Economy help needed

[sausage (OP)]

So I start a game, build a survey ship, research a bunch of stuff dealing with production and such, set up a few automated mining colonies and before I know it im either out of sorium of corundium, even though ive got venus transferring corundium and Io transferring fuel.  Is there a better way to start out?

Also, my friend was telling about the supply/demand thing that I cant firuge out, how does that work and what's it for

[AndonSage]

So I start a game, build a survey ship, research a bunch of stuff dealing with production and such, set up a few automated mining colonies and before I know it im either out of sorium of corundium, even though ive got venus transferring corundium and Io transferring fuel.  Is there a better way to start out?

Also, my friend was telling about the supply/demand thing that I cant firuge out, how does that work and what's it for

When you say you are "out" of a resource, do you mean
1) that you have mined all of that resource that was available, and there are no more deposits, or
2) that you have used up all of that resource that you had in stock, but you still have some available in deposits?

If #1, then you'll need to find more deposits to mine. If #2, then you can build more mines to harvest more of the resource faster.

As far as the "supply/demand thing" are you referring to civilian contracts? If so, that is managed in the F2 Population and Production screen --> Civilians / Ind Status tab. You need to have more than one colony for that to work, and you need to set up both the supply and the demand for the colonies. For example, if you have colonized Mars, then you could set up a supply contract on Earth, and a demand contract on Mars, for whatever Installation Types you want. This is most often used to ship more Infrastructure than you can haul by your own freighters.

Note: Questions like these belong in "The Academy" sub-forum. Please post future questions there. Thanks

[sausage (OP)]

When you say you are "out" of a resource, do you mean
1) that you have mined all of that resource that was available, and there are no more deposits, or
2) that you have used up all of that resource that you had in stock, but you still have some available in deposits?

the latter, but it slows down production of automated mines so its difficult to get more.

and thanks for the help on civilian contracts

[Steve Walmsley]

When you say you are "out" of a resource, do you mean
1) that you have mined all of that resource that was available, and there are no more deposits, or
2) that you have used up all of that resource that you had in stock, but you still have some available in deposits?

the latter, but it slows down production of automated mines so its difficult to get more.

and thanks for the help on civilian contracts

Managing the Aurora economy is all about balancing between minerals, wealth and industrial capacity. You can see your estimated future mineral usage on the Mining tab of the Economics window. If that is higher than your mining output then you will need to reduce the amount of capacity you are using. Stop building with construction factories, or reduce the percentage you are using, or only build items that use minerals for which you have sufficient supplies. Pause shipyard tasks until you have enough minerals. Before you can expand capacity further you will need to build more mines or automated mines to boost mineral production. Although automated mines are very flexible they are expensive so you may be better with normal mines used on less accessible deposits. For example, two normal mines will produce twenty percent more Duranium from a 0.6 deposit than a single automated mine from a 1.0 deposit and they cost the same.

Steve

[sausage (OP)]

When you say you are "out" of a resource, do you mean
1) that you have mined all of that resource that was available, and there are no more deposits, or
2) that you have used up all of that resource that you had in stock, but you still have some available in deposits?

the latter, but it slows down production of automated mines so its difficult to get more.

and thanks for the help on civilian contracts

Managing the Aurora economy is all about balancing between minerals, wealth and industrial capacity. You can see your estimated future mineral usage on the Mining tab of the Economics window. If that is higher than your mining output then you will need to reduce the amount of capacity you are using. Stop building with construction factories, or reduce the percentage you are using, or only build items that use minerals for which you have sufficient supplies. Pause shipyard tasks until you have enough minerals. Before you can expand capacity further you will need to build more mines or automated mines to boost mineral production. Although automated mines are very flexible they are expensive so you may be better with normal mines used on less accessible deposits. For example, two normal mines will produce twenty percent more Duranium from a 0.6 deposit than a single automated mine from a 1.0 deposit and they cost the same.

Steve

Unfortunately, most of the minerals deposits are on practically uninhabitable planets so i can't bring in colonists to work the regular mines so I have to use automated mines.

My most recent game was abruptly ended by a triple thermal contact that ended in hundreds of nuclear warhead impacting earth within a ten minute timespan so im going to try and balance the economy next game.  I'll let you know how it goes

[ccasper]

I thing your problem with sorium shortage is due to fuel production. You can teporarily shut down fuel production at the botom of the industry tab, you don't need much fuel in the begining so if it's running all the time youre needlesly wasting sorium. The corundium shortage is proably from building too much mines or automated mines, there's little you can do about this except expand mines very slowly. these are the reasons i used to run out of these minerals so i know the problem well