Hive Asteroid Exploit

[Artaios Greybark]

I am not sure I am getting this right but this seems incredibly broken to me. As a young empire you simply develop all but one of the fields and you get a massive amount of minerals without any drawback. I feel like I am cheating when I build there. Thoughts?

 

[artemis667]

I didn't know that actually. I thought just developing one of the asteroids would be enough to trigger the event although you sometimes wait a while. Anyone else confirm?

 

[Vishaing]

I got the system right next to my home system this last game and just mining 1 caused the event to trigger. I am running a few mods but I don't think any of them affect this particular chain.

 

[artemis667]

Cool, that's what I thought. So the OP has to wait a bit.

It's still probably a nice bonus for a young empire, mind. The payback of these particular asteroids is quite short so unless you're unlucky you're probably going to get more back than you put in quite quickly, and then you just have to deal with a blocked-off system until you get a fleet strong enough to take out the critters.

 

[Ashantai]

Yeah, make use of it whilst you can because pretty soon...yeah.

 

[The Founder]

MTTH is 100 years. Times 0.3 for each mine around a cristalline asteroid.
I come to 0.243 years if you got it around all 5.
If you just keep off the cirstalline asteroids you should be fine, however.

 

[artemis667]

It makes economic sense then to build one or two.
Assuming no reductions or bonuses (worst case scenario) and taking 1 off the output to account for energy maintenance, an 8 mineral asteroid pays itself back in just over a year for low risk. Three probably would give you a positive return, four gets dicey, the only note there is that you'll get the best return with one assuming you won't be ready to deal with the hive when it wakes up.

 

[Artaios Greybark]

Yeah, turns out I was not patient enough. I was mining all but one of the asteroids. I still think it was worth it, though.

 

[The Founder]

It makes economic sense then to build one or two.
Assuming no reductions or bonuses (worst case scenario) and taking 1 off the output to account for energy maintenance, an 8 mineral asteroid pays itself back in just over a year for low risk. Three probably would give you a positive return, four gets dicey, the only note there is that you'll get the best return with one assuming you won't be ready to deal with the hive when it wakes up.

I would not even consider including the maintenance. You would need that for a mining network or the mining station anywhere else too.

At 90/station, that 8 asteroid pays for itself in about 12 months. On a normal 2 asteroids, it is 45 months.
I got mining stations as low as 67, wich is slighly above 8 months there/34 months elsewhere.

 

[artemis667]

Ignoring the energy component of the crystal mining station's life-cycle cost may be fine if you want to keep your calculation simple, but if you are trying to follow a process of risk analysis and return maximisation, your resulting calculation will be less precise and less accurate. You're right that energy maintenance applies to every other mining station, however assuming you are able to protect them militarily, the risk of not getting the return on your investment is negligible.

The question really is 'should you build on 1, 2, 3, 4, or all' of the crystal asteroids. I think the answer is probably 3 for maximal probable return but it might be 2 - the other question is 'do you want to exploit 3 faster and riskier or 2 slower but safer'

Even if your fleet is ready to clean out the hive it may not make sense to build the fourth - unless you park the fleet in the system while you build them all and wait.