Remote mining reduces production? - Page 2

DirectorTsaarx · #11 March 22nd, 2001, 04:47 PM

This has been debated at length before; and Drake is right, the decrease is 1% per turn, no matter how many (or how few) miners/farmers/extractors are being used per turn. So that starbase could mine a 144% asteroid field for 144 turns.

Well, OK, slightly less than that, since eventually maintenance will be higher than the resources mined; but with Mineral Miner III's, a Master Computer (slightly less expensive than all those life support and crew quarters for a starbase), and the 50% maint. reduction for bases, that comes to, um, 5000 minerals/125 orgs/725 rads maintenance cost; 24 miners extracting (800*value) each means that you make profit on any asteroid (or planet) with mineral value higher than 26%. So, in reality, that Starbase loaded with mineral miners could mine for (144 - 26) or 118 turns. Obviously, you'd want to scrap it at that time. Which would return a little value also...

Suicide Junkie · #12 March 22nd, 2001, 05:28 PM

quote:
My MOD has maintanence set to 15%.

Whoah! Does that mean that if you set your "maintenance reduction" trait to +20%, that your ships will have -5% maintenance?

Ie. Ships make you money by sitting in space!?!

Just repeat build factory bases with lots of expensive components, and soon you'll be making 1M resources from one planet!

Hydraa · #13 March 22nd, 2001, 06:07 PM

I just did a quick test on this in 1.30 and zero is as low as maintenance will go. So Racial points spent above would be wasted.

Windborne · #14 March 23rd, 2001, 02:31 AM

I think adding in an official "Deep space mining" set would be awesome. If you took all those remote mining components out of their current spot s you could group them together like this:

Tech Level 1: small expensive mining components that give lots of resources per turn put reduce the planet/astroids value.

Tech level 2: Large expensive mining components that give a small return without reducing value

As time goes by your remote mining components would become cheaper and the returns they give could potentially become much greater then that of your surface based mines. This would give players the choice of whether to specialize in remote mining or planetary mining, plus the ability to choose whether to take the huge amount of resources each turn at the cost of polluting the galaxy, or go the slower way with a larger initial investment and a small return forever.

Maybe one of you mod-people could work on this and send a complete set to MM?

Will · #15 March 23rd, 2001, 05:10 AM

quote:
Originally posted by DirectorTsaarx:
This has been debated at length before; and Drake is right, the decrease is 1% per turn, no matter how many (or how few) miners/farmers/extractors are being used per turn. So that starbase could mine a 144% asteroid field for 144 turns.

Well, OK, slightly less than that, since eventually maintenance will be higher than the resources mined; but with Mineral Miner III's, a Master Computer (slightly less expensive than all those life support and crew quarters for a starbase), and the 50% maint. reduction for bases, that comes to, um, 5000 minerals/125 orgs/725 rads maintenance cost; 24 miners extracting (800*value) each means that you make profit on any asteroid (or planet) with mineral value higher than 26%. So, in reality, that Starbase loaded with mineral miners could mine for (144 - 26) or 118 turns. Obviously, you'd want to scrap it at that time. Which would return a little value also...

Well, this goes against my experience in the game, and I don't recall seeing anything in the History that says it was changed. The resources should go down 1% for EACH miner component, and I have seen it do just that several times when I experimented with miner components on BaseShips (just barely profitable, not really worth it). If it only goes down 1% per vessel (and thus, 1% per turn no matter how many components), then it's a bug and should be reported with a savegame.

Suicide Junkie · #16 March 23rd, 2001, 05:12 AM

quote:
I just did a quick test on this in 1.30 and zero is as low as maintenance will go. So Racial points spent above would be wasted.

Including the "merchants" or "engineers" culture?

-----------------------
Windborne:
I'm pretty sure MM would have to add another component ability. As it is now, you can turn the value reduction on & off, but only on a global scale, using the settings.txt. All remote mining components will act the same in regards to value reduction.

E-mail MM, and ask for that new ability, and explain the reasoning behind it.
I like the idea, but I'm sure MM will have to change the .EXE

Hydraa · #17 March 23rd, 2001, 05:08 PM

Yes, I testing it with changing the settings.txt file to 15 % and then loaded 6 races to check starting @ 100% maintainence increasing in 5% increments and then the Last one as merchant+120% maintainance.

The Last 3 all had zero maintaince and did not add any resources back into the pool

DirectorTsaarx · #18 March 23rd, 2001, 05:26 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Will:
Well, this goes against my experience in the game, and I don't recall seeing anything in the History that says it was changed. The resources should go down 1% for EACH miner component, and I have seen it do just that several times when I experimented with miner components on BaseShips (just barely profitable, not really worth it). If it only goes down 1% per vessel (and thus, 1% per turn no matter how many components), then it's a bug and should be reported with a savegame.

My experience (in a 1.19 game; haven't tried it lately) was the opposite of yours. And discussions on this bulletin board at the time agreed that the reduction was per ship, not per component, and that MM had intended it that way.

I'll test it in my 1.30 game and see what happens...

Windborne · #19 March 23rd, 2001, 10:42 PM

I just sent the following e-mail to MM, if we want it in the next patch, or perhaps even ever other people should probably send similiar notes supporting the idea, along with more suggestions:

_____________________________________________

I've been talking in the shrapnel forums and an idea came up that could make for a much more interesting and diverting game, but nobody seems to know how to implement it . . .
The idea relates to the concept of remote mining. Durign the current game we get huge expensive remote mining components withe very level of resource extraction technology we research, and noboy uses them because they pollute the galaxy ruining planents and potential planets (astroids) we might want to colonize later on.
Howeverif you were to remove the remote mining components from each resource extraction technology and place them into a seperate field called "deep space mining" a lot more options open up.
The main option, and the one we are having a problem figuring out how to impliment goes like this:

==========================================

At first level of deep space mining you et access to the first set of huge, expensive, polluting remote miners. These miners give vast amounts of resources each turn but chew up the neighborhood like locusts.

At second level of deep space mining you get a new Version of each mining device that produces significantly less resources but is environmentally sound, leaving the planets/astroids intact.

At third level you get the next incarnation of the polluting component.

And at fourth you get a safer Version that produces much less in the way of goods each turn.

The field goes on like this for at least six levels.
=============================================

The advantages of the system are as follows:

(A) You can research remote mining
technologies to be more efficient then
your planet-bound facilities, letting
some rces specialize in remote mining.
Adding diversity to the game.

(B) Players get the bread and butter
decision of whe ther to rape the
universe for vast amounts of riches now
or get a tiny return continually over
time.

(B) Astroid systems would become more valuable early on. Someone with deep space mining level four and starbases could turn an astroid system into something awesome, while another player might want to turn those same astroids into planets. A potentially vast difference between different human players. Imagine the hotseat play! ::grins::

There was also talk of a specialized cheap hull called the prospector that wold need to be filled with 60% remote mining components.

Drake · #20 March 24th, 2001, 03:24 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Will:
If it only goes down 1% per vessel (and thus, 1% per turn no matter how many components), then it's a bug and should be reported with a savegame.

I'm wondering where you get the impression that 1% per turn must be a bug. Just because you add more components doesn't logically imply you'll drain more minerals when the game lets you pull resources from colonized planets with no resource concentration loss. I think you're trying to throw in realism- tsk, tsk.