Modding your way to profitable remote mining
 

I just wanted to share with you the small(?) changes I made to make remote mining profitable w/o allowing it to become an abuse...

First, I added a -20% maintenece reduction to all transport vessels... they are afterall utility designs w/o many systems.

After that I made these changes to the actual robo miners/farmers/extractors...

Name := Robo - Miners I
Description := Small autonomous robots which can mine asteroids or empty planets remotely, but it will decrease their value permanently.
Pic Num := 243
Tonnage Space Taken := 100
Tonnage Structure := 100
Cost Minerals := 250
Cost Organics := 0
Cost Radioactives := 50
Vehicle Type := Ship\Base\Sat
Supply Amount Used := 100
Restrictions := None
General Group := Remote Mining
Family := 30
Roman Numeral := 1
Custom Group := 0
Number of Tech Req := 1
Tech Area Req 1 := Minerals Extraction
Tech Level Req 1 := 1
Number of Abilities := 2
Ability 1 Type := Remote Resource Generation - Minerals
Ability 1 Descr := Automatically mines 800 minerals from any asteroids or empty planets at those coordinates each turn. Only one ship can mine a location each turn.
Ability 1 Val 1 := 800
Ability 1 Val 2 := 0
Ability 2 Type := Cargo Storage
Ability 2 Descr :=
Ability 2 Val 1 := 0
Ability 2 Val 2 := 0
Weapon Type := None

(I kept the costs constant for each upgrade, but increased the amount harvested by 100 per upgrade level bringing them in-line with equal level planetary facilities... BTW, I used 150M/100org/50R for farmers and 200M/0org/100R for extractors)

This turned out to give a profit of about 1000 minerals for a small transport (w/ 2 miners... they'll fit because they toggle the CARGO flag) on a 100% asteroid field.

IMO I think that's fair...