Post by: welchbloke on January 12, 2009, 01:22:16 PM
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
Post by: Kurt 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
Post by: welchbloke on January 12, 2009, 02:41:08 PM
Quote from: "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).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
Thanks for giving me the benefit of your experience.
Post by: Erik L on January 12, 2009, 02:55:09 PM
Post by: welchbloke 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.
Post by: Erik L 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.
Post by: sloanjh on January 12, 2009, 09:38:05 PM
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
Post by: sloanjh 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
Post by: sloanjh 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
Post by: Erik L on January 13, 2009, 01:56:06 AM
Post by: welchbloke on January 13, 2009, 11:23:38 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
*SNIP*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.
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
Post by: welchbloke 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?
Post by: Kurt 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 threatDo 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
Post by: welchbloke on January 13, 2009, 12:59:17 PM
Quote from: "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.
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
Post by: Erik L 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.
Post by: welchbloke on January 13, 2009, 02:23:12 PM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
I think I'll give unmanned depots a go and see where things take me; I think they would be viable for games where there is only one race on the starting planet. In campaigns like Kurt's and Steve's with multiple empires on the same planet they would be just too tempting for the other powersQuote 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.
Post by: sloanjh on January 13, 2009, 08:23:44 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 :-) (Too bad they don't know that the only way a bad guy could come through is if I had generated an NPR race
Post by: sloanjh on January 13, 2009, 08:29:36 PM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
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.It's nastier than that, since the ships come hit the home world to refuel sporadically. He'd have to add up all the fuel across the empire (including in ships) and compare that to the previous increment - I don't know how hard it would to write that query.
Unless he kept a time history of fuel on the planet at each update, and simply compared "today" to "3 months ago" or 6 months, or a year. I imagine that the year-previous delta would give you a pretty good pretty good idea of what your fuel stocks were doing (the delta would probably dominate the amount in ships.
BTW, I just remembered the other major source of fuel consumption - filling the tanks of new construction!
John
Post by: Erik L on January 13, 2009, 09:13:06 PM
Post by: jfelten on January 14, 2009, 06:08:16 AM
Post by: Kurt on January 15, 2009, 10:04:39 AM
Quote from: "welchbloke"
Quote from: "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.
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
Currently, the Reich and the Alliance are planning on stationing an infantry division or two at their forward depot, along with a cruiser or two. It definitely isn't very much, but the focus for those two powers remains on the solar system, not outside. Of course, currently, both the Reich and the Alliance are operating unchallenged on their primary warp lines, although the Japanese and Indians have done some exploring down both of those warp lines.
Right now both the Reich and the Alliance are trying to figure out how much security they need to provide for their primary colony sites in the Hamburg and the Alpha Cephi system (respectively). Oh, and the Reich is dealing with the devastating realization that their entire stock of missiles, and therefore ships and bases, is worthless in the nebula in the Hamburg system. Major oops.
Kurt
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 15, 2009, 10:30:47 AM
Quote from: "welchbloke"
I think most people don't do this (feedback please if you do) which probably means the cost or size needs to be adjusted a little to make it a viable strategy without making it the best strategy. Or perhaps it's just more hassle than building automated mines, or just higher priorities for shipbuilding. I have built such ships in the past myself but not too many.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.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 15, 2009, 10:34:50 AM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
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.I have made a note to myself to add some charts in the future that show minerals and fuel stockpile level per population and for the Empire as a whole over time. It might not make it into the next version though as I have been working full time on a large piece of functionality for the last two weeks and it is going to continue to take up my time for the next few weeks as well. I'll post about it in a separate thread.
Steve
Post by: welchbloke on January 15, 2009, 02:36:30 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
I would like to see this added, but not at the expensive of nice shiny new functionalityQuote from: "Erik Luken"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.I have made a note to myself to add some charts in the future that show minerals and fuel stockpile level per population and for the Empire as a whole over time. It might not make it into the next version though as I have been working full time on a large piece of functionality for the last two weeks and it is going to continue to take up my time for the next few weeks as well. I'll post about it in a separate thread.
Steve
Post by: welchbloke on January 15, 2009, 02:40:24 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
In my (admittedly limited) experience, in the earlier stages of the game, ship building priorities would stop me from building anything that doesn't directly contribute to the expansion of my race; asteroid harvester don't fall into my definition of contributing to expansion.Quote from: "welchbloke"I think most people don't do this (feedback please if you do) which probably means the cost or size needs to be adjusted a little to make it a viable strategy without making it the best strategy. Or perhaps it's just more hassle than building automated mines, or just higher priorities for shipbuilding. I have built such ships in the past myself but not too many.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.
Steve
Post by: Sotak246 on January 15, 2009, 07:13:56 PM
Post by: Erik L on January 15, 2009, 07:21:30 PM
Post by: Father Tim on January 15, 2009, 09:33:17 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
I think most people don't do this (feedback please if you do) which probably means the cost or size needs to be adjusted a little to make it a viable strategy without making it the best strategy. Or perhaps it's just more hassle than building automated mines, or just higher priorities for shipbuilding. I have built such ships in the past myself but not too many.
Steve
I haven't ever botherd with asteroid miners because automated mines and freighters are pretty much the first things I build. The 5000 RP and shipyard time required to produce the ships seems a waste when a few auto mines can be thrown on any planet/moon/comet easily enough, and the occasional cargo run can be sent out to collect the takings.
Sorium harvesters, on the other hand, I do use because there's no other way to access the deposits on a gas giant. If there were likewise bodies too large or too small to emplace automated mines (perhaps gravity < 0.1G, or >6 or 7G) upon, I would then be likely to build mining ships.
Post by: Erik L on January 16, 2009, 03:57:25 AM
Post by: welchbloke on January 17, 2009, 08:42:53 AM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Sorium Harvesters are almost a necessity. Asteroid Miners are more of a "That's cool. Let's build a couple" type thing.That's pretty much my take at present as well. I will keep the ast miner+small cargo shuttle run in mind for later in my campaigns.