OK my advice for mining with small ships and more than one laser:
What we know:
Small ships can carry at best three lasers for mining or scavenging, two if you add cargo
Cargo space needs to be maximised to increase the fuel efficiency of the operation
Adding lasers to a fleet does not increase its collect rate in line with # of lasers
Always build your scavengers with DX engines, wreckage and asteroids don’t come to you
Cargo ships without lasers are filled by those with lasers as long as they are in the same fleet
My recommendations (take 'em or leave 'em):
If your biggest ship is a cutter:
Build two types of ship, one with large cargo (50k) one with 3xlasers, both with DX engines. Pair them up 1-1 in fleets, this gives you 3xlasers 53k cargo, two engines taking fuel. Use each pair as a unit collect rate should be ~240/min.This is the sweet spot.
Why? well add another laser ship and you get 6xlasers and 55k cargo. But three engines and ~270/min collect rate. so use 50% more fuel for minimal benefit, and you can still only hit one asteroid or wreckage field. Build two pairs you use double the fuel, combined space is 110k and collect rate approx 480/min, on two fields at once. Double production, double coverage.
Once you get to corvette:
One chassis, 2xlasers, 50k cargo, DX. Use singly or if targets are scarce in pairs. Same decreasing benefit rule applies, one ship gives ~220/min 51k cargo, two gives ~250/min 102k cargo double fuel cost single target. To my mind that’s not worth it.
I know race, research level and experience may modify the numbers somewhat but I think the general principle is sound. I did wonder about using even larger chassis as miners/recyclers but from a collect rate standpoint this makes little sense due to the above. Extra capacity, speed etc may well make these a good option but I have nothing bigger than corvette so can’t really decide - no data.
IMHO of course
edit I know adding more fleets costs £££ in commander wages, but on the upside you are training more commanders too. The least of my problems in the game is money, resources are far more pressing.
edit 2 reorganised my fleets today along the lines above
Fleet1 asteroids 3xcutter each with 1xmining laser, 1xsmall cargo (3 ships total)
Fleet2 asteroids 1xcutter with 3xmining laser, 1xcutter with 1xlarge cargo (2 ships total)
Fleet3 salvage 1xcorvette with 2xsalvage laser, 1xlarge cargo (1 ship total)
Fleet3 salvage 1xcorvette with 2xsalvage laser, 1xlarge cargo (1 ship total)
Total take (10 asteroid and wreckage fields)
Titanium 32674
Copper 7780
Iron 9372
Aluminium 10400
Mercury 15413
Silicon 6720
Uranium 11087
Krypton 21585
Nitrogen 13706
Hydrogen 19879
Grand total 148616
Thats for gathering reports from 12:00 pm until now, or 5 hours in total.
making no allowance for travel times : 148616/5 is 29723 per hour
sites hit 10 = 2 per hour @14862 per site on average
Overall capture rate is 29723/60=495/min including travel, unload, refuel etc. overall or 124/min per fleet
Capture rate for the fleets per hour = 13960 (using the smallest value) or 230/min (38/min less than yesterdays)
Actual capture time is 148616/13960 = 10.64 hours
Efficiency = 10.64/20 (4 fleetsx5 hours) = 53% – to check, 124/230=54% yep close enough with rounding
So this reorg gives me a minimum per fleet of 124/min, overall rate of 495/min including downtime. I’m happy with that. And I know I would not have achieved that rate had I left all the ships together and just added more, I doubt I could have hit 300/min. Yesterday with all the asteroid miners in one big fleet I was getting 268/min whilst mining (no need for calculations I only had one fleet), haven’t got all the log reports to calculate a true rate, but it would obviously be lower.