Lost in minefields

Introduction

Most of the experienced players know what torpedo type to use to lay minefields, and what torpedo type is most efficient in minerals or MC to bring down shields. However almost nobody knows that minescooping can be a very valuable effort! Minescooping can save you up to 64 % of the price of a torpedo, and it could save you hundreds of megacredits a turn. On the other hand if you don't do it right it could cost you thousands of MC a turn! Lost in minefields? Here's your way out!

Minefield!

The Minelaying Formula

The cheapest mine unit

To answer this question, we'll have to combine the mineral cost and the cost in MC. This can be done when we look at the Alchemy ships in VGAP. The regular conversion of supplies into mineral says that 3 kT supplies equals 1 kT of minerals.
To build 1 torpedo you need 3 kT minerals: 1 kT of Molybdenum, 1 kT of Tritanium and 1 kT of Duranium. This amount equals 9 supplies, or 9 megacredits. So we multiply the column labelled 'Min/torp' in the table above by 9 and add this to the column labelled 'MC/torp'. This results in the following table of the overall cost of a mine unit:

Cheaper torpedoes

To start with you'll have to be very careful how many torpedo of a certain type you use for the minefield. For example 10 position 6 torpedoes would form 10 * 6* 6 = 360 mine units - if you would scoop them up as position 5 torpedoes you would end up with 14 position 5 torpedoes and a minefield of 10 mine units you can't scoop because they can't be put together to form a complete torpedo.
Those remaining mine units are a loss - they will deteriorate by a percentage per turn set in the host configs. This is however a loss that can easily be prevented: you can get the max out of the torpedo conversion by using the exact number of torps of type A that matches the position of torpedo type B. Using the same example as above: to convert position 6 torpedoes to position 5 torpedoes you'll have to start with 5 * 5 = 25 position 6 torpedoes. These fill form 6 * 6 = 36 position 5 torps. In general: use A * A position X torps to convert them to X * X position A torpedoes. Use the following table to determine the perfect torpedo conversion rate. (4)

TABLE 4:
Perfect Torpedo Conversion Rate

pos.| position of scooped torpedoes laid| 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 1-> 1 4-> 1 9-> 1 16-> 1 25-> 1 36-> 1 49-> 1 64-> 1 81-> 1 100-> 1 2 | 1-> 4 1-> 1 9-> 4 4-> 1 25-> 4 9-> 1 49-> 4 16-> 1 81-> 4 25-> 1 3 | 1-> 9 4-> 9 1-> 1 16-> 9 25-> 9 4-> 1 49-> 9 64-> 9 9-> 1 100-> 9 4 | 1-> 16 1-> 4 9-> 16 1-> 1 25->16 9-> 4 49-> 16 4-> 1 81-> 16 25-> 4 5 | 1-> 25 4->25 9-> 25 16-> 25 1-> 1 36->25 49-> 25 64->25 81-> 25 4-> 1 6 | 1-> 36 1-> 9 1-> 4 4-> 9 25->36 1-> 1 49-> 36 16-> 9 9-> 4 25-> 9 7 | 1-> 49 4->49 9-> 49 16-> 49 25->49 36->49 49-> 49 64->49 81-> 49 100->49 8 | 1-> 64 1->16 9-> 64 1-> 4 25->64 9->16 49-> 64 1-> 1 81-> 64 25->16 9 | 1-> 81 4->81 1-> 9 16-> 81 25->81 4-> 9 49-> 81 64->81 1-> 1 100->81 10 | 1->100 1->25 9->100 4-> 25 1-> 4 9->25 49->100 16->25 81->100 1-> 1

Use multitudes of the above ratios to prevent unnecessary losses.

If you subtract these values, i.e. when it says A -> B you calculate B - A, you get the number of extra torps that is generated by scooping up the minefield. This number equals an amount of 3*(B-A) kT minerals, or 9*(B-A) megacredits. A positive number (labelled green) means that the torpedo conversion generated minerals, a negative number signals a loss. The following table shows these numbers in megacredits.

This table shows you what conversion will cost you minerals, and what conversion will gain you minerals. For example when you turn 4 position 5 torps (Mark 3 Photons) into 1 position 10 torp (Mark 8 Photons) you'll lose 27 MC (or 9 kT) worth of minerals. The general suggestion of this table seems to be that with respect to the minerals only conversions from high tech torps to low tech torps are profitable.

We're not through yet - this table only covers the mineral costs of the conversion. Next topic: the cheaper torpedoes promised in the beginning of the article. The method to calculate this was already briefly described: "Lay a minefield of cheap mine units, and scoop the minefield up as higher priced mine units!"
So we'll have to look at the prices of mine units in the column labelled 'MC/torp' in the second table of this article and search for good combinations. To get a good indication of the usefulness of a combination, the ratios of the prices of the swept and laid torpedoes is calculated:

This shows you that when you lay position 6 torps and scoop them up in position 1, you'll get those for only 36% of the regular price in MC! Too bad those position 1 torps themselves are pretty useless. But look in the last column: what about tech 10 torps for 67% of the regular price? Just lay a couple of position 6 torps (tech 5, Mark 4 Photon) and it happens right where you're standing!