Not enough money...

[farflamex]

I have around 400,000 credits, but every time I try to buy a mining station for 5,000 or so, it tells me I don't have enough money. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?

[Erik Rutins]

In what way are you trying to purchase a mining station? Is this in a diplomatic negotiation?

[farflamex]

Sorry I mean build one, with a construction ship.

[Erik Rutins]

That should indeed be pretty straightforward. Are construction ships building other mining stations and just not this one? How are you issuing the order (interface-wise)?

Regards,

- Erik

[farflamex]

Right-clicking on the planet and hitting 'Build X here'. Is it because there are so many queued up and it counts the potential cost of the queue against current credits?

[Bingeling]

As far as I know, the mining station is paid for by the civilians, so your money is not important. Their money is.

I don't quite see how you could run the civilians broke in any normal scenario, though. Are you running crazy tax levels?

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

As far as I know, the mining station is paid for by the civilians, so your money is not important. Their money is.

Only for maintenance. State funds are used to build it.

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: Kayoz

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

As far as I know, the mining station is paid for by the civilians, so your money is not important. Their money is.

Only for maintenance. State funds are used to build it.

Prepare for that to be true soon, then

[feelotraveller]

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

ORIGINAL: Kayoz

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

As far as I know, the mining station is paid for by the civilians, so your money is not important. Their money is.

Only for maintenance. State funds are used to build it.

Prepare for that to be true soon, then

Hooray!

[Bingeling]

It could be worth a test, though. If civilians have negative cash, can you build a mine? It is a bit too annoying to set up for me to bother.

[feelotraveller]

I didn't stick my hand up for the Shadows beta otherwise I probably would test this. [:D]

[Bingeling]

Yeah, you can build a mine even if the civilians are in the red.

Very peaceful galaxies, with sky high tax levels and lots of busy constructors, can tell you that...

[farflamex]

So what's happening in my case then? I haven't even altered the tax levels, my cash levels were high and it just kept saying I didn't have enough money. The only thing I can think is that I'd queued up a huge amount of mines.. I'm not sure if it's 'wrong' to do that but I just tell them to build a mine at practically every planet with a half-decent amount of resources. At that stage I may have had 50 mines queued up and 400,000 credits... so the cost of the waiting mines might have exceeded my balance. Maybe it sets aside the cost of the queued mines first?

[farflamex]

Actually it's not that, I've just started a new game anyway (so it's not a problem now really unless it happens again) and I've noticed in a new game, it lets you queue up as many mines as you want without problems. If you literally run out of money, you get a pop-up box saying so. So I dunno what was happening. It was after reloading a saved game, could be a bug?

Another quick question, is there a problem with mining asteroids? It doesn't say anything, but are they just as good as an equivalent amount of resources on a planet? I have an asteroid field in my main system and almost every rock has over 50% gold (which sounds good to me) so I'm setting up a few mines there. Worth it?

[Jeeves]

The only asteroids worth mining are the named scenic ones for gold and dilithium. For them you custom design a resort with mining equipment and cargo bays. Also be sure to give those resorts at least ten docking bays...

Lonnie Courtney Clay
edit : my rule of thumb for mining is that it isn't worth mining with less than 125% total from sum of minerals percents plus two times sum of luxuries percents. You might need to explore faster if you can't find that required level anywhere. Or send constructors to repair ships in debris fields. I micromanage all constructors...

[farflamex]

Hmmm, I tend to just mine everything unless it looks really poor (less than 50%). How do I calculate the income from a mine? To be honest, if I just spam mining stations everywhere, it still seems to go fine and my empire grows quickly, but I'd like to know if any of the mines are inefficient.

Are asteroids particularly poor or do you just go off the resources? If an asteroid has 50% gold, is it the same income as a moon with 50% gold?

[Bingeling]

You don't need that many mines, really.

You need to mine more than you spend, and it depends on the size of your empire. Fuel sources are the most critical. 1-2 sources for each strategic and luxury. More for the ones most needed (steel and friends).

Expansion planner shows your total stores. If they increase, you got enough mines, but a spare don't hurt in case you lose one. Of course, if your stores are good, you can wait with replacing the lost one until it is actually lost.

[Numdydar]

I just like building mines [:)] So I build them everywhere lol.

[farflamex]

Same here and it seems to help the empire to grow faster. I'm going to play this current game with just 100+ resource planets, unless they're in a really convenient location (like the moon next to my homeworld). It's hard to tell if it makes a different, when I just grow everywhere, I seem to do better.

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Farflamex

So what's happening in my case then?

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