Which mining combo is better: autos and mass drivers or orbitals and freighters?

[MuthaF]

Strange that no one else seems to be building giga stations with tugs.  I mean i prefer auto-mines for actual mining, mostly because it helps a lot with actually creating enough demand for expansion.
When i build stations tho', i go big.  Since ground construction is so powerful, terraforming stations go with 100 modules, and that only because bigger stations will greatly overshoot when terraforming small worlds.
Mining on the other hand. . .  I usually aim for stations that can mine most asteroids in year or two, meaning hundreds of mining modules.
Its so easy to build and tug stations weighting several millions tons with just ~50 000 ton tug.  Speaking of easy, is it just me or is tugging much bigger object easier than in old Aurora?
I just dont ever use mass drivers as they feel just too. . .  magical to me.  I mean the catching part, not the shooting one.
Like others said, its mostly preference/role-play choice.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

Strange that no one else seems to be building giga stations with tugs.  I mean i prefer auto-mines for actual mining, mostly because it helps a lot with actually creating enough demand for expansion.
When i build stations tho', i go big.  Since ground construction is so powerful, terraforming stations go with 100 modules, and that only because bigger stations will greatly overshoot when terraforming small worlds.
Mining on the other hand. . .  I usually aim for stations that can mine most asteroids in year or two, meaning hundreds of mining modules.
Its so easy to build and tug stations weighting several millions tons with just ~50 000 ton tug.  Speaking of easy, is it just me or is tugging much bigger object easier than in old Aurora?
I just dont ever use mass drivers as they feel just too. . .  magical to me.  I mean the catching part, not the shooting one.
Like others said, its mostly preference/role-play choice.

Small #s of giant stations are easy to manage and make better use of skilled commanders. But from an industrial perspective they are significantly worse than large numbers of smaller stations.

Why?

Two reasons.

1. Shipyards are much better at mass production than construction factories because they can simultaneously build stuff and expand their capacity (by adding slipways). In my last game, even devoting between 10 and 30% of my factories to expansion at all times, I had a single commercial shipyard that could outproduce ALL my factories. Combined. This sucker could spit out 7x100,000 ton stations every year.
2. Giant stations take a long time to build, and until they are finished, they are producing NOTHING. This is particularly noticeable for terraforming stations. Given the choice between building a ten module station or ten 1 module stations: the ten module station takes about 9x as long as the 1 module station, so it will be done before the ten solo module stations. But we get 8x build time output from the first solo module, 7x build time from the second, etc. before the ten module station does ANYTHING.

[MuthaF]

I guess im only one to research construction rate then; all my station are build under 1 year. 
Also, i run with as few shipyard as possible.
There is no point arguing for "efficiency" in a game where is almost impossible to lose against AI unless you really, really try HARD.
Aurora was created and still is remains a mostly Roleplay gaming tool, not game per se.

[liveware]

Strange that no one else seems to be building giga stations with tugs.  I mean i prefer auto-mines for actual mining, mostly because it helps a lot with actually creating enough demand for expansion.
When i build stations tho', i go big.  Since ground construction is so powerful, terraforming stations go with 100 modules, and that only because bigger stations will greatly overshoot when terraforming small worlds.
Mining on the other hand. . .  I usually aim for stations that can mine most asteroids in year or two, meaning hundreds of mining modules.
Its so easy to build and tug stations weighting several millions tons with just ~50 000 ton tug.  Speaking of easy, is it just me or is tugging much bigger object easier than in old Aurora?
I just dont ever use mass drivers as they feel just too. . .  magical to me.  I mean the catching part, not the shooting one.
Like others said, its mostly preference/role-play choice.

Small #s of giant stations are easy to manage and make better use of skilled commanders. But from an industrial perspective they are significantly worse than large numbers of smaller stations.

Why?

Two reasons.

1. Shipyards are much better at mass production than construction factories because they can simultaneously build stuff and expand their capacity (by adding slipways). In my last game, even devoting between 10 and 30% of my factories to expansion at all times, I had a single commercial shipyard that could outproduce ALL my factories. Combined. This sucker could spit out 7x100,000 ton stations every year.
2. Giant stations take a long time to build, and until they are finished, they are producing NOTHING. This is particularly noticeable for terraforming stations. Given the choice between building a ten module station or ten 1 module stations: the ten module station takes about 9x as long as the 1 module station, so it will be done before the ten solo module stations. But we get 8x build time output from the first solo module, 7x build time from the second, etc. before the ten module station does ANYTHING.

Another useful aspect for station building is that NAVAL shipyards can also build new commercial space stations, which gives idle naval yards something useful to work on if nothing else is needed.

[liveware]

Do you have some sort of defence fleet in orbit of your shipyard world? If you do, have your orbital miners be built into that fleet. If you're worried about needing to move that fleet elsewhere, you could use an old, obsolete ship to hold the fleet in place after the last orbital miner gets tugged. You could also get a fighter to do that job.

As far as I know there would be nothing to stop the tuggers from tractoring that obsolete ship as well once there are no orbital miners left in the fleet.

If you constantly have shipyard tasks building new stations into your 'idle station' fleet then the 'idle station' fleet should not disappear even if you tug away all of the stations. That works for me at least. I use a mix of automines and orbital mines as both have niches in which they excel.

Are you sure? I remember when I first started tugging terraformers that if the default fleet for their SY disappeared when I wanted to build the next ones the default fleet would be reset because the original default fleet no longer existed. However, I don't remember if I already had terraformers building when the fleet disappeared and what happens to them, I will give it a try later, if it works the way you say it's huge. Thanks!

I'm fairly certain this works as I've described (I'm on version 112). I've been testing out station building extensively in my most recent game and I have been building mining stations, terraforming, stations, and orbital habitats from my commercial shipyards almost continuously for about 50 game years. I set up my original station fleets (one of each station type) and leave them in earth orbit and occasionally assign a tug to move stations to new colonies/asteroids as needed. As long as there is an active construction project building new stations into the station fleet when the tug pulls away the last station the station fleet does not appear to disappear.

[Droll]

Do you have some sort of defence fleet in orbit of your shipyard world? If you do, have your orbital miners be built into that fleet. If you're worried about needing to move that fleet elsewhere, you could use an old, obsolete ship to hold the fleet in place after the last orbital miner gets tugged. You could also get a fighter to do that job.

As far as I know there would be nothing to stop the tuggers from tractoring that obsolete ship as well once there are no orbital miners left in the fleet.

If you constantly have shipyard tasks building new stations into your 'idle station' fleet then the 'idle station' fleet should not disappear even if you tug away all of the stations. That works for me at least. I use a mix of automines and orbital mines as both have niches in which they excel.

Are you sure? I remember when I first started tugging terraformers that if the default fleet for their SY disappeared when I wanted to build the next ones the default fleet would be reset because the original default fleet no longer existed. However, I don't remember if I already had terraformers building when the fleet disappeared and what happens to them, I will give it a try later, if it works the way you say it's huge. Thanks!

I'm fairly certain this works as I've described (I'm on version 112). I've been testing out station building extensively in my most recent game and I have been building mining stations, terraforming, stations, and orbital habitats from my commercial shipyards almost continuously for about 50 game years. I set up my original station fleets (one of each station type) and leave them in earth orbit and occasionally assign a tug to move stations to new colonies/asteroids as needed. As long as there is an active construction project building new stations into the station fleet when the tug pulls away the last station the station fleet does not appear to disappear.

Yeah when the tug pulls the last ship in a fleet the fleet will dissapear. Since it usually takes a while for the tug to finish what I do is detach the stations I wanna tug into their own fleet and tug from that instead.
If I want to tug more stations to the same destination all I have to do is drag a station from the default construction one to the transit fleet.
When all the tugs to that destination have arrived and the tug is finisheds, the transit fleet auto-deletes but the construction fleet remains.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Are you sure? I remember when I first started tugging terraformers that if the default fleet for their SY disappeared when I wanted to build the next ones the default fleet would be reset because the original default fleet no longer existed. However, I don't remember if I already had terraformers building when the fleet disappeared and what happens to them, I will give it a try later, if it works the way you say it's huge. Thanks!

There is a slight difference between factory created stations and ones you build at shipyards. If you move the station from the "Space Station" fleet and it is the last one it will disappear. But shipyards have the fleet locked so it will not disappear.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Strange that no one else seems to be building giga stations with tugs.  I mean i prefer auto-mines for actual mining, mostly because it helps a lot with actually creating enough demand for expansion.
When i build stations tho', i go big.  Since ground construction is so powerful, terraforming stations go with 100 modules, and that only because bigger stations will greatly overshoot when terraforming small worlds.
Mining on the other hand. . .  I usually aim for stations that can mine most asteroids in year or two, meaning hundreds of mining modules.
Its so easy to build and tug stations weighting several millions tons with just ~50 000 ton tug.  Speaking of easy, is it just me or is tugging much bigger object easier than in old Aurora?
I just dont ever use mass drivers as they feel just too. . .  magical to me.  I mean the catching part, not the shooting one.
Like others said, its mostly preference/role-play choice.

Small #s of giant stations are easy to manage and make better use of skilled commanders. But from an industrial perspective they are significantly worse than large numbers of smaller stations.

Why?

Two reasons.

1. Shipyards are much better at mass production than construction factories because they can simultaneously build stuff and expand their capacity (by adding slipways). In my last game, even devoting between 10 and 30% of my factories to expansion at all times, I had a single commercial shipyard that could outproduce ALL my factories. Combined. This sucker could spit out 7x100,000 ton stations every year.
2. Giant stations take a long time to build, and until they are finished, they are producing NOTHING. This is particularly noticeable for terraforming stations. Given the choice between building a ten module station or ten 1 module stations: the ten module station takes about 9x as long as the 1 module station, so it will be done before the ten solo module stations. But we get 8x build time output from the first solo module, 7x build time from the second, etc. before the ten module station does ANYTHING.

I agree that any station you will mass produce you want to produce in your shipyards... although building really large stations will be more efficient long term as you can get some really good commanders on those super large stations. It should not be too hard to at least build your Commercial Yards to about 500kt to 1 million in size to build multiple stations eventually.

Personally I tend to build my stations at around 500kt and expand one yard each for Orbital Mining stations, Terraforming Stations, Refueling Stations... all of the things you know you want to continue produce at all times.

It also does not take ten times longer to build a 1mt station versus a 100kt station in a yard... it is more like 50% extra time to build in the larger yard versus the smaller. The larger the yard the more BP per construction cycle you get but less BP per tonnage.

So over time you will benefit from larger station but it might take a few decades to notice the benefit. For mineral and fuel this probably will never ever be a problem either as it depend on if you are experience a shortage or not in the immediate term or not. You might have need to churn out smaller stations to cover deficiencies, it is possible.