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What is a mineral fountain ? Thu, 27 November 2003 15:36 Go to next message
Staz is currently offline Staz

 
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I'm really sorry if this is a FAQ, but I have tried searching for the answer already and so far have come up with nothing.

What is this "mineral fountain" thing people talk about with AR, and how does it work ?

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Re: What is a mineral fountain ? Thu, 27 November 2003 15:54 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Micha

 

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staz69uk wrote on Thu, 27 November 2003 21:36

I'm really sorry if this is a FAQ, but I have tried searching for the answer already and so far have come up with nothing.

What is this "mineral fountain" thing people talk about with AR, and how does it work ?


Each HW (= Home World) has a minimal mineral concentration of 30, it might look the concentration gets lower and eventually drop down to 1 but as long as the planet is inhabited, you'll be mining at that minimum concentration. If you however would abandon your HW and place a fleet of remote miners in orbit they will mine at the concentration that the planet window is showing, which could be below 30.
Now an AR is living in starbases, which means he can remote mine the planets he is living on. IOW they are the only race that can remote each (not necessarily their own) HW at the minimal concentration as long as they have a base in orbit. They can place 100's, 1000's, 10000's of miners in orbit and the planet will never get depleted, endless minerals in huge numbers that's what the mineral fountain is all about.

One a side note: you don't merge all those miners in one fleet because there is a limit of how much one fleet can mine each turn, that's 1200kT per mineral, the equivalent of 80 Superbugs (that's a midget miner hull with 2 robo-ultra-miners on it).

To give you an idea: in the last big teamgame I played (4 teams of 4 race) our AR was mining 423651kT per mineral per year! He had 28510 of those Superbugs ... and still not enough minerals to feed the hungry HP teammates who were building nubs. Grin

In a solo game you wouldn't build that much miners, you would only build enough to make sure all your planets have enough minerals to use up all their resources in ship building every year, after you get all the tech you want of course.

mch
...



[Updated on: Thu, 27 November 2003 15:56]

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Re: What is a mineral fountain ? Thu, 27 November 2003 17:02 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Staz is currently offline Staz

 
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Micha wrote on Thu, 27 November 2003 20:54

Each HW (= Home World) has a minimal mineral concentration of 30, it might look the concentration gets lower and eventually drop down to 1 but as long as the planet is inhabited, you'll be mining at that minimum concentration. If you however would abandon your HW and place a fleet of remote miners in orbit they will mine at the concentration that the planet window is showing, which could be below 30.
Now an AR is living in starbases, which means he can remote mine the planets he is living on. IOW they are the only race that can remote each (not necessarily their own) HW at the minimal concentration as long as they have a base in orbit. They can place 100's, 1000's, 10000's of miners in orbit and the planet will never get depleted, endless minerals in huge numbers that's what the mineral fountain is all about.



Ahhhhhh, I see now.

I had all the information but never made the connection Embarassed

Thanks,
Staz

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Re: What is a mineral fountain ? Thu, 03 October 2019 15:16 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Raindancer is currently offline Raindancer

 
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Does anyone have more details on how to do the calculations of the max number of miners per fleet?

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Re: What is a mineral fountain ? Sat, 05 October 2019 05:15 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Altruist is currently offline Altruist

 
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Dependent on what or in relation to what?

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Re: What is a mineral fountain ? Mon, 14 October 2019 11:56 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mrvan is currently offline mrvan

 
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From https://wiki.starsautohost.org/wiki/AR_Guide_by_Leonard_Dick ens_-_Revised:_21st_September_2000:
"Infinite mining: Unlike the normal races, when an AR remote mines a homeworld that it owns (meaning, has colonized), the homeworld floor of 30 concentration applies to *all* of the AR's remote mining fleets at that planet. This means that an AR can mine an almost unlimited amount per turn, each turn, needing only the remote miners to do so. (Remote mining for all players is subject to a limit of 4000 mine-equivalents per fleet; thus, ARs are limited in remote mining by the 512 fleet limit.)"

And from https://wiki.starsautohost.org/wiki/Remote_Mining
"Remote mining caps at 4000 mine equivalents/fleet. If you have more remote mines than that in a fleet, they will produce no additional minerals. The concentration on the planet is lowered between each fleet mining, so it is a good idea to have big fleets at 4000 mine equivalents rather than several smaller fleets. That is, the same number of miners will produce fewer minerals if split into multiple fleets compared to fewer fleets as long as no fleet has too many miners. To be clear, the Robot Midget Miner says it can mine up to 5kt of each mineral, so it is equivalent to 5 mines. The Robot Ultra Miner can mine up to 25kt of each mineral so it is equivalent to 25 mines. If you make a bunch of small hull miners with two Ultra Miners each, each ship would be equivalent to 50 mines and you would want 80 such ships in any single mining fleet.
[..]
5 fleets of 4000 mine equivalents each reduce mineral concentration 100 to concentration 34 in one turn. After 2 turns, it's time to move on."

Since AR can mine inhabited worlds on arrival, it's best to colonize on turn 1, and start mining on turn 2. This also means there's no efficiency penalty in concentrating mining fleets. As non-AR, you want to minimize turns lot to travel so it's better to spread X fleets over X planets so they can stay there longer. In AR, you might as well concentrate a
...



[Updated on: Mon, 14 October 2019 12:01]

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Re: What is a mineral fountain ? Mon, 14 October 2019 15:34 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Raindancer is currently offline Raindancer

 
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Thank you. That is what I was looking for. I looked through the forum for quite a while and did not find that information. I will have to check the wiki more often.

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Re: What is a mineral fountain ? Mon, 14 October 2019 15:42 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mrvan is currently offline mrvan

 
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I don't trust the wiki search function Smile. My normal MO is to google for something like:

site:starsautohost.org mineral fountain
or
site:starsautohost.org remote mining

This will search through wiki articles, forum/academy posts, etc., and I can generally find what I'm looking for. Often adding "guts of ..." also helps find the technical stuff.


[Updated on: Mon, 14 October 2019 15:43]

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Re: What is a mineral fountain ? Sat, 15 February 2020 00:07 Go to previous messageGo to next message
magic9mushroom is currently offline magic9mushroom

 
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mrvan wrote on Tue, 15 October 2019 02:56
Remote mining caps at 4000 mine equivalents/fleet.
[...]
In AR, you might as well concentrate all miners on priority planets (high minconc, vulnerable, or near a location where you need the minerals; you can't gate minerals, but you can gate ultra miners)

You can't gate Ultra-Miner hulls safely, at least if they're anywhere near fully loaded. The mining hulls and robots definitely could have been named better, though. Laughing

Without ARM you can't build gateable miners (some people try miniminers with 1 robot, but that's still 1% losses every gate and it's a very significant hull/engine overhead), so your best miner is the Maxi-Miner with 10 Robo-Super-Miners. That's 270 mine-equivalents, so you want either 14 or 15 per fleet (14 has 3780, which maximises mining efficiency per minerals/resources spent, but 15 maxes out the mining per fleet if you're hitting the fleet limit). Note that due to their weight of 2522-2585kT (depending on engine), moving these is a nontrivial proposition (I don't actually recommend putting fuel pods on them, as you won't be moving them often and you're likely to need boosters either way, but a decent engine is probably worth it to reduce the amount of boosters needed). Given that miners before the Robo-Super-Miner generally suck and that the Maxi-Miner is Con 11, there's little need to build any other design of miner with a non-ARM AR.

With ARM your best miner is the Midget Miner with 2 Robo-Ultra-Miners, for 50 mine-equivalents. This is cheaper than any of the larger hulls (even the Ultra-Miner) as long as you use a QJ5 engine, and given they're gateable (and in fact Dockable) and you'll never want to move them to anywhere other than one of your planets that's a pretty obvious pick. 80 of those is 4000 mines exactly. If you still have previous designs of miner and want to combine them, then perfect replacement in a fleet would be 25 Robo-Maxi-Miner robots for nine final-design miners (at 450 mine-equivalents) or 50 Robo-Super-Miner robot
...

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Re: What is a mineral fountain ? Sat, 15 February 2020 04:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mrvan is currently offline mrvan

 
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magic9mushroom wrote on Sat, 15 February 2020 00:07
mrvan wrote on Tue, 15 October 2019 02:56
you can't gate minerals, but you can gate ultra miners)

You can't gate Ultra-Miner hulls safely, at least if they're anywhere near fully loaded. The mining hulls and robots definitely could have been named better, though. Laughing

With ARM your best miner is the Midget Miner with 2 Robo-Ultra-Miners, for 50 mine-equivalents.


Yeah, that's what I meant when I wrote ultra-miner. As AR these are certainly my workhorse. Note that for AR the ability to gate is especially nice because they mine on the turn of arrival (for inhabited planets), so you don't lose a turn by shuffling them around...

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Re: What is a mineral fountain ? Sat, 15 February 2020 11:03 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ricks03 is currently offline ricks03

 
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mrvan wrote on Tue, 15 October 2019 02:56
you can't gate minerals, but you can gate ultra miners)

Which is why you want an IT in your alliance - THEN you can gate minerals!



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Re: What is a mineral fountain ? Fri, 21 February 2020 19:08 Go to previous messageGo to next message
magic9mushroom is currently offline magic9mushroom

 
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ricks03 wrote on Sun, 16 February 2020 03:03
mrvan wrote on Tue, 15 October 2019 02:56
you can't gate minerals, but you can gate ultra miners)

Which is why you want an IT in your alliance - THEN you can gate minerals!

I'd be careful about doing that in a single-winner game. Right when you think you're doing well, there's a fair chance the IT will suddenly gate to all your worlds and blow up all your starbases for an instakill (after which they will be gating your minerals). Backstabbing an AR is easy mode because all you need in the late-BB/nub eras is 128 chaff and a few missile ships per planet, and with IT gatescan (and the ability to immediately take over all the worlds via gating pop) it's even worse.


[Updated on: Fri, 21 February 2020 19:14]

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Re: What is a mineral fountain ? Sat, 22 February 2020 02:05 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ricks03 is currently offline ricks03

 
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Yes, of course. I certainly intended to mean that as a team game.

AR are super vulnerable to allies and gates any other way.


[Updated on: Sat, 22 February 2020 02:06]




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Re: What is a mineral fountain ? Sat, 22 February 2020 02:39 Go to previous message
magic9mushroom is currently offline magic9mushroom

 
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ricks03 wrote on Sat, 22 February 2020 18:05
Yes, of course. I certainly intended to mean that as a team game.

AR are super vulnerable to allies and gates any other way.


Eh. IT and AR are both excellent choices for team games, but I don't think the synergy benefit's all that big. LFs are cheap and you'll probably have a pile left over from ferrying pop by the time the mineral fountain becomes relevant (which isn't for a while; AR's mines are quite expensive until the final ARM miner becomes available, and until everything's mined down to con 30 there's no reason to centralise at homeworlds).

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