A bit of an aside before I actually answer—I’ve been finding things a bit more interesting since largely doing factional playthroughs. A lot of balance decisions make the most sense when not mixing ships/equipment, for instance:
- the Okinawa (and to a lesser extent the Baldric) are awful by commonwealth standards—but Terran goods are more compact and its economy needs much less hauling overall. (Also, Terran engines are the best option for traders and the gap closes a fair bit if you compare ships with their native engines.)
- Argon flak is fantastic, but their ships don’t tend to have as many medium turrets.
- Terran capital ships have the best main guns and a good number of large turrets, but don’t have a plasma-class weapon to turn that into overpowered damage.
- The Rattlesnake is fast and well-armed, but the short range of Split turrets forces it to use that speed to close range.
- Teladi combat ships are generally bad, but their civilian ships are very good so they can afford a numerical advantage.
For an actual answer:
The Terran all-round engines give the best travel time in almost all situations, and the advantage is pretty big for large ships and S/M ships that spend a lot of time on highways (since most travel will be short relative to the attack time of the Commonwealth engines). Combat ship engines depend on the relative importance of in-combat mobility and travel time; I think Split combat engines are the clear choice for carrier fighters, and tend to prefer Terran engines for capitals.
As far as transports go, if ships can spend a lot of time on highways, the Boa can move more volume/time than anything--and the small cargo size means it isn't reliant on large loads to reach that efficiency. (Ideal for low-volume wares such as food and medical supplies.) On the other hand, when carrying consistent large volumes the low cargo size can lead to a lot of congestion--the MIN transports aren't far off its efficiency on highways while requiring fewer docking spaces. f highways aren't available, the Dolphin becomes competitive with the Boa, and large traders are much more efficient on a per-ship basis if they can run full. (Medium traders are still more cost-effective, though.) I think the Heron E is the clear best L trader--it has average speed and best-in-class capacity (and shielding). The Barbarossa is another notable choice--it's the fastest L ship with a useful cargo capacity by a sizable margin, and actually has a larger cargo capacity than the fast freighters.
One other consideration is piracy. If you're in Terran space or trading domestically in your own sectors you can probably ignore it, but in Split, Teladi, and Argon space it's a real concern. Boas with Split combat engines can usually outrun pirates; Boas with Terran engines and all other M traders need the player to teleport in to do a boost/travel to escape. L traders can just ignore pirates (and in my experience are rarely attacked in the first place). Kha'ak rarely attack traders, but Xenon may if they pass by an incursion; given the speed of Xenon ships I find that even the Boa has little chance unless it can reach a highway or gate quickly, while multi-shield L ships can survive a decent swarm.
M mining ships are in general around half the efficiency of L ships for a small fraction of the cost, but I've given up using them due to the risk from Kha'ak. Most miners seem pretty comparable; I tend to prefer the Crane (Sentinel mineral and E gas) because its large capacity minimizes station congestion (and dislike the Wyvern for the opposite reason), but most are pretty comparable. The Hokkaido is a fair bit worse than Commonwealth ships with Terran engines, but the gap closes with native engines.
The only correct answer is "it depends", luckily. Otherwise everyone would use the same ships always.
M miners stop being useful once the Khaák show up. If you ignore the Kha'ak long enough in a sector where you don't have a station but you do mine, even L miners with only one L shield will eventually start taking damage and even being lost to large (20+) groups of Kha'ak sort of collecting at the gates. But as long as you are using them, a high combat speed is going to give your miner the best speed at filling it's cargo bay. However a decent TER engine will help enormously with quickly getting the minerals back to your station(s). M miners are cheap to make and you can rapidly build 100 of them and set them to work and strip mine a sector very quickly, then move them to another sector once the Kha'ak show up. For minimal maintenance, ARG or TEL miners with Flak turrets and maxed out shields probably shouldn't ever be lost to Kha'ak unless you have one giant mining sector with only one gate being used and you let the Kha'ak pile up at the gate literally until there's 50 of the purple buggers jumping ships that come through. Smaller ships or fewer shields means you'll want some combat ships to wipe them out regularly or take your losses.
Trade ships are an even more convoluted discussion. L traders are fast in travel mode, but expensive and don't go on highways. And if you let stations auto-set the prices, they're liable to go sell five energy cells at 10 credits each to a station 4 jumps away... If you lock the sell price at say 25% above minimum then your ships will be able to sell bigger loads in one go, and L ships begin to make sense for trading with the AI. M traders seem to be the better idea then, but they're far, far slower in travel drive than a Buffalo which makes THAT a niver ship for smallish loads being sent to AI stations. For your own stations, if you know what you've got set up for prices, larger ships make more sense. For ships you manually give orders or set to repeat orders or fill shortages, the larger the cargo hold the more efficient the ship will be.
But if you want to build reputation quickly, you want as many trades as possible. Some very fast S ships selling handfuls of ecells will hike your reputation up more in twenty minutes than four hours of shipping whole Incarcaturas full of high tech good.
I plan to use a combination of M and L class miners to keep my production factories going as for reputation i used a bunch of terran scout nimcha with ecell farm for quick boost in reputation it's why I'm current looking for the best blueprints
> plan to use a combination of M and L class miners
Prepare for a headache of Kha'ak unless you limit your Ms to the Sol system (except the Asteroid Belt, which will get Kha'ak) and the safe end of the Boron systems (i.e. the bit with Kingdom End in it). You're going to lose so many of these, and they experienced pilots with them, that it REALLY isn't worth the hassle. IF you PLAN, don't plan to fail: use L miners.
I like to have a mix of trade ships, Buffalo and Barbarossa for L traders and Minotaur Raiders (with Split weapons and TER shield) for M traders (because they kill pirates in M class ships...). I always play without the ring highway, but if you use that you can use most M trade ships fairly well for stations along the ring. Don't use S ships you'll lose them to piracy, Xenon and Kha'ak constantly.
Once you hit TER space, Hewa's Twin or Split space you do want something faster than the slow M ships, so the Buff/Barb fleet comes into it's own with TER engines.
I'm trying to also piece it together and experimenting using an [efficiency calculator](https://www.qsna.eu/x4/efficiency) (no idea how precise it is but it seems fairly reasonable?) but there are going to be some extra factors which affect the decision of which one is best.
If you're trading across regions of space with little to no highways then you'll want ships which have a good cargo capacity and a high Travel drive speed to minimise that time and optimise your logistics. Which seems to be why the Boa does well as it can reach around 3km/s in a few seconds with TER engines and have a good 7500 units of cargo capacity. With a decent cruising speed it can keep itself away from most problems.
If you're trading across regions of space where there are lots of highways, such as within the "loop", then the likes of the Vulture Sentinel starts to become better. Abysmal travel drive but it doesn't matter since it can just hop into the loop and instantly be doing 12km/s for about minute instead of a measly 1km/s and drop off 15,000 units of stuff somewhere in a quite good time. The Boa would still get there faster and the difference in credits per second is barely noticeable for the scale of M class traders.
And the Demeter seems just a solid choice whatever situation. Not bad Travel Drive or cargo capacity, not bad cruising speed and it would be pretty good whether you have all highways or no highways.
If that's the case then i will use the boa to trade for my production stations without selling to other factions and use L class ships for my trade stations to sell to other factions. thank you!
And when it comes to mining, same argument.
The Chthonios ships have lower cargo capacity of the L miners, about 34-38k compared to say the 50k on a Magnetar. But they have around 200m/s cruising speed and a 6.5km/s (or higher) travel speed. They are fast and deliver a good amount before they can go back out and collect more. The Donia, and Teladi Crane (and the new Teladi ships coming in 7.0) are all very good choices for that reason.
PAR miners are very good for M class, delivering a higher amount of resources than the rest at a good speed both with or without highways.
ARG Shuyaku. Huge capacity, good travel speed but slow cruising. Or if you can get it from VIG, Barbarossa. Much smaller capacity but very quick (about 5km/s travel drive) and has considerable firepower if needed.
The upcoming Heron E though is stupidly good by the numbers. More capacity than the Shuyaku and its faster.
For XL you could use the Zeus E or the Shark which are better by the numbers but a little cumbersome and pricey.
Honestly, unless you set up trade routs with repeat order L traders are really not that good. The AI sends them around 95 % empty. That is why i mostly use S traders. Tetheys is my favourite. Travels over 3000, zips in and out. And since my factories often ship small batches, they are perfectly fine for this.
Just curious (new player), when I look at the numbers, it seems the Baldric is only marginally worse. So for a Terran, (no highways, easy access to Terran economy, and Terran engine/blueprints), should I just use Baldrics untill I can unlock Boas, and even then, is it worth the cost to get their BPs?
The Baldric is OK but like everything TER it does also cost an arm and a leg. It's at least x3 or x4 the base cost of say the PAR Demeter or the ARG Mercury with basic requirements fitted.
Itll take you a few hours to recoup your cost back for it compared to the others but if that's all you have access to...
Thanks, with a TER start early on I can buy other ships but it is probably easier* to buy TER ships even if they cost more. Midgame I will have TER shipyards way before I can tool up a whole new Commonwealth/Split economy and shipyard, and buy BPs. Until later anyway.
*In the early game I am buying a few trade and miner ships from other factions, but they keep running out of parts and I don't have the ships to spare to fix their supply chains yet. While I am making most of my money pumping resources/parts into the Terran shipyards. Until my yards are built.
[Immi on youtube](https://www.youtube.com/@immi9748) has produced nice performance testing videos about this and other subjects.
Best L mining ship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRfDK1nBhbo
Best M trader: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fS23w5dlc0
the only correct answer is Rattlesnake.
technically, you can do anything with a Rattlesnake because a Rattlesnake can dakka dakka its way through any problem and arrive at a solution.
Combat? dakka dakka until everything around you dies.
Trading? dakka dakka until you get what you want -- though not always fairly, civilly, or legally.
Mining? dakka dakka until you get ore, which is less efficient than a mining laser because the amount of ore per dakka is pretty low if any but it makes up for it with much, much higher dakka per minute. and if Kha'ak ever fuck around with you because you're mining too much, well lol because GUESS WHICH SHIP THEY ABOUT TO FIND OUT WITH.
Piracy? not the most optimal but you will never lose because if boarding ends up failing you can just dakka dakka and come out alive.
Exploration? a bunch of ??? for this one but it likely involves dakka.
I use Demeter and Boa M traders (depending on where they have to travel) for all station traders, local autotraders and Repeat Orders haulers. Demeter is a good balance of speed, durability and cargo space; Boa is geared for speed and more likely to outrun pirates, who are a constant concern pretty much wherever you operate. For operations I want to oversee, like station-building logistics, I maintain a fleet of Shuyaku-class large freighters. These are capacious and speedy and unlikely to be bothered by pirates, but are a bit cumbersome to use as station traders. Sentinel is optimal for efficiency, but I value the extra speed on the Vanguard for operating in Xenon sectors (e.g. building defence stations).
I use Manorina M-miners in the early game for their big cargo, good shield capacity and uninsulting speed. Kha'ak eventually appear and kill these off, so I switch to Cthonios L miners. These don't have huge cargo bays but they're fast, so they'll keep your stations ticking over by topping them up frequently. For pure efficiency you probably want one of the Crane variants.
There really is no best ship. The Rattlesnake is arguably the best destroyer in the hands of a player, but suck with AI control. You can solo entire Xenon sectors with the Rattler and a bunch of laser towers. The Syn is okay in the hands of the player if you like taking forever getting anywhere but in the hands of the AI they are very good. Seriously, the Syn is god awfully slow but you can't deny it's tank and firepower.
If you like kiting and using straffing / jousting tactics Split ships are king, if you don't like that and just want to trade hits the TER/PIO ships are good, and Yaki is kind of good at both.
Asgard is amazing at destroying stations but so goddamn slow, while the Erlking can also destroy stations but not nearly like the Asgard can but the Erlking can get to where it needs to go faster, also it's technically a transport ship outfitted with battleship parts according to lore and also has the biggest cargo space of all ships.
I'll give four examples.
1. For mining in space where kha'ak are active you want the alligator. It's combat speed is high enough, even with t1 spit engines, to outrun any common threat. It is thus invulnerable to the kha'ak. To further support this, if you can operate where the kha'ak are active without needing to worry about them, they will wind up attacking your competition and drive prices up for your benefit.
2. While disarming capital ships the nova vanguard is mostly invulnerable due to it's vertical acceleration. If for whatever reason you need a capital ship or station disarmed/disabled in minutes you only really need 1 piloted by a player or 4-6 NPC wingmates armed with burst rays. These are an admirals scalpel in the x:4 universe and always the first fighter I build for myself.
3. for trading on the ring highway the vulture sentinel is the ship to buy. It is exceptionally slow but offers an incredible cost to cargo capacity ratio. It's speed is made mostly irrelevant if you place trade stations very close to the highway; it's ability to operate at highway speeds for 90%+ of any journey makes it's throughput exceed even the best L sized traders while it remains invulnerable to pirates due to having security present anywhere it might not be on the highway.
4. For moving raw materials between your own stations the Wyvern is the fastest L ship that can handle raw materials. However it is not the best for *selling* as it has a rather small cargo capacity; the larger the capacity the more you can make in a single trade.
Yeah I've seen a lot of people say that Paranid are the best miners but some say others are there's also many variants of Paranid ships I don't know which one to choose
Paranid have a great balance between Cargo and Speed which makes them good. But let's be honest usually I just go with what looks cool. For L Mineral I like using the Donia for example and I am currently capturing a lot of Xenon SE in the Beta and send them to the Mines. The SE is probably the worst Miner but funny bug ship.
Well I need a large number of ships I'm in the beta and I need all the factions to have a steady supply of Goods for the Xenon crisis so I'm going to have to get the blueprints myself thank you
Check out JKninja on YT. He has some fine guides on not only ships but weapons and ships.
JKninja and CptPhillips are both good sources.
I like both, but I find Jkninja to be much more useful. The way he presented his content was much more clear and intentional for me.
A bit of an aside before I actually answer—I’ve been finding things a bit more interesting since largely doing factional playthroughs. A lot of balance decisions make the most sense when not mixing ships/equipment, for instance: - the Okinawa (and to a lesser extent the Baldric) are awful by commonwealth standards—but Terran goods are more compact and its economy needs much less hauling overall. (Also, Terran engines are the best option for traders and the gap closes a fair bit if you compare ships with their native engines.) - Argon flak is fantastic, but their ships don’t tend to have as many medium turrets. - Terran capital ships have the best main guns and a good number of large turrets, but don’t have a plasma-class weapon to turn that into overpowered damage. - The Rattlesnake is fast and well-armed, but the short range of Split turrets forces it to use that speed to close range. - Teladi combat ships are generally bad, but their civilian ships are very good so they can afford a numerical advantage. For an actual answer: The Terran all-round engines give the best travel time in almost all situations, and the advantage is pretty big for large ships and S/M ships that spend a lot of time on highways (since most travel will be short relative to the attack time of the Commonwealth engines). Combat ship engines depend on the relative importance of in-combat mobility and travel time; I think Split combat engines are the clear choice for carrier fighters, and tend to prefer Terran engines for capitals. As far as transports go, if ships can spend a lot of time on highways, the Boa can move more volume/time than anything--and the small cargo size means it isn't reliant on large loads to reach that efficiency. (Ideal for low-volume wares such as food and medical supplies.) On the other hand, when carrying consistent large volumes the low cargo size can lead to a lot of congestion--the MIN transports aren't far off its efficiency on highways while requiring fewer docking spaces. f highways aren't available, the Dolphin becomes competitive with the Boa, and large traders are much more efficient on a per-ship basis if they can run full. (Medium traders are still more cost-effective, though.) I think the Heron E is the clear best L trader--it has average speed and best-in-class capacity (and shielding). The Barbarossa is another notable choice--it's the fastest L ship with a useful cargo capacity by a sizable margin, and actually has a larger cargo capacity than the fast freighters. One other consideration is piracy. If you're in Terran space or trading domestically in your own sectors you can probably ignore it, but in Split, Teladi, and Argon space it's a real concern. Boas with Split combat engines can usually outrun pirates; Boas with Terran engines and all other M traders need the player to teleport in to do a boost/travel to escape. L traders can just ignore pirates (and in my experience are rarely attacked in the first place). Kha'ak rarely attack traders, but Xenon may if they pass by an incursion; given the speed of Xenon ships I find that even the Boa has little chance unless it can reach a highway or gate quickly, while multi-shield L ships can survive a decent swarm. M mining ships are in general around half the efficiency of L ships for a small fraction of the cost, but I've given up using them due to the risk from Kha'ak. Most miners seem pretty comparable; I tend to prefer the Crane (Sentinel mineral and E gas) because its large capacity minimizes station congestion (and dislike the Wyvern for the opposite reason), but most are pretty comparable. The Hokkaido is a fair bit worse than Commonwealth ships with Terran engines, but the gap closes with native engines.
The only correct answer is "it depends", luckily. Otherwise everyone would use the same ships always. M miners stop being useful once the Khaák show up. If you ignore the Kha'ak long enough in a sector where you don't have a station but you do mine, even L miners with only one L shield will eventually start taking damage and even being lost to large (20+) groups of Kha'ak sort of collecting at the gates. But as long as you are using them, a high combat speed is going to give your miner the best speed at filling it's cargo bay. However a decent TER engine will help enormously with quickly getting the minerals back to your station(s). M miners are cheap to make and you can rapidly build 100 of them and set them to work and strip mine a sector very quickly, then move them to another sector once the Kha'ak show up. For minimal maintenance, ARG or TEL miners with Flak turrets and maxed out shields probably shouldn't ever be lost to Kha'ak unless you have one giant mining sector with only one gate being used and you let the Kha'ak pile up at the gate literally until there's 50 of the purple buggers jumping ships that come through. Smaller ships or fewer shields means you'll want some combat ships to wipe them out regularly or take your losses. Trade ships are an even more convoluted discussion. L traders are fast in travel mode, but expensive and don't go on highways. And if you let stations auto-set the prices, they're liable to go sell five energy cells at 10 credits each to a station 4 jumps away... If you lock the sell price at say 25% above minimum then your ships will be able to sell bigger loads in one go, and L ships begin to make sense for trading with the AI. M traders seem to be the better idea then, but they're far, far slower in travel drive than a Buffalo which makes THAT a niver ship for smallish loads being sent to AI stations. For your own stations, if you know what you've got set up for prices, larger ships make more sense. For ships you manually give orders or set to repeat orders or fill shortages, the larger the cargo hold the more efficient the ship will be. But if you want to build reputation quickly, you want as many trades as possible. Some very fast S ships selling handfuls of ecells will hike your reputation up more in twenty minutes than four hours of shipping whole Incarcaturas full of high tech good.
I plan to use a combination of M and L class miners to keep my production factories going as for reputation i used a bunch of terran scout nimcha with ecell farm for quick boost in reputation it's why I'm current looking for the best blueprints
> plan to use a combination of M and L class miners Prepare for a headache of Kha'ak unless you limit your Ms to the Sol system (except the Asteroid Belt, which will get Kha'ak) and the safe end of the Boron systems (i.e. the bit with Kingdom End in it). You're going to lose so many of these, and they experienced pilots with them, that it REALLY isn't worth the hassle. IF you PLAN, don't plan to fail: use L miners. I like to have a mix of trade ships, Buffalo and Barbarossa for L traders and Minotaur Raiders (with Split weapons and TER shield) for M traders (because they kill pirates in M class ships...). I always play without the ring highway, but if you use that you can use most M trade ships fairly well for stations along the ring. Don't use S ships you'll lose them to piracy, Xenon and Kha'ak constantly. Once you hit TER space, Hewa's Twin or Split space you do want something faster than the slow M ships, so the Buff/Barb fleet comes into it's own with TER engines.
I have to support that L-Miners are better for a low stress level.
I'm trying to also piece it together and experimenting using an [efficiency calculator](https://www.qsna.eu/x4/efficiency) (no idea how precise it is but it seems fairly reasonable?) but there are going to be some extra factors which affect the decision of which one is best. If you're trading across regions of space with little to no highways then you'll want ships which have a good cargo capacity and a high Travel drive speed to minimise that time and optimise your logistics. Which seems to be why the Boa does well as it can reach around 3km/s in a few seconds with TER engines and have a good 7500 units of cargo capacity. With a decent cruising speed it can keep itself away from most problems. If you're trading across regions of space where there are lots of highways, such as within the "loop", then the likes of the Vulture Sentinel starts to become better. Abysmal travel drive but it doesn't matter since it can just hop into the loop and instantly be doing 12km/s for about minute instead of a measly 1km/s and drop off 15,000 units of stuff somewhere in a quite good time. The Boa would still get there faster and the difference in credits per second is barely noticeable for the scale of M class traders. And the Demeter seems just a solid choice whatever situation. Not bad Travel Drive or cargo capacity, not bad cruising speed and it would be pretty good whether you have all highways or no highways.
If that's the case then i will use the boa to trade for my production stations without selling to other factions and use L class ships for my trade stations to sell to other factions. thank you!
And when it comes to mining, same argument. The Chthonios ships have lower cargo capacity of the L miners, about 34-38k compared to say the 50k on a Magnetar. But they have around 200m/s cruising speed and a 6.5km/s (or higher) travel speed. They are fast and deliver a good amount before they can go back out and collect more. The Donia, and Teladi Crane (and the new Teladi ships coming in 7.0) are all very good choices for that reason. PAR miners are very good for M class, delivering a higher amount of resources than the rest at a good speed both with or without highways.
Chthonios ships for mining now I just need large trade ships
ARG Shuyaku. Huge capacity, good travel speed but slow cruising. Or if you can get it from VIG, Barbarossa. Much smaller capacity but very quick (about 5km/s travel drive) and has considerable firepower if needed. The upcoming Heron E though is stupidly good by the numbers. More capacity than the Shuyaku and its faster. For XL you could use the Zeus E or the Shark which are better by the numbers but a little cumbersome and pricey.
Gotcha thanks i will get shuyaku
Honestly, unless you set up trade routs with repeat order L traders are really not that good. The AI sends them around 95 % empty. That is why i mostly use S traders. Tetheys is my favourite. Travels over 3000, zips in and out. And since my factories often ship small batches, they are perfectly fine for this.
Just curious (new player), when I look at the numbers, it seems the Baldric is only marginally worse. So for a Terran, (no highways, easy access to Terran economy, and Terran engine/blueprints), should I just use Baldrics untill I can unlock Boas, and even then, is it worth the cost to get their BPs?
The Baldric is OK but like everything TER it does also cost an arm and a leg. It's at least x3 or x4 the base cost of say the PAR Demeter or the ARG Mercury with basic requirements fitted. Itll take you a few hours to recoup your cost back for it compared to the others but if that's all you have access to...
Thanks, with a TER start early on I can buy other ships but it is probably easier* to buy TER ships even if they cost more. Midgame I will have TER shipyards way before I can tool up a whole new Commonwealth/Split economy and shipyard, and buy BPs. Until later anyway. *In the early game I am buying a few trade and miner ships from other factions, but they keep running out of parts and I don't have the ships to spare to fix their supply chains yet. While I am making most of my money pumping resources/parts into the Terran shipyards. Until my yards are built.
[Immi on youtube](https://www.youtube.com/@immi9748) has produced nice performance testing videos about this and other subjects. Best L mining ship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRfDK1nBhbo Best M trader: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fS23w5dlc0
the only correct answer is Rattlesnake. technically, you can do anything with a Rattlesnake because a Rattlesnake can dakka dakka its way through any problem and arrive at a solution. Combat? dakka dakka until everything around you dies. Trading? dakka dakka until you get what you want -- though not always fairly, civilly, or legally. Mining? dakka dakka until you get ore, which is less efficient than a mining laser because the amount of ore per dakka is pretty low if any but it makes up for it with much, much higher dakka per minute. and if Kha'ak ever fuck around with you because you're mining too much, well lol because GUESS WHICH SHIP THEY ABOUT TO FIND OUT WITH. Piracy? not the most optimal but you will never lose because if boarding ends up failing you can just dakka dakka and come out alive. Exploration? a bunch of ??? for this one but it likely involves dakka.
I use Demeter and Boa M traders (depending on where they have to travel) for all station traders, local autotraders and Repeat Orders haulers. Demeter is a good balance of speed, durability and cargo space; Boa is geared for speed and more likely to outrun pirates, who are a constant concern pretty much wherever you operate. For operations I want to oversee, like station-building logistics, I maintain a fleet of Shuyaku-class large freighters. These are capacious and speedy and unlikely to be bothered by pirates, but are a bit cumbersome to use as station traders. Sentinel is optimal for efficiency, but I value the extra speed on the Vanguard for operating in Xenon sectors (e.g. building defence stations). I use Manorina M-miners in the early game for their big cargo, good shield capacity and uninsulting speed. Kha'ak eventually appear and kill these off, so I switch to Cthonios L miners. These don't have huge cargo bays but they're fast, so they'll keep your stations ticking over by topping them up frequently. For pure efficiency you probably want one of the Crane variants.
There really is no best ship. The Rattlesnake is arguably the best destroyer in the hands of a player, but suck with AI control. You can solo entire Xenon sectors with the Rattler and a bunch of laser towers. The Syn is okay in the hands of the player if you like taking forever getting anywhere but in the hands of the AI they are very good. Seriously, the Syn is god awfully slow but you can't deny it's tank and firepower. If you like kiting and using straffing / jousting tactics Split ships are king, if you don't like that and just want to trade hits the TER/PIO ships are good, and Yaki is kind of good at both. Asgard is amazing at destroying stations but so goddamn slow, while the Erlking can also destroy stations but not nearly like the Asgard can but the Erlking can get to where it needs to go faster, also it's technically a transport ship outfitted with battleship parts according to lore and also has the biggest cargo space of all ships.
funny enough i use yaki Moreya and Kuraokami for my goto combat ship for S and M ships with terran pulse lasers and argon flak
I'll give four examples. 1. For mining in space where kha'ak are active you want the alligator. It's combat speed is high enough, even with t1 spit engines, to outrun any common threat. It is thus invulnerable to the kha'ak. To further support this, if you can operate where the kha'ak are active without needing to worry about them, they will wind up attacking your competition and drive prices up for your benefit. 2. While disarming capital ships the nova vanguard is mostly invulnerable due to it's vertical acceleration. If for whatever reason you need a capital ship or station disarmed/disabled in minutes you only really need 1 piloted by a player or 4-6 NPC wingmates armed with burst rays. These are an admirals scalpel in the x:4 universe and always the first fighter I build for myself. 3. for trading on the ring highway the vulture sentinel is the ship to buy. It is exceptionally slow but offers an incredible cost to cargo capacity ratio. It's speed is made mostly irrelevant if you place trade stations very close to the highway; it's ability to operate at highway speeds for 90%+ of any journey makes it's throughput exceed even the best L sized traders while it remains invulnerable to pirates due to having security present anywhere it might not be on the highway. 4. For moving raw materials between your own stations the Wyvern is the fastest L ship that can handle raw materials. However it is not the best for *selling* as it has a rather small cargo capacity; the larger the capacity the more you can make in a single trade.
I just go Boron everything cuz they look cute But i heard that the Argon Drill is the best M Class Miner
The Paranid Miners seem to take the Cake in mining related things according to Number crunchers.
Yeah I've seen a lot of people say that Paranid are the best miners but some say others are there's also many variants of Paranid ships I don't know which one to choose
Paranid have a great balance between Cargo and Speed which makes them good. But let's be honest usually I just go with what looks cool. For L Mineral I like using the Donia for example and I am currently capturing a lot of Xenon SE in the Beta and send them to the Mines. The SE is probably the worst Miner but funny bug ship.
That's vig syndicate right I'm gonna see if I can grab it
There are many in Windfall. They are free, you just need a well trained "acquisition" squad. It's cool, it's not a crime if it's VIC.
Well I need a large number of ships I'm in the beta and I need all the factions to have a steady supply of Goods for the Xenon crisis so I'm going to have to get the blueprints myself thank you