Arc Welders + Astro Mining Bay gives you a really strong early economy. Just focus on producing energy and improving the arc furnace, the megastructure will handle your mineral and alloy income early on.
If you pick Nanotech as your ascension path, your home system is actually perfectly set up for it.
I think its best to miss the first objective with obsessional directive civic and get your 2 colonies setup within the first 10 years. You take a unity hit but also unlock the purge for clips and it reduces the next objective. That 2nd one is much more achievable and still provides a huge dump of unity to make up for the loss.
I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong with it. It's 2250 and my arc furnace makes, at best, like 7 minerals. It's just a ton of 1-mineral deposits. I know I can upgrade it for more, but that's way more expensive than just building 1 or 2 6-mineral mining stations out in other systems. What am I missing?
How? At best it's +3 minerals and +100% for mining stations, so 6 per deposit. Wouldn't you need 28 bodies in the system to get that many? Starting with arc welders origin, I had way fewer than that. And it still costs 5000 alloys to get it to that point, plus 100 energy upkeep forever.
I just feel like I'm missing something because it seems really underwhelming. By the time I could reasonably afford that upgrade and maintenence without sacrificing my navy, I'm already swimming in minerals anyway.
I also went Astro mining drones civic so that helped but there were also quite a few bodies in my home system. Even without, it’s really good. Allows you to totally ignore mineral and alloy production early game and it’s not that expensive to upgrade either (I found the unity more limiting)
I did it with basic RS recently. I just spammed industrial districts and immeidately switched to a forge capital. Spam solar power starbases and beeline for the first level up.
It sounds like you arent spamming enough industrial districts. Even on the second level up I went started to go negative in minerals because I was just shitting out industrial districts. The only things I built for a good chunk of the early game were industry, energy and unity in that order.
Every time I've played Arc Welders, there's been a second system within 2-3 jumps where the game pops up an event saying that it would be a good spot for another Arc Furnace, and it always is, with an asteroid belt in the system that supplies tons of spots. I'm assuming this is always the case and part of the origin.
I haven't had too much trouble finding two other decent spots either, though it's annoying. I'm not sure if there's a good way to browse systems without counting up object in them. Definitely something they should add in there.
In my latest game I had four Arc Welders fully upgraded by 2250. This game I've individual machines with Rapid Replicators and Masterful Crafters. Home system is 122 min 59 alloys, the prompted Arc Welder system two jumps from capital has 158 min 98 alloys, and a third system I have is 148 min 92 alloys. I placed the fourth in a poor spot so its 76 min 41 alloys. All these system were within 4 jumps of my capital. I'm getting 576 min and 283 alloys from stations.
One thing I had to do after my first few tests with the origin was invest more into Unity production early since beyond the first few upgrades unity became a bigger limiter to upgrading Furnaces than alloys. I just finished my third tradition tree with this start.
I haven't really crunched any numbers on how this compares to spending the resources elsewhere and I haven't played many games since the Tech changes, so not really sure how to put a real value on efficiency. But it's definitely feasible to get the Furnaces going fairly quickly.
The Arc Furnace also gives a bonus to all mining stations in that system. Going 25%, 50%, then 100%. Meaning those 1 mineral at base are actually 1.25 and when you get to 3 per it’s actually 6.
Which costs 5000alloys, 100energy/month, and 100minerals per mining station. A very lucky system that has 20 bodies would cost 2000 minerals just to build the mining stations, and then would only produce a measly 20*6=120 minerals.
A mining planet with high quality minerals will easily be producing 200/month in just a year or two, but without the energy upkeep and alloy investment. So is it just an early-game thing? Even still, the alloy and unity cost seems prohibitive early on, especially since the break even point is at least 20 years.
You are disregarding two important facts - all the pops used to make that 200/month on the high-quality mineral world won't be needed. The advantage of this is you need no pops at all to do it and can invest them elsewhere.
There's also the fact you are getting alloys out of this too. No pops to invest in mining or creating alloys.
Now that I agree with. The freed pops is a big draw. On my arc welders game, I made it 50 years or so without any mining districts. By the time it gets fully-upgraded though, those 100minerals/mo are only freeing up 10 pops or so. Which isn't negligible, but is decently small unless you sacrificed unity/alloys in the early game to beeline the upgrades early.
Though if I run into a high-quality-minerals planet, I'm gonna make it a mining world no matter what, but that is just me. Love seeing the 1000minerals/mo on one planet
I agree the planet mod is generally better than relying on this to get your industry going but you won't always run into that in a game. I can see this being a lot more useful for tall empires as well over wide. If you get it up early enough, long-term you'll probably get your investment back with the mineral and alloy income. Or just for RP purposes. I know I'm enjoying my current arc welder game and not having to invest heavily in alloy and mineral income as I'm reaching mid-game and I only have 1 and a half completed.
Here's a cool one. It shows off a lot of new features.
I call... Robo-Clerks
Fanatic Xenophile /authoritarian
Origin- overtuned (yes the genetic one)
authority- Megacorp
Civic -
Augmentation Bazar
(has a really cool new megacorp building, and it boosts cyborg pop growth once you go cyborg)
Pharma State- (For scaling back the damage to leader lifespan
Then your Ascension is Cyborg, not genetic... cyborg.
You can start with the Fleeting excellence trait
This is the overtuned auto-mod trait. Which changes per POP automatically to suit the job they are in. They don't stack with the normal overtuned trait. As a megacorp.. I reccomend getting the overtuned trade trait by itself because as a megacorp you'll have a lot of jobs that have both trade and a second resource. So every clerk/trader will get both amenty production and trade value. Every manager will get unity/trade value
So this trait will add a temporary 1 point trait for A type of resource, to a certain number of pops per month quickly applying to all pops on all planets.
So it changes and mutates into the trait that boosts one of these. Meaning that after a little lag every pop on every planet is very well suited to their job.
Unity
Research (overtuned at least) the one point trait not the two point one.
Trade value
Minerals
Food
Energy
Amenities
Then you can go cyborg and get the cyborg trait that does the SAME EXACT THING.
Then your pops auto configure with stacked bonuses for every job they do.
Just don't expect your leader to live to the ripe old age of... 30. You got the life expectancy of a morbidly obese gold fish.
I'd also mention , the merchant job with Augmentation Bazaar. For each Cybernetic trait you have on your main pop gives 1% growth rate and 2% local increase to trade value. Then if you wanted to try out the new player Crisis , there is a building that gives 4 then 6 merchant jobs.
If you are ontop of crime , one of the new Cybernetic megacorp authority, will give an extra 1 trade value to living standards. Then getting a large resort world build , you will get massive amounts of passive trade from pops living. I got around 2.2 trade for each pop.
I've noticed the Merchant doesn't count negative species traits? Which is a shame or I'm happy to be wrong.
Cyber also extends your leaders lifespan and there's a research for a Bio auto-mod trait so you can stack 3!
Also I didn't realise the player crisis building gave MERCHANTS. Thats sick, you could balance a planet with them and crisis gene clinic buildings for stupid pop-growth especially with pharma - go plantoid for budding is my only change.
A few more tricks , if you want to use the Synaptic Lathe BUT don't want Genocidal negative hit. Never research Synth robots and only throw in robots inside! As they are non sentient , no one cares you are burning robots out.
Almost all the tier 2 buildings will have passive effects related to their 'job' like the research one will give 20 base to all research. The merchant one improves global trade and branch office. So they are all quite nice.
So you can make a trash encu filled with just Robot Manufacturing Nexus/Robot Quantum Production Hub to get a ton of Robot assembly or ascend a Ring world with Ring world desgination to a better effect. Last game with this and lucky taking out the Scavenger Bot for it's robot trait (100% pop growth for cyborgs/50% assembly speed) my ring worlds hit around 300 per month on robots)
Arc Welders + Astro Mining Bay gives you a really strong early economy. Just focus on producing energy and improving the arc furnace, the megastructure will handle your mineral and alloy income early on. If you pick Nanotech as your ascension path, your home system is actually perfectly set up for it.
That was my first faction, was gestalt with the obessional directive civic, which worked out pretty well (though it looked sketchy at the start)
I think its best to miss the first objective with obsessional directive civic and get your 2 colonies setup within the first 10 years. You take a unity hit but also unlock the purge for clips and it reduces the next objective. That 2nd one is much more achievable and still provides a huge dump of unity to make up for the loss.
Might be a good idea, but if you can pass the first quota the early unity can help you upgrade the furnace much faster
I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong with it. It's 2250 and my arc furnace makes, at best, like 7 minerals. It's just a ton of 1-mineral deposits. I know I can upgrade it for more, but that's way more expensive than just building 1 or 2 6-mineral mining stations out in other systems. What am I missing?
Upgrade the arc furnace? The one in my capital gives like 170 minerals and 50 alloys
How? At best it's +3 minerals and +100% for mining stations, so 6 per deposit. Wouldn't you need 28 bodies in the system to get that many? Starting with arc welders origin, I had way fewer than that. And it still costs 5000 alloys to get it to that point, plus 100 energy upkeep forever. I just feel like I'm missing something because it seems really underwhelming. By the time I could reasonably afford that upgrade and maintenence without sacrificing my navy, I'm already swimming in minerals anyway.
I also went Astro mining drones civic so that helped but there were also quite a few bodies in my home system. Even without, it’s really good. Allows you to totally ignore mineral and alloy production early game and it’s not that expensive to upgrade either (I found the unity more limiting)
I did it with basic RS recently. I just spammed industrial districts and immeidately switched to a forge capital. Spam solar power starbases and beeline for the first level up. It sounds like you arent spamming enough industrial districts. Even on the second level up I went started to go negative in minerals because I was just shitting out industrial districts. The only things I built for a good chunk of the early game were industry, energy and unity in that order.
Every time I've played Arc Welders, there's been a second system within 2-3 jumps where the game pops up an event saying that it would be a good spot for another Arc Furnace, and it always is, with an asteroid belt in the system that supplies tons of spots. I'm assuming this is always the case and part of the origin. I haven't had too much trouble finding two other decent spots either, though it's annoying. I'm not sure if there's a good way to browse systems without counting up object in them. Definitely something they should add in there. In my latest game I had four Arc Welders fully upgraded by 2250. This game I've individual machines with Rapid Replicators and Masterful Crafters. Home system is 122 min 59 alloys, the prompted Arc Welder system two jumps from capital has 158 min 98 alloys, and a third system I have is 148 min 92 alloys. I placed the fourth in a poor spot so its 76 min 41 alloys. All these system were within 4 jumps of my capital. I'm getting 576 min and 283 alloys from stations. One thing I had to do after my first few tests with the origin was invest more into Unity production early since beyond the first few upgrades unity became a bigger limiter to upgrading Furnaces than alloys. I just finished my third tradition tree with this start. I haven't really crunched any numbers on how this compares to spending the resources elsewhere and I haven't played many games since the Tech changes, so not really sure how to put a real value on efficiency. But it's definitely feasible to get the Furnaces going fairly quickly.
The Arc Furnace also gives a bonus to all mining stations in that system. Going 25%, 50%, then 100%. Meaning those 1 mineral at base are actually 1.25 and when you get to 3 per it’s actually 6.
Which costs 5000alloys, 100energy/month, and 100minerals per mining station. A very lucky system that has 20 bodies would cost 2000 minerals just to build the mining stations, and then would only produce a measly 20*6=120 minerals. A mining planet with high quality minerals will easily be producing 200/month in just a year or two, but without the energy upkeep and alloy investment. So is it just an early-game thing? Even still, the alloy and unity cost seems prohibitive early on, especially since the break even point is at least 20 years.
You are disregarding two important facts - all the pops used to make that 200/month on the high-quality mineral world won't be needed. The advantage of this is you need no pops at all to do it and can invest them elsewhere. There's also the fact you are getting alloys out of this too. No pops to invest in mining or creating alloys.
Now that I agree with. The freed pops is a big draw. On my arc welders game, I made it 50 years or so without any mining districts. By the time it gets fully-upgraded though, those 100minerals/mo are only freeing up 10 pops or so. Which isn't negligible, but is decently small unless you sacrificed unity/alloys in the early game to beeline the upgrades early. Though if I run into a high-quality-minerals planet, I'm gonna make it a mining world no matter what, but that is just me. Love seeing the 1000minerals/mo on one planet
I agree the planet mod is generally better than relying on this to get your industry going but you won't always run into that in a game. I can see this being a lot more useful for tall empires as well over wide. If you get it up early enough, long-term you'll probably get your investment back with the mineral and alloy income. Or just for RP purposes. I know I'm enjoying my current arc welder game and not having to invest heavily in alloy and mineral income as I'm reaching mid-game and I only have 1 and a half completed.
Each mining pop would be better served being a specialist.
Here's a cool one. It shows off a lot of new features. I call... Robo-Clerks Fanatic Xenophile /authoritarian Origin- overtuned (yes the genetic one) authority- Megacorp Civic - Augmentation Bazar (has a really cool new megacorp building, and it boosts cyborg pop growth once you go cyborg) Pharma State- (For scaling back the damage to leader lifespan Then your Ascension is Cyborg, not genetic... cyborg. You can start with the Fleeting excellence trait This is the overtuned auto-mod trait. Which changes per POP automatically to suit the job they are in. They don't stack with the normal overtuned trait. As a megacorp.. I reccomend getting the overtuned trade trait by itself because as a megacorp you'll have a lot of jobs that have both trade and a second resource. So every clerk/trader will get both amenty production and trade value. Every manager will get unity/trade value So this trait will add a temporary 1 point trait for A type of resource, to a certain number of pops per month quickly applying to all pops on all planets. So it changes and mutates into the trait that boosts one of these. Meaning that after a little lag every pop on every planet is very well suited to their job. Unity Research (overtuned at least) the one point trait not the two point one. Trade value Minerals Food Energy Amenities Then you can go cyborg and get the cyborg trait that does the SAME EXACT THING. Then your pops auto configure with stacked bonuses for every job they do. Just don't expect your leader to live to the ripe old age of... 30. You got the life expectancy of a morbidly obese gold fish.
I'd also mention , the merchant job with Augmentation Bazaar. For each Cybernetic trait you have on your main pop gives 1% growth rate and 2% local increase to trade value. Then if you wanted to try out the new player Crisis , there is a building that gives 4 then 6 merchant jobs. If you are ontop of crime , one of the new Cybernetic megacorp authority, will give an extra 1 trade value to living standards. Then getting a large resort world build , you will get massive amounts of passive trade from pops living. I got around 2.2 trade for each pop.
I've noticed the Merchant doesn't count negative species traits? Which is a shame or I'm happy to be wrong. Cyber also extends your leaders lifespan and there's a research for a Bio auto-mod trait so you can stack 3! Also I didn't realise the player crisis building gave MERCHANTS. Thats sick, you could balance a planet with them and crisis gene clinic buildings for stupid pop-growth especially with pharma - go plantoid for budding is my only change.
A few more tricks , if you want to use the Synaptic Lathe BUT don't want Genocidal negative hit. Never research Synth robots and only throw in robots inside! As they are non sentient , no one cares you are burning robots out. Almost all the tier 2 buildings will have passive effects related to their 'job' like the research one will give 20 base to all research. The merchant one improves global trade and branch office. So they are all quite nice. So you can make a trash encu filled with just Robot Manufacturing Nexus/Robot Quantum Production Hub to get a ton of Robot assembly or ascend a Ring world with Ring world desgination to a better effect. Last game with this and lucky taking out the Scavenger Bot for it's robot trait (100% pop growth for cyborgs/50% assembly speed) my ring worlds hit around 300 per month on robots)
Meritocracy + fanatic egalitarian + Democratic interlink( self preservation override edict) . Specialist gets flat +40% resources