Hrm....How do Asteroid miners work?
ANd resposting, but how exactly do you colonize and set up mining outposts on worlds?
Also, once your economy is decent enough the civilian AI may create Civilian Mining Colonies (CMCs), which over time can grow into pretty significant sites, with integrated mass drivers and basic sensors. Chances for CMCs to appear depend on your per capita income and your race's Trading value (higher = more likely). As a result, government type plays a role. Corporate Governments tend to spawn CMCs easily, while a Hive Mind Race may never see one.
I think there're also need for minimum of a few thousand units of Duranium or Sorium at accessiblity of at least half before they'll even consider mining it. At least that's according to an old post from maker, I've not tested it out. Mine growth also depends on income.
Yeah, that's correct. Not sure about the quantity, but yes...must have some fairly accessible Duranium or Sorium. I went and dug and found the Word of Steve on CMC mechanics:
Each 5-day increment a random number is generated between 1 and 1 million. If that number is lower than the annual racial income, a new mining colony will be created. This is based on the assumption that the racial income reflects the size of the civilian economy and is therefore will serve as a reasonable method of determiing the liklehood of new mining colonies being established. If a colony is established, the first step is to determine the system in which the new colony will be located. This is done by listing the populations of the Empire greater than ten million in size in descending order of population size and working through the list. As each pop is checked, there is a 50% chance that the system in which that pop is located will be selected, at which point the system selection is complete. Obviously this favours the systems in which larger pops are located. If the entire list is checked and no pop is selected, the system in which the largest pop is located will be used.
Once the system is selected, the program looks for suitable surveyed system bodies without an existing colony orbiting the same star as the selected population with an orbital distance no greater than 80 AU. On the first run through, the program checks for those system bodies which have either 25,000 tons of Duranium or 25,000 tons of Sorium at an accessibility of 0. 8 or greater. Once those are found, the program works out the total mineral deposits for each world, multiplying the total tonnage of each deposit by its accessibility and ignoring any with an accessibility less than 0. 5. The world with the greatest total tonnage is selected. If none are found that meet the criteria, a second check is made using 15,000 tons of Duranium or Sorium at an accessibility of 0. 7 or greater. If worlds within these criteria are found, the total tonnage check is performed again to select one.
When the mining colony is created, it has 1-3 CMC, a deep space tracking station and a single Garrison division named after the system body.
In addition to the check for new mining colonies, all existing colonies are checked during each 5-day increment and there is a chance they will be expanded by adding one extra CMC. This check was originally 1-1,000,000 but after playtest it is now 1-4,000,000.
So if you can get your total racial income up to 1,000,000 a year, you'll soon be awash in CMCs.
EDIT: And I believe that means Trading indirectly increases CMC chances by boosting tax revenue?