Escaping a duranium crunch

[Zeebie (OP)]

So I'm in the throes of a duranium crunch - Earth is out, I have mines, automines, and asteroid miners wherever I can in Sol (but that's not much), and the other solar system I'm exploiting has very little duranium.  Since I need duranium to build everything, I can't seem to escape the crunch.  I can't build more mines or automines, ships to explore for more, or even infrastructure so I can get more colonists to work the mines on Titan.  Any suggestions on the most efficient way to use the duranium I have, and eventually how to escape the crunch?

[LoSboccacc]

research armor until it uses less duranium, also try older/small components in ship as new stuff costs more

[Zook]

- If you're still at low tech levels (nuclear engines), scrap your military ships. Ouch. But they aren't worth the upkeep anyway. You'll get a few resources back. You can scrap the components, too (the "Stockpile" button tooltips tell you how much).

- For those military ships you absolutely want to keep, build large PDCs with nothing but hangars. Set the ships' Mothership to a hangar PDC, then have the PDC Recover Parasites. Ships in a hangar don't need maintenance and maintenance eats lots of minerals (see the mining tab).

- Use automines and mass drivers, they're cheaper than asteroid miners.

- Put every ounce of duranium into producing more duranium or you'll never get out of the crunch.

- If you already have a civilian shipping line, make sure they have nothing to do but transport *civilian infrastructure* to Titan. The stuff at the bottom of the Wealth tab; it's independent from your state-produced infrastructure.

- Have patience.

[xeryon]

Cheat.  That works too.

[Nathan_]

Geo surveying everything with > 1000 radius can generally yield a nice return on duranium in your home system, exploring other starsystems might likewise let you make a nice find.

[Thiosk]

Theres an analysis on these boards somewhere of the payback time for a single automine.  Its like 10 years or something crazy like that, and can be worse if the abundance is low. 

For your next empire, I suggest putting EVERYTHING into duranium and corundium exploration and exploitation.  I use automines in most cases because i'd rather have my civilians working to do something else.  I don't bother colonizing Titan unless theres something CRAZY there, like 7 elements at >+0.5 abundance.

[Nathan_]

A base technology automine will generate 10 minerals per year from a 1.0 deposit, so the time to return on investment for an automine is 12 years for duranium. However, mining planetary leaders can shorten this by increasing mine yields. Likewise a sector leader with a mining bonus works as well, and finally the tech to increase mining production again shortens this, so there are many things that can be done to alleviate a shortage, but planning ahead is the least painful.