Posted by: gpt3
« on: January 12, 2022, 11:41:08 PM »Enceladus Prime (EP), the "home base" space station in ΔV, is my new headcanon for how Civilian Mining Complexes work in Aurora.
- EP is owned and operated by the Enceladus Corporation. Aurora CMCs have a unique corporate entity per colony.
- Trans-Newtonian Elements tend to accumulate in gravity wells; one of ΔV's quests investigates why Saturn's rings contain planetary-core-like mineral deposits. Presumably my bureaucrats decided to assign all of those minerals to Enceladus for database convenience.
- EP's ~175k population is almost entirely dedicated to supporting the mining industry. This explains why CMC workforces, like automine crews, are irrelevant from the perspective of central government economic planners.
- The bulk of the actual extraction work is done by freelancers using Newtonian spacecraft and conventional mining. This explains why CMCs don't drain national TNE stockpiles.
- Corporate security is provided by Vilcy security contractors; I imagine that some of them also man the civilian garrison.
- Miners can fight each other at ~1 km range using visible light lasers and railguns, but actual military ships fight each other at 2-3 light-second range using XASERs. First, 600k-900k km is a doable combat range for Aurora ships using x-ray lasers. Second, this explains why common pirates are a non-issue for the central government. Third, this also explains why even the lowliest spoilers can effortlessly curbstomp civilian ships and populations.
- The developer mentioned on Discord that EP is a converted shipyard. I wouldn't be surprised if my civilians recycled waste from shipyard and ship refits. After all, the major interstellar shipping companies never seem to have any problems getting their hands on TNEs.