They're relatively short journeys (at which M miners with Combat 3 engines excel) between well defended stations so the vulnerability of M ships is pretty much a non-issue. Essentially they're either moving too fast to be shot at or, if waiting to pick up cargo, there are several dozen station turrets in close proximity to protect them. Also find it useful to have different icons on the map to make it easy to distinguish between miners & ships which handle internal logistics. I do a similar thing with my freighters - L's handle sales to NPC stations, M's transport stuff between my stations.

I honestly don't think there is a "Wrong" way of doing things and the game is so wonky at times, any hardcore attempt to figure out just what is the best way is kind of a shot in the dark anyway. I see pros and cons to both to be honest. I do like your logic about using the M miners to transfer resources. The only issue with it is how long it takes for AI ships to traverse a gate as that is where I always seem lose ships to pirates or even wandering Xenon raiding parties.

I still stick by my assertion that using a large M fleet is better for the first half of the game.

[flatbush71]

I switched over to the non-Steam.exe and it made an enormous difference for me. ( i7-10700 CPU )
Can't say for you others guys, but its only way to go for me now on other than to update

[GCU Grey Area]

The only issue with it is how long it takes for AI ships to traverse a gate as that is where I always seem lose ships to pirates or even wandering Xenon raiding parties.

Can recommend Terran ships & engines if you want ships which accelerate hard almost immediately after leaving a gate, particularly if you've got the parts to modify them for extra travel mode speed. Very fond of basic Polisher chassis & Reaver engine mods for all of my L freighters & miners.

They've been running almost entirely without incident for the past 10 days or so of my current game. Occasionally a pirate hassles them, however the phenomenal acceleration of Terran engines has made them surprisingly good at evading pirates, even the pirates flying ships which are supposedly a lot faster than them (e.g. Rattlesnakes). Whenever one of them notifies me of a pirate's threat I check relative positions - if the pirate's behind them I cancel the automatic flee & let them continue on their way. If it's in front I give them a couple of fly to orders to route them around the threat. The pirates normally abandon the chase as soon as it's clear they won't be able to keep up with the acceleration of a Terran ship running on Terran engines.

Only significant incident to date was entirely my fault. I mostly keep my freighters well away from Xenon infested areas, however messed up a manual trade - didn't spot it's destination was a TEL station in Matrix #451 until it called for help when it encountered a K immediately after leaving the gate from Ianamus Zura. Since it was already under fire, almost from the moment emerged from the gate, it had no chance to get it's engine into travel mode & was destroyed shortly thereafter. However, aside from that one incident, have been really quite impressed with how good Terran L freighters & miners have been at not getting themselves killed. Much lower attrition rate than I'd normally expect by this point in the game.