Geology Teams

[SteveAlt (OP)]

I have added a new type of team for v3.1, the Geology Team. This team carries out more detailed survey of planets, trying to find any mineral deposits that might have been missed by the orbital survey. They may find a new deposit of a mineral that has previously been mined out, additional deposits of an existing mineral or even a way to increase the accessibility of an existing mineral.

The team skill is Survey, so you will need five team members with decent survey skills. The mechanics are fairly straightforward. When a team is on a system body during the 5-day increment, it makes a mineral deposit check. This is done using the same base mineral discovery chance as when a new planet is being created with two modifiers, the skills of the team/100 and a the proportion of a year. So over a year, a team with a skill of 100 should have approximately the same chance of generating a mineral as when the original mineral deposit check was made. Depending on how this works in testing, I might drop this chance a little.

If a mineral is generated, the program picks one at random, although Duranium has twice the chance of any other mineral. If this mineral does not exist on the planet, a new deposit is generated using the normal mineral generation process for that type of planet. If it already exists, a new deposit is generated and compared to the existing deposit. If it is larger, then the mineral amount on the planet is set to that of the new deposit but using the existing accessibility. If the new deposit has a higher accessibility then the existing deposit, the existing deposit is changed to the new accessibility, regardless of whether the amount is also changed.

Every time additional minerals are added to the planet, or a deposit is changed to higher accessibility, a check is made to see if the geological survey team decides that further surveys are futile. This check is equal to 150-Team Skill with a minimum of 10, so a team with a skill of 140 or above will minimise the chance that surveys will miss potential deposits.

This was based on a post regarding random events in the suggestion thread by Haegan2005

Steve

[Laurence]

Steve, I'm wondering how effective the Geology teams are supposed to be.  On Earth in 6 months since assembling a geo team the minerals has increased Corundium from 38,000 to 38 million (0.1 accessability) and Duranium ~50k to 50 million (accessibility 1.0).  I placed the team hoping they'd find Corbomite and Mercassium (which I've already exhausted) but I wasn't expecting numbers this large.  Is that intentional?

[Steve Walmsley]

Steve, I'm wondering how effective the Geology teams are supposed to be.  On Earth in 6 months since assembling a geo team the minerals has increased Corundium from 38,000 to 38 million (0.1 accessability) and Duranium ~50k to 50 million (accessibility 1.0).  I placed the team hoping they'd find Corbomite and Mercassium (which I've already exhausted) but I wasn't expecting numbers this large.  Is that intentional?

That does seem pretty effective .  I haven't had such good results when I have used them but I will take another look to avoid such dramatic improvements. The amounts are OK for a large planet but I assume this is a homeworld where the accessibilities were artificially high.

Steve

[Laurence]

Yes, it was the homeworld. Pretty much ended any worry I have about Duranium for a long time.  

[IanD]

I have noticed that before I can unload my team I need to have established a colony, even though I only want to re-examine the mineral prospects of a potential colony site. I know this is the same for any team, but I didn?t want to have a whole raft of colonies that will not ever be required if the mineral content does not improve, thus the situation is a little different to Cybernetic and Archaeological teams.

Regards

[Hawkeye]

I have noticed that before I can unload my team I need to have established a colony, even though I only want to re-examine the mineral prospects of a potential colony site. I know this is the same for any team, but I didn?t want to have a whole raft of colonies that will not ever be required if the mineral content does not improve, thus the situation is a little different to Cybernetic and Archaeological teams.

Regards

I agree.

Currently, I simply delete the colonies, that I won?t need, after the team is finished and picked up again.

Yes, it?s "only" a workaround, but probably a lot easier than programing a seperate routine just for geological teams (not that I know anything about progamming, mind you)

[waresky]

..make me ever and ever without words:)..
Ive lend geology (poor:D) in EVERY body in every damned system am survey..
Earth r The Poorish Planets ever see around,compare some other Huge mining System..
Titan in 3 champaign r ever rich..callisto and ganymede same.
mars some r good...some r void..
Mercury r ever interesting and Venus too..Luna 1 to 3 r poor to medium..never good.

Pluto sometimes have gallicite or vendarite..:DDDDDDD
For build up a little hut..fugitive from bad empires..and for discover a SINGLE planet for millenia:))..
PLEEEASE!! add-on a Hexagon planets map!
same as Traveller:)..BUT..useful and travel and build some:)

[IanD]

I'm not sure whether the following is a feature, a bug or my unstable Aurora installation.

I created a geologist team on Earth, they found a few million tons of soruim and corbomite missed in the initial survey and then went off to do other things. It was only when the Homeworld got down to approximately its last 19K tons of duranium that I noticed that the accessibility was down to 0.49 and falling every turn, while every other mineral but sorium and corbomite was down to 0.1 accessibility. The sorium and corbomite stayed at the accessibility assigned by the geo survey team, which may just be a coincidence. Anyone have an explanation?

Regards

[waresky]

dnt know:(
hope Steve answer or some others experts.
see ya

[Erik L]

I'm not sure whether the following is a feature, a bug or my unstable Aurora installation.

I created a geologist team on Earth, they found a few million tons of soruim and corbomite missed in the initial survey and then went off to do other things. It was only when the Homeworld got down to approximately its last 19K tons of duranium that I noticed that the accessibility was down to 0.49 and falling every turn, while every other mineral but sorium and corbomite was down to 0.1 accessibility. The sorium and corbomite stayed at the accessibility assigned by the geo survey team, which may just be a coincidence. Anyone have an explanation?

Regards

Accessibility degrades the closer to zero you mine a mineral.

[IanD]

Accessibility degrades the closer to zero you mine a mineral.

Thanks Eric, my games had never lasted long enough before to ever see this feature. I was a little surprised to see all the other minerals down at 0.1 when they had 25-35K tons left. At what percentage left of a mineral deposit does the accessibility start to fall?

Regards

[Erik L]

Accessibility degrades the closer to zero you mine a mineral.

Thanks Eric, my games had never lasted long enough before to ever see this feature. I was a little surprised to see all the other minerals down at 0.1 when they had 25-35K tons left. At what percentage left of a mineral deposit does the accessibility start to fall?

Regards

I'm not sure. I believe there's a post in here somewhere that explains it more fully. I'll see if I can find it.

[Father Tim]

I believe it's half.

100% - 50% of mineral remaining --> no change

Below 50%, a mineral's accessability degrades linearly from its original value down to 0.1.  It never goes below 0.1 (so a mineral that was originally 0.1 doesn't degrade).

I can't remember if the linear degradation is calibrated to hit 0.1 acc at 0 tons left, or 0.0 at 0 tons (but in actuality stopping at 0.1, wherever that point happens to be).

[sloanjh]

The original proposal was acc = (amount remaining)/(initial amount).

Steve tweaked this so that acc only begins to drop when amounts are getting low, e.g.

acc1 = min(1, 2*(amount remaining)/(initial amount))
acc = max(0.1, acc1)

The second line (by making sure acc never drops below 0.1) ensures that a mineral will be "mined out" in finite time.

The reason for doing this was to give players a "soft landing" as e.g. Duranium runs out.  In the early games, a planetary economy would be charging along with the same mining production as on Day One, then the next week the mining rate would crash to zero.  The technobabble is that the first material mined is the easiest to get to (think of all the techniques used to squeeze oil out of old wells today).

IIRC, asteroids and comets don't have this slow drop in accessibility - they always stay at 1.0 or 0.9.  The idea here was that they're small enough to be fully accessible.

ERIK - I'm pretty sure the post on this is long gone - this went in very early on (e.g. V0.4).

John

Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure that asteriods and

[IanD]

Geology teams are wonderful! Once they reach 150+ they never seem to ?survey out? a location. If you start your teams at 130-135 it doesn?t take them long to reach 150.

 I have found the normal progression is to find up to several megatons initial, then several tens of megatons, then hundreds of megatons. I find accessibility less likely to increase, but give a team enough time.... .

In a moment of spare time I wondered on the chemical symbol for the trans-Newtonian elements. Below are the chemical symbols for the trans-Newtonian elements I came up with. I will leave the chemistry for someone else.

Duranium ? Du
Neutronium - Nu
Corbomite - Cb
Tritanium - Tr
Boronide - Bo
Mercassium - Me
Vendarite - Ve
Sorium - So
Uridium - Ur
Corundium - Cn
Gallicite ? Gl

Regards