Author Topic: Mining Ships Useful?  (Read 2976 times)

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Offline Borealis4x (OP)

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Mining Ships Useful?
« on: May 02, 2021, 01:32:57 PM »
Are mining ships and fuel harvesters useful in any situation? I find its much more efficient to create mining/harvesting stations so you can build them using construction factories and then just use freighters/tankers to ferry the goods from those. IMO the mining modules are just too big to ever be efficient on a ship and having gas stations scattered around is pretty useful.

I've thought about creating 'small' mining ships that can take advantage of all those bodies where it isn't worth establishing a full mining colony but I don't know if I can set it up to automatically drop its haul when full at a designate planet.

Now that I think about it, why would you use mining stations when you can just use automated mines? Logistics are easier since you can use mass drivers and its arguably easier to pick up and move automines than it is to tug a mining station of the same productivity.

I wish civilians would build miners and harvesters and you could buy from them. Pretty sure they used to do the latter, but I haven't seen them in any of my games since 1.12, and even then I don't think you could buy from them. They were just stealing your resources >:(
« Last Edit: May 02, 2021, 01:34:34 PM by Borealis4x »
 

Offline skoormit

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Re: Mining Ships Useful?
« Reply #1 on: May 02, 2021, 01:46:33 PM »
why would you use mining stations when you can just use automated mines?

Orbital mining modules are the same cost as a normal surface mine.
Automated mines are twice the cost.

Orbital mining modules are 5,000T.
Automated mines require 25,000T of cargo space to move.

In other words, it is way more expensive to build and haul automated mines than to use orbital modules.
 

Offline Borealis4x (OP)

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Re: Mining Ships Useful?
« Reply #2 on: May 02, 2021, 02:05:38 PM »
why would you use mining stations when you can just use automated mines?

Orbital mining modules are the same cost as a normal surface mine.
Automated mines are twice the cost.

Orbital mining modules are 5,000T.
Automated mines require 25,000T of cargo space to move.

In other words, it is way more expensive to build and haul automated mines than to use orbital modules.

I forget; do station mines just put the minerals on the planet or do they need cargo space?

 

Offline spartacus

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Re: Mining Ships Useful?
« Reply #3 on: May 02, 2021, 02:09:07 PM »
Orbital mining stations can be more efficient in certain circumstances the problem is that they have a limit on how large the body can be that they mine.  Due to this it is not a question of orbital stations or automated mines rather a question of automated mines or both. 

You can mine an entire system with just automated mines and mass drivers alone or a mix but you can't get at all the resources with just orbital stations.
 

Offline Migi

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Re: Mining Ships Useful?
« Reply #4 on: May 02, 2021, 03:12:55 PM »

I forget; do station mines just put the minerals on the planet or do they need cargo space?
Orbital miners leave the extracted minerals on the planet.
I think if they have cargo space they fill that first but I might be wrong.
Fuel harvesters need to store it all on board.
 

Offline nuclearslurpee

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Re: Mining Ships Useful?
« Reply #5 on: May 02, 2021, 03:41:31 PM »
Are mining ships and fuel harvesters useful in any situation? I find its much more efficient to create mining/harvesting stations so you can build them using construction factories and then just use freighters/tankers to ferry the goods from those. IMO the mining modules are just too big to ever be efficient on a ship and having gas stations scattered around is pretty useful.

The later parts have been answered but no one has answered this part.

The main reason to use mining/harvesting ships instead of platforms is logistics: a ship even with very minimal engines can relocate itself, slowly but surely, without the assistance of a tug. The flip side is that since those kinds of ships move so rarely, the engines are largely wasted tonnage the other 99% of the time, and a ship with one or few engines will move so slowly from one mining site to the next that using a tug is almost certain to be more time-efficient (but not fuel-efficient, if that's a concern).

Logistically, especially for large empires with many dispersed mining nodes, tugs do represent certain costs, both in resources (fuel but more so gallicite for what is basically a mass of engines with a towing winch on the back end - commercial engines are cheap, but building three dozen of them can stack up costs) and complexity as a large empire has to keep its tugs in the right place to minimize downtime.

Finally, being built from a shipyard is not necessarily a downside for a mining ship. Building mining platforms with industry means you are not using your industry for other things, while a shipyard can only be used to build ships and the only demand on planetary industry is the cost of that yard (usually this is less than even a single mining platform in net BP). I think most players with large empires and a lot of shipyards will usually maintain at least a couple of massive yards that can slowly put out a stream of 250,000-ton mining platforms regardless of what the planetary factories are needed for at any time.

As an aside, NPRs as far as I know only build mining ships, never stations, but I think this is mostly because they have not been taught how to use tractor beams yet.
 

Offline Froggiest1982

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Re: Mining Ships Useful?
« Reply #6 on: May 02, 2021, 04:25:48 PM »
I use a classification system.

Priority class 1: System is rich in minerals and requires a long term commitment. These systems can be generally harvested in 100/150 years. I find automated mines to be ideal as some of the bodies are planets and you can use also mass drivers to have 1 collection point.

Priority class 2: System is rich in minerals but scattered. Small ships with orbital modules (not necessary fast) can mine these systems fairly easily. Again, to have a body to use as warehouse and also with a refuel station can help on the long term and the refuel station can be picked up on your way to a new system. The refuel station can be loaded with fuel from a colony or if there is any gas giant nearby you can harvest your own.

Priority class 3: System has a mineral which is important for the empire but the rest is not worth the investment. Usually, I handle these with a Tug and a powerful station in orbit. Fast deployment and fast mining. Once done move to a new one.

Furthermore, something I have seen not coming up is the investment in time to stabilize multiple jump points to get there with stations. I think it is important to fully understand the strategic implications of opening a way to your capital or inner systems. As I approach Aurora in a very "realistic" way and mostly challenge myself running not only multiple races but recently also 1 alien menace, I always weight in the possibility of stretching my defenses too much. If you add this into the mix, I am finding the combination Orbital Miners, Tugs and Tenders strategically more valuable for both Class 2 and 3 systems, while Class 1 gets the bonus only if possible to be colonized at some point. It's a kind of risk versus reward thing.

Offline Barkhorn

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Re: Mining Ships Useful?
« Reply #7 on: May 02, 2021, 06:55:58 PM »

I forget; do station mines just put the minerals on the planet or do they need cargo space?
Orbital miners leave the extracted minerals on the planet.
I think if they have cargo space they fill that first but I might be wrong.
Fuel harvesters need to store it all on board.
Orbital miners always leave the minerals on the planet.  I always include 25k cargo space so I can bring a mass driver, it saves a lot of freighter trips that way.
 
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Online Zap0

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Re: Mining Ships Useful?
« Reply #8 on: May 02, 2021, 08:22:58 PM »
Regarding fuel harvesters I prefer ships over stations since they can fly to a planet, dump their fuel and return all by themselves. No need to micro a tanker to come by every few years.
 

Offline Black

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Re: Mining Ships Useful?
« Reply #9 on: May 03, 2021, 04:19:15 AM »
I was never fan of fuel harvester ships. They will most likely be very slow, so you will dump fuel on some moon that orbit the gas giant to minimize the down time. So you most likely still need to pick up the fuel with tanker to transport it to colony.

I have order template that I select when I get message that fuel harvesters are full, so it is just a few clicks to pick up the fuel.

For the mining ships, I could see smaller mobile miners to roleplay small private operators that go after asteroids or moonlets that are not interesting for large civilian companies or state owned mining operations.

But for mining bodies with bigger deposits, stations seems more logical as they will spend long time on site before the minerals are depleted.
 

Offline Rich.h

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Re: Mining Ships Useful?
« Reply #10 on: May 03, 2021, 05:57:15 AM »
I never use them as for me it's both a logistical and RP issue. I only ever mine bodies that have 100k or more of a mineral. Generally I want at least 300kt total of minerals on a body before I invest in mining operations run by the state. Everything below that I leave for the CMCs. We already know in the real world that most of the space mining will be conducted by civillian companies, so I like to keep things similar and just by the minerals from them. Logistically it is far easier to manage the build up of wealth and then spend that buying minerals. This also means I can focus all my investments into 500AM batches at a time for large scale mining operations.

Fuel is a different matter, I get 70% of my empire fuel from orbital stations. Big heavy things that are fitted with a single engine for <400kms speed, they lumber into place in massive fleets and sit their sucking dry entire gas giants. Then any sorium mined on bodies is used for industry instead. I have a single wolrd that is devoted to fuel production, after all worlds have got the sorium they require the surplus gets sent to my refinery world. For fuel transport it is a simple matter of tankers setup on repeat orders to collect and deliver, you do a little bit of math at first to set their speed so there is always plenty of fuel in the station tankes, then forget about them for the rest of the game.
 

Offline skoormit

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Re: Mining Ships Useful?
« Reply #11 on: May 03, 2021, 07:19:36 AM »
I was never fan of fuel harvester ships. They will most likely be very slow, so you will dump fuel on some moon that orbit the gas giant to minimize the down time. So you most likely still need to pick up the fuel with tanker to transport it to colony.

This is my go-to method as well.
One single small tanker with cycling orders keeps the harvesters from filling up.
The long-run supply tankers pick the fuel up from the colony.

One problem with this: the small cycling tanker can generate a LOT of fleet history messages.
Since the fleet history message table never gets cleared, this will eventually greatly increase the amount of time it takes to save the game.
If you like to save the game frequently, this can be a real pain.

You can work around it by manually purging the table in the database.
If you would like details on that, feel free to send me a PM.
 
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Offline Arwyn

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Re: Mining Ships Useful?
« Reply #12 on: May 06, 2021, 11:00:16 AM »
I find fuel harvesters useful to stage forward bases. For example, if I colonize a system to keep an NPR out, or I need a forward base to prosecute a war. In those cases, the fuel harvesters move in, drain the local gas giant and dump the fuel on the forward base. The forward base has the deep space sensors, defense, and refueling stations.

I also occasionally use them as fuel waypoints in very long warp chains. Those ships are big, with harvesters and refueling capability to gas up and resupply ships moving up and down the warp chain, just to shorten the logistical chain.

Otherwise, I dont use them much. They are big, expensive and slow.
 

Offline Borealis4x (OP)

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Re: Mining Ships Useful?
« Reply #13 on: May 06, 2021, 03:40:21 PM »
What do you think is more efficient? Having a 'self-moving' refiner that is super slow and might have to compromise on harvesting for engines or using harvesting stations, which means investing in tankers and tugs as well.

The tankers are useful since they're easy to make and versatile, but having to invest in tugs is a pain. Expensive to make and always need to be massive plus you have to make sure you calculate their speed and range while tugging manually for each station and giving them orders is annoying. But I still think the tanker/tug/refiner station combo that specializes in each job is still better than having a massive mobile refiner that has to compromise in mobility, refining, and storage.

Perhaps a happy medium would be to have mobile refiners but have them serviced by smaller tankers. You'd still need a large slipyard to build them tho, and I personally think slipyard space comes at more of a premium than construction capacity due to retooling and capacity buildup time.
 

Offline bankshot

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Re: Mining Ships Useful?
« Reply #14 on: May 07, 2021, 10:07:32 AM »
For fuel harvesters - I use slow harvester ships and designate one of the inner moons as a fuel dump.  I use tugs to deploy the harvesters to their station and to move them to their new station if the current giant runs out of sorium.  The engines are often recycled from scrapped ships as their only purpose is to move the harvesters from the gas giant to the moon and back once every year or so.  As long as they can make it from the gas giant to the moon and back in 5-10 days that's plenty fast. 

By doing this I don't have to worry about managing the harvesters - just "drag and drop" and the fleet will automatically dump fuel when it is full then go back to harvest more.  The colony serves as the system's refueling stop and can double as the collection point for mass drivers - the freighter can refuel while picking up minerals.   

My tugs are also tankers - fuel tanks are fairly light/small, so throwing an ultra large tank or two on the design doesn't slow them down by much. 
 
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