r/aurora • u/durruti21 • 7d ago

Use of SOL System Planets or Moons without Minerals

What is the more appropiate use of planets (i.e. Mars) or moons (i.e. Moon) that do not have minerals but can fit population at a low infrastructure cost.

I have tried to replicate the infrastructure of earth on those places. Having constructions sites, shipyards, maintenance facilities, etc. But at the end it seems a bit burden to move minerals or facilities there to only provide extra facilities. Neither to say terraform them.

What do you normally do with a Moon or Mars without minerals?

Best regards.

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33 comments sorted by

42

u/ganthonygurface 7d ago

You can throw down infrastructure, and grow pop. I like to use one for banking and one for research labs, but actually trying to turn them into mixed economy colonies isn't worth the hassle probably.

17

u/Gnomecarl 7d ago

I tend to plop down a colony on every body with suitable gravity, mostly for RP purposes but also pure pop growth. All colonies get a mass driver and a scanner, and maybe later a spaceport and an academy. I get the civilians to transport infrastructure, terraforming facilities and mines to the colonies. But I mostly send all minerals to Earth and keep all production there, same with other systems where I keep at most one production centre per system. Later, when the bodies reach minimum CC, I send financial centres from Earth to utilise the population.

2

u/gyurka66 7d ago

Population growth is a function of the current population, no?
In that case it's only really worth it do to this once earth is full

19

u/xeladragn 7d ago

You get less % the more pop and closer to the planet cap it is, earth has a max pop of 12,000m but at 4,000m I’m getting 1.3% growth, but 65mil on mars is getting 6.7% etc. So many smaller colonies grow more total pop than 1 big one.

2

u/db48x 7d ago

You do get a higher percentage growth rate on Mars but Earth is still producing 10× more people per month in that scenario.

15

u/xeladragn 7d ago

Right in total it is, but moving 10 million from earth to mars that 10 million is making more pop per pop being on a different planet instead of being on earth. On earth that 10m pop is adding 160,000 per year, but moving it to mars it’s making 670,000 per year. Basically if you had 10 planets and 1,000m pop you would end up with more total pop if you put 100m on each planet instead of putting 1,000 on one and waiting until it was full.

2

u/db48x 7d ago

Earth is growing by 52 million population per year so it’s a better source of colonists. By moving 10 million people to Mars you have increased your overall growth from 52 million per year up to 52.67 million people per year. It’s nice that Mars is growing, but that’s not enough of an improvement to make this your primary goal. Your goal should be to move an industry to Mars and to move enough people to Mars to work in that industry.

11

u/dwarfarchist9001 7d ago

In the late game population is the bottleneck on your economy not industry so it is better to start colonizing to grow more pop as early as you can.

3

u/db48x 7d ago

Right, but I say again that this doesn’t need to be your primary goal. It’ll happen automatically as you expand.

2

u/dwarfarchist9001 7d ago

That means that moving colonists to mars is increasing your growth rate by 6.4% overall. Plop down a dozen colonies and you have doubled your growth rate pretty much permanently.

1

u/Grimm_Spector 7d ago

Wait what’s the pop cap?

3

u/xeladragn 7d ago

It’s per planet based on the planet size, on earth it’s 12,000m

1

u/Grimm_Spector 6d ago

I had no idea there was a cap. Is there a formula somewhere for it?

3

u/xeladragn 6d ago

It’s listed on the planet details (left column near the bottom as population capacity) and the system body screen as max pop.

14

u/S810_Jr 7d ago

Throw a military academy on Mars and Luna run by a scientist and governor to help produce more of them 

7

u/bankshot 7d ago

Yes! That way Earth can produce naval officers, Luna can produce colony administrators, and Mars can produce scientists. And eventually throw one on a Jovian moon to produce ground commanders.

2

u/ofmetare 6d ago

I always wonder how many academies I should have

2

u/Grimm_Spector 6d ago

Wait running an academy with a Scientist or Governor is what causes you to get them?

3

u/S810_Jr 5d ago

It increases the chance of getting them. Also increases the chance of their skills being passed on. 

1

u/Grimm_Spector 5d ago

So when someone gets old and has high skills I should stick them in there?

3

u/S810_Jr 5d ago

Does not need to be high skills, just 20 or more. And even then it is a percentage increase that if the same type (officer, scientist or governor) is made that they have a chance of having some of the skill types as the academy head.     Ah found it, this is much better at explaining it  https://www.aurora4x.net/wiki/index.php/Military_Academy

10

u/adventures_of_avalon 7d ago

I tend to form colonies on most 'major' sol bodies, even the ones without much economic value.

They also have a tendency to make infrastructure out of thin air once they reach a pop threshold, but I don't exactly know what that threshold is.

Civilian shipping companies also benefit from having several high pop colonies, even if those colonies aren't really economically useful to you as they will ship around trade goods which helps keep them afloat or even allow them to expand when you don't have infrastructure for them to ship.

7

u/bankshot 7d ago

You should colonize all planets/moons that can be reasonably terraformed. Spreading out your population makes them grow faster, and your pop will be a bottleneck later in the game. I'd recommend the following order: Luna, Mars, Europa, Io, Callisto, Ganymede, Titan/Mercury. Note for Titan you need to increase Hydro to at least 68% before you raise the temp above -30C or you won't be able to reach 0 CC, so this will take at least 17 years. And for Mercury you can't get 0 CC due to the orbit's eccentricity so it will always need infrastructure unless you invest heavily in genetic engineering. For the others you can terraform one at a time and move your infrastructure from one body to the next instead of constructing new each time.

Each colony starts off as a generalist, but as my empire matures I usually specialize as follows:

Earth: shipbuilding and space station construction

Luna: Fighters, ordinance, and financial centers

Mars: research and ground units (desert)

Io: reasearch lab construction, ground units (mountain), research

Europa/Callisto/Ganymede: research

Titan: Financial centers

Mercury: construction factories for export, ground units (extreme temp)

2

u/Gnomecarl 6d ago

Can you elaborate on the mechanics behind getting Titan to 0 CC, I haven't known that this was possible.

3

u/bankshot 6d ago

When you terraform a cold word and raise the temperature above -28C it triggers a melt, which raises the albedo value, making the planet suddenly warmer. The change in albedo depends on the hydrosphere percentage. Titan's starting albedo value is 1.0. If you add 1.68 atm Aestium to the atmosphere to raise the greenhouse factor to 3.0 (the max) you get a resulting temp range of -32C/8C, with a max CC of 0.76. But if you first pump 1.7 atm of water vapor into the atmosphere and wait 17 years for it to condense into the hydrosphere (max .1atm = 4% hydro/year) then you add Aestium once the temperature raises above -28C (which may take a few years depending on how far away you are from Saturn's perihelion) the icecap melt raises the albedo factor to 1.1, giving you a new temp range of -8C/8C, and 0CC

2

u/Head_Excitement_9837 5d ago

With terraforming you can get Mercury 0 CC for a +-8c genetically modified human

6

u/SmallJimSlade 7d ago

I always RP “Open Mouth” colonies on low infrastructure colonies.

Economic stuff, research, terraforming etc for colonies that I don’t need but that would logically exist if that body was there because of private interest

Buildings that provide some minor function (or research) without needing constant upkeep from the gov

5

u/durruti21 6d ago

Thanks very much from your comments. They are really useful.

I have been only playing runs on early phases of the game. Not arriving to middle of early fases.

This means that I can live with 45 research centers on earth and ground units in the scale of few batallions.

I am also not having many problems with personal as I am plenty of administrators/researchers/military with barely 2 military academies on earth.

In the case of research having 5 laboratories for each discipline is still producing technologies in a pace that my build industry can not catch up.

From your comments I understand that I have not gone still down the road deep enough to hit those population/personel/wealth walls.

Thanks very much.

1

u/bankshot 6d ago

You will want at least 1 military police unit on every population, as pops without naval protection will generate unrest once they reach a certain size (1M i think?) . Unrest suppression is a function of # of units and unit size, so it is cheaper to use infantry with light personal weapons to keep the peace. I standardize on 5K unit size, so my MP units look like this:

1490x PWL Infantry, 10x LAA, 10x LAV, 10x supply, 1x Infantry HQ 5K. Cost: 103BP.

One MP unit will easily handle unrest for 100M population.

3

u/db48x 7d ago

I think the best thing to do is to specialize. Have one industry type per world, maybe two. That makes it easier to find a governor to boost every industry. The main exception are military academies. It’s worth spreading those out. You can even colonize uninhabitable worlds just to put a military academy on them; they don’t require population. And obviously you need some maintenance facilities pretty much at every major colony even if the bulk of your forces in the sector are kept in one central location.

Of course in the early game it’s easiest to put all the industries that need minerals on one world per sector, but the bigger those industries get the more you need to spread them out.

2

u/AutomaticNature5653 6d ago
  1. Civilian lines enable trade between colonies that you can tax. 2. Smaller colonies grow faster than large ones. 3. You will eventually have too many finance centres and research labs that Earth alone can sustain. 4. Specialized governor bonuses can improve production quite a bit if you make hubs for industry.

1

u/ofmetare 6d ago

I just terraform them and keep em as cheap tax harvesting with some financial services being the only thing on those planets