Lesson 3: Mining
This post is inspired by two things. First, this post New mining technology and machinery suggesting existing orbital mining is underpowered and maybe a new approach could be useful.
Second, thanks to the elections in my current campaign forbidding any automation, I’m wondering just how restrictive this is.
Starting beliefs
I feel like you always want to use orbital mining modules if you can.
I treat automated ground based mines as the last resort because of their increased cost.
I haven’t ever used forced mines, leaving manned mines as the default.
I don’t know when ark pops are better than infrastructure supported pops. Obviously CC 0 is ground and CC > 5 ark, but not sure where the break point is.
The methods I use seem to change every post on this thread. For this, I’m going to start with a huge number of assumptions as I compare alternative approaches, and then try to put numbers in for each assumption until we get a semi-useful model.
Paradigm
I assume every TNE is equally valuable and interchangeable. When I look at cost, therefore, I will use cost in wealth as the standard.
I am assuming that the mining is happening on a body and then mass-drivered away, rather than used in-situ for production.
I know of four mining modules:
- Automated mines
- Manned mines
- Forced mines
- Asteroid mines
All have the same production / year but different costs. The metric I can use to compare them, therefore, will be time to payback investment.
Mines requiring population can have that supported by
- Infrastructure
- Ark modules
I will add their cost into the overall cost of the mine, as I think ground based construction capacity is a limiting factor and is always useful.
My reference asteroid miner is:
Amber class Orbital Miner
25,669 tons
Orbital Miner: 5 modules producing
50 tons per mineral per annum
Costing 708 wealth.
This makes the maths a little easier as it is (almost) the size of one standard cargo hold, which is my unit of transport
My reference ark module is:
Indigo class Orbital Habitat
502,082 tons
Colonist Berths 200,000
Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 1
Costing 293 wealth.
I am not adding the cost of the transporting craft into the cost of the mine. I will use the time to transport to site, and assume that one cargo hold of cryo, freight, tug or ark is equally hard to move a given distance.
We begin with something like this in arbitrary units:
| Name | Cost | Output | Return |
|---|---|---|---|
| Automated | 240 | 1 | 240.0 |
| Manned | 120 | 1 | 120.0 |
| Forced | 40 | 1 | 40.0 |
| Asteroid | 708 | 5 | 141.6 |
At 1 accessibility and with no tech, this looks like:
| Name | Cost | Output (t/year) | Return on investment time (y) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Automated | 240 | 10.0 | 24.0 |
| Manned | 120 | 10.0 | 12.0 |
| Forced | 40 | 10.0 | 4.0 |
| Asteroid | 708 | 50.0 | 14.16 |
Let’s normalise output to t/year.
Wealth
Manned and Forced mines generate taxes from workers and overseers, employing 0.05m and 0.01m employees respectively. This is 5 and 1 wealth / year with default starting conditions.
We can convert from wealth into mining output by looking at what civilian complexes charge for purchase and sale.
My thinking: what amount would I have to pay to get the same mineral output from a civilian mine and / or what wealth am I forgoing by not taxing them.
The ‘swing’ from buying to selling the output of one Civilian Mining complex is 375 wealth (I no longer pay 250 per complex and gain 125 in tax per complex). As a complex has 10 mines, the output of one mine over one year can be valued at 37.5 wealth / year.
A manned mine, therefore, outputs 1 mine’s worth of mining and 0.133 (5/37.5) mine’s worth of wealth per year, or 11.33 tn / year. A forced mine has 1+ 1/37.5 mines worth, or 10.267 tn/ year.
I think this is now the output normalised. Now we need to account for size.
Delivery time (mine)
The return on investment will only begin when it arrives, we add delivery time. For forced camps, this is 4x the others as it is 4x larger.
While we can easily calculate journey time, which I add onto the return on investment timer (it will only start paying off when it arrives).
Delivery time (workers)
Thanks to this lovely sheet Aurora Colony Cost and Workforce - Google Sheets I can get a good estimate of how many colonists I need to add to the body to get enough workers.
I am not certain on the exact maths behind arks. I will treat arks as CC 0 with a pop requirement 95.24% of normal (as we don’t have the 5% working in agri anymore)
For infrastructure, I need to add the cargo size of infrastructure plus colonists, who take up 100,000 per cargo hold.
Arks are 10x less space efficient, at 10,000 per cargo hold.
So, on an example planet with 100m pop and colony cost 1 which is 1 year away:
We now know how many cargo holds worth of building and people and support are needed to get one mine running.
Cost
Finally, we just add the cost of infrastructure and Ark modules.
Infrastructure costs 2 per unit, which is modified by colony cost.
The Ark module above costs 293/200,000, which we also add.
Results
With the following conditions:
- Journey time: 1 year
- CC: 1
- Current population: 1m
- Accessibility: 1
- Upgrades: none
We get this table:
| Name | Cost | Employees (m) | Output (t/year) | Mine Size (Cargo Holds) | Citizens (m) | Population Size (Cargo Holds) | Journey Time (y) | Full cost inc. citizens | Return on investment time (y) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Automated | 240 | 0.0 | 10.0 | 1 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 1.0 | 240.0 | 25.0 |
| Manned (I) | 120 | 0.05 | 11.333333 | 1 | 0.075758 | 0.757583 | 1.757583 | 120.000015 | 12.34582 |
| Forced (I) | 40 | 0.01 | 10.266667 | 4 | 0.015152 | 0.151517 | 4.151517 | 40.000003 | 8.047621 |
| Manned (Ark) | 120 | 0.05 | 11.333333 | 1 | 0.06707 | 6.707042 | 7.707042 | 120.000098 | 18.295286 |
| Forced (Ark) | 40 | 0.01 | 10.266667 | 4 | 0.013414 | 1.341408 | 5.341408 | 40.00002 | 9.237514 |
| Asteroid | 708 | 0.0 | 50.0 | 1 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 1.0 | 708.0 | 15.16 |
Let’s look at some examples
Examples from my game
At the start of the game, I’m using freighters with a speed of 360 km / s and no upgrades. Where colony cost > 5, I don’t consider ground mines and, where asteroid mining is impossible, I also don’t consider it.
I’m not allowed to use auto-mines on Venus. How much worse is using orbital pops to man mines down below?
Venus (average)
distance: 130.0 mkm
CC: 10
Accessibility: 3
Population: 0m
| Name | Return on investment time (y) | Proportional to best (%) |
|---|---|---|
| Forced (Ark) | 1.94699 | 100.0 |
| Manned (Ark) | 6.276434 | 322.365989 |
| Automated | 8.011451 | 411.478734 |
Huh - not actually worse at all. In fact, it seems like using manned orbitals over Venus is better!
What about an asteroid?
Cromelin
distance: 2000.0 mkm
CC: 10
Accessibility: 2
Population: 0m
| Name | Return on investment time (y) | Proportional to best (%) |
|---|---|---|
| Forced (Ark) | 3.753094 | 100.0 |
| Asteroid | 7.256166 | 193.338224 |
| Manned (Ark) | 10.556897 | 281.285171 |
| Automated | 12.176166 | 324.430061 |
So once again, this is interesting, but perhaps expected. The forced mines, which have all sorts of externalities I haven’t measured, are the best by far (especially for an asteroid so nearby).
BUT, Asteroid mining is far and away better than manned ones which don’t have any of those externalities. And my guess about Auto being worse is still true!
Findings
- Forced mining is incredible
While they are larger to transport, this is offset by their incredibly low cost and lower pop requirement, taking less time to pay off and less colonist transport / support
- Asteroid miners are well balanced
They’re the best for best they are for yet they aren’t universally superior. Forced mines still win out in places and there are bodies that you wouldn’t want to asteroid mine even if you could.
- Forced mines and asteroids can be thought of on a spectrum
We can think of asteroid mines as expensive high output VS the cheap low output of forced mines. This makes them well suited to their roles.
Want to plonk something down on pluto? Forced mines - make a load of them, dump them there.
Need something to rapidly clear out several bodies? Asteroid mine
4.Ark mining can be well paired with forced
Orbiting overseers living in luxury whilst slaves endure the blistering winds of Venus? RP heavy and productive!
Conclusion
I hope this has been useful. I was quite surprised by the utility of ark modules to support mining.
I also feel like this shows that asteroid mining modules are pretty balanced - best module without externalities. Seems like you’d always want to use them on any high CC body if possible, but you are limited to just small ones.
Please let me know where I went wrong. If there are comparisons you’d like me to make, I can add them.
If people want my code, please let me know and I’ll put it on GitHub and link it here.