Is Tritanium too common?

[kilo (OP)]

Hi there,

I had a look at the games I played in C# and looked into the resource shortages I encountered. Resources, which had been in short supply were most of the times Corundium caused by overbuilding mines, but there had also been shortages of Gallicite, Mercassium and even one Neutronium shortage. Tritanium on the other hand was never a problem, as Gallicite was the limiting factor in missile based games and outside of those, there was no sink for it.

What do you think about reducing the availability of Tritanium during generation or giving it some uses besides missile warheads and munitions factories?

[TallTroll]

The other logical use would be for missile launchers, I suppose. I would think pretty hard about reducing any TN mineral overall though, especially as missiles are essentially consumables, which drains Tritanium from the game overall (your specific experience in general or in a given game may vary, but across all games it should represent something of a limiting factor).

Although it's not a short term solution, some sort of transmutation tech would be a partial answer to mineral supply/demand problems, although any such tech should be pretty limited in its' usefulness, even at high tech levels, so as to not trivialise the mining aspect of the economy. Perhaps a large building with high worker requirements (to restrict deployment of such buildings), and abysmal conversion efficiency (say 200:1 at T1, dropping to 10:1 at max tech, or something).

[misanthropope]

when you've got one resource that binds as tightly as gallicite does, it pretty much follows that you're going to have enough of everything else.  the c# maintenance change was the final nail in THAT coffin.

there isn't sufficient variety of options, nor do human players optimize carefully enough, to make so many TNEs meaningful.

[nuclearslurpee]

It is weird to me that presently, we have nuclear missile warheads which require tritanium, nuclear-powered engines which run on sorium fuel, and nuclear power reactors which run on...boronide? I really don't understand why we need 3/11 of the TNEs to be three different types of nuclear materials which are incompatible with each other, especially once we are beyond the fission era. I accept that some handwavium is necessary since, e.g., sorium is both a fissile and fusionable material apparently (TNEs are magic!) but overall it seems silly to me.

If nothing else tritanium should probably be used in power plants along with boronide, which already has lots of uses.

That being said, I suggest this more for consistency than for any concern about mineral economic balance. The TNEs are not equal and have never been intended to be equal so I don't mind if some like gallicite are highly valuable and others like tritanium are mostly a useful byproduct. It's just weird to me to have three different nuclear fuels (for no sensible reason like a fission/fusion split).

[Stormtrooper]

when you've got one resource that binds as tightly as gallicite does, it pretty much follows that you're going to have enough of everything else.  the c# maintenance change was the final nail in THAT coffin.

Nailed it. One mineral to rule them all. The problem isn't just tritanium. Is literally gallicite vs the rest of the world. I'd be really happy to see ALL other minerals made much rarer.

[gpt3]

It is weird to me that presently, we have nuclear missile warheads which require tritanium, nuclear-powered engines which run on sorium fuel, and nuclear power reactors which run on...boronide? I really don't understand why we need 3/11 of the TNEs to be three different types of nuclear materials which are incompatible with each other, especially once we are beyond the fission era. I accept that some handwavium is necessary since, e.g., sorium is both a fissile and fusionable material apparently (TNEs are magic!) but overall it seems silly to me.

If nothing else tritanium should probably be used in power plants along with boronide, which already has lots of uses.

That being said, I suggest this more for consistency than for any concern about mineral economic balance. The TNEs are not equal and have never been intended to be equal so I don't mind if some like gallicite are highly valuable and others like tritanium are mostly a useful byproduct. It's just weird to me to have three different nuclear fuels (for no sensible reason like a fission/fusion split).

I think that it's up to the player to imagine how the TNEs are actually used by their machinery. For example, one interpretation could be that ships are powered by uranium-235/helium-3/antihydrogen and that TNEs are used to harvest the energy from burning the fuel.

• Tritanium is wrapped around a warhead to boost its destructive potential, similar to a fragmentation grenade's jacket. Bigger warheads can support thicker or more elaborately-shaped tritanium layers.
• Sorium is a engine propellant, equivalent to Newtonian reaction mass. This would fit with Steve's assertion that "Sorium [is] the lightest and most reactive of the TNEs".
• Boronide is a working fluid used to power electrical turbines or something like biology's ATP molecule. Note that both working fluids and ATP are recycled after use, which explains why reactors don't constantly burn boronide.

[xenoscepter]

 --- I've always considered Boronide to be the key ingredient in TN superconductors, which make the mind-boggling amounts of power needed to run lasers and such an economical affair. Sorium was always the TN additive to fuel that made space travel economical. Tritanium was just a super strong, super light, super robust material which allowed missiles to pack more payload in a small amount of space than comparable Neutronium, but was limited as to how much mass (or volume I guess...) it could feasibly support which is why it isn't used in Fighters or Cargo Shuttles to the same end.

[Migi]

Hi there,

I had a look at the games I played in C# and looked into the resource shortages I encountered. Resources, which had been in short supply were most of the times Corundium caused by overbuilding mines, but there had also been shortages of Gallicite, Mercassium and even one Neutronium shortage. Tritanium on the other hand was never a problem, as Gallicite was the limiting factor in missile based games and outside of those, there was no sink for it.

What do you think about reducing the availability of Tritanium during generation or giving it some uses besides missile warheads and munitions factories?

I agree that Tritanium you mine as a byproduct when extracting other minerals is pretty much all the Tritanium you'll ever need in C#.
IIRC back in VB Tritanium was used to make construction factories (25% of the cost), so it was quite important then.
I take issue with Vendarite being used for fighter factories while the Ground Force Training Complex does not use Vendarite (not that I especially want to increase Vendarite usage, for some reason the deposits I find seem lackluster compared with other minerals).

As for possible solutions maybe Tritanium could be used as part of the cost for ground units. A simple way would be to make 25% or 50% of the total cost Tritanium. As a more complex method you could make it scale based on the damage or AP value of the unit, to represent highly explosive ammunition for artillery or something.

[nuclearslurpee]

I take issue with Vendarite being used for fighter factories while the Ground Force Training Complex does not use Vendarite (not that I especially want to increase Vendarite usage, for some reason the deposits I find seem lackluster compared with other minerals).

As for possible solutions maybe Tritanium could be used as part of the cost for ground units. A simple way would be to make 25% or 50% of the total cost Tritanium. As a more complex method you could make it scale based on the damage or AP value of the unit, to represent highly explosive ammunition for artillery or something.

I like this. Make ground forces cost 50% Vendarite, 50% Tritanium, and then add Vendarite/Tritanium to the cost of the GFTCs, which indirectly helps promote a healthy amount of ground forces (much needed given how many players struggle with this!) by reducing dependence on minerals what are competed for by other installations and projects.

[kilo (OP)]

Hi there,

I had a look at the games I played in C# and looked into the resource shortages I encountered. Resources, which had been in short supply were most of the times Corundium caused by overbuilding mines, but there had also been shortages of Gallicite, Mercassium and even one Neutronium shortage. Tritanium on the other hand was never a problem, as Gallicite was the limiting factor in missile based games and outside of those, there was no sink for it.

What do you think about reducing the availability of Tritanium during generation or giving it some uses besides missile warheads and munitions factories?

I agree that Tritanium you mine as a byproduct when extracting other minerals is pretty much all the Tritanium you'll ever need in C#.
IIRC back in VB Tritanium was used to make construction factories (25% of the cost), so it was quite important then.
I take issue with Vendarite being used for fighter factories while the Ground Force Training Complex does not use Vendarite (not that I especially want to increase Vendarite usage, for some reason the deposits I find seem lackluster compared with other minerals).

As for possible solutions maybe Tritanium could be used as part of the cost for ground units. A simple way would be to make 25% or 50% of the total cost Tritanium. As a more complex method you could make it scale based on the damage or AP value of the unit, to represent highly explosive ammunition for artillery or something.

That sounds very good. Tritanium is the ingredient for explosives, which should make it a requirement for ground units in general and supply elements in particular. Something else that came to my mind when reading this is forced labor mines. Those could use relatively unsafe explosives instead of mining lasers or whatever else the high tech mines use, which would allow to substitute Corundium with Tritanium. Those mines have other significant disadvantages to balance them though, which are mass and population related.