by @Jaye ~ Aug 1, 2169, transmitted from Deta, Home Sector
Finding a Golden Needle
Hey there, rookie! Looks like you’ve managed to avoid taking a wrong turn out of an air-lock so far. Good job! Found any good asteroids, yet? No? Well, you should be looking for them! Why? Well, let’s get into that. Get that vac suit off, wash up and meet me in the bar in 1.5 kilosecs, okay?
Asteroids have fewer resources than whole planets. So instead of filling up your ship with 10 different resources, at least five of which are common, a good asteroid could give you half as many different resources, but a combination of rare, asteroid-only resources and the more-common resources that you are currently most in need of at any given moment. Find an asteroid with Titanium, Tungsten, Thorium, Radium, and Plutonium? Yeah, that’s what I call finding a Golden Needle in a haystack. If you find one of those, I wouldn’t mind getting a tip, you know. I’d be happy to return the favor!
So, the idea is to let your planetary mining platforms get some of the more common stuff, and you use your shuttle to go get the good stuff from asteroids. You’ll bring in the resources you want much faster that way. And something like Thorium is only found on asteroids, so just mining for that, you’ll get a lot of other stuff, too.
Asteroid Location Reports
Asteroids are often bumping into each other and constantly moving, sometimes in unpredictable ways. So, that asteroid you found last week might not be there tomorrow. A lot of miners cooperate to give the locations of new asteroids as they are found. It’s a good idea to keep an eye on the comm network, and download the latest location report. Go to the #tools channel of the Space Ex discord and look in the pinned comments for the latest Asteroid Location Report. This will tell you how to find the asteroids, once it has been updated with new information. This comes in the form of tips from miners. Send me a tip, rookie. I’ll pass you a few plat, okay?
Asteroid Resource Reports
Besides the location, there are also reports of the exact resources found in the asteroids in the #strategy channel. That can save you a lot of time! If you have any scan data of your own to add, feel free to post a report there, rookie. Even a partial asteroid resource report is helpful!
I’ll get the first round! Do I wear a mining suit in space? Of course! I’m a little tougher than a human, but I’m still pretty soft and delicate, you know. Sure, my bio-skin is ‘alive,’ but it’s soft and smooth, and I want to keep it that way! Micro-meteorites, and hard vacuum would kill it, and the heat and cold of space would trash a lot of my polymers and lubricants, too. On the other hand, I only have to replace the CO2 scrubbers on my shuttle about once every… I don’t know… like, never, so far!
More About Buildings
Did you build your Power Plant and Mining Platform already? Great! Those two are pretty much the best two buildings to build first. Getting that mining going on your plot is great, isn’t it?
Of course, if you go all in and buy a plot, it comes with an Auto-miner on the plot, so you don’t have to build on that plot right away. On the other hand, getting a Power Plant and Mining Platform built on your purchase-plot will double the mining output of your plot. Since the plot storage capacity is only 80K cubic meters after building the Mining Platform, you would probably want to build the Main Base, next, which will increase your plot capacity by about 30 times.
Then you have the choice of building a Refinery or Research Center. You may have plenty of time left before needing to supply fuel to the Power Plant, which will run for 60 days before it needs more fuel. You’ll need to build the Refinery to make more Power Plant Fuel. A fuel module costs a lot of Uranium, Argon, Platinum, and Radium, and will also take about 6 days to fabricate once you have the resources. If you have most of the resources, and a few weeks to spare, you might go for the Research Center, first, before the Refinery.
The Refinery currently can produce Power Plant Fuel, and Ship Fuel that you will need for the Intergalactic ship. You are working toward building a launch pad so that you can discover new planets, ultimately. But the most immediate need is for Power Plant Fuel, only.
And if that can wait, then consider building the Research Center first. Why? Well, with that building in place, you can build upgrade modules for your shuttle, which includes +50% scan range, +25% cargo capacity, and +20% shuttle speed. The extra scan range is worth it. The extra cargo capacity is expensive, but it might actually pay for itself in a relatively short time, given warp fees saved and extra mining performed per trip.
We’ll have to do this again, soon, rookie! You’re a good kid! Me? I’m pretty old, even if I don’t look like it. I actually remember when Old Musky was still alive, living out his last days on Mars. I’ve been fully remanufactured twice, so don’t let my youthful looks fool you. I’ve been around more than one sun quite a few times. Maybe you’ll be ready to talk about your next buildings, too, the Factory and the Launch Pad, and the different ships you can build.
