Homeworld Starting Minerals

[Paul (OP)]

I notice homeworlds always start with very little minerals, comparatively speaking. Most homeworlds have around 1 million total minerals, spread between all 11 types. Many have much less - my last game had a total of just over 500 thousand. Other similar sized planets are generated with far more.

For instance, Venus - which is pretty close to earth size - is often generated with 100x the mineral content of Earth. My last game had Venus with 110 million total minerals spread between 10 different types with 9 of them being .5 or above access (the huge 40m sorium deposit was 0.1, that would take a while to mine!). Now obviously I was probably pretty lucky in that case, but even the much smaller Mars and Mercury often have 20-30 times the amount of minerals on Earth. If you're lucky enough to find a mineral containing large planet in other sectors they seem to have similar amounts. I assume it's based on the diameter - every large diameter world I've found with minerals has been loaded with them.

So I guess my question is, why is Earth so barren of minerals? I'm just curious about the logic behind it. Is it a game balance decision, as a kind of kick start to boot players off the homeworld looking for more resources? Or is there a ingame reasoning for the homeworld to be mineral bare?

At first I thought maybe it was because your race was assumed to have used up most of the minerals over the years, hence lower mineral count. But then from reading about the game it appears that the start of the game is supposed to be when you first start using these certain minerals since they were only recently discovered, which should mean that the entire planet's reserves would still be available.

[Father Tim]

Actually, homeworlds start with quite a lot of minerals - the SM version of the F9 System Information window has a 'HW Minerals' button to change a body's mineral content.

The standard mineral generation code uses a (very) small chance for the presence of a particular mineral, with the amount being proportional to the size (or rather, the gravity) of the body, and the availability being inversely proportional.  So asteroids have a small amount at a high availability, and planets have a large amount at a small availability.  The chance of there being any at all is quite small, except on comets which get a significant bonus (but offer their own problems in terms of recovery).

So homeworlds have far more minerals than random chance says they should, since they always have Duranium and almost always have all eleven minerals (only one in a million has fewer than eight).  On the other hand, they have far fewer tons of each mineral than an equivalently-sized planet would.

The other exception is Sorium on Gas Giants/Super-Jovians.  There's an increased chance it will be present, with a minimum availability of 0.5 (until you start mining it, then it drops after 50% has been removed, the same as any other mineral).

And yes, the game reason is so you'll get up off your homeworld and out into the universe.  Feel free to justify it as 'your race has used up most of the minerals already'  - most of us do.

[Father Tim]

But then from reading about the game it appears that the start of the game is supposed to be when you first start using these certain minerals since they were only recently discovered, which should mean that the entire planet's reserves would still be available.

It depends whether you do a conventional start or not.  All those factories, mines, academies, shipyards, GFTF, research labs, ships, etc. that a TN-empire starts with suck up a few million tons of minerals.

[Paul (OP)]

Just to sate my curiosity, I made a new game at default settings (500m pop) and calculated the cost of every facility on the planet in minerals. I just did aggregate minerals and didn't compare by type, but the total mineral cost of everything (including the military and commercial shipyards with costs for capacity and slipways) came out to only 231,510. You would have to start with a very very large population to be assigned enough facilities to be worth a few million minerals. The minerals on the world (including the already mined stockpiles) were 644038. You also have fuel, and free points for ships (fast OB creation), and maybe a bit of commercial usage in the years prior to starting, bringing it to about a million minerals used or currently on the earth all total.

That same game has Venus, a slightly smaller planet, with roughly 13 million minerals (which is actually very low for Venus, my other game had 110 million, the one before it had about 80 million IIRC). Mars has 22 mil. Even Luna has about 2.5 million, and it's 1/4 the size. Mercury is barren, but you can't have everything. That's quite a difference compared to the measly 1 mil I attributed to Earth.

I wouldn't really say it has "far more than random chance says it should have." Sure, it has 11 types, but the low quantities make it fairly short-lived - and just randomly generating gives a good mix of minerals for Earth it seems. Does the mineral generation routine run by tapping the "All Minerals" button (SM mode) generate it just like a normal game? By the description of the button I assume it does. I did a bit of testing just out of curiosity and the first time it generated earth with a whopping 193 million minerals with 10 varieties (missing one). A second push of the button gave me 145 mil with 8 varieties. A third was 113m with 9 varieties. Fourth came out 167m with 10 varieties. Fifth came out 43m with only 6 varieties. Sixth was 123 mil with 7 varieties. I stopped counting after that, but tapping the button another 30 times never once showed the earth as no minerals.

Maybe having 1.0 gravity gives 100% chance of minerals? Venus almost always has a good assortment of minerals too, but not quite as good as Earth - it has 0.91 gravity. I deleted my colony there and reran it with nothing just in case colonies influenced the mineral generation, but it didn't seem to have an effect. Now the availability of these are often low, but in some of the cases it was good. The time with 167 and 10 varieties had 9 of the minerals at 0.5 or above, with the 10th at 0.1.

The low minerals kinda makes sense from a gameplay perspective if you want to get the player in a mineral crunch and make them branch out rather than just holing up for 100 years on Earth.

It just doesn't make much logical sense. Maybe I'm nutty, but I think about things like that when playing games. Even if the Earth in these games was always generated with low minerals at say 10 million, where did the humans put the other 9 million minerals that should have been on the planet? That's a lot of minerals to have been mined out and mysteriously used.

Hmm, maybe I should post in the suggestion forum...

[Steve Walmsley]

Just to sate my curiosity, I made a new game at default settings (500m pop) and calculated the cost of every facility on the planet in minerals. I just did aggregate minerals and didn't compare by type, but the total mineral cost of everything (including the military and commercial shipyards with costs for capacity and slipways) came out to only 231,510. You would have to start with a very very large population to be assigned enough facilities to be worth a few million minerals. The minerals on the world (including the already mined stockpiles) were 644038. You also have fuel, and free points for ships (fast OB creation), and maybe a bit of commercial usage in the years prior to starting, bringing it to about a million minerals used or currently on the earth all total.

That same game has Venus, a slightly smaller planet, with roughly 13 million minerals (which is actually very low for Venus, my other game had 110 million, the one before it had about 80 million IIRC). Mars has 22 mil. Even Luna has about 2.5 million, and it's 1/4 the size. Mercury is barren, but you can't have everything. That's quite a difference compared to the measly 1 mil I attributed to Earth.

I wouldn't really say it has "far more than random chance says it should have." Sure, it has 11 types, but the low quantities make it fairly short-lived - and just randomly generating gives a good mix of minerals for Earth it seems. Does the mineral generation routine run by tapping the "All Minerals" button (SM mode) generate it just like a normal game? By the description of the button I assume it does. I did a bit of testing just out of curiosity and the first time it generated earth with a whopping 193 million minerals with 10 varieties (missing one). A second push of the button gave me 145 mil with 8 varieties. A third was 113m with 9 varieties. Fourth came out 167m with 10 varieties. Fifth came out 43m with only 6 varieties. Sixth was 123 mil with 7 varieties. I stopped counting after that, but tapping the button another 30 times never once showed the earth as no minerals.

Maybe having 1.0 gravity gives 100% chance of minerals? Venus almost always has a good assortment of minerals too, but not quite as good as Earth - it has 0.91 gravity. I deleted my colony there and reran it with nothing just in case colonies influenced the mineral generation, but it didn't seem to have an effect. Now the availability of these are often low, but in some of the cases it was good. The time with 167 and 10 varieties had 9 of the minerals at 0.5 or above, with the 10th at 0.1.

The low minerals kinda makes sense from a gameplay perspective if you want to get the player in a mineral crunch and make them branch out rather than just holing up for 100 years on Earth.

It just doesn't make much logical sense. Maybe I'm nutty, but I think about things like that when playing games. Even if the Earth in these games was always generated with low minerals at say 10 million, where did the humans put the other 9 million minerals that should have been on the planet? That's a lot of minerals to have been mined out and mysteriously used.

Hmm, maybe I should post in the suggestion forum...

The homeworlds minerals are created outside of the normal mineral generation routine. You gain from the fact you have all eleven minerals and enough of them to get started and the key minerals have good accessibilities. You lose out in that they are often more like the quantities found on a moon than a terrestrial world. The gameplay reason is to provide a start but get you to explore.

You can modify the minerals in SM mode if you would prefer a different starting setup, giving yourself more or less of a challenge in terms of starting minerals.

Steve