[X3] Mining station guide (updated 2006-01-21)

[jlehtone]

Update 2006-01-21: Added a (IMO useless) table



I've looked through many of the excellent guides that describe station and complex building. The matching of production rates of different factories have been described quite extensively. The behaviour of solar power plants and how they differ from the rest of the factories has been explained too. However, there is an another "non-conforming" factory and that is the mine. It is a safe bet to say that a mine on an asteroid with yield 26 is sufficient. That is not the whole truth. One can save on station costs by placing the mine on a higher-yield asteroid, because then that mine can support more factories. The question is how much more? And are the low-yield asteroids worth any?

The production rate of mines is calculated from the yield of the asteroid exactly as it was done in X2.

And how was it in X2 / is in X3?

There is a BASETIME, which is 2400 seconds (40 minutes) for Silicon and 600 seconds (10 minutes) for Ore. Fab_size is 2 for M, and 5 for L.

[Malcolm (Cyteen)]

From the notes I have here, it does appear that the Teladi produce the cheapest mines for both ore and silicon. I have not confirmed this in game however.

Interesting post, thank you.

Cyteen out

[Iron Giant]

[jlehtone]

[jlehtone]

*update bump*

[The Rogue Trader]

So what is the difference between L and M mines ?
Do they produce quicker/slower or at the same rate ?
I thought the only difference was the amount they could hold.

[Shokai]

An M class station will produce at a rate of 2.0, An L will produce at 5.0, an XL station at 10. So yes, the L will get more faster than an M


Shokai

[jlehtone]

The "scale" of production is x2, x5, and x10 for M, L, and XL. There are no XL mines. The scale affects the stock size and the number of products per cycle. It does not affect the cycle time.

Thus, mine M and mine L (on same yield) have exactly the same cycle time. However, the L will produce 2.5 times more than M in one cycle.

L is not faster than M, but is does produce more.

Effectively the same, but since factories do produce in fixed-time cycles, one cannot be faster.

[Shokai]

[boran_blok]

now I might have missed in some formulas but isnt it so then that the cycletime goes down and then jumps up when the multiplier gets a bump ?

I have put these into excell and if i'm not mistaking (which might very well be the case)

a yield of 39 gives a cycletime of 61 seconds. but a yield 40 has a cycletime of 118 seconds. am I correct ?

and the best yield would then be either 80 or 81, both giving a cycletime of 60 sec.

[jlehtone]

The Basic_cycletime goes down, it is 61 seconds for yield 39 and 59 seconds for yield 40.

However, cycletimes below 60 seconds are not allowed. Therefore both the Basic_cycletime and products per cycle are multiplied by an integer. Yield 40 mine thus produces in one cycle (in 118 seconds) the same amount as yield 39 mine produces in two cycles (in 122 seconds). That multiplier and "bump" are merely cosmetic.

[boran_blok]

IC so cycle time goes up but so does production.

[Augustini]

I havn't gotten to placing mines yet, but i'm going to very shortly. I have one question though.

Can you place more than 1 mine on a roid? can you for instance place 2 or 3 mines?

didn't want to make a new topic out of this!

[jlehtone]

[ggvw]

I have been looking for a table but I could not find one. So I put excel to work with the formula, and it came up with this.

Ore and Sillicon mines table

I checked the results for 27 yield ore mines and a 31 and 26 yield sillicon mine and they are correct. But I'm not very sure if the table is correct for the very low (< 3) yield sillicon mines.

Please don't tell me someone else already made such a table