Formula for bonus structure calculations

[snakeye]

Well!!!! Let it not be said that I am a guy that does not enjoy a challenge! Here are my latest findings.

I thought that structures have maintenance cost but apparently they dont. So the initial formula will work for every kind or production, be it Mineral, intelligence or Research! ( )

Now! You guys gave me an idea about Remote mining. In the past I used to build Remote mining ships only for asteroid belts with Resource_PCT > 100%. Since I read your post, I thought to examine if my assuption was logical. This is what I found. I normaly build mining bases rather than ships, but what I will say applies to either.

In order to determine whether is beneficial to build on an asteroid or not, one can look to the individual resource (ie minerals) or the total. After examining this fact, I came to the conclusion that taking the total of an asteroid is pointless and not really useful. For example I might be mining on an asteroid with 135% Mineral, 50% Organic and 10% Radio. I know my ship needs radio to maintain, but I dont care spending it since I am after the 135% mineral bonus. In view of that, it would be safe to assume we would need a formula to calculate what would be the ideal % of an asteroid before we place a REMOTE MINER COMPONENT to harvest the particular resource. Lets assume we have an asteroid belt with stats:
135% Mineral, 40% bio, 60% Radio.
I would like to know IF its worth sending a ship with a Mineral mining component on to harvest minerals and what would be the min % bonus I would require (did i undestand your request successfully?). So here it goes:

if C = the bonus in percent
MC = maintenance cost of the ship AS FAR AS the resource harvested is concerned
and A = the amount of material produced by the component AS FAR AS the resource harvested is concerned
and N = number of such components on the ship
we have:

C>MC/(N*A)

This means that in order to gain advantage of an asteroid the % bonus for the material has to be greater than its MaintenanceCost divided by the product of components with their output. One can verify the formula roughly like so: if we increase the number of components N then the product of N * A becomes larger, but MC/N*A becomes smaller, hence a smaller percentage is enough to give us profit from the mining.

Real game example:
I have a ship that containts 2 mineral miners, 1 organic and 1 radio. The maintenance of the ship is 487mineral, 59 organic, 71 radio. Whats the ideal asteroid for my ship?

Answer:
Using the above formula I have:
C(mineral)>MC(mineral)/N*A

since i have 2 components N=2 and they give me 700 each in minerals. So i have:
C> 487/1400 or C>0.34 or C>34%. In otherwords, I will have profit from the asteroid as far as minerals go, for as low bonus as 35%. To verify this we have 1400 * .35 = 490 which is greater than 487. Of course, building the ship would require time and materials so something as low as that its not really viable, but gives you an idea on how low it can be before you actually make profit on it. It came as a surprise to me since I never build on anything less than 100% bonus

[Slynky]

So, did you really use a "real time" example with a real ship? If so, what was the cost of building the ship? Given that, a person could come up with a scale on how many months a person had to have it in service (at the asteroid) at a certain percentage in order for the ship to "pay for itself" and begin "sending back" a profit.

(yeah, I know, I know...git off yer back, right? )

[Fyron]

There is no maintenance cost for any facilities. DS just meant the build cost. But, that is not a good way to compare them, because the increased production rates offset the build cost of Robotoids and such very quickly. You lose at most 4 turns of production from a mineral miner when building a planetary Robotoid, and System Robotoids provide so much of an increase that the extra build time is even more irrelevant in most situations. The build cost of the facility is really only a major issue in Proportions mod.

[FadingSuns]

Snakeye, I'm lovin you man! Finally a formula that makes sense even to someone mathmatically impared like myself. Oh, on an earler message from Slynky: I've got plenty of stats people around me at work too.. none play SE4. What a drag.

[snakeye]

Originally posted by Slynky:
So, did you really use a "real time" example with a real ship? If so, what was the cost of building the ship? Given that, a person could come up with a scale on how many months a person had to have it in service (at the asteroid) at a certain percentage in order for the ship to "pay for itself" and begin "sending back" a profit.

(yeah, I know, I know...git off yer back, right? )

No its ok! I appreciate the comments and suggestions. Cost of building is something I didnt includ in the formulae because there can be no standard relation to cost and profit-over-time. The reason for this is that there are other factors to take into account (productivity, research of new techs that make ship obsolete, accidents, attacks, etc). The formula assumed the ship will be in operation for the end of days. In other words, IF I was to build a ship that would Last forever, be used forever and able to mine forever, what would be the minimum asteroid to mine for the given resource. Since your questions, I started thinking about the initial submitted formula. I think as a general gauge is quite solid! With that, I can calculate quickly how much more I would gain if I installed a system-wide bonus facility, and can use the same formula for research, intel, production. As far as building a remote mining ship goes, then you have to tell me how soon would you like the ship to "pay for itself" as far as the given resource is concerned. If we assume that you would wish to "pay" for the given ship in one turn after its operation then the formula can be modified to:
IF
C=%of bonus from an asteroid
MC=Maintenance cost
BC=Building cost
N=number of miners onboard
A=mining value per turn of miner
then we have
C>(MC+BC)/N*A
Going back to the previous example of the mining ship, if it's cost for minerals is 6500, maintenance is 487 minerals, has 2 mineral miners for 700 per turn each then:

C>(6500+487)/2*700 or C>4.99 or C must be greater than 500%!!! Since there is no asteroid in the game that will have that, we can settle for a ship that will pay for itself in a many turns as it was built. In the case of the above ship, I used a level II shipyard ship to construct my base(yes the ship is actually a base) with rate of 1650 minerals per turn. Substituting this to the above we have:
C>(1650+487)/2*700 or C>1.5264 ~ C>153%
So in order to produce enough to pay for the ship in as many turns as it was built, I will have to aim for any asteroid with a bonus to minerals of 154% or above. You can understand from this formula, that I chose when I want to pay for the ship. This was a choice rather than a rule. Different ppl might have different demands. But by adding the cost in the above equation, we can see quickly if its worth building a mining base with 2 mineral miners or a small ship with one. Hope you find this helpful.

[Loser]

Snakeye you are incredible, I love to see the arithmetically capable do their thing. Your formula for facilities is great.

There are a few more things, however, to take into account where Remote Mining is concerned.

1. Cost of the construction vehicle.

2. Cost to get there. (Turns of movement to proposed station location X construction ship maintenance.)

3. Cost while there. (Turns of station construction X construction ship maintenance.)

4. The value of an asteroid decreases over time. (For this reason it may be a good idea to include a self-destruct device on the mining station, so you can get rid of it when it no longer produces more than it costs in maintenance.)

5. Cost afterward. (Continued maintenance of construction ship until it starts doing something useful again (like heading to the next asteroid, when maintenance should be 'billed' to the next station) Remember to account for taking the construction ship back to a Resupply Depot somewhere in your calculations, if you intend to use the ship for a while.)

This is in addition to those elements you have already isolated.

6. Initial cost of mining station.

7. Maintenance of mining station, a function of 6.

8. Mining station's unmodified production, almost a function of 6. (Really a function of the components of the ship, of which 6 is also a function.)

9. Asteroid's starting production modifier.

After all of this, one could put together a separate formula for the maximum viable distance from planet-side shipyard (or Last station) to proposed station site, maximum construction ship cost, maximum station cost, and minimum asteroid value for any given set of the remaining values, for the proposed station to become profitable at all, ever or to be come profitable in a specified number of turns.

If you have the time, patience, and motivation to put all of this into a spreadsheet (with graphs, in all five involved dimensions, with twenty-four color glossy photos with the circles and the arrows and the paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one is for), then you are truly an amazing human begin.

If you just want to lay out the formulae for us, with your usual, readable, reasonable explanation then your just a damn cool guy.

So says me.

[Slynky]

Originally posted by Loser:
...twenty-four color glossy photos with the circles and the arrows and the paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one is for),...

Hey, "Arlo", I think you just showed your true age... .