I can't see a thread dedicated to this so I was wondering if you could maybe expand on what a Civilian Mining Complex will do over time?
It was somewhere in the middle of the v4.3 suggestions thread.
1) Each Civilian Mining Complex is equivalent to ten automated mines and has a mass driver built in.
2) The parent race can purchase mineral output from the mines by a simple on/off switch on the population created by the civilians. When the switch is set to 'Purchase Mineral Output', the minerals will either be placed in the population stockpile for the player race to pickup or they will be sent by mass driver to a location of the player's choice within the system. When the switch is set to 'Minerals go to Civilian Sector' the minerals still disappear from the planetary deposits and are permanently lost (on the assumption that civilian industry is using them).
3) The annual purchase cost for the entire output of a CMC is 250 wealth. Assuming a racial mining output of say 16 tons, the player would receive up to 160 tons of each accessibility 1.0 mineral and smaller amounts of other minerals for his 250 wealth.
4) If the output from a colony is not purchased by the player, he will instead receive 50 wealth per year in taxation income per CMC.
Each 5-day increment a random number is generated between 1 and 1 million. If that number is lower than the annual racial income, a new mining colony will be created. This is based on the assumption that the racial income reflects the size of the civilian economy and is therefore will serve as a reasonable method of determiing the liklehood of new mining colonies being established. If a colony is established, the first step is to determine the system in which the new colony will be located. This is done by listing the populations of the Empire greater than ten million in size in descending order of population size and working through the list. As each pop is checked, there is a 50% chance that the system in which that pop is located will be selected, at which point the system selection is complete. Obviously this favours the systems in which larger pops are located. If the entire list is checked and no pop is selected, the system in which the largest pop is located will be used.
Once the system is selected, the program looks for suitable surveyed system bodies without an existing colony orbiting the same star as the selected population with an orbital distance no greater than 80 AU. On the first run through, the program checks for those system bodies which have either 25,000 tons of Duranium or 25,000 tons of Sorium at an accessibility of 0.8 or greater. Once those are found, the program works out the total mineral deposits for each world, multiplying the total tonnage of each deposit by its accessibility and ignoring any with an accessibility less than 0.5. The world with the greatest total tonnage is selected. If none are found that meet the criteria, a second check is made using 15,000 tons of Duranium or Sorium at an accessibility of 0.7 or greater. If worlds within these criteria are found, the total tonnage check is performed again to select one.
When the mining colony is created, it has 1-3 CMC, a deep space tracking station and a single Garrison division named after the system body.
In addition to the check for new mining colonies, all existing colonies are checked during each 5-day increment and there is a chance they will be expanded by adding one extra CMC. This check was originally 1-1,000,000 but after playtest it is now 1-4,000,000.
While this is not as detailed as the shipping lines, it will increase the minerals available to the player if he is prepared to pay for them, increase the number of colonies to protect and perhaps create those colonies on some worlds that the player might not have considered. In my own game during playtest of the new code, the civilians created a mining colony on the Moon, which has 320,000 tons of accessibility 1.0 Duranium and 950,000 tons of 0.7 Tritanium. One of Neptune's moons is actually a better mining target but already has a colony.
From the text in the civ tab of the population it looks like it can add new complexes over time to the same place? Also, can it increase the size of the planetary sensor?
As above, they may increase in size over time but the planetary sensor won't increase. However, you can add your own planetary sensors to the colony.
How do you track the amount of money each CMC has and can we see it in the same way we can see shipping lines?
At the moment I am not tracking any money for the mining complexes. I may add that in a later version so they can expand into something more like the shipping companies. The current civilian shipping has evolved over several versions to the current model and the CMC are still on the first step of their evolution.
I assigned an R2 (Commander) with a mining bonus to the CMC but I am not sure that the benefit is going to be applied since there are no mines listed on the mineral tab?
The commander will help. If you move your cursor over the text at the top of the mining report, it will show the production calculation.
Do the civilian shipping lines move the sensor and CMC to the new locations? Instead of them just spawning I imagine that using the shipping lines to move the equipment would add more depth to the whole side of it.
At the moment they just appear. I may add more depth though in future versions.
Steve
