Exploiting minerals

[welchbloke (OP)]

I guess that this is analogous to the historial situation facing navies in the 18/19th centuries where coal depots in strategic locations were needed to ensure global reach (that's one of the reasons why Britain had outposts in places like Ascension Island and the Falkland Islands).  Do you look to provide defences for these forward depots or do you assume that a mobile defence is better and use your fleets to ensure nothing gets into the key systems?  I would think that fixed defences would be very wasteful in terms of resources but could be seen as insurance for worst case scenarios.

Maybe Kurt does something different, but for supply depots, I prefer to put a colony there with people. And my colonies all have some sort of fixed defenses, even if it is a squadron permanently stationed in that system. Unmanned depots, hmm. I'd think they would be vulnerable to raiding. But you'd need to find them first as there wouldn't be much, if any signature to give it away.

I think I'll give unmanned depots a go and see where things take me; I think they would be viable for games where there is only one race on the starting planet.  In campaigns like Kurt's and Steve's with multiple empires on the same planet they would be just too tempting for the other powers

[sloanjh]

I haven't really experienced the exponential growth yet; I suspect that's because I'm playing a cautiously expanding race who have not encountered any aliens yet.  I suspect they will have a major shock when they try to rapidly expand in the face of an emerging threat :-)  (Too bad they don't know that the only way a bad guy could come through is if I had generated an NPR race )

[sloanjh]

Maybe Steve could color code the fuel to show positive or negative gains. Or just list what was produced/consumed in the last time increment.

It's nastier than that, since the ships come hit the home world to refuel sporadically.  He'd have to add up all the fuel across the empire (including in ships) and compare that to the previous increment - I don't know how hard it would to write that query.

Unless he kept a time history of fuel on the planet at each update, and simply compared "today" to "3 months ago" or 6 months, or a year.  I imagine that the year-previous delta would give you a pretty good pretty good idea of what your fuel stocks were doing (the delta would probably dominate the amount in ships.

BTW, I just remembered the other major source of fuel consumption - filling the tanks of new construction!

John

[Erik L]

Easier than you think. Value is stored at the end of the time increment processing. For example, 10 million liters. Next increment, the after all of the automated processes from this increment and the manual from last, the value is stored again. Compare the two entries. If A > B, then you have a decreasing supply. If B > A, then your supply is increasing.

[jfelten]

It should be fairly easy for him to calculate a sliding average and issue a warning if the fuel stockpile is projected to be exhausted in X months.

[Kurt]

I use a combination of both.  Tankers and supply ships are useful to build up stocks on forward supply dumps, otherwise, you have to make many trips with normal ships to build up supplies.  

The nations in the 6 Powers Campaign are just getting to the point where they are going to need some forward supply dumps to continue their outward expansion.  With their current designs, the exploration groups are finding it very difficult to operate more than 3-4 jumps from Earth.  That is very true for the less advanced nations like Japan and Russia, and less so for the Reich and the Alliance, although they are feeling it too.  

Kurt

I guess that this is analogous to the historial situation facing navies in the 18/19th centuries where coal depots in strategic locations were needed to ensure global reach (that's one of the reasons why Britain had outposts in places like Ascension Island and the Falkland Islands).  Do you look to provide defences for these forward depots or do you assume that a mobile defence is better and use your fleets to ensure nothing gets into the key systems?  I would think that fixed defences would be very wasteful in terms of resources but could be seen as insurance for worst case scenarios.

Currently, the Reich and the Alliance are planning on stationing an infantry division or two at their forward depot, along with a cruiser or two.  It definitely isn't very much, but the focus for those two powers remains on the solar system, not outside.  Of course, currently, both the Reich and the Alliance are operating unchallenged on their primary warp lines, although the Japanese and Indians have done some exploring down both of those warp lines.  

Right now both the Reich and the Alliance are trying to figure out how much security they need to provide for their primary colony sites in the Hamburg and the Alpha Cephi system (respectively).  Oh, and the Reich is dealing with the devastating realization that their entire stock of missiles, and therefore ships and bases, is worthless in the nebula in the Hamburg system.  Major oops.

Kurt

[Steve Walmsley]

I tend to look for bodies with at least half of the minerals. The only exceptions to this are gas giants with fuel harvesters and a planet with an ungodly amount of mineral at a decent (.4+) accessibility. I also tend to emplace mag drivers and automated mines... send the minerals to a central location, and ship from there. Of course, this will give away the locations of your nodes in a system by the steady stream of mineral packets to it. As for minimum amounts... Haven't really thought about it, but 1000-5000 is about right. Anything under 1000 you are better off putting an asteroid harvester ship in orbit for a couple months. And only if you REALLY need that mineral.

So what do people think about mineral harvesting?  Is a viable propostion or do most people do as Erik suggested and only do it a mineral is REALLY needed?  I would have thought that this course of action would lead to a mineral harvesting ships that sat idle at a starbase most of the time and don't really repay the resource investment.

I think most people don't do this (feedback please if you do) which probably means the cost or size needs to be adjusted a little to make it a viable strategy without making it the best strategy. Or perhaps it's just more hassle than building automated mines, or just higher priorities for shipbuilding. I have built such ships in the past myself but not too many.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

Maybe Steve could color code the fuel to show positive or negative gains. Or just list what was produced/consumed in the last time increment.

I have made a note to myself to add some charts in the future that show minerals and fuel stockpile level per population and for the Empire as a whole over time. It might not make it into the next version though as I have been working full time on a large piece of functionality for the last two weeks and it is going to continue to take up my time for the next few weeks as well. I'll post about it in a separate thread.

Steve

[welchbloke (OP)]

Maybe Steve could color code the fuel to show positive or negative gains. Or just list what was produced/consumed in the last time increment.

I have made a note to myself to add some charts in the future that show minerals and fuel stockpile level per population and for the Empire as a whole over time. It might not make it into the next version though as I have been working full time on a large piece of functionality for the last two weeks and it is going to continue to take up my time for the next few weeks as well. I'll post about it in a separate thread.

Steve

I would like to see this added, but not at the expensive of nice shiny new functionality  

[welchbloke (OP)]

I tend to look for bodies with at least half of the minerals. The only exceptions to this are gas giants with fuel harvesters and a planet with an ungodly amount of mineral at a decent (.4+) accessibility. I also tend to emplace mag drivers and automated mines... send the minerals to a central location, and ship from there. Of course, this will give away the locations of your nodes in a system by the steady stream of mineral packets to it. As for minimum amounts... Haven't really thought about it, but 1000-5000 is about right. Anything under 1000 you are better off putting an asteroid harvester ship in orbit for a couple months. And only if you REALLY need that mineral.

So what do people think about mineral harvesting?  Is a viable propostion or do most people do as Erik suggested and only do it a mineral is REALLY needed?  I would have thought that this course of action would lead to a mineral harvesting ships that sat idle at a starbase most of the time and don't really repay the resource investment.

I think most people don't do this (feedback please if you do) which probably means the cost or size needs to be adjusted a little to make it a viable strategy without making it the best strategy. Or perhaps it's just more hassle than building automated mines, or just higher priorities for shipbuilding. I have built such ships in the past myself but not too many.

Steve

In my (admittedly limited) experience, in the earlier stages of the game, ship building priorities would stop me from building anything that doesn't directly contribute to the expansion of my race; asteroid harvester don't fall into my definition of contributing to expansion.

[Sotak246]

In my games I tend to build a few small TF of 4-6 ast miners. These are basic hulls with 1-2 mining modules.  I send them out to the astroids with good availability but low amounts of minerals, then just have a small freighter run around between the mines and earth picking up and dropping off minerals.  This seems to pay for itself rather quickly and is cheaper than sending automines out for only a few years then having to move them again, no worring if you built enough mass drivers and if they are set up right(don't want to accidently bomb your planet).  With 3 or 4 of these TF you just set them up and a shuttle run, then ignore them till they run dry. Then just order the miners to a new ast, and a slight course correction to the shuttle run.

[Erik L]

I've done that too, but not until a system is well developed or nearly exploited. Better things to focus on in a developing system.

[Father Tim]

I think most people don't do this (feedback please if you do) which probably means the cost or size needs to be adjusted a little to make it a viable strategy without making it the best strategy. Or perhaps it's just more hassle than building automated mines, or just higher priorities for shipbuilding. I have built such ships in the past myself but not too many.

Steve

I haven't ever botherd with asteroid miners because automated mines and freighters are pretty much the first things I build.  The 5000 RP and shipyard time required to produce the ships seems a waste when a few auto mines can be thrown on any planet/moon/comet easily enough, and the occasional cargo run can be sent out to collect the takings.

Sorium harvesters, on the other hand, I do use because there's no other way to access the deposits on a gas giant.  If there were likewise bodies too large or too small to emplace automated mines (perhaps gravity < 0.1G, or >6 or 7G) upon, I would then be likely to build mining ships.

[Erik L]

Sorium Harvesters are almost a necessity. Asteroid Miners are more of a "That's cool. Let's build a couple" type thing.

[welchbloke (OP)]

Sorium Harvesters are almost a necessity. Asteroid Miners are more of a "That's cool. Let's build a couple" type thing.

That's pretty much my take at present as well.  I will keep the ast miner+small cargo shuttle run in mind for later in my campaigns.