10, maybe fewer, depending.
Done the math? Not so much. There's the Calculator page, but that only gives estimates.
Personally, I stop and figure what my use of the planet is gonna be. Since I usually max factories first, that's easy enough. Then, I find the resource that's gonna be the most problematic and tune to that. (More on that in a sec.)
See, in the endgame, every single planet with a decent climate should have a massive Colonist population plus a fully-defended starbase. I'm talking millions here. Icy or desert worlds need a Supplies stockpile to manage it, but I like to put 130k+ on each of those -- more if I'm facing Lizards or Fascists.
In order to make that happen, you'll need minerals, sure, but most of those will be generated by Merlins. The big limiting factor (at least for players who don't get free fighters) is cash. Even with exceptional luck, most of your planets will only produce an average of a couple of hundred per turn for the first fifty-odd turns (more for Lizards and Feds).
Thing is, massive numbers of mines are bad for colonist and native happiness. I like to keep my numbers small when I can -- 30, maybe. But that's on worlds where there are great natives and copious nearby mineral worlds.
The other side of the coin is places on borders, where happiness is less important. On those, I max everything and take every scrap someplace safe, at least ideally. The most important thing there is to make sure there are no huge fuel stockpiles on your borders. Mine 'em out quick, and then either haul 'em back or dump 'em -- unless you're planning to attack through there, of course.
Then too, there's the non-native high-mineral worlds close to my homeworld or close to good Ghip, Human, or Silicon native worlds that I develop early in the game. I hate to do it, but I mine those suckers out but fast.
So, tuning:
Let's say there's a world with ten thousand Neutronium at something piddly like 11%, and it's someplace where I'm gonna need a ton of fuel. So what I do is, I figure how many colonists I'm gonna have there (say 20,000 or so; good safe number) and I set an autobuild target with that in mind. So... 180, say, or 190, a bit below the ideal for 20k colonists. Then, after the population reaches the target, I go back to the world and adjust, building mines one at a time until the amount of minerals mined per turn ticks up by one. Then I set the Autobuild to that number so I know I've been there and tuned it, and I forget about it for the rest of the game.
Simple.
It's not a pre-figured number, mate, and it's not an add-on. It's an easy method you can use whenever you get around to it. Using those whenever possible, in my opinion, is the trick to playing this game. |
Show Media Item - some thoughts on building mineral mines... there has to...
