[snakeye]

Originally posted by Slynky:
So, did you really use a "real time" example with a real ship? If so, what was the cost of building the ship? Given that, a person could come up with a scale on how many months a person had to have it in service (at the asteroid) at a certain percentage in order for the ship to "pay for itself" and begin "sending back" a profit.

(yeah, I know, I know...git off yer back, right? )

No its ok! I appreciate the comments and suggestions. Cost of building is something I didnt includ in the formulae because there can be no standard relation to cost and profit-over-time. The reason for this is that there are other factors to take into account (productivity, research of new techs that make ship obsolete, accidents, attacks, etc). The formula assumed the ship will be in operation for the end of days. In other words, IF I was to build a ship that would Last forever, be used forever and able to mine forever, what would be the minimum asteroid to mine for the given resource. Since your questions, I started thinking about the initial submitted formula. I think as a general gauge is quite solid! With that, I can calculate quickly how much more I would gain if I installed a system-wide bonus facility, and can use the same formula for research, intel, production. As far as building a remote mining ship goes, then you have to tell me how soon would you like the ship to "pay for itself" as far as the given resource is concerned. If we assume that you would wish to "pay" for the given ship in one turn after its operation then the formula can be modified to:
IF
C=%of bonus from an asteroid
MC=Maintenance cost
BC=Building cost
N=number of miners onboard
A=mining value per turn of miner
then we have
C>(MC+BC)/N*A
Going back to the previous example of the mining ship, if it's cost for minerals is 6500, maintenance is 487 minerals, has 2 mineral miners for 700 per turn each then:

C>(6500+487)/2*700 or C>4.99 or C must be greater than 500%!!! Since there is no asteroid in the game that will have that, we can settle for a ship that will pay for itself in a many turns as it was built. In the case of the above ship, I used a level II shipyard ship to construct my base(yes the ship is actually a base) with rate of 1650 minerals per turn. Substituting this to the above we have:
C>(1650+487)/2*700 or C>1.5264 ~ C>153%
So in order to produce enough to pay for the ship in as many turns as it was built, I will have to aim for any asteroid with a bonus to minerals of 154% or above. You can understand from this formula, that I chose when I want to pay for the ship. This was a choice rather than a rule. Different ppl might have different demands. But by adding the cost in the above equation, we can see quickly if its worth building a mining base with 2 mineral miners or a small ship with one. Hope you find this helpful.