A couple questions about ai/cargo.

[Dramegno]

I don't know if this should be 2 different threads or one. So here I go, also I am in the experimental branch.

 

1. With how the AI is now is it more time efficient to have a bunch of smaller ships with 1-2 of mining/salvage lasers each or fewer bigger ships with more lasers per ship. I.E. 5 small ships with 2 lasers each vs 2 ships with 5 lasers each. Also, is say one or two ships filled with fighters the best way to go later on?

 

2. Can plants and fish be sold anywhere realistically? I haven't found a single place for plants but I did find a couple places for fish that was fully stocked that didn't go down after leaving the game on in the same sector overnight.

[nDervish]

Fighters seem to be pretty much worthless for mining and salvage operations.  I had the idea that it would be good to get a bunch of salvage fighters, launch them after the fight is over, wait a few minutes for them to pick the field clean, then collect them and move on.

 

What actually happened is that it took them forever to pick apart the first wreck, in large part because they were making strafing runs against it, then turning around and pulling back before making another pass.  I'd estimate they only spent between a quarter and a third of the time actually doing salvage work and the rest just flying back and forth.

 

And then, when they finally finished with the wreck I'd sent them after, they returned and took up a defensive formation around my ship instead of salvaging one of the other wrecks in the system.

 

If you want automated mining or salvage operations, it looks like (for now, at least) you're better off building and scrapping AI captained ships than trying to use fighters for it.  I generally build a Scytales X-009 Needlepoint and slap on a pair of mining/salvage lasers and just enough crew quarters to man them, then go off to do other stuff and forget about them until I get the message that they've run out of materials to collect.  (Note that I'm on the beta branch, so they continue to work even after I leave the sector.)  I haven't experimented with larger ships because I'm not going to wait for them to finish anyhow, so I don't care how quickly they work.

[Ravien]

Mining fighters are actually pretty good to use with AI controlled ships. The AI will launch and direct the fighters to mine asteroids. The downside is that fighters can be expensive and when you use cheap ships it's easy to break them down and rebuild them in a new location but if you delete a mining carrier, you lose all the fighters.

 

Salvaging fighters have issues targeting large wrecks. Sometimes their lasers won't even reach the wrecks.