With 1.12 released I decided to try a harder game. Conventional start, of course, with 10% research, terraforming, and survey speeds as well. Then I got the idea to turn on Human NPRs and set the year really high so that I can reclaim my lost empire. It stands to reason that my lost empire must have mined a lot of minerals out of Earth, so I set the minerals down to 50%. That was clearly the first mistake.
The other mistake was to read someone's clever idea for using a carrier with grav survey fighters to rapidly explore the jump point network. It was such a neat idea that I decided to try it. That was clearly the second mistake.
So why are these mistakes? Well, I managed to build about 180 automines before completely running out of Corundium. There are only a handful of other sources in the solar system, and two of them orbit Miranda which is a 61bkm round trip. I managed to survey Miranda and its moons with the help of a tanker sitting at Sedna, but moving a large quantity of mines all the way out there is going to take a while. I also don't have that many to send, and with only about 1000 tons of Corundium mined every year I'm not making them very fast.
The Duranium mines on Earth have also been depleted, but my stockpile of 9k should be enough for the immediate future.
Finally, I'm also out of Neutronium. My carrier with 8 hangar decks, a 1kt fuel tank, a jump drive, and one single layer of the finest armor humanity can manufacture is just 40kt. I didn't even know that shipyard operations needed Neutronium, and I didn't hesitate to expand all my other shipyards. I ran out of Neutronium just when that particular shipyard reached 37kt. I paused all the other shipyards to conserve Neutronium, but retooling also needs Neutronium. I'm pulling in just 1203 tons of Neutronium per year, and the game now stops every other construction cycle to remind me that I'm out again.
Maybe in a year or two I'll finally be able to start construction of the first jump-capable ship since the fall of civilization. My engineers assure me that constructing the ship won't require any Corundium or Neutronium at all, but I'm not really sure I believe them.
What mistakes have you made lately?