Comparing different ways to acquire strategic resources

[Matoro_TBS]

Different ways to get strategic resources:

1. Space-mining. This is not sufficient for any sufficiently advanced economy, as there is limited amount of space resources available.
2. Synthetic refineries. They use building slot, a pop and turn 10 minerals to a strategic resource.
3. Trading enclaves. Fixed 10 EC per strategic resource cost, but you can buy only 5/month.
4. Market. Cost usually hovers around 12 EC per strategic resource. Infinite supply.

... I'm having hard time understanding why would anyone use synthetic refineries. Minerals are the only resource you can't generate out of thin air (except via market) but actually require right districts. Food and EC can be both produced anywhere with hydro farms and clerks. Energy credits are nearly infinite if min-maxed to trade enough. Buying the resources with energy just seems always better option.

Except for gestalts, though. They cannot use trade value, so energy does become a limiting factor. I guess both machines and hive minds have pretty good reasons to burn minerals into strategic resources instead of energy. But for normal empires, I just don't see the argument for synthetic refineries. If there was a way to "lose" galactic market, like with embargoes or extreme price fluctuation in strategic resource cost being self-sufficient in the production could be useful, but at the moment there's little benefit.

 

[bjornulf]

I find that synthetic refineries are very use full, mostly for gas. When you have tech worlds with tier three research labs, a single planet will consume over 30 gas pr month. having your low pop mining and agri worlds turned into refinery worlds is very useful, as you want most of your pops on ecumenopoli, to produce alloys and goods, without the strategic resource upkeep. and tech is the only job you have where they need a lot of gas. you also want gas for your clinics, for that 25% growth boost.
If you are running a very, very credits heavy Empire, you can maybe buy all the gas you need, but i would rather use my money on ship- and megastructure upkeep.
Minerals mining worlds are very important, and you may have to steal some from your neighbors, but minerals should not be a problem, buildings are not expensive, and once you have an ecumenopolis or two, they are mostly only good for alloys and strategic resources anyway.

 

[Blurb]

A fifth option: What is saved is earned.
Unless you're upgrading your buildings, then you only need an minimal amount of strategics for ship components and edicts, a measly amount easily covered by mining stations alone.
Provided you have planets that can provide jobs and houses for pops, then it is (usually) more economical to resettle unemployed pops than it is to pay for strategic upkeep on buildings.

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

Different ways to get strategic resources:

1. Space-mining. This is not sufficient for any sufficiently advanced economy, as there is limited amount of space resources available.
2. Synthetic refineries. They use building slot, a pop and turn 10 minerals to a strategic resource.
3. Trading enclaves. Fixed 10 EC per strategic resource cost, but you can buy only 5/month.
4. Market. Cost usually hovers around 12 EC per strategic resource. Infinite supply.

... I'm having hard time understanding why would anyone use synthetic refineries. Minerals are the only resource you can't generate out of thin air (except via market) but actually require right districts. Food and EC can be both produced anywhere with hydro farms and clerks. Energy credits are nearly infinite if min-maxed to trade enough. Buying the resources with energy just seems always better option.

Except for gestalts, though. They cannot use trade value, so energy does become a limiting factor. I guess both machines and hive minds have pretty good reasons to burn minerals into strategic resources instead of energy. But for normal empires, I just don't see the argument for synthetic refineries. If there was a way to "lose" galactic market, like with embargoes or extreme price fluctuation in strategic resource cost being self-sufficient in the production could be useful, but at the moment there's little benefit.

In most of my late game economies, the demand for motes ,crystals, and gases is so high, that I need everything I can get.
Space-mining is the ideal scenario first choice.
Next is trading enclaves, they give you consistent resources at rock-bottom prices 5 per month
Third is something you forgot, which is naturally occurring veins on planets than be mined more efficiently than synthetic refineries.
Fourth is synthetic refineries
Fifth is the market.

You should do as much of the first 3 as you possibly can.
Between the market and synthetic refineries, I really can't decide which is better. It's possible to get bonuses for refinement, but you only get 1 job per building, so that's a real unemployment causer for any refinery world, so it might be better to spread out your refineries across worlds.

Market is a reliable source, but it gets really expensive. Good thing that there is a price cap, because without that your economy would crash and you'd have to downgrade a lot of buildings. Late game, it can really bad. In one of my games, I was selling thousands of minerals and food each month just to afford the cost of buying enough strategic resources to break even each month.

 

[trojan1234]

Except for gestalts, though. They cannot use trade value, so energy does become a limiting factor. I guess both machines and hive minds have pretty good reasons to burn minerals into strategic resources instead of energy. But for normal empires, I just don't see the argument for synthetic refineries. If there was a way to "lose" galactic market, like with embargoes or extreme price fluctuation in strategic resource cost being self-sufficient in the production could be useful, but at the moment there's little benefit.

Refineries are mandatory in order to run 5 or more techs worlds because market prices become too expensive when I buy more than 30-40 per month.

 

[Kryndude]

Yeah I had the same thought as OP but realized that late game rare resources can get pretty expensive. What's interesting with the market is that while it's very efficient it also has the potential to ruin your economy all of a sudden with price changes.

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

Yeah I had the same thought as OP but realized that late game rare resources can get pretty expensive. What's interesting with the market is that while it's very efficient it also has the potential to ruin your economy all of a sudden with price changes.

That's a good thing. It means that in a multiplayer game, an economy with autarky can wreck an economy that's market dependent. Economic warfare at it's finest.

 

[evilcat]

Some plannets have rare resource deposit which allows to build cheaper rafinaries.
If you have habitats you can fill it with Rafinaries, unfortunetly habitats work better if you are authoritarian (domestic servitude) or even better xenophobe (livestock)

It is not that bad.

 

[Derp]

Some plannets have rare resource deposit which allows to build cheaper rafinaries.
If you have habitats you can fill it with Rafinaries, unfortunetly habitats work better if you are authoritarian (domestic servitude) or even better xenophobe (livestock)

It is not that bad.

everything works better with authoritarian though

 

[PeterPancake]

Different ways to get strategic resources:

1. Space-mining. This is not sufficient for any sufficiently advanced economy, as there is limited amount of space resources available.
2. Synthetic refineries. They use building slot, a pop and turn 10 minerals to a strategic resource.
3. Trading enclaves. Fixed 10 EC per strategic resource cost, but you can buy only 5/month.
4. Market. Cost usually hovers around 12 EC per strategic resource. Infinite supply.

Just some thoughts on your points from my view.

1. I am gonna put the strategic resources from planets here, too. Space-mining and planetary resources give me the necessary leeway for ship upgrades and building tier 2-3 weaponary and are capable to crank up some edicts for firepower. I do tend to w8 for terraforming and land clearlance with mote and gas edict. Just some nice goodies.
2. Those are somewhat important for your upgraded Energy Grid, Food Processing, Mineral Purification (25% more basic resources). I do build on every planet those 3 if they do have more then 3 districts (an example: without any other bonuses that would be 32 [8 jobs]+25%=40 minerals ). At all maybe 1-2 planets per 10-15 needed. Just use one of the planets that can't build a lot of housing districts after you fully utilized other districts.
3. An easy and constant way to obtain some gases. You can focus on one early heavy research planet getting to 700-800 research with trade enclave, sector and planet gas (really nice with assisting research).
4. Rather selling strategic resources then buying.

Refineries are getting for me only important in maybe 2350. As planets need to get that 75-85 pop and job count to get the last building slot (75) and administration upgrade (80). Commercial Megaplex (1 crystal) gives 11 jobs (paired with a Galactic Stock Exchange can push your Trade). Mostly small planets or ones with a low amount of districts are affected.

Overall it doesn't feel hefty important more like the min-max mid-late game scheme.

 

[anamiac]

This is an issue that has bothered me as well. I solved it by writing two mods.

Regional Space resources:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfi...636672149&searchtext=regional+space+resources
Galaxy generates with lots of strategic resources in nebula.

Job and Building balance:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfi...643512009&searchtext=job+and+building+balance
Increases the number of jobs in refineries while decreasing the amount of resources needed for building upkeep. Will need to be updated before it's ready for 2.2.5.

 

[Dementor4]

I would like it if there was some sort of simulated efficiency of having resources in the same place they are consumed, a small increase to upkeep costs if you have an imbalance. IE, a planet that generates enough of its own minerals to feed it's manufacturing plants would have no added upkeep costs, but if your planet has a minerals deficit then every building/job on that planet that requires minerals would cost a small amount of added energy to simulate the cost of shipping those minerals from whatever planet produces them. The same would apply to rare resources.

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

I would like it if there was some sort of simulated efficiency of having resources in the same place they are consumed, a small increase to upkeep costs if you have an imbalance. IE, a planet that generates enough of its own minerals to feed it's manufacturing plants would have no added upkeep costs, but if your planet has a minerals defect then every building/job on that planet that requires minerals would cost a small amount of added energy to simulate the cost of shipping those minerals from whatever planet produces them. The same would apply to rare resources.

I don't know about that, but actually having transportation costs would be interesting. Though you'd have to revamp the entire trade system, the current trade value resource would make far less sense, because trade would actually be moving real resources like minerals, food, etc. Though I can see how your way would affect things the least. Still, I think they should add privateers so that pirates and trade warfare makes more sense.

 

[Bouchart]

A couple of thoughts:

1. Anything that reduces building upkeep costs, like Functional Architecture, reduces any upkeep costs you pay with rare resources.
2. Habitats with livestock slaves are good for building refineries, since you'll unlock a lot of building slots and with careful population management you won't have any unemployment.
3. Research districts on habitats don't use rare resources. Foundry and industrial districts on an ecumenopolis don't use rare resources.
4. If the mineral costs from refineries is overly painful for whatever reason, you can always deactivate them and reactivate them later. Or you can push hard towards the Extraction Patterns repeatable tech.