Astroid clusters!
 

Hi

you know how there are some systems that have one sun in the middle surrounded by approx 15 asteroids that seem to be orbiting it.

I get a ship yard ship, and make a starbase on it and just fill it up with one sort of miners, and build them all around. but I noticed that the ai builds planets all around them.

can you mine from space if you populate a planet? because I think it would be more efficent if I am to create a planet, put a valve improvement on it, then can I still mine from a star base, or only from the planet? and when you create a planet does it have the same % as the asteroids did?

Just want people opinions on this!

thanks

Re: Astroid clusters!
 

Orbital miners are wasteful. And you can't remote mine if there are people below.
With the colony, you can either convert the atmosphere, or repeatedly blow it up and rebuild until you get the perfect atmosphere.
Then you get your value improvement (2 or 3 would probably be good, since they stack fully) and your maintenance free extraction facilities that don't reduce the value of the planet.

Re: Astroid clusters!
 

I remote mine (or strip-mine more precisely) extensively since they very quickly bring in huge income with a short start-up time. It's not inconcievable that in less than a year I can get an asteroid belt pumping out over 45K resources from a strip-miner base. But it depends on the economic situation you're in. Do you need the resources now, or can you wait and invest more to get more of them later on?

Also consider the long-term effects: the best value improvement plant improves a planet's value by 3% a year (it can take several years to pay back building one of those, so only build them on larger worlds that focus only on resources, you get a ROI faster.) Remote mining reduces a stellar object's value by 1% a month, over three times as quickly as it would take you to improve it back. So be aware that by remote mining, you really are ruining the potential planet for future generations of Green hippies.

You can't mine from a populated planet. You have to build resource miners on the planet. Also I think the cap of a value improvement plant is less than the cap of asteriods, meaning some might begin slightly more valuable than you can improve them to (not sure about this but I think it was 250% and 300% respectively.)

If you create a planet it will have the same values as the asteriod field did. The atmosphere and type will be random.

So in the long-term, yes, it makes sense to turn most asteroids into planets and colonize them. But you have to consider things like: would it be better for me to have large gains in a resource soon, or spend more time getting this to a rich planet? Is this asteroid belt in a militarily risky position? How long is the game going to go on vs. when will I see a return on my investment?

Personally my expensive high-tech fleets demand minerals and radioactives NOW. And my planets need to devote all their room to research and intelligence. And shuffling around breathers doesn't exactly make me ecstatic. But I do indeed see the point of those who swear off remote mining completely. I'm just a heartless capitalist pig-dog. And if I have a rich asteroid field in a system with built up planets, I usually do build that one into a resource colony.

Re: Astroid clusters!
 

i find remote mining a good "side" income in my few games. while my bigger ships are being researched (bah, who needs destroyers? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ) i just build several miner ships. little by little, but they do add to the income.

creating a planet is a far-fletched perspective in most games, i think... not even worth worrying about

Re: Astroid clusters!
 

Planet building is only far-fletched on small maps with lots of players. Larger maps will guarantee that building planets is a good idea. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Remote mining has nothing to do with Green vs. capitalist... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif The true capitalist would build the planets, making the most return off of his investment in the long term. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Astroid clusters!
 

Oh, every "true" long-term capitalist would probably be environmentally-friendly anyway... but not a greedy capitalist pig-dog.