Engine drive upgrades for Miners: to stop or not to stop?

Quote from anveena-menethil

As a miner, do you keep upgrading engine drive levels to increase the speed of cargoes/recyclers/deathstars at the cost of messing up the timings of your fleetsaves in high speed universes, or do you raise those technologies to the bare minimum?

if we'r talking to 6x or so speed unis then bare minimum is more then needed. if still even 1-3x servers, i'd say somewhat mediocre, focus on combustion and imp, u can forget hyper after the speed of slowest expo ship ( repaer ) exceeds speed of lc's or either gets somewhat close to sc's rather invest that ress and merch deut for crys/met into mines

Quote from anveena-menethil

As a miner, do you keep upgrading engine drive levels to increase the speed of cargoes/recyclers/deathstars at the cost of messing up the timings of your fleetsaves in high speed universes, or do you raise those technologies to the bare minimum?

This s a very interesting question! If you ask me it's always interesting to keep upgrading your combustion drive and it may be interesting to keep upgrading your impulse drive (depends on your playstyle).

Combustion drive
A miner has usually a large cargo fleet. That large cargo fleet consists of large cargo's... So when your large cargo's go faster they will use less deuterium when you're fleetsaving them since your fleetsave flies at the speed of the deathstar. Since you fleetsave at least once per day you can profit every day of a lower deut bill.

Further when you also raid inactives you want fast espionage probes. The faster they're back, the faster you can send them away again which means you've more time to raid instead of that annoying waiting when they're back. For that's a reason alone to upgrade the combustion drive, that "annoying waiting"

Impulse drive

When you raid inactives you want to have your small cargo as fast back as possible to send them again. If it's possible to send every day a complete wave (computer tech +1 attacks) more than normal this would mean millions of resources more per day, so the upgrade will pay back fast.

Hyperspace drive
Some miners raid heavily defended inactives with deathstars. In that case a faster hyperspace drive is worth it since you want your deathstars back as fast as possible since they occupy a fleet slot.

If you're not a ripper beside your mining activities then you can stop at level 7 (required to produce a deathstar). When you upgrade them more the deut bill of your fleetsave will rise since your deathstars are faster and your fleetsace flies at their speed.