I would like for you to be able to mine planets with orbital miners
Edit: to be host to me orbital mining is annoying when I can just use auto mines, yes I know auto mines are the hardest to produce but it’s easier to move them around when I can use freighters to transport them compared to using a tug and moving one at a time plus if you tractor that last station it deletes the fleet it was in
Is it possible to get a different kind of miner like I don’t know maybe a star lifter that takes recourses out of a star for endgame
Currently, there is a nice balance between all three types of mining systems in Aurora which works very well:
Manual mines cost 120 BP and can work anywhere, but require population.
Automated mines cost 240 BP and can work anywhere, but don’t require population. Compared to manual mines, these are more expensive to build but may be cheaper to deploy due to not requiring population.
Orbital mines cost 120 BP and do not require population, but only work on a limited (if plentiful) subset of bodies. Compared to manual mines, these are just as cheap but easier to deploy since they don’t require population. Compared to automated mines, they are half the cost and therefore preferable. Thus, you always want to use orbital mining if you can, and the primary balance factor is that you can only use them for a limited subset of mining locations.
Allowing orbital mines to mine large planets would make them simply the best option in all cases. This is a case where it would not make sense to destroy the game mechanical balance for (what I presume to be) roleplay reasons. Further, if orbital mines were rebalanced to mine large planets, they would not offer anything different from automines, so this would remove complexity and interesting decisions from the game.
If you wish to destroy the game balance for your own campaign setting, I believe you can do so by modding the orbital mining techs in the DB. My recommendation would be to devise some roleplay conceit, e.g., using a combination of orbital habitat modules and surface-based mines and fluffing these as orbital infrastructures (i.e., the population in the habitat modules operates the giant surface-scarring lasers or whatever you think of your orbital mining systems as).
While we’re on the topic, how much do you use orbital miners? I’ve mostly not bothered because I feel like it takes a lot more micro per ton of mineral compared to auto mines or finding a rich enough place to colonize. Is anyone leaving hard into OM?
I use all three types of mines heavily. Orbital miners don’t seem to be any more micro-intensive than any other type of mine.
I can see the argument for leaving orbitally mineable bodies for CMCs, but often it’s beneficial to throw a stack of mines at the Gallicite problem rather than waiting patiently for the CMCs to grow to large sizes.
I have admittedly not tried using them much beyond one early campaign. With that caveat, I think of them as more micro intensive because the size of body that’s eligible for orbital mining (even with several levels of tech which is an additional expense to using OMs) don’t have the kind of deposits you can dump a bunch of mines on and never think about again. Also, while accessibility tends to be high, they don’t typically have enough different types of minerals at high accessibility to be as efficient as larger bodies. Comets are sometimes an exception to this, but rarely. Again, haven’t looked deeply into it, so this is just my perception; more than happy to be proven wrong.
And with certain spoilers active, if you’re using OMs you have a lot more surface area to be attacked, because you’re distributing OMs (which are orbiting and hence more visible and attackable) among a larger number of geographically distributed bodies.
I use orbital miners quite extensively - but usually after I have already established surface mines throughout Sol. Individually, Asteroid mining dosen’t net you much but even a small amount of orbital mining vessels working the Belt (or any system with large Asteroid belts) will net you a large amount of minerals. It is a nice secondary source to delay the resource pinch in Sol.
For balance one could make orbital mines cost even more materials then auto mines maybe 2.5 times that of manual mines. But if it is balanced it may not added enough meaningful play choices over using automines.
Mines options that might add more meaning play choices might be something like toxic mines that produce resources faster but decrease the habitability of the plant (perhaps decreasing both max population and increasing population cost).
Another option might be something an extraction mine that made a mine cost more (perhaps but racial income and minerals) and miner slower but extra higher percentage of the ore. Perhaps 125% of the available ore. The idea being that improved mining methods might extra more of a material and have less waste at an extremely higher cost. For instance a mine costing as much a couple financial centers to run and producing half or a quarter as much ore per time as a stand mine.
Another option would be a mine that produces for the player only a specified mineral fixed at mine manufacture and does that at 2x speed but still reduces all ore types on the planet.
Not saying any of these are needed but there certainly are kinds of mines one can conceive of that meaningful player choice.
If one really wanted to go down the rabbit hole one could image a game there one designed and researched different mines using different options like one does with ground units.
