| Best miner with ARM and an IT ally? |
Sun, 12 August 2007 14:37  |
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I've seen it argued that the SuperBug (Midget + 2 UltraMiners) is the best miner because it's gateable through 300/500 gates.
First question: What about using the mini-miner hull? Only 1 or 2 more iron at high cons levels, still gateable, and it has an scan/elec/mech slot for a cloak, jammer, or a man jet, increasing survivability. Or is the idea you always protect your mining fleets with overwhelming warship fleets so that extra slot is a waste?
Second question (and the one implied by my title): Suppose it's a team game and you have an IT ally. Then would you use the UltraMiner hull and 12 UltraMiner robots? Certainly it's the best rate of return on invested iron, but you might have a few wasted turns moving to/from your ally's gates (OTOH, mostly, these sit at the HW generating the fountain. Only when there is some useless red to be strip-mined would you bother *going* any place with them.)
If you did use the Ultra hull, what would you put in the 3x armor/scan/elec/mech slot? Again, I'm thinking cloak, jammer or man jet are the only logical choices. 3 overthrusters would ensure a relatively speedy exit from any battle. Again though, if the idea is you never expose them to any risk, then I suppose the slot should be empty.
[Updated on: Sun, 12 August 2007 14:38] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Best miner with ARM and an IT ally? |
Mon, 13 August 2007 10:36  |
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 BunBun vonWhiskers |
 | Crewman 3rd Class |
Messages: 9
Registered: August 2007 | |
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I try to keep my miners out of combat whenever possible, so maneuvering jets and jammers are useless to me. Cloaks are nice, at least in the “stumbling around in the dark” phase, but when you are building zillions of Superbugs, those tiny resource costs add up fast. The bulk of my miners are going to be sitting around my homeworld anyway, and if that gets zapped I’m toast. I have to say that the added survivability is usually not worth the added resource cost if you are only going to have one class of mining ship. If you are going to have two, I would go with a small, cloaked version for when you need to move mining capacity around quickly, while your bulk-rate mining/resource ratio ships sit around your homeworld as efficiently as possible.
If I am using the UM hull as well as Superbugs, I usually don’t have any doodads in the extra slot. Heck, since my UMs have only one purpose (to orbit my homeworld supporting my mineral fountain) I sometimes put the prop tech zero engine on them. Once your fountain is going to any reasonable extent, the only thing that matters is resource cost anyway, mineral requirements sort of fall by the wayside.
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| Re: Best miner with ARM and an IT ally? |
Tue, 14 August 2007 23:36 |
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I struggle to look past the Ultra robot on a midgit miner hull (once you get to ulra tech, of course - I'd usually have one or two 'temp' designs along the way, that I'll typically try to trade out later to free up the slot.)
The Ultra hull is maybe a tiny bit cheaper, but it's not much cheaper... And the ability to gate between your OWN gates, to selectively boost minerals at any world at a moments notice (AR manage to mine the same year they gate!) really can be a colony saving advantage (even game saving, sometimes.)
As you approach the end game, ultrabugs get down stupidly cheap anyway... In my last game as AR, they got down to 1.3 resources per mine equivalent. Mmmmm. Ubercheap, instantly gateable mines.... 
Oh, and even consider using the QJ5 instead of FM on your final design (if you have IFE) just to save a couple of resources per ship. By that point it's rare to need to actually fly miners through space anywhere (in which situation you can use whichever older design you decide to hang on to for a while, for this.)
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| Re: Best miner with ARM and an IT ally? |
Wed, 15 August 2007 13:02 |
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Quick and mobile, yes. In gates
I've thought a few times about the concept of mining out an opponents world... But overall, think it doesn't really accomplish much that bombing out the installations does already. And I'm more likely to get in the position of being able to do *that* to them, if my miners were cheaper... I regreted using FM on my ultrabugs in my last game. It's not a big difference, but I was very aware of it. I was glad to have the FM on my maxibugs and superbugs (the stopgap designs I used on the way to ultras) as these ships *did* make trips through open space.
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