Resource mining and you

[Aeson]

I may not be clear on what I mean by (to use your phrase) a tanker-battleship. What I am talking about is a ship designed to the exact specifications as a normal Refueling Ship design, only set as another ship class (Escort, Destroyer, Frigate, etc). That's it. I'm not talking about tanker fleets anymore, which people didn't seem to like. I'm talking about a single ship in the tanker role that is not a Resupply Ship.

Ah, sorry, I thought you were still asking in comparison to the self-refueling fleet. The point still stands that Resupply Ships can be much larger, and it can potentially be about as fast and as agile if you want to pay for the engines to make it that way, and it's still much more of a set-and-forget refueling point than the tankers are.

Is that about right? I prefer speed and agility and everyone else prefers strength and survivability in a tanker?

I often don't bother with tankers and keep my wars fairly close to home. As a result, I can't say I really have a preference in tankers.

[Airpower]

Yeah, that's true. Sorry if I sound like I'm arguing... I really think this is an interesting topic, and I'm enjoying learning as I read more responses.

I guess my thought on the "set and forget" point you raise is that a deployed tanker can't return fire or flee until it undeploys. Which in my experience doesn't happen unless it's manually ordered. This means a deployed Resupply Ship will sit there and get blown up if it's deployed.

A tanker-battleship on the other hand (especially with a gravity well generator) will get the heck out of dodge as soon as it sees enemies appear.

Your set-and-forget point is well taken though. I think I'll experiment with making a bare-bones, super cheap refueler with no defense or offense, 10 docking bays and 30100 cargo. Then deploy them in groups of 3 along enemy borders, and colocate them with a few defensive bases.

Of course at that point, you're better off with a dedicated Starbase design with weapons and armor but no commerce center, to act as a fixed resupply point...

I don't know... Maybe I'm thinking too hard about this.

[Yank31]

Well this was an amazing read, thank you for sharing.

Mining starbases clusters sound completely broken. Good piece of info for the sake of understanding things, still totally broken.

And I'm enlightened - and sad - about resupply ships and E2F now, dam that was such a good post !

[twinkypillow]

Mining starbases clusters sound completely broken. Good piece of info for the sake of understanding things, still totally broken.

What? mining starbases are not broken? i've been putting starbases with 3 or 4 extractors , 1-2 luxory, and 4 gas mining..and putting them with commerce centers and i can build as many as I want on 1 planet..so what do you mean?

I'm having trouble figuring out where i can build defensive bases... only on planets? i'm playing pirate.. version 10.

[Yank31]

ORIGINAL: pumkinfacer22

Mining starbases clusters sound completely broken. Good piece of info for the sake of understanding things, still totally broken.

What? mining starbases are not broken? i've been putting starbases with 3 or 4 extractors , 1-2 luxory, and 4 gas mining..and putting them with commerce centers and i can build as many as I want on 1 planet..so what do you mean?

By broken I meant imbalanced, overpowered, game breaking, unfair, probably not intended, etc.

I'm not saying they don't work, I'm saying they work too well. When you read the OP, the way you *could* abuse them seems broken.

[twinkypillow]

I see, but i dont think its broken or anything.. one of the best parts about this game is that they do let you "control" and "manually" build and create your own empire in "ANY" way you want..

Now i understand that if the AI can't keep up and handle it.. well thats on the matrix and the developer.. he should hire a team dedicated to AI.. or something.. **hint**..

but being able to put however many mines should you have the money, is what makes this 4x space game incredible.. and doing it your own way.. now it just needs more weapons and ship types and of course the economy fixed.. freighters..

[Yank31]

Regarding ship types I really wish the current ones would have more different sizes. It does feel kind of odd to me that I can build my escorts just as big as my capitals. Of course, I can always chose not to, but I still feel a bit of "hardcoded" limitation wouldn't hurt, here and there.

Regarding your points I can definitely see where you're coming from, and I do agree the freedom in this game largely contributes to make it incredible. I would imagine that enforcing a "happy middle" with codes can be a daunting task, and certainly one that we have little to no control over, so for now, it probably falls down to the player to be responsible enough to, well, not spoil his own thing ("abusing" game mechanics or not, whatever better suits your mood).

[Apheirox]

Question: Why oh why are mining ships/bases not designed optimally by default? According to Airpower's info, I need 4 mining engines/luxury extractors at tech 1 for a 100% extraction rate - anything less means I'm mining suboptimally. I could modify the designs myself and add extra engines/extractors, of course (default Mining Station design has only two Mining Engines and one Luxury extractor rather than the 4/4 needed) but not only is this tedious (the ship design is not the main attraction of the game for me, certainly not private ship/base design) it is also - and this is worse - 'cheating', since the AI can't make these same improvements. So, by default, both the player and the AI are seemingly made to use subpar designs. Why did the developers choose this? I'm well aware that player-designed ships are often better than the default designs but with something as critical as mining rate it would seem it should be imperative that the default designs are strong?

While I'm at it I should also ask if Airpower's data still applies as of latest version (1.9.5.10? Furthermore, I found this old thread on the same topic - here, they talk about mining ships having half the extraction rate of bases. Does this distinction also still apply? Finally, Nedrear talked about a 140% mining gas extraction rate as opposed to Airpower's 200% rate - I assume it is Airpower's more recent data that is the correct number?

Thanks!

[Bingeling]

The AI seems to just fine with the mining setups they use. If you leave them alone, one of them will win.

The game is balanced around the default mining setups. That is why it is not necessary to modify the mining stuff. If you want perfection, you modify it, but why do you want perfection?

[Apheirox]

The game is balanced around both the player and the AIs having the same subpar mining designs, therefore nobody getting an advantage. It's the same as if the default ship designs and the automatic retrofits designed all combat ships to never include more than one engine and one vectoring device per ship. Everybody would then have awfully slow and cumbersome ships fighting other awfully slow and cumbersome ships, therefore balanced. Yet, I doubt many players would be happy with that.

The mining designs are the same - everybody is extracting resources at a rate that is well below what the game allows for. The default level 1 Mining Station extracts luxury resources at only 30% of the rate it could. The player is given the option to correct this by making his own designs but in doing so he creates an enormous disparity with the AI.

What I'm saying is I think Eliott should consider refitting all the default designs with two more luxury extractors and one more mining engine. The extra cost and maintenance cost of this is completely negligible compared to the benefit of now having a 90-100% extraction rate. This way, both player and AIs are no longer artificially gimped and the player can feel free to design his ships and stations however he wants without the feeling that it is 'cheating'/making the game way too easy. Distant Worlds boasts of "being able to tailor the game how YOU want" but that doesn't make sense if actually doing so completely breaks the balancing.

Alternatively, if Eliott prefers the current, slowed down mining rate for gameplay he should lower the extraction rate limit so that the current 2 engine/1 luxury designs are optimal and extract at/near 100% rate.

At any rate, a revisiting of this topic by the developer is necessary. Airpower already pointed out a number of other things that don't work properly, both with regard to mining and others.

Hopefully a feature of 1.9.6.0?

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Apheirox
What I'm saying is I think Eliott should consider refitting all the default designs with two more luxury extractors and one more mining engine. The extra cost and maintenance cost of this is completely negligible compared to the benefit of now having a 90-100% extraction rate. This way, both player and AIs are no longer artificially gimped and the player can feel free to design his ships and stations however he wants without the feeling that it is 'cheating'/making the game way too easy. Distant Worlds boasts of "being able to tailor the game how YOU want" but that doesn't make sense if actually doing so completely breaks the balancing.

While it's not the base game of course, funnily enough that is exactly what I've done for the Mining Station designs for all races in the AI Improvement Mod.

[NephilimNexus]

ORIGINAL: buglepong

Resupply ships can work in enemy territory.

And they can be retrofitted with construction gear to allow them to be used as mobile repair stations, which can save so much time.

There is also a significant flaw in the "Star Bases as mining stations" strategy: Star Bases come out of the government budget, while regular mining stations are private sector. Since the private sector always has like x10 the disposable income of the military budget, it's generally best to dump as much of an empire's financial burden on them as possible. In other words one should never pay for crap they don't have to.

[aaatoysandmore]

You did a wonderful job OP doing all that math an calculations but with the AI as weak as it is is it really necessary to even worry about mining ticks? Trying to maximize profits in this game seems illogical (as Spock would say). I just take what I get from automation and don't worry about the micromanagement as I usually have millions of credits and resources from start to finish. But, I applaud you for all the work you did deciphering all that. [&o]

The fun in this game is WAR for me anyways and I'm in one often. Even when I have crappy ships. The ai always seems to beg for mercy even when it has the power to beat me. This one ai race had one planet but it had ships and defense bases that destroyed over half my armada and I didn't do any damage that wasn't repaired to those defense bases. He didn't have warp drive or nothing yet he had the power to beat everything in it's backyard. Yet, it asked for peace over n over again as I tried to stomp it in the dirt but couldn't.

When I can lose about 260 destroyers to one base and not even put a dent into it. A few points of maximum mining isn't going to help me. Now if you can figure a way for me to get max weapons and power in those calculations I'll be glad to listen.

In fact I have another question come to think of it. Do I need to research every weapon path in the tree or can I just pick like one or two lines and max those out with armor and missiles maybe?

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: aaatoysandmore
You did a wonderful job OP doing all that math an calculations but with the AI as weak as it is is it really necessary to even worry about mining ticks? Trying to maximize profits in this game seems illogical (as Spock would say). I just take what I get from automation and don't worry about the micromanagement as I usually have millions of credits and resources from start to finish. But, I applaud you for all the work you did deciphering all that. [&o]

The fun in this game is WAR for me anyways and I'm in one often. Even when I have crappy ships. The ai always seems to beg for mercy even when it has the power to beat me. This one ai race had one planet but it had ships and defense bases that destroyed over half my armada and I didn't do any damage that wasn't repaired to those defense bases. He didn't have warp drive or nothing yet he had the power to beat everything in it's backyard. Yet, it asked for peace over n over again as I tried to stomp it in the dirt but couldn't.

When I can lose about 260 destroyers to one base and not even put a dent into it. A few points of maximum mining isn't going to help me. Now if you can figure a way for me to get max weapons and power in those calculations I'll be glad to listen.

In fact I have another question come to think of it. Do I need to research every weapon path in the tree or can I just pick like one or two lines and max those out with armor and missiles maybe?

Given the comments about weak AI and lots of spare cash, how did you go with the AI Improvement Mod on Extreme Difficulty with some House Rules?

[Shark7]

I know that a lot of work has gone into figuring this out, and I give you praise for it, but...

I simply am not going to number crunch and try to figure out the exact perfect formula. Anymore I just design my designs, mod the game files to get the AI templates to match, and be happy with it.

That is the key though, you need to be sure to adjust the AI design templates to match your own so you can keep some balance to the game. I still do manual designs on my own ships, but I try to have templates that would be very, very similar to how I'd build them on my own. That is, trying to keep the defense/firepower/speed in balance (not perfect balance mind you, just competitive).

I think for some people (like me) the game is a lot less fun when you spend too much time an getting everything perfectly efficient. It's just a personal preference thing. [:)]