Engineers Ships Engineering for mining

[TickTockRob]

Hi guys,

Okay, I'm relatively new to the engineer game, despite playing the game for a while

I've mainly done exploring and trading, and have mainly engineered for exploring (FSD and also that Guardian upgrade).

However, now I'm looking into mining

I know there's the Anaconda etc, but I've gone for the Type 9 Heavy. Eventually I want to rank up my Imperial rank so I can get a Cutter (or a Clipper...or both!)

Basically, the T9 is a bit of a cow, but I like that about it. Now, the issue I have is that I know there's engineering that can be done, but I don't really know what is good, what is bad, and what is overkill.

What I expect to need to do with the T9 is to engineer the shields and also three shield boosters (the fourth slot being left for point defence).

I also expect to have to engineer the hull

After all this, I probably have to engineer the power plant

Further, I also expect to have to engineer the thrusters

This is a lot of stuff (and yes, I know I could get an Anaconda)

So my questions:

1. What is the baseline of a good shield
2. What is the baseline of a good hull
3. Do I need a good hull if I have good shields
4. What sort of resistances do I need and why

I think that's about it

With a bit of faff, some guessing and other malarky, I came up with this build (the link shortener isn't working for some reason):

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

coriolis.edcd.io

You'll notice it has resistance percentages and other things. I've no idea if any of it is excessive or not, and I also don't know the difference between the resistances on the hull and the shields. The reason for this is that I believe some types of damage can either go through shields or damage in different ways (or both!). But that is also something I don't understand, so should perhaps be added to the question list above

Okay, I think that's basically it for all this...I know it's a lot of ask, so I hope you don't mind answering at least some of it!

Thanks, guys!

 

[Sethiest]

Do you mine in Open/Private/Solo?

Here's my build for mining in open anyway. https://s.orbis.zone/3uqd

When you get real deep into an asteroid field and feel you can't be found. Turn the shield boosters off and enable the pulse wave scanner. Then when leaving, turn off the scanner and enable shield boosters. Wait for them to recharge.

With a fast reboot FSD, strong shield (ALWAYS 4 pips to systems) and good drives, you can at least escape if you get pulled by another CMDR. Unless they are role playing pirates and asks for a low amount of void opals. If that's the case pay the tax, it'll be easier, more fun, and they'll leave you alone then.

 

[Innocentius]

For mining when not in Open you do not really need any engineering. It is one of those few activities that does not benefit much at all from it. If you want to do something: better engines take you faster from rock to rock and better FSD makes it faster to go sell your loot. That is about it.

 

[TickTockRob]

Well I guess so, but I do usually play in open, and I guess would like to know hypothetically anyway, and plus what all the things do regardless, just in case I need them elsewhere for when I do trading etc. I may well end up using the same ship for that.

 

[Sethiest]

The type-9 I showed you was my trading one also, here is what it looks like in the trading config: https://s.orbis.zone/3uqw

Also when you ask, "what all the things do regadless" can you be more specific?

 

[TickTockRob]

The type-9 I showed you was my trading one also, here is what it looks like in the trading config: https://s.orbis.zone/3uqw

Also when you ask, "what all the things do regadless" can you be more specific?

Very sorry, I missed your original reply (somehow!) - thank you for your build and the info! I've only ever done mining with lasers so far, but some point will branch out, so the info will come in handy!

I notice you're using prismatic shields...are they better overall? I've heard a lot use them (but you need the 4 week play in PP).

What do all the resistances do exactly? Are they for different weapon types? Can the weapons go through shields or something unless you have those resistances? That's the sort of thing I meant about what does what

 

[Sethiest]

Prismatic have the highest raw strength, but when they go down, they go down so a long time. Also, they take a whole bunch of power.

I use Prismatic on the T-9 because I intend to never have the shields break before I can escape. T-9 won't be fighting, it's not designed for that. So shields strong enough to tank damage before escaping is very important to me. That's also why I use shield cells. Even if they have cascade on their rails, it halts further damage, more or less, which buys me more time to escape.

Each weapon has a damage type.


Lasers - Thermal
Canons, multicanons, things that shoot bullets - Kinetic
Missiles, torpedo’s, mines - Explosive.


Therefore, when you build a ship, you'll notice FOUR numbers next to shields. This is how much health they have against those weapon types. That's why it's important to pay attention to your resistances. If you have low thermal resistance, and get shot by lasers, your shields have less health essentially and go down quicker.

Absolute is a damage type that ignores all other resistances (thermal, kinetic, explosive). These are found on Rail Guns and Plasma Accelerators. Nasty!

 

[TickTockRob]

Prismatic have the highest raw strength, but when they go down, they go down so a long time. Also, they take a whole bunch of power.

I use Prismatic on the T-9 because I intend to never have the shields break before I can escape. T-9 won't be fighting, it's not designed for that. So shields strong enough to tank damage before escaping is very important to me. That's also why I use shield cells. Even if they have cascade on their rails, it halts further damage, more or less, which buys me more time to escape.

Each weapon has a damage type.


Lasers - Thermal
Canons, multicanons, things that shoot bullets - Kinetic
Missiles, torpedo’s, mines - Explosive.


Therefore, when you build a ship, you'll notice FOUR numbers next to shields. This is how much health they have against those weapon types. That's why it's important to pay attention to your resistances. If you have low thermal resistance, and get shot by lasers, your shields have less health essentially and go down quicker.

Absolute is a damage type that ignores all other resistances (thermal, kinetic, explosive). These are found on Rail Guns and Plasma Accelerators. Nasty!

ahh thank you very much! That all makes sense now, as I couldn't really understand what those figures under HP meant.

What is considered an average percentage resistance, and what is considered good? Also, what HP are considered good for each of those things?

I notice that thermal seems a bit harder to get a good percentage than others...is there a reason for that? And what is caustic?

 

[Sethiest]

Thats the joy of ship building. You have to find a balance between good shield strength and resistances. However, It's not a good idea to have low anything. You should at least aim to get above 40% on all of them. And yeah, thermal is usually low before enginnering shields because mechanically the game is designed that way. Lasers are supposted to do higher damage to shields but not hull. And kinetic is supposed to hurt hull more than shield.

Caustic is damage that the Thargoids can inflict. It's nasty stuff that does damage over time to your hull. You don't need to worry about that in a mining/trading ship.

Thermal isn't that hard to get higher. But you may have to consider engineering your shield for thermal resistance. A good combo is to have thermal enginnered shields, with heavy duty shield boosters and resitence shield boosters. You can see this here on my FDL https://s.orbis.zone/3urz

 

[TickTockRob]

Yes, if any Thargoids demand any of my painite, they can have it!

And yes, that makes sense about them having that special damage - makes them harder if you can't defend against it, and interesting!

And that makes sense about Thermal. What about hull resistances then? They're harder to come by, but should you also average them out, rather than have one a lot lower?

What about the numbers for the values in HP for the shields and hull - is there any average baseline for it, so you know if you've got something relatively good?

 

[Sethiest]

Hull is pretty much the same deal when engineering.

You have military, reactive and mirrored. Each with their own strengths and weaknesses. For example, reactive has high explosive and kinectic health but low thermal. So you add a hull enforcement package and engineer it to have thermal resistances to balance out your defences.

Reactive is usually the best because it has two defences - explosive and kinetic. All you need to do is as mention, add a hull package with thermal engineering.

But that's why reactive is super expensive. Cost 300 million on my Corvette.

Also in terms of a "baseline", it's hard to say, because all ships have different hull strengths. But yes you should average them out too. I haven't for my type-9 because i've accepted that if my shields go, it's pretty much gameover anyway. But my corvette is a fighting ship, so it goes on fighting without shields because it's got boat loads of hull packages and module enforcements.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

For mining when not in Open you do not really need any engineering. It is one of those few activities that does not benefit much at all from it. If you want to do something: better engines take you faster from rock to rock and better FSD makes it faster to go sell your loot. That is about it.

If you're doing laser mining, a charge enhanced distributor is really useful for keeping a full set of mining lasers running.

 

[Abysinth]

For PvE [i.e. against NPC characters] I use the following as a guide:

Shlds: eng. to Thermal Res with Fast Charge experimental
then add shld bstrs with eng. in the following order: 1] Heavy Duty, 2] Res. Aug., 3] Res. Aug., 4] Heavy Duty, 5] Res. Aug., 6] Heavy Duty, 7] Res. Aug., 8] Heavy Duty all with flow ctrl as experimental.

There are other more specialised builds but this is a good enough baseline. Note, this is with standard shlds, not bi-weaves or Prismatics, I've not done the maths for those [yet]

For Reactive Surface armour [the really expensive stuff], I have recently discovered that if you have a 5D HRP then Eng. Armour to Hvy Duty and the HRP to Thermal Res, else if no HRP then armour to Thermal Res. With lightweight armour you have to add more HRPs to make up for its tissue paper like qualities

HTH

 

[TickTockRob]

Hull is pretty much the same deal when engineering.

You have military, reactive and mirrored. Each with their own strengths and weaknesses. For example, reactive has high explosive and kinectic health but low thermal. So you add a hull enforcement package and engineer it to have thermal resistances to balance out your defences.

Reactive is usually the best because it has two defences - explosive and kinetic. All you need to do is as mention, add a hull package with thermal engineering.

But that's why reactive is super expensive. Cost 300 million on my Corvette.

Also in terms of a "baseline", it's hard to say, because all ships have different hull strengths. But yes you should average them out too. I haven't for my type-9 because i've accepted that if my shields go, it's pretty much gameover anyway. But my corvette is a fighting ship, so it goes on fighting without shields because it's got boat loads of hull packages and module enforcements.

Thanks again for all the useful information! I've actually looked into farming a few components i need for various shield engineering, and there's a good few that I can only get from wreckage, the consensus being that it's best to go after mining vessels in anarchy systems to destroy them for the wreckage. Can you get the same wreckage from doing bounty hunts on wanted criminals do you know? The components I'm after, for example, are things like Conductive Components.

 

[TickTockRob]

If you're doing laser mining, a charge enhanced distributor is really useful for keeping a full set of mining lasers running.

That's a very good point!

 

[Sethiest]

Thanks again for all the useful information! I've actually looked into farming a few components i need for various shield engineering, and there's a good few that I can only get from wreckage, the consensus being that it's best to go after mining vessels in anarchy systems to destroy them for the wreckage. Can you get the same wreckage from doing bounty hunts on wanted criminals do you know? The components I'm after, for example, are things like Conductive Components.

This is the best resource I've found for finding materials!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Mp7l0bSnMp_G7xWUm75M-XuihDfTdi27rm-vB9K8AX0/edit#gid=0

 

[TickTockRob]

For PvE [i.e. against NPC characters] I use the following as a guide:

Shlds: eng. to Thermal Res with Fast Charge experimental
then add shld bstrs with eng. in the following order: 1] Heavy Duty, 2] Res. Aug., 3] Res. Aug., 4] Heavy Duty, 5] Res. Aug., 6] Heavy Duty, 7] Res. Aug., 8] Heavy Duty all with flow ctrl as experimental.

There are other more specialised builds but this is a good enough baseline. Note, this is with standard shlds, not bi-weaves or Prismatics, I've not done the maths for those [yet]

For Reactive Surface armour [the really expensive stuff], I have recently discovered that if you have a 5D HRP then Eng. Armour to Hvy Duty and the HRP to Thermal Res, else if no HRP then armour to Thermal Res. With lightweight armour you have to add more HRPs to make up for its tissue paper like qualities

HTH

Thank you for all this, I shall keep it all in mind! it's a bit unclear when you engineer stuff that none of it stacks does it? I mean, if you add one thing, either better or worse, than the previous thing in the same area, it completely replaces it doesn't it? I've always assumed that was the case, but thought I'd best check that

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Thank you for all this, I shall keep it all in mind! it's a bit unclear when you engineer stuff that none of it stacks does it? I mean, if you add one thing, either better or worse, than the previous thing in the same area, it completely replaces it doesn't it? I've always assumed that was the case, but thought I'd best check that

Yes, this is it. One modification and one experimental effect maximum, per module. If you have a grade 4 lightweight module, and you put sturdy on it, you get grade 1 sturdy and work up from there again.

 

[Abysinth]

Thank you for all this, I shall keep it all in mind! it's a bit unclear when you engineer stuff that none of it stacks does it? I mean, if you add one thing, either better or worse, than the previous thing in the same area, it completely replaces it doesn't it? I've always assumed that was the case, but thought I'd best check that

If you engineer a module, for example the FSD with Increased range then if you try to engineer the FSD with shielding it will lose your inc. range engineering. But multiple modules do stack, kind of. Shlds stack but not the resistances, there is a rule of diminishing returns, hence my odd order for engineering the shld bstrs.

 

[Abysinth]

Thank you for all this, I shall keep it all in mind! it's a bit unclear when you engineer stuff that none of it stacks does it? I mean, if you add one thing, either better or worse, than the previous thing in the same area, it completely replaces it doesn't it? I've always assumed that was the case, but thought I'd best check that

If you engineer a module, for example the FSD with Increased range then if you try to engineer the FSD with shielding it will lose your inc. range engineering. But multiple modules do stack, kind of. Shlds stack but not the resistances, there is a rule of diminishing returns, hence my odd order for engineering the shld bstrs.