Author Topic: Exploiting minerals  (Read 3729 times)

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Offline welchbloke (OP)

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Exploiting minerals
« on: January 12, 2009, 01:22:16 PM »
A question for the more experienced Aurora players out there:
What criteria do you use to decide if a system body is worth exploiting for its mineral content?  I'm assuming total tonnage and availability rating will factor in somewhere but what would you consider the lower end worthe exploiting?

Sorry that's now 2 questions :)
Welchbloke
 

Offline Kurt

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Re: Exploiting minerals
« Reply #1 on: January 12, 2009, 01:38:56 PM »
Quote from: "welchbloke"
A question for the more experienced Aurora players out there:
What criteria do you use to decide if a system body is worth exploiting for its mineral content?  I'm assuming total tonnage and availability rating will factor in somewhere but what would you consider the lower end worthe exploiting?

Sorry that's now 2 questions :)

This is very complex, and very situational, at least for me.  First off, there is demand to consider.  If I need a resource, badly, this will play a large part in determining what resource deposits I'll exploit.  While the primary resources that tend to run out the most, at least for me, are first duranium and second sorium, all of the others can be a problem at various points in the game.  When you are out of, or nearly out of something like neutronium, then that moon with a 0.9 availability deposit of neutronium and nothing else might become a prime site for exploitation.  

Past the emergency situations, to fuel general growth, I tend to look at bodies with multiple deposits with availability levels over 0.5 and amounts over 100,000.  The higher the availability levels go, and the more types of resources available, the lower the amounts can be, but I generally don't bother with exploiting deposits under 1,000 units, no matter the availability.  Location matters, as a deposit that is closer to your homeworld or whatever manufacturing center you are going to use is worth more than a higher availability deposit further away.  

There is no one formula to follow, although I have played around with developing one based on the calculations that obviously go on in my subconcious when I'm trying to decide whether or not to exploit a deposit.  I suspect it would be very difficult to quantify.  I've thought about rating resource finds by adding up the availability levels, to show the overall production of mines emplaced there, but that doesn't tell the whole story.  After all, who cares if you just found a moon with nine different resources with 1.0 availability levels and present in the millions, if you have a lot of those already and you really need two other resources that you are short on?

One rule of thumb that I try to follow is to bulk up the mining centers closer to home until they have a resource exhaustion date of 20-30 years.  Why start mining a site farther away if the closer site still needs to be exploited, unless the farther one is better somehow?

Kurt
 

Offline welchbloke (OP)

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Re: Exploiting minerals
« Reply #2 on: January 12, 2009, 02:41:08 PM »
Quote from: "Kurt"
Quote from: "welchbloke"
A question for the more experienced Aurora players out there:
What criteria do you use to decide if a system body is worth exploiting for its mineral content?  I'm assuming total tonnage and availability rating will factor in somewhere but what would you consider the lower end worthe exploiting?

Sorry that's now 2 questions :)

This is very complex, and very situational, at least for me.  First off, there is demand to consider.  If I need a resource, badly, this will play a large part in determining what resource deposits I'll exploit.  While the primary resources that tend to run out the most, at least for me, are first duranium and second sorium, all of the others can be a problem at various points in the game.  When you are out of, or nearly out of something like neutronium, then that moon with a 0.9 availability deposit of neutronium and nothing else might become a prime site for exploitation.  

Past the emergency situations, to fuel general growth, I tend to look at bodies with multiple deposits with availability levels over 0.5 and amounts over 100,000.  The higher the availability levels go, and the more types of resources available, the lower the amounts can be, but I generally don't bother with exploiting deposits under 1,000 units, no matter the availability.  Location matters, as a deposit that is closer to your homeworld or whatever manufacturing center you are going to use is worth more than a higher availability deposit further away.  

There is no one formula to follow, although I have played around with developing one based on the calculations that obviously go on in my subconcious when I'm trying to decide whether or not to exploit a deposit.  I suspect it would be very difficult to quantify.  I've thought about rating resource finds by adding up the availability levels, to show the overall production of mines emplaced there, but that doesn't tell the whole story.  After all, who cares if you just found a moon with nine different resources with 1.0 availability levels and present in the millions, if you have a lot of those already and you really need two other resources that you are short on?

One rule of thumb that I try to follow is to bulk up the mining centers closer to home until they have a resource exhaustion date of 20-30 years.  Why start mining a site farther away if the closer site still needs to be exploited, unless the farther one is better somehow?

Kurt
I assumed that things were complex and I assumed that events would dictate matters to a certain degree; what I do find intriguing is that you list both duranium and sorium as your primary resources.  I've already experienced the duranium shortages and I think I need to find my own starting strategy to ensure I don't fall rapidly fall behind in duranium production.  I'd not considered that I might suffer a Sorium shortage; whenever I look at how much fuel I have and is being produced I'd not appreciated that I could use up the millions of litres of fuel in storage.  At present, I was using 10 000 unit as a lower limit for considering a body for exploitation but that's probably because my empire still new and hasn't begun to experience critical shortages (apart from duranium of course).

Thanks for giving me the benefit of your experience.
Welchbloke
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: Exploiting minerals
« Reply #3 on: January 12, 2009, 02:55:09 PM »
I tend to look for bodies with at least half of the minerals. The only exceptions to this are gas giants with fuel harvesters and a planet with an ungodly amount of mineral at a decent (.4+) accessibility. I also tend to emplace mag drivers and automated mines... send the minerals to a central location, and ship from there. Of course, this will give away the locations of your nodes in a system by the steady stream of mineral packets to it. As for minimum amounts... Haven't really thought about it, but 1000-5000 is about right. Anything under 1000 you are better off putting an asteroid harvester ship in orbit for a couple months. And only if you REALLY need that mineral.

Offline welchbloke (OP)

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Re: Exploiting minerals
« Reply #4 on: January 12, 2009, 03:24:36 PM »
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
I tend to look for bodies with at least half of the minerals. The only exceptions to this are gas giants with fuel harvesters and a planet with an ungodly amount of mineral at a decent (.4+) accessibility. I also tend to emplace mag drivers and automated mines... send the minerals to a central location, and ship from there. Of course, this will give away the locations of your nodes in a system by the steady stream of mineral packets to it. As for minimum amounts... Haven't really thought about it, but 1000-5000 is about right. Anything under 1000 you are better off putting an asteroid harvester ship in orbit for a couple months. And only if you REALLY need that mineral.

So what do people think about mineral harvesting?  Is a viable propostion or do most people do as Erik suggested and only do it a mineral is REALLY needed?  I would have thought that this course of action would lead to a mineral harvesting ships that sat idle at a starbase most of the time and don't really repay the resource investment.
Welchbloke
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: Exploiting minerals
« Reply #5 on: January 12, 2009, 03:27:06 PM »
Quote from: "welchbloke"
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
I tend to look for bodies with at least half of the minerals. The only exceptions to this are gas giants with fuel harvesters and a planet with an ungodly amount of mineral at a decent (.4+) accessibility. I also tend to emplace mag drivers and automated mines... send the minerals to a central location, and ship from there. Of course, this will give away the locations of your nodes in a system by the steady stream of mineral packets to it. As for minimum amounts... Haven't really thought about it, but 1000-5000 is about right. Anything under 1000 you are better off putting an asteroid harvester ship in orbit for a couple months. And only if you REALLY need that mineral.

So what do people think about mineral harvesting?  Is a viable propostion or do most people do as Erik suggested and only do it a mineral is REALLY needed?  I would have thought that this course of action would lead to a mineral harvesting ships that sat idle at a starbase most of the time and don't really repay the resource investment.

If you only build 2-3 and have many many more sites for them, they won't sit idle. That said, I rarely do build harvester ships myself.

Offline sloanjh

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Re: Exploiting minerals
« Reply #6 on: January 12, 2009, 09:38:05 PM »
From my point of view, there are three classes of mineral: Duranium, Sorium, and everything else.  The reason that Duranium and Sorium are special is that these are central to economic growth; I've found these to be much more heavily consumed than the others (although Mercassium can also be a problem sometimes due to research labs).

I'm an exponential economic growth fanatic, and growth is fueled by Duranium which is used to create factories and mines.  So I find the early game (which can go on a decade or more and which I rarely make it past before Steve comes out with a new version) is a race to build new mines and/or ship existing mines offworld fast enough that I don't experience a Duranium shortage when my homeworld becomes depleted. (Part of this is probably due to me using large starting populations.)  The preference is to ship manned mines to another populated world, but I'll also build automated mines to send to a good uninhabitable body.  This means that the primary questions on where to mine are "Is the Duranium accessibility >0.7 (prefer 0.9 or 1.0)" and "is the Duranium amount enough so that it won't run out in less than ~20 years".  Note that this effort to shift mining efforts offworld consumes a HUGE amount of resources in terms of building the ships and fueling them - that's why it's the core of the early game.

The secondary consideration is "what other minerals am I in danger of exhausting".  The most important among these is Sorium, since that's another one with a high consumption rate, i.e. it requires moving a LOT of mines in order to get enough production to avoid shortages.  There's usually 1-2 other "minor" minerals that will deplete out quickly, but there's usually enough stockpiled to last until they're being mined on another world that has Duranium.

So I'd verbalize the strategy as "maximize Duranium and Sorium production and duration everywhere, and make sure each minor mineral is being mined in decent quantities somewhere".

John
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: Exploiting minerals
« Reply #7 on: January 12, 2009, 09:41:20 PM »
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Quote from: "welchbloke"
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
**SNIP**
 Anything under 1000 you are better off putting an asteroid harvester ship in orbit for a couple months. And only if you REALLY need that mineral.

So what do people think about mineral harvesting?  Is a viable propostion or do most people do as Erik suggested and only do it a mineral is REALLY needed?  I would have thought that this course of action would lead to a mineral harvesting ships that sat idle at a starbase most of the time and don't really repay the resource investment.

If you only build 2-3 and have many many more sites for them, they won't sit idle. That said, I rarely do build harvester ships myself.

I don't think I've ever built one myself.  I looked at the maintenance run rate (in terms of minerals consumed) and decided that they didn't seem economical (i.e. you'd need a lot of minerals with high accessibility just to break even).  You don't pay maintenance on mines :-)
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: Exploiting minerals
« Reply #8 on: January 12, 2009, 09:49:48 PM »
Quote from: "welchbloke"
I assumed that things were complex and I assumed that events would dictate matters to a certain degree; what I do find intriguing is that you list both duranium and sorium as your primary resources.  I've already experienced the duranium shortages and I think I need to find my own starting strategy to ensure I don't fall rapidly fall behind in duranium production.  I'd not considered that I might suffer a Sorium shortage; whenever I look at how much fuel I have and is being produced I'd not appreciated that I could use up the millions of litres of fuel in storage.  At present, I was using 10 000 unit as a lower limit for considering a body for exploitation but that's probably because my empire still new and hasn't begun to experience critical shortages (apart from duranium of course).

Thanks for giving me the benefit of your experience.

Fuel exhaustion is insidious - the nastiness is that Aurora doesn't have a strong indicator as to whether your fuel stocks are increasing or decreasing.  The other nastiness is that economies grow exponentially, and so the burn rate tends to be increasing as your empire grows.  What this means in my experience is all of the sudden noticing that your fuel stock is ~30% lower than you remember, and that at the rate it's dropping you're going to run out in a year or two.  This in turn leads to frantic building of fuel factories, which in turn leads to a sudden increase in the Sorium consumption rate.

It's kind of like foxes and lemmings (or is it bunnies) in the arctic :-)

John
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: Exploiting minerals
« Reply #9 on: January 13, 2009, 01:56:06 AM »
Maybe Steve could color code the fuel to show positive or negative gains. Or just list what was produced/consumed in the last time increment.

Offline welchbloke (OP)

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Re: Exploiting minerals
« Reply #10 on: January 13, 2009, 11:23:38 AM »
Quote from: "sloanjh"
*SNIP*
I don't think I've ever built one myself.  I looked at the maintenance run rate (in terms of minerals consumed) and decided that they didn't seem economical (i.e. you'd need a lot of minerals with high accessibility just to break even).  You don't pay maintenance on mines :-)
This was my gut feeling about mineral harvesters; however, I haven't played enough games or for long enough to have any quantitative data to hang my hat on.  I don't think I'm inclined to use them, right now I'd go with automatic mines. I think I will also be using Erik's suggestion of using a central shipping hub; probably fed by mass drivers.
Welchbloke
 

Offline welchbloke (OP)

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Re: Exploiting minerals
« Reply #11 on: January 13, 2009, 11:27:51 AM »
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Quote from: "welchbloke"
I assumed that things were complex and I assumed that events would dictate matters to a certain degree; what I do find intriguing is that you list both duranium and sorium as your primary resources.  I've already experienced the duranium shortages and I think I need to find my own starting strategy to ensure I don't fall rapidly fall behind in duranium production.  I'd not considered that I might suffer a Sorium shortage; whenever I look at how much fuel I have and is being produced I'd not appreciated that I could use up the millions of litres of fuel in storage.  At present, I was using 10 000 unit as a lower limit for considering a body for exploitation but that's probably because my empire still new and hasn't begun to experience critical shortages (apart from duranium of course).

Thanks for giving me the benefit of your experience.

Fuel exhaustion is insidious - the nastiness is that Aurora doesn't have a strong indicator as to whether your fuel stocks are increasing or decreasing.  The other nastiness is that economies grow exponentially, and so the burn rate tends to be increasing as your empire grows.  What this means in my experience is all of the sudden noticing that your fuel stock is ~30% lower than you remember, and that at the rate it's dropping you're going to run out in a year or two.  This in turn leads to frantic building of fuel factories, which in turn leads to a sudden increase in the Sorium consumption rate.

It's kind of like foxes and lemmings (or is it bunnies) in the arctic :D   Do you tend to use for suppy dumps on colonies or just use tankers to support your fleets?
Welchbloke
 

Offline Kurt

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Re: Exploiting minerals
« Reply #12 on: January 13, 2009, 12:35:20 PM »
Quote from: "welchbloke"
I haven't really experienced the exponential growth yet; I suspect that's because I'm playing a cautiously expanding race who have not encountered any aliens yet.  I suspect they will have a major shock when they try to rapidly expand in the face of an emerging threat :D   Do you tend to use for suppy dumps on colonies or just use tankers to support your fleets?

I use a combination of both.  Tankers and supply ships are useful to build up stocks on forward supply dumps, otherwise, you have to make many trips with normal ships to build up supplies.  

The nations in the 6 Powers Campaign are just getting to the point where they are going to need some forward supply dumps to continue their outward expansion.  With their current designs, the exploration groups are finding it very difficult to operate more than 3-4 jumps from Earth.  That is very true for the less advanced nations like Japan and Russia, and less so for the Reich and the Alliance, although they are feeling it too.  

Kurt
 

Offline welchbloke (OP)

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Re: Exploiting minerals
« Reply #13 on: January 13, 2009, 12:59:17 PM »
Quote from: "Kurt"

I use a combination of both.  Tankers and supply ships are useful to build up stocks on forward supply dumps, otherwise, you have to make many trips with normal ships to build up supplies.  

The nations in the 6 Powers Campaign are just getting to the point where they are going to need some forward supply dumps to continue their outward expansion.  With their current designs, the exploration groups are finding it very difficult to operate more than 3-4 jumps from Earth.  That is very true for the less advanced nations like Japan and Russia, and less so for the Reich and the Alliance, although they are feeling it too.  

Kurt
I guess that this is analogous to the historial situation facing navies in the 18/19th centuries where coal depots in strategic locations were needed to ensure global reach (that's one of the reasons why Britain had outposts in places like Ascension Island and the Falkland Islands).  Do you look to provide defences for these forward depots or do you assume that a mobile defence is better and use your fleets to ensure nothing gets into the key systems?  I would think that fixed defences would be very wasteful in terms of resources but could be seen as insurance for worst case scenarios.
Welchbloke
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: Exploiting minerals
« Reply #14 on: January 13, 2009, 01:51:51 PM »
Quote from: "welchbloke"
I guess that this is analogous to the historial situation facing navies in the 18/19th centuries where coal depots in strategic locations were needed to ensure global reach (that's one of the reasons why Britain had outposts in places like Ascension Island and the Falkland Islands).  Do you look to provide defences for these forward depots or do you assume that a mobile defence is better and use your fleets to ensure nothing gets into the key systems?  I would think that fixed defences would be very wasteful in terms of resources but could be seen as insurance for worst case scenarios.

Maybe Kurt does something different, but for supply depots, I prefer to put a colony there with people. And my colonies all have some sort of fixed defenses, even if it is a squadron permanently stationed in that system. Unmanned depots, hmm. I'd think they would be vulnerable to raiding. But you'd need to find them first as there wouldn't be much, if any signature to give it away.