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[ollobrains]

I've managed to get to midgame with my first non-hive race and I'm starting to understand why people talk about a mineral crunch. There's just not enough of them. I've got virtually every possible mine built in my whole empire, with production targets running and I'm still running a -500 deficit. I didn't even go too crazy with the alloy forges - I've got one refinery planet covered in them, and a small handful on other planets and that's it, but I just can't keep them fed. I don't even have any ecumenopolis since I don't have megacorp, I can't imagine how bad it would be with a couple of those.

It feels especially bad because there's no way to get more. You can spam hydroponics for food, and spam commerce buildings for energy but nothing for minerals. So every new planet I snag is only useful up to however many mine slots it has - and anything more than that is dead weight, paying consumer goods (indirectly minerals) to get stuff I don't need and that feels really bad.

For now I'm managing to afford buying hundreds of minerals per month from the magic unlimited market but I feel like I probably can't sustain that forever. At least the only penalty for running out of minerals is half alloy production so it's not actually a very big deal... but I want to try and at least pretend I'm playing "correctly" and not abusing a stupid design decision.

It almost seems pay2win (matter decompressor, hive mind for hive worlds or robots for robot worlds) except there have been so many other oversights and questionable design decisions with 2.2 that I suspect they probably just didn't think it all the way through.

Edit: oops, 500 deficit was without production targets which I didn't notice had run out, but still - minerals are too rare imo.

know whwat u mean, in my playthrough ended up with my war declarations where I could laying claim to the nearby enemy mineral systems and just going after those (plus capturing ther species to incorporate into my empire, having a mix of species to settle different habability worlds according to species made the consumer upkeep cost much less and being able to drop mining on planets did help but its really min maxxing but it did help a lot cut the mineral crunch by about 60%)

[melkor]

You can spam hydroponics for food, and spam commerce buildings for energy but nothing for minerals.

actually that's not true you can build nebula refinery's to get 6+ minerals
i will however admit that is kinda tricky to get since the starbase must be build in a nebula before you can build the refinery.

[dennislp3]

This is why a trade system exists....to essentially cover up the flawed and simplistic economy. A few resources are infinite while a few others are not...this helps create balance. If infinite minierals via spam was possible alloys would also be spammable and at that point trade becomes useless.

[EnigmaticHat]

I would point out that in a large empire space based food production is going to become rapidly unsustainable... 20 starbases (which is an above average limit I'd say) is like... 1 and a half largish planets worth of food.

[Rolan7]

Starbase hydroponics is something I only use to fill the slot, yeah.  Spamming hydroponics buildings on a planet could be useful though, particularly on a dedicated agri-world to make efficient use of bonuses.

And it's odd about the mineral crunch, I haven't experienced that at all yet.  I have been running very few alloy forges though, and often find myself falling behind in consumer goods.  Trade value can make a lot of goods, but I prefer to run the unity boost when I can.

[Telgin]

I kind of felt a mineral crunch mid-late game, but it was tolerable.  I feel like the consumer goods trade policy did help a lot to cut down on consumer goods draining my minerals, and I probably didn't really have enough alloy production.  I never did have to resort to the market to stay above water, but I did have to buy lump sums of minerals fairly often to build things.

Very late game, I was able to keep production targets and omnifarious acquisition running, but it would kind of suck if they became mandatory.  Can't really remember if they were necessary for me by that point, but I did run them both often.

[forsaken1111]

I'd rather leave the slot open than put hydroponics in, but I guess that depends on if you mind paying the upkeep

[Telgin]

I keep forgetting that hydroponics bays are a thing that can be built in star bases.  The food output is better than nothing, but small enough that it's easy to forget.  Same with the nebula refinery, which also requires somewhat rare nebulae.  A black hole observatory at least gives a big enough bonus to kind of matter for a while, but just increases the disparity between physics and engineering research output. 

[acidia]

How the heck do you get solar panel farms on star bases?  I captured an enemy star base and noticed that instead of anchorages it had solar panels in the slot where weapon batteries normally go.  Each was a +3 to energy output, don't remember the maintenance.  Was this something that was available to the player in an earlier version and just got disabled?   

[Shooer]

It's available to machines and I assume hives.  They get it instead of the trade hub.  Since they don't do trade.

[forsaken1111]

Yeah, machine empires at least get the solar panels. Haven't check hives. Gestalts don't get any trade so it's a token bone thrown to them to help with energy woes and a really useful thing to fill otherwise useless slots on starbases

[Dunamisdeos]

I always figured the no-mineral-building things was because there's not as much upkeep for minerals as there used to be. Ships upkeep with alloys, after all.

[Telgin]

I assumed it was more to do with realism than anything.  You can build hydroponics farms in places that don't support normal farming, and you can build generators to burn fuel for power anywhere, but minerals can only be dug up where they are.  That's presumably why there are no mining districts on ring worlds anymore, and none on habitats.

That said, an inefficient asteroid mining bay building for habitats would still make some sense, and the old matter replicator building would still make sense.  Not sure why they removed them, really.

[Dunamisdeos]

Hm. Well Minerals were basically a catch-all for "Any sort of material resource" before. A matter replicator could make sense on a habitat, it could be used to create all kind of material goods.

Now they have alloys and more-directly-useful strategic resources for that sort of thing, and minerals are exactly that, raw natural materials.

[E. Albright]

I'd qualify that as "any sort of non-organic material resource that doesn't act as fuel".