New player woes...

[DaMachinator (OP)]

Impending gallicite shortage. Ancient and slow freighters. Hostiles next door to Sol.
None of the Sol gas giants have sorium deposits worth mining. Titan is my best supply of that until I get some intersystem tankers. Need more survey ships - have 3 geosurvey and 2 gravisurvey, all outdated and rather expensive. Need more labs. Need more conyards to make said labs. Need more mass drivers. Wish I hadn't spent time refitting my survey craft with useless size-1 passive thermals instead of making dedicated scout craft.
Also I'm rather low on Uridium.

What should I do?

Good news: I found a dead end system with a good sorium gas giant and made jump gates.
I have decided scout craft.
There's an asteroid close enough to the hostile's JP so I put DSTS's on it. 
I have two big naval yards with 800+ mod rate and 10 kiloton+ capacity.

[83athom]

Have you started mining Venus yet?

[DaMachinator (OP)]

I'm mining all of the inner planets except Mars and it's moons. Luna too. Mercury is a pretty good source of minerals in this playthrough. I dropped off a geo team there in hopes of getting better accessibility on some minerals.

[Iranon]

Are you going out of your way to limit expenditure of Gallicite and Sorium?

Large, low-powered engines taking up about half of your craft is very economical on both... and I'm fond of that design practice for other reasons.
Note that build cost of engines scales quadratically below 1.0 power multiplier... half as powerful, a quarter the cost.

[DaMachinator (OP)]

Are you going out of your way to limit expenditure of Gallicite and Sorium?

Large, low-powered engines taking up about half of your craft is very economical on both... and I'm fond of that design practice for other reasons.
Note that build cost of engines scales quadratically below 1.0 power multiplier... half as powerful, a quarter the cost.

Aside from the scout craft where space constraints were a thing because I wanted to reuse an already researched jump drive design, the only engine ANYTHING has is the max size min power engine. (A really big ion engine.) Some things use two or three.

[Iranon]

Seems you're doing a lot of things right under current circumstances.
What's the lowest power multiplier available to you though?

I still find 0.5 excessive for most civilian and even some military applications, I typically reserch down to 0.3 before I build any ships in a standard TN start. When short on Sorium and Gallicite specificially, I might drop lower.

[Drgong]

I learned to love building a whole classes (generally I call them corvettes) using commercial engines as they are dirty cheap to make and are useful for filling out your fleets.  It sounds like you have a good grasp of the game - so good job!

[DaMachinator (OP)]

Seems you're doing a lot of things right under current circumstances.
What's the lowest power multiplier available to you though?

I still find 0.5 excessive for most civilian and even some military applications, I typically reserch down to 0.3 before I build any ships in a standard TN start. When short on Sorium and Gallicite specificially, I might drop lower.

I haven't researched down or up any, although I might research up for missile engines. I think I have .3 or .2 minimum power. I did make one ship that used a 100% power engine, because GOTTA GO FAST and space constraints imposed by a preexisting jump drive design I wanted to reuse.

I learned to love building a whole classes (generally I call them corvettes) using commercial engines as they are dirty cheap to make and are useful for filling out your fleets.  It sounds like you have a good grasp of the game - so good job!

Everything I've built so far (no warships yet) aside from two scout craft uses one or more of the same 50HS .3 or .2 power multiplier commercial engine. I'd like to have Fuel Efficiency .7, but I don't (yet).

I also just realized that I'm short of Uridium too, which I need even more of. However, I did finally finish an asteroid mining module.

[Drgong]

you can also put auto mines on asteroids. 

[DaMachinator (OP)]

you can also put auto mines on asteroids.

I know, but my survey ships are preoccupied elsewhere. Might as well build a redesign of my salvager class to use miners instead of salvaging modules.

[83athom]

Don't forget to add a colony on them or the minerals will just delete themselves.

[DaMachinator (OP)]

Don't forget to add a colony on them or the minerals will just delete themselves.

Um, what? I guess it's a good thing I haven't surveyed any of them yet.

[DIT_grue]

Don't forget to add a colony on them or the minerals will just delete themselves.

Um, what? I guess it's a good thing I haven't surveyed any of them yet.

Your asteroid mining ship needs to be orbiting a colony (not just the rock itself), or the minerals produced will evaporate forever. Speaking of which, I vaguely remember this bug may have been fixed?, but for a long while it was necessary with these (and similar types of ships, like sorium harvesters) to make sure every ship Moved to the destination before it did anything like merging with a Task Group already there.

[Sheb]

I think it's still the case with terraformers.

[MarcAFK]

That's the case with asteroid miners, terraformers, sodium harvesters, and orbital habitats, Basically the database won't update properly unless the ship goes to the body which will then trigger the production calculation.