Most large planets have millions of minerals, but often only at 0.1 accessibility. It's the normal trade-off in mineral generation, small bodies have low amounts and high accessibility, large bodies the opposite. Do you want to see less such planets, or just have their numbers dialed down by a few orders of magnitude?
I would like to decide if I want it to dial down or not. I know I can do it from SM but I would like to set it up myself. I think I can agree with the below:
Honestly I'd love mineral settings, both for amount and accessibility, separate for each mineral as well. Mineral slides would be a decent addition allowing for custom challenges and self-balancing beyond the simplistic tradeoff of low acc but high amount and vice versa which in practice often doesn't impact the gameplay as much as it sounds on paper.
I've always seen such deposits as either endgame sources where your extreme mining rate makes them usable and other sources have been exhausted or as backup options in case there are no good sources of a mineral available otherwise.
This is your view and I could understand to a certain extent. However, the mineral deposits also need to account for distance (fuel to transport and route to set up are a major factor in larger empires especially not that we'll have raiders in 1.14). A 0.1 large deposit could work better if near (in fact, it always does) as you can transport minerals faster (partially mitigating less mining resources) and using less fuel. Furthermore, setting up the mining operation as well will cost you less fuel and can be done faster along with expanding such operation.
Would be nice for a change, to have a game where finding an important mineral site would actually be a VITAL strategic asset to defend at all costs.
This is not aided by the fact that you need income of eleven minerals in total, naturally forcing you to mine multiple locations and away from single points.
Do you? Really? I think that mostly your priorities are always the same if you start conventional:
Neutronium. Gosh, these Shipyards do need it!
Sorium. As your efficiency is low at the start, fuel becomes essential especially if you lucky (or unlucky) enough to find aliens within the first 2 or 3 jumps from Sol.
This will lead to a massive need for Gallicite and if you planning a ground invasion Vendarite.
The rest of the minerals (including the important Mercassium and Corundium) are all based on the scale of your operations and usually extremely manageable with the 50,000,000 tons you just found on a remote planet with 0.1 accessibility from now to eternity. So yes, I don't like it. Deposits over the million tons should be the exception and not the norm, 0.1 accessibility or not.
How NPRs interact with a mineral starved map may be a point of concern, though.
This is true, but again I think that this feature is more for Human Vs Human situation. Consider that in the past 6 months I now generate and control my own Aliens as I cannot be bothered with NPR nonsense anymore. In this meaning, the changes to AI coming in 1.14 are extremely welcome. I think Steve should focus on adding more threats in the form of Spoilers before actually revamping the AI of the NPRs. Considering the complexity of Aurora, and despite his best efforts, AI will never match Human creativity and problem solving on the go. It is a system too different from Stellaris (or DWU for instance) where the "cage" of rules and simple math limitation can make the AI looking like challenging.
FINAL NOTESI am extremely satisfied with the system overall and the comments above are just to clarify that while adding a simple slider could have larger implications, it is also true that some elements may be reviewed based on the years of experience we all have now on Aurora. Eventually, SM simple editing tools on the minerals generation and spawn are already enough for those who are looking for different challenges without extensive DB tempering like in other circumstances. Still, few of us may be happy with a less Randy Random experience and a more Custom Sandbox one.