This is a collection of economic and logistics changes I would love to see. Curious for your feedback.
Note, I will use “CMC” to mean a civilian mining company, similar to a shipping line. When I use the term “CMC”, I do not mean the mining installation historically called a CMC, which I propose renaming to Civilian Auto Mine (C-AM) and having them be the same efficiency/size as a normal auto-mine.
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Civilian mining companies have a home-base colony, i.e. the body which triggered them to be founded. CMCs still operate within one system but are no longer 1:1 with the bodies they mine. A single CMC could establish operations on multiple bodies in that system. This would make them more like shipping lines. CMCs earn money from sale of minerals and would determine which bodies to invest in building additional mines on based on profitability, instead of having the current criteria of based on specific subset of minerals being available.
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Add a mass-driver ship component. Small is 5k ton, normal size is 25k ton, capacity is linear with size with the normal being equivalent to half a ground-based mass driver.
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CMCs can now build and operate orbital mining ships (which include one or more mass-driver ship component).
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Instead of the player choosing to buy or not buy the entire production of a specific body with a CMC present, players enable buying/selling (two separate check boxes) of each mineral at each colony (default is “disabled”). Player buy/sell orders are generated if box is checked based on whether or not the colony is outside of the min/max targets for that mineral. Prices are set automatically based on civilian supply and player demand. Player can check a box to pay a premium for purchase of that mineral (adds an extra 50% to cost paid by player).
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Shipping lines are changed to be able to move minerals for the player, with supply and demand established by each colony’s min and max targets for each mineral. Shipping lines can earn money both on delivery fee and buying low/selling high between systems with different pricing.
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Player owned mass drivers move minerals based on min/max targets set at each colony. A target for the mass driver no longer needs to be set, but the automated distribution behavior can be overruled by setting a target for all output of that colony. If there is no demand in the system, CMC-owned mass drivers default to sending to their home-base colony.