"several centuries"?

With a decent supply of Duranium like Thebes, once it is in production it can double its own mines and construction factories in about 15 years.  Probably more time in practice.  But "A couple of centuries" potentially involves 10 doubling, or a 1000-fold increase in the economy.

Well, with that much time, even Thebes would possibly run out after a 100-fold increase in the economy.  Well, running out would need a huge number of automated mines, because even with its population maximized it would probably only be able to support some 4-8,000 mines.

I suppose that as the game continue, beam weapon range grows to the point that jump cruisers with dispersion of 50 can be defended against with beam weapons.

I suspect that Shipyard construction rates will be the big limitation on building very large ships.  A ship that takes 10 years to build will spend 2 years in refits for each 3 in operation.  A ship that takes 15 years to build will spend equal time in operation as out.

As limitations on large ships go, that is a quite reasonable one, in my opinion.

I don't think that it would be doable at all without computer support.  I wonder how far exploration will extend beyond colonization.  There is a practical limit that 1 years travel beyond where a ship refitted will allow 1 year of surveying.  But will refit colonies be set up on the fringe or will distance just reign in exploration?

There are other things that could tie down freighters:

Shipping Jump Gate components.

Transporting automated mines to more distant and more lucrative mining sites.

The population growth curve is not a perfect match for the freighter shipping curve.  The population growth is slower at first, but will eventually outpace the freighters, so having the freighters get a bit ahead of the game in terms of shipping mines would be prudent.

Getting a bit ahead of the game in terms of shipping manned mines from Earth will also give a bit more flexibility in moving automated mines to various places with additional freighters.

So if you have enough of a stockpile of Duranium, Supply Points, and things you can cannabilize to see you through year 10 or so, Colony Ships are the superior option.

Another important thing to note:
"End of year 10: 42 mines"
So consider the existing colony ships.  In 8 years, each of them will be responsible for increasing manpower sufficient to man 42 mines.

Naturally, there is an upper limit to the number of mines that can be shipped.  5 years of building colony ships as fast as possible will probably be enough.

But this is considering the Commonwealth's resources only.
I think that they should do as much trade with Gitanyow involving Tritanium as possible.  The Gitanyow have few mines or factories.  The more production they spend on weapons than on increasing production, the greater the likelihood that the Commonwealth will come out of the decade with a significantly greater economy.

Play up the Gitanyow's security concerns.  That also forces the Asians and Terran Union to rely on the strong Commonwealth to protect them while they do their best to establish off world colonies.

By playing up the Commonwealth's scrapping of fighter bases built in more optimistic times, and scrapping Construction and possibly Ordnance factories, the Commonwealth can portray its economic prospects as worse that they really are, and possibly prompt the Asian Alliance and Terran Union into their own drastic scrapping and/or mothballing programs.

Well, surprisingly, a colony ship actually has a negative effect on the amount of duranium produced.....

Comments?

O.K. I had a longer look at this, and worked out that over the mid-term, the colony ship method turns profitable, and in the long run is a LOT better......

Assumptions:
1) 10% growth of population (it would actually be more when the colony is smaller - but hey, if you don't like the assumption, run the simulation yourself..... )
2) Population growth is 10% (I know it would be higher for the colony when it is just starting out), and the population growth occurs at the end of every year.
3) Food plus Service Population = 30% of all colonists transfered (when the colony is smaller, this would be less than 30%.)
4) That the colony ship is overhauled every 3 years.

O.K. then, here is a summary of the results:

End of Year 1:
* automated mine:
6 mines, 84 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
0K colonists, 0 mines, 0 stockpiled duranium (colony ship under construction)

End of Year 2:
* automated mine:
7 mines, 20 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
0K colonists, 0 mines, 0 stockpiled duranium (colony ship just launched)

End of Year 3:
* automated mine:
7 mines, 118 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
210K colonists, 4 mines, -38 stockpiled duranium

End of Year 4:
* automated mine:
8 mines, 76 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
441K colonists, 8 mines, -96 stockpiled duranium

End of Year 5:
* automated mine:
9 mines, 42 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
695K colonists, 13 mines, -172 stockpiled duranium

End of Year 6:
* automated mine:
10 mines, 18 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
870K colonists, 17 mines, -150 stockpiled duranium

End of Year 7:
* automated mine:
11 mines, 8 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
1166K colonists, 23 mines, 34 stockpiled duranium

End of Year 8:
* automated mine:
12 mines, 12 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
1493K colonists, 29 mines, 226 stockpiled duranium

End of Year 9:
* automated mine:
13 mines, 32 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
1747K colonists, 34 mines, 395 stockpiled duranium

End of Year 10:
* automated mine:
14 mines, 68 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
2132K colonists, 42 mines, 895 stockpiled duranium


Interesting points:
* The colony ship doesn't "break even" (i.e. the stockpiled duranium is above 0) until just before the end of year 7.
* That the largest "debt" by the colony ship is -241 tons, but by halfway through year 6 (after the ship has had it's first overhaul) the "monthly production minus usage" is positive.
* By the end of year 4, the number of mines in operation by the colony ship method is the same as to the automated mine method. Afterwards, the number of mines in usage by the colony ship method is much greater.

Even with the 5 months the Colony ship has to spend refitting after 3 years, it still pays better.

However, to be fair, I also neglected the Supply cost of the colony ship.  But then, we also neglected the increase population growth as a result of shipping colonists.

It is tricky, trying to determine what factors you can leave out in comparing two courses of action.

Looking at the Commonwealth's resource crisis, everything but the Duranium part can be dealt with by shipping automated mines to Platea.  So when comparing how the colony ship strategy compares with the converting mine strategy with getting the Duranium budget positive, the colony ship strategy comes out _way_ ahead.

There is another course of action for staving off the Duranium crisis:
Scrap the fighter bases, a large number of construction factories, and some of the ordnance factories.

Running the numbers on fighter design, I just don't see them being effective with two racks.  A size 2 missile just isn't going to be very effective.  And getting to three racks requires 40,000 research points.  A huge number that will take some time.  Sufficient time that investing the Duranium component of the Fighter Bases would likely pay off in an increase in total production sufficient to build them later.

And on Thebes.

I think that when comparing Colony Ships to converting mines, one should look at the number of mines needed to replace the resources consumed.  Because that helps calculate the long term sustainability and profitability of a particular course of action.

And that 150 Duranium is a big chunk.

In the next decade, as technology improves, colony ships will get faster and with the Jump Gates, become more efficient in terms of build cost and time.

However, the heyday of the colony ship as the best single investment runs out when the manned mines of Earth are completely shipped.  It would take 25 million population to man 500 manned mines, or a population on Thebes in excess of 40 million.  Of course, those colony ships still pay off in supplying the population for Construction factories and Supply Factories.

Hmmm.  Good analysis I would dispute that the Commonwealth _needs_ to keep all of its factories running.

I agree. I think that the Commonwealth needs to re-evaluate it's priorities, and then only do the essential.

Running factories to convert mines costs 150 Duranium per mine.  It takes a while for an automated mine to earn that back.  10 years per mine.

Colony ship is a better payoff, I think, because each 2.5? 3? round trips transports enough colonists to support another manned mine.  A bit over 2 months per round trip, a colony ship allows another manned mine every 6 months or so.  2 a year.  Payoff in about 4 years.  Figure that the added population growth in that time takes care of the additional population required for food and services.  Of course, it takes longer to build a colony ship, so that is weighting against it in terms of time.

Good point! Let's do the maths to see what is better, to automate a manned mine, or to ship out colonists. (The shipping of the manned/automated mine won't be calculates, as it should be the same.)

With a colony the size of Thebes, approx 30% of the new colonists are going to service population, plus an extra 5% to food production - leaving 65% available.

Each colony ship can do 6 convoys/year, and carries 50 000 colonists - for a total of 300 000 colonists/year. Multiply this by 65% and we get 195K free population/year - or enough to man 4 mines/factories.

The flip side of this, is that a colony ship costs almost 870 BP (and takes almost 870 tons of materials) to build, verse only 150 to automate a manned mine.

So the payoff for an automated mine is in 10 years (150/15), and for the colony ship it is 14.5 years (870/(4 x 15)).

Which is surprising - automating a manned mine is actually better value than shipping colonists! Can you just double check my maths for me - as I am very surprised by this.

Looking at the math, the colony ship is penalised a little, as the assumption is that a mine is only mining a single type of metal (whereas in reality a single mine can be producing multiple types, and so increasing it's efficiency).

If being short of Duranium means the Commonwealth can't build a colony ship, it has made the wrong decision.  So reluctantly I agree, since it would take many years for a new shipyard to produce enough colony ships to pay for the resources involved, by the logic I described, if it costs a chance to build a colony ship it has to be delayed.

The Commonwealth is having a resource crash, and needs to conserve what it can and preserve its ability to grow.

Agreed. But I think that we need to consider exactly what is the best method to grow. I know that I was surprised by the results (above), that showed that a colony ship can be more inefficient that automating a mine......

Thank you for running the numbers on the number of shipyards required to keep up with refits, and how many more will be needed.

I think that the shipyards _have_ to be running at full blast because they address the resource crash faster than anything else.  Because the manned mines are already built.

I'm of two minds on this. The ships are more of a long-term growth need, whereas automated mines are a short term need.

Personally, I think that the shipyards should be reasonably busy now, with increasing usage when the material shortage subsides.

Once the Jump gate line to Thebes is built, colony ships can be built with a much higher engine:cryotank ratio.  That would reduce the build time and the Mercassium cost a bit.

I think someone needs to do an analysis as to what is the best colonist:ship speed ratio.

With the jump gates becoming operational in 2 years, the best way of shipping colonists now might not be the best way in the future.

As for the raw materials, the Commonwealth has enough to keep the ship building going, with the Mercassium from the Gitanyow, the stockpile of Duranium, and Gallicite isn't a problem anymore.  So shipping a bunch of automated mines for a quick lunch in Sicyon, with availability 1 in 7? elements on an asteroid there would be a good thing.

The Commonwealth has more freighters than are useful just for shipping to Thebes.  However, a longer haul could be profitable, if they can ship mines to places with higher mineral availability.

Agreed.

Something else your numbers showed:
Ship building has advantages because it requires a lot of different minerals.  A mine producing gallicite, mercassium, and duranium could produce as many as 42 tons a year towards making another ship, but only 14 tons a year towards producing another mine.  That means building ships in order to expand the economy can require fewer mines to replace the resources involved than build more mines would.

Agreed. As I stated above, the years to recoup the raw materials for a colony ship is 14.5 years, but that is assuming only a single material is gathered per mine.

If 2 materials are gathered, then the time is halved, if 3 are gathered, the time is one third, etc.

Duranium looks like it will be The long term limiter on growth.  Chances are, if you have enough Duranium for everything you will have enough of everything else.  That makes pure Duranium consumption potentially poison for growth.

Agreed.

And this is where the Commonwealth is going to be held back by the other nations - as it is the only nation producing substantial amounts of raw materials, the other nations are going to be putting pressure on the Commonwealth to hand over raw materials to support their own economy - and this is only going to get worse with the Duranium running out on Earth.

For example, the Islamic Alliance has very little duranium and a small industry. The only way it can grow is to get raw materials, but it first needs to grow to get the raw materials in the first place. And so it is in a lose-lose situation - and has nothing to lose by threatening the Commonwealth to supply raw materials......