Doesn't Anyone Remote Mine?

[Cyclop]

I've been in a few pbw games and it seems that I am the only one who takes advantage of remote mining. Doing so has turned into a mineral gold mine as in most games I can easily acquire more than 500k worth of minerals alone, not to mention the other 2-400k of organic or rads if higher. All it takes is a good systems and patience. Any one else have an luck?

Does the remote mining amount get calculated in the Traded percent to your allies?

[Gryphin]

I do it against the AI. It can ba a micro managment nightmare. With the extra moons of Fyrons Quadrant Mod it is somewhat easy to load them over colonized planets.
I create a 1 Sat bay escort and trying to "program" its Load and Launch sequance. With one sat bay it can only pic up one sat so you don't end up with multble sats in one sector.

[Pax]

Originally posted by Cyclop:
I've been in a few pbw games and it seems that I am the only one who takes advantage of remote mining. Doing so has turned into a mineral gold mine as in most games I can easily acquire more than 500k worth of minerals alone, not to mention the other 2-400k of organic or rads if higher. All it takes is a good systems and patience. Any one else have an luck?

IMO, the costs of setting up remote mining, usually outweigh the benefits. I think the RM components are a bit large, and/or a bit costly, for the gains.

Basically -- for every remote mining ship, base, or satellite I could build ... I've always a more-pressing need for OTHER satellites, bases, or ships. If the "profit margin" were larger, I might place remote mining higher in priority than other ships ... but IMO, it's always better to colonise a world, than remote mine it ... even if I can only build one facility, a single Monolith 3 is going to be superior to a similar cost base in terms of production, ESPECIALLY over time (the monolith doesn't degrade the planet's value) ....

[ November 22, 2002, 18:01: Message edited by: Pax ]

[capnq]

I've occasionally used rad miners as an early game substitute for Resource ConVersion, but most of the time I simply don't need them. I'm more likely to be faced with deciding whether to build resource storage facilities or to ramp up production to use up my surplus production.

Does the remote mining amount get calculated in the Traded percent to your allies?

I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

[Cyclop]

I know for a fact that a little investment can turn into a huge gain. If you build a ship with a Construction Yard, move it to an astroid with %200+% in minerals, build a Space Yard Construction base, then a Battle Station with 14 mineral miners, that a 25k a turn mineral surplus. Do that in an asteroid field you can easily produce more than your planets. Granted this will take a 20+ turns to deploy but if you start small the gains will outweigh the investment. Not to mention other tricks that could enhance the mining field.

[geoschmo]

The biggest problem with that is that to build a construction ship requires a cruiser hull or larger. And by the time I have researched cruiser tech, not to mention battle station tech, my empire has expanded to the point where it's much easir to just pump out a half dozen colony ships and plant some more colonies.

Unfortuntly, when you really need remote mining to work, early in the game, there is no practical method of employing it. By the time you have the tech to make it worthwhile, it's no longer needed.

Geoschmo

[Gozra]

Remote mining is profitable. But the game gets so huge so fast that the player time involved gets high compared to the advantage you get in the game. Also remote mining uses up the asteroids and turning a 200% plus asteroid into a planet is the gift that keeps on giving. But remote mining does have other advantages.
It can be used as a means of economic warfare. By Reducing asteroids and planets(yes virgina remote mining works on planets too) then giving the worthless husks away is a nice touch.
If you get to a system and put some miners out (really nice with sensors)when the badguy destroys them they can be used as a pretext for declaring war. Not that anyone in SEIV needs a pretext.

[Gandalph]

Here -->is a link to when this was discussed before. Hope it helps clarify.

EDIT -> In a PBW game I am in now I have 9 remote mineral mining bases (producing approx. 6500 mins per turn each) and 3 remote rad bases (roughly the same output) and would be severely hampered in production without them. BTW it is turn number 97.

[ November 23, 2002, 03:20: Message edited by: Gandalph ]

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
The biggest problem with that is that to build a construction ship requires a cruiser hull or larger. And by the time I have researched cruiser tech, not to mention battle station tech, my empire has expanded to the point where it's much easir to just pump out a half dozen colony ships and plant some more colonies.

Unfortuntly, when you really need remote mining to work, early in the game, there is no practical method of employing it. By the time you have the tech to make it worthwhile, it's no longer needed.

Geoschmo

You could fix this by reducing both the size and output of Remote Extraction components in the same proportions. The 'efficiency' needs to be carefully balanced to keep it from being too easy to do, but I agree that the components are too large at present. Slash the size and output in half and they're much more usable.

[Captain Kwok]

The Star Trek TNG mod makes exactly the change that MB suggested. Half the components, half of the output - expect for rads - which are cut in half for the whole mod.