Best route to mining Io

[legemaine (OP)]

Hi all, just thought I'd ask the collective wisdom about some potential decisions

I've been fortunate enough to get a lot of minerals on Io - enough with other in system resources to help sort out the potential minerals crunch - in particular 3m (1) Duranium, 1m(0.9) Vendarite, 2m(0.4) Corundium and 3m(0.4) Gallicite.

Now how best to extract? I'm currently establishing a ground colony (6.2 CC) and relying on injecting greenhouse gas to get the temp up and the CC down, but I could automine or use an orbital habital I suppose. Bear in mind I want a really substantial mining operation here, to get all those lovely minerals out of the ground.

How would others suggest?

Legemaine

[Zap0]

Any of those options are valid. Terraforming the body to habitable and manned mining will of course be the cheapest option in the long run. Calculate the costs for how much automines vs orbital habs vs infrastructure would cost you if you want to know how it is right now.

[vorpal+5]

I'm in a similar situation, with Io having many interesting minerals. I settled it and let it develop around 2 M, and then it kicked automatically, with civilian freighters transporting extra infrastructures and then pop.
I'm basically doing nothing and it is already at 11 M.

[gpt3]

Here's an old detailed thread with worker count mechanics: https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12258.0

Since Io's colony cost is 6.2, you will need to either use terraforming to get your CC below 5 or deploy orbital habitats. This is because the proportion of your population working in the manufacturing/mining sector will over time drift towards (25-5*colonyCost)%. This means that it is possible to have your worker pool shrink over time even as your population increases.

• A 0 CC home world will eventually settle into 25% of its population as TN workers
• A 2 CC plant will have 15% as TN workers
• A 5 CC plant will have 0% as TN workers

In the future in v2.6.0: https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg169793#msg169793

• The new "Colonization Pressure" mechanic means that your population will be reluctant to immigrate (and tempted to emigrate) if your CC is too high.
• Trade good production has been drastically reduced, so you won't have as much free civilian infrastructure as before.

[nuclearslurpee]

Here's an old detailed thread with worker count mechanics: https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12258.0

Since Io's colony cost is 6.2, you will need to either use terraforming to get your CC below 5 or deploy orbital habitats. This is because the proportion of your population working in the manufacturing/mining sector will over time drift towards (25-5*colonyCost)%. This means that it is possible to have your worker pool shrink over time even as your population increases.

• A 0 CC home world will eventually settle into 25% of its population as TN workers
• A 2 CC plant will have 15% as TN workers
• A 5 CC plant will have 0% as TN workers

A couple of implications which may be relevant for OP and others:

• With a small amount of calculus, you can find that the peak manufacturing population occurs for a (total) population in billions of P = (0.76 - 0.04*C)^4, where C is the colony cost. For an Io colony cost of 6.2, this means the maximum manufacturing population will occur for a total population of about 69 million (nice!).
• For a colony cost less than 5.0, once you reach a population of about 240 million the services sector hits a maximum of 70% and manufacturing population increases linearly with total population. This means that, in theory, growing a colony with C < 5.0 will eventually allow you to exceed the maximum manufacturing population from the previous point, although for higher colony costs this may not be economical and the "lower maximum" may be a more realistic target. I would say colony cost of 3.0 or 3.5 roughly marks this boundary, but it depends on how willing you are to invest in growing a population beyond 240 million.
• A colony with C > 5.0 has a hard maximum manufacturing population, and you should not grow it beyond this point. In practice, you probably want to be within a couple million population in either direction and draw off pops/infrastructure from normal growth every so often to maintain the level. This rule applies for Io!
• For a colony cost less than 1.5, manufacturing population will always increase with total population.

Since ark modules do not have any agricultural population, the rules work a little bit differently, but suffice to say since the colony cost factor disappears you will always gain manufacturing population when expanding an orbital (total) population. Since Ark Modules cost a bit more than 500 infrastructure per million population, this means that Ark Modules are probably the most cost-efficient way to support a population for a colony cost greater than 5.0; for lower colony costs it depends on the relative importance of the infrastructure costs vs improved population efficiency, but probably a colony cost of 4.0 is a good approximate break point as a rule of thumb. I would therefore recommend using orbital populations to colonize Io if you have researched and built Ark Modules.

[legemaine (OP)]

Hi , thanks to all of you that took the time to reply to this thread.

I haven't researched Ark Modules yet, but I can see that this might well have been the optimum strategy. I currently have a bunch of terraformers heating up the surface and CC is now well below 6 and I hope to be below the magic 5 before long. Hence on this occasion I will probably go with a reducing the CC to a reasonable value by heating up the surface, getting the colony size to an acceptable level and then letting the civs pile in. I note the comment that this won't work so well with the next version with reduced trade good availability, but well, I'll do it differently next time!

Thanks again for the interesting insights

Legemaine

[Noriad]

Another possible strategy (I play conventional starts), which must be played from the beginning, is to combine civilian mining and regular colonies.
Initially, I only survey bodies that are good for colonization: Luna, Mars, Mercury, and possibly some of the larger gas giant moons.
At game start, I immediately start enlarging my naval shipyard and when it's big enough (roughly 3000 tons), I build a survey vessel with conventional rockets, conventional geosurvey equipment and a tiny cargo space. Slow and primitive but adequate for this task.
I then survey those few bodies, and if any has the potential to spawn a civilian mining operation, I leave it untouched and dump 2 infrastructure on an empty body. This unlocks the creation of civilian mining. Then I push my wealth income as high as feasible with financial centers and accompanying research, to increase the chance of triggering a civilian mining center. Once it is in place, which is why I initially restrict my initial surveys to places I want the mining colonies to spawn, I add a regular colony to it.
If you build a regular colony, no new Civilian mining centers can spawn. But once the first civilian mining center is in place, it will expand over time, adding up to the equivalent of hundreds of automines. Plus you get a free military unit to keep order.
Civilian mining centers spawn if the body contains Duranium or Gallicite, minimum 10,000 units with concentration 0.7 or more. Higher wealth income increases the spawn chance.

[David_H_Roarings]

Io can be terraformed to 0. 0 cc eventually

[Marski]

I use infrastructure to colonize it first and then use terraforming stations to remove the methane to reduce CC, I never commit much to maintaining the colony beyond resource extraction.

[bankshot]

The four Galilean moons (Europa, Io, Calisto, and Ganymede) can all be fully terraformed, so you will eventually want to colonize all of them.  Unless minerals are a factor - as in your case - I usually colonize them just after Luna and Mars.  Initially, I also concentrate on terraforming one colony at a time.  That way once the CC starts to shrink I can move (or allow civilian transport to move) infrastructure from a colony that no longer needs it to the one that will be next.  That way you can reuse the bulk of the infrastructure - this is particularly easy with the moons since they are so close to each other.

So full speed ahead on Io terraforming!  once that is complete send the ships to the other moons. 

For later: Mercury's eccentricity means you will probably need some infrastructure there permanently as you can't get cc to stay at 0.  Also be sure to get Titan's hydrosphere up to at least 60% before you warm it past -30C.  That way the albedo change from the melt will push it over the edge to full habitability.

[kyonkundenwa]

You can even use the hydrosphere exploit to eventually make the four big Jovian moons 0 CC with an earthlike atmosphere, no magic technical hot gas required. Just give it a high hydrosphere %, raise the temperature above freezing (+albedo due to hydrosphere), remove the hydrosphere, lower the temperature back below freezing (-0 albedo due to no hydrosphere), and repeat. If you go fully 100% -> 0% you get 0.15 albedo each time.
It takes an eternity due to how slowly the liquid hydrosphere evaporates into gas that can be terraformed away but it will there eventually. Probably a more realistic timeline compared to the rate at which I can add 3 ATM of magic technical hot gas from space to turn the place into a paradise. It's obviously an exploit but I don't feel bad about using it because I'm achieving the exact same effect as just adding hot gas as normal, but I'm making it take 50-100x longer for no other reason than to see that beautiful assessment "Nitrogen - Oxygen (0.2)" when I open the System View.

[Steve Walmsley]

The 'fake' greenhouse gas is really just a normal greenhouse gas in terms of effects on temperature. The 'magical' part is that it doesn't poison us or suffocate us

[boolybooly]

Depends how you want to roleplay it.

Strategically, I would stack Io with automines because it is not the absolute cost which matters, so much as whether production can meet the cost and serve the higher priority of the tech research increase curve and meet defence requirements. If you have corundium there then it can supply its own growth.

Plus I currently play with heating Sol disaster, so am preparing to abandon the system to machines anyway so populated colonies are all in alien systems and to spice things up, civilian transport is disabled. Sol's destiny is to become a ghost system of hot baked machinery slaving for humanity in perpetuity.