Note that the dilemma that you're in is standard, and is at the heart of the game. Also note that neither of the two mining options you've found look good to me - I always try to find mineral sources that have duranium at 0.5 or more in addition to the secondary mineral that I'm looking for.
The first Sol Asteroid has at this point:
Dur 112,564 (1)
Ven 13,524 (1)
Gal 9,055 (1)
I have 33 automines on it.
The second Sol Asteroid started out with Dur (1), Sor (1), Corun (1) and Gal (1). The Duranium has been exhausted and the Sorium is down to (.65). I am switching my Asteroid Mining TG which has 5 ships x 10 mining modules per ship from this asteroid to a new one with this:
Dur 9,031 (1)
Bor 2,919 (1)
Ven 523 (1)
Sor 5,559 (1)
Uri 2,742 (1)
The Kruger asteroid has:
Neu 102,392 (.9)
Corbo 176391 (1)
Tri 172,216 (1)
Bor 36,092 (.9)
Mer 159,992 (.9)
Ven 60,017 (.9)
Sor 105,616 (1)
Gal 159,953 (.
I agree with your point about the Duranium, but I thought the other deposits were worth it. And Earth had a decent Duranium deposit to start with plus my geology team found another 100,000. At this time Earth has Dur 252,740 (1) so Duranium is a low priority for me at this time.
Otherwise (as you point out) you have to build multiple mines per factory to keep your industry going, which is a bad (from the economic growth perspective) situation to be in. Finally, this is why it's a good idea to start cranking out freighters from day one - you're going to be in these sorts of situations a lot, and it helps to have your own shipping capacity to move things around.
John
I have been going from one bottleneck to another in this game. I started out not knowing I was burning through wealth faster than the US Congress, so I had to fix my wealth generation. Then I was making ships too fast so I ended up with a -10 grade crew. So, I am trying to increase the military academy and I have several slipways on pause. I should have been pumping out freighters, as you said, but that is just one boo boo out of many for me in this game.
Thanks for the pointers.