Remote Mining Economics

I just discovered the payback on remote mining! It is wonderful! Build battle cruiser yard ships. Each yard ship goes over a planet of the wrong atmosphere and builds a starbase with master computer III and one remote miner III RM3. It takes 4 turns and when built immediately do a retrofit to same with 3 RM3 plus one repair bay. Retrofit again to same with 7 RM3. Retrofit again to same with 13 RM3 and now 13 to repair. Next turn you have 8 working and the repair bay added. Retrofit to same with 22 RM3. Retrofit to same with 23 RM3 and one minelayer III which has space for 6 small mines. There are 16 to repair and the Last retrofit is done. Next turn the yard ship shifts to another planet and starts over. So it takes 4+3 = 7 turns per planet mined. Next turn your income is 800x23xtotal percentage of planet/ moons which is 184 per percent. Base maintenance is 5181 125 701. So breakeven is 29% total. Factor of five profit per turn versus maintenance is 169% requiring moons, but who is that greedy? The base costs at least 42k minerals, but I did not bother to check how much more multiple refits make it. The planet is depleted one percent per turn. Calculate L = total percent minus 29. Then total percentage earned until you drained it down to breakeven is L*(L+1)/2.
Examples % = 39 gains 55 * 184 = 10k definitely not worth it
% = 59 gains 465* 184 = 85k about a factor of two minus initial is 1x.
% = 79 gains 1275 * 184 = 234k a factor of 5-1 but it takes 50 turns
% = 99 gains 2485 * 184 = 457k a factor of 10-1 takes 70 turns
Draining a 99 down to 59 is 40 turns at (40*41/2+30*40 = 2020) * 184 = 371k Which is a factor of 9-1 payback in 40 turns.
At 99% if you have the proper atmosphere on a large planet you can get yard + 19 * 1000 * 1.2 Jubiliant * .99 = 22572 per turn. At that rate it takes 14 turns to get the same minerals payback as the base gives in 40 turns. But it also takes 5 turns to build the yard and 19 more to reach full production. So call it 5+24 turns to get an equal payback. So if it will be 10 or more turns until you can plant a colony with the proper atmosphere, do the starbase. Now why would that be a factor ? Well it turns out that production from planets is part of your score. But production from remote mining is NOT!!!!!! To have an enormous minerals surplus while avoiding MEE you just need to learn minerals 3, battle cruisers, and bases 3. If you have the time you should also do yards 3, computers 3, repair 3, and mines 3, but the economics without them is almost the same.

Let's just say that this has completely changed my plans as presented in "TDM-Modpack politics in really big game". All I need the sphereworlds for is to deny them to the enemy, grow population, and build intelligence centers and storage facilities.....

[This message has been edited by LCC (edited 13 June 2001).]