Simple Way to improve mining stations in a balanced way

[NemoRow]

I think that we all agree that mining stations are unbalanced because while in the early game they provide significant amount of total resources, in the late game all of the mining stations can be compared to one or two developed planets.

This makes building them boring because while it's possible to do it does not matter enough. Even the greatest systems with 30 or 40 minerals are nothing more than 2 mines on some 10 tile size planet.

The simplest way to enhance them is to use technologies:
1) Mines level 1-5, Energy 1-5 and Labs 1-5 improve also mining stations by increasing the amount of resources they produce by 50% (or some other more balanced amount). Of course this number can be 20% for Sciences because the science has a different scale.
2) Enable one building slot on outpost, which can be filled by only few building, one of which is as an Example the Space Energy Grid, which amplifies system energy income by 10/20% (level 2) or 20/40%. The same for Research and Mineral mines.

More complicated way is to have additional branches of technologies for all of those.

Even more complicated way is to add exponentially growing upgrade cost up to some level, so it often won't be worth to do high level upgrades in every system.

 

[DukeLeto42]

Stellaris is really lacking in that sort of mid-level space economy. While the game has the early mining outposts and the option to go whole hog with megastructures, there's really no middle level, with large scale mining and energy extraction taking advantage of space resources.

Personally, I'm kind of in favor of adding in space extraction technologies. I can see some interesting tech options, with new levels of space extraction technology unlocked by the ground-level extraction and the improvement in starport technology. Plus, more technologies = more fun, right? Just me?

 

[NemoRow]

I agree with you. And I thin @TheTeam is also thinking about it, as they have mentioned it at least several times.

Systems giving just fracture of a single mine resources can not feel important or helpful.
So I were thinking about two sorts of updates - technological and structural. Because there are a lot of changes coming a think it can bee too much to experiment for a second case (updating stations optionally with resources cost).

The first one also can be solved in two ways:
1) Each technology level gives static amount of resource (let say +1) for each mine
2) Each technology level gives a multiplier for resources (let say +20% as I've mentioned above). The latter will fruit in mining systems giving lot of resources give even more of them, so I think that it feels better.

I've suggested more complicated solution here but may be I've over complicated it.

 

[3ishop]

Agree, early game planet minerals should be the main income but as you advance in tech being able to gather the materials in space and refine them there should get easier and more efficient.