Stick a fork in Robo-Miners, they're done!

[geoschmo]

Robo-Miners have always been considered close to useless by the majority of people on this forum. I think we can now declare them officially obsolete!

I noticed recently that one of the Last patches changed robo-miners so that only one mining component of each type will generate resources per turn. The first question that this brings to mind is, "Who in the world thought Robo-miners were a big enough problem that they bothered to email Aaron and suggest that change?" The second question is "What good are they now at all?"

Prior to that you could at least build a large vessel or space station with enough robo miners to overcome the resources you would be spending in maint for the ship. With only one per sector functional, that goes out the window.

Now what is left?

Possibility #1: A race very low maintenance could build destroyers with robo-miner components that might generate more minerals than they cost in maint.

Problem: I have not worked out the numbers, this may not even be true. Besides the fact that a race with very low maint probably won't need robo-miners to begin with.


Possibility #2: Satellite Miners. This was my preferred use for the robominer component all along. It has the advantage of generating resources without costing maint.

Problem: You still have to research satellite 3 to get a unit big enough to hold a robo-miner comp. By the time I have research sat 3 (A very expensive tech to research) My empire has probably expanded to the point where I don't have resource problems anymore, or time to deal with moving them around to choice locations.

Possibility #3: Low tech resource converting. Use Robo-rad extractors or Robo-farmers. Costs minerals in maint, but you would have a net gain in the resource you are extracting.

Problem: This is a possibility. It has not changed really. But it's not terribly efficient, and my experience has been that minerals are what I am in short supply on until later in the game. And by them my empire has expanded to the point where resources are not a problem.


Of course I have several options to fix this, and they can be modded in very easily. But as far as the unmodded game goes, robo-miners are IMHO obsolete unless Aaron does one or more of the following...

1. Reduce the size of the robo-miner component. This would allow their use on small sats, getting them into the game earlier, when you actually have resource problems.

2. Reduce the cost to research sat 3. See suggestion 1.

3. Give robo-resource components more resource generation ability. Get them above the break even point of maint.

4. Give robo-resource components the "Modified Maintenance Cost" ability to reduce the maint cost of a ship that has them onboard. (This has potential for abuse though. Players may put them on their larger warships just to get the maint reduction.)


Any comments?

Geoschmo

[This message has been edited by geoschmo (edited 10 August 2001).]