X3 Reunion: How much minerals contains the entire universe in form of rock clusters?

General discussions about the games by Egosoft including X-BTF, XT, X², X³: Reunion, X³: Terran Conflict and X³: Albion Prelude.

Moderator: Moderators for English X Forum

Post Reply
Xenon K
Posts: 32
Joined: Sat, 2. Mar 13, 08:16
x3tc

X3 Reunion: How much minerals contains the entire universe in form of rock clusters?

Post by Xenon K » Tue, 20. Sep 22, 12:16

So this question might come a little late with the game being almost 17 years old :roll: , but I need to know this. I've recently started a new game and now have to decide what kind of complex i wanna make. In earlier games, I would just let a fleet of fighters destroy the rocks in all of the sectors to raise IS performance and looks, while building self-sustaining weapon complexes that would supply my ships with what they need. However i love efficiency and this time I would like to use the rocks instead of destrying them. The idea I had in mind was to build a complex that cointains all the stations needed for a self-sustaining complex except for the mines, that produces enough weapons/missiles/shields for a particular fleet that i have in mind, but obviously I don't wanna run out of ressources before i reach my goal.

I have calculated that I would need at least 2.5 million units of ore for the fleet that I have in mind. Haven't calculated it for the sillicon yet, but obviously it would be in the same or larger magnitude. Of course I'm aware that I could always just add some mines later, but my plan was to build this in a faraway sector if it was feasible and adding mines would be an additional hassle, that I'd like to avoid.

So the question is, does anyone know how much ore and silicon the rock clusters contain? Is there a script or any other method to find out? :gruebel: Any help is appreciated :goner:
Gestern noch standen wir mit beiden Beinen am Abgrund. Heute sind wir schon einen Schritt weiter.

jlehtone
Posts: 21801
Joined: Sat, 23. Apr 05, 21:42
x4

Re: X3 Reunion: How much minerals contains the entire universe in form of rock clusters?

Post by jlehtone » Tue, 20. Sep 22, 17:06

I ... don't remember. :oops:

I know that I did clear all rocks from Elena's Fortune, Ore Belt, and Barren Shores by mining (in the latter I had accidentally busted an Asteroid). The operation did use the script from Bonuspack. I also know that I did post about it when I was done. To find those posts ... :shock:

I could find my Nividium-mining description from same era: viewtopic.php?t=194631 (sorry, all images are broken).

That demonstrates one option: you can detonate an Asteroid and then collect those rocks. Since the Asteroid will respawn (eventually), the resource is infinite.

More important question is, at what rate can you mine? You know how fast your complex can consume, but how many miners do you need and therefore, is that feasible (even if rocks were infinite)?
Goner Pancake Protector X
Insanity included at no extra charge.
There is no Box. I am the sand.

Xenon K
Posts: 32
Joined: Sat, 2. Mar 13, 08:16
x3tc

Re: X3 Reunion: How much minerals contains the entire universe in form of rock clusters?

Post by Xenon K » Tue, 20. Sep 22, 22:57

I could find my Nividium-mining description from same era: viewtopic.php?t=194631 (sorry, all images are broken).
That was a funny read. It is interesting that you bring this up, because I had a similar idea in mind, except that i was planning to exterminate the Kha'ak heathens instead of preaching to them :-D . So my idea was to set up a fleet of 400 Boron Raysto invade all the Kha'ak sectors at the same time OOS, eliminate any Kha'ak activity there and surpress ther respawn by sheer force of all the Rayspatroling their sectors in order to send a fleet of miners there to mine the Nividium roids during the 2 hours respawn time and then jump out again and let the Rays deal with the Kha'ak until the asteroids return and then repeat the thing again.

A Ray needs 40 GPPC, and a GPPC needs 150 ore, thus the calculation is 40*150*400, which turns out to be 2.4 million units ore, which is what i was referring to in my original post. Ideally i would at a few shield and missile fabs too, but I'm not even sure if the clusters are enough for the PPC, so i have no idea if even more stations are reasonable.
More important question is, at what rate can you mine? You know how fast your complex can consume, but how many miners do you need and therefore, is that feasible (even if rocks were infinite)?
I've tested it and found that 1 miner gathered 162 ore per ingame hour and the other gathered 102 silicon in the same time. A complex with 50 GPPC factories would be sufficiently fast for my playstyle to provide all the weapons i need for my Rays and consumes 7500 ore and 1200 silicon per hour. Let's be pessimistic and assume 1 freighter can mine 100 units of ore/sillicon per hour, a fleet of 100 ships (80 ore, 20 silicon) would be more than sufficient. In reality there is no reason to be pessimistic though, because I would support the miners with a fleet of fighters that break the rocks, so things should go significantly faster.

The total cost of the miners would be over 400 million Cr (I'm planning to use Caiman SF 2), which seems high compared to the ~ 25 million I would need for the mines, but bear in mind that

- the nividium in the rock clusters of the normal universe (Kha'ak sectors not counted) is already worth more than 1.5 billion Cr
- I need the freighters later on anyways for quickly mining nividium inside the Kha'ak sectors.
- want to clear the sectors containing rocks and debris sufficiently fast too.

So yes, it is both feasible from an economical and gameplay standpoint, at least for the PPC version of the complex. If i wanted to add shield and missile factories (150-200 ore consuming stations instead of only 50), it would still be balanced. It is just that I have no idea how much minerals a sector like Kingdom End contains. Let's see if anyone else has an answer to my question. Otherwise i gotta be the one to find out i guess xD.

I'm aware of that option, but the idea was to use the minerals of the rocks that's I'm going to clear from each anyways, due to my liking of efficiently using my ressources. I wouldn't blow up roids just to have a complex with no mines attached, in that case i would of course build one with mines. this is why i wanna know so badly if there are enough minerals for my idea, because otherwise i would just build an ordinary weapons complex with mines attached.
Gestern noch standen wir mit beiden Beinen am Abgrund. Heute sind wir schon einen Schritt weiter.

Post Reply

Return to “X Trilogy Universe”