Mining asteroids and resources

These are a starbase thing.

You see, there are special resources on the map. For instance, antimatter is currently found near black holes. These resources are used when you build ships that use special components. I'm not sure about the how the 2 relate (I haven't tested it yet), but supposedly each unit of resource allows you to build 1 ship that needs it. I think that antimatter is a missile weapon thing, but you can check the details when you add the ship modules.

You can mine these resources by placing a starbase nearby, and then installing the mining modules. More modules give you more points. It is currently not compatible with other specializations like economy or military.

I understand that part but: 

1) originally we were also able to mine asteroids for more income...

Furthermore,

2) What technology do you need to place these modules on on the starships, because I have capped technology and the feature is still not available

In GalCiv 2 you mined them for more production, not income. This sort of mining isn't in GalCiv 3 yet, and the devs are still debating whether it will be. They talked about it in the last dev stream.

Mining requires starbases, not starships.

I would also like to add that these starbase modules are not the same as they were in GalCiv 2. In GalCiv 2, mining starbase modules were unlocked by factory techs. In GalCiv 3, they currently have their own techs.

It is a complete waste to try and build a starbase. At this point, you can get one to stage 1, which does nothing at all. There is a list of things to add to make it into one of several types of base, but these are not there yet. Well, the labels are there, but they do not work, and it says so. It was a mistake to put up the starbase at all intill the whole thing is ready to go. Huge waste of time and effort just to get to an expensive nothing.

So yeah, you're wrong about everything. Starbases are fully implemented and have modules and everything. Economy Starbases are particularly useful.

Have you tried sending more constructors to your starbases to add modules? Because they are most certainly in the game.

I think the only benefit from them at this time is extending the reach of your ships.

The only useless types of starbases, for now, are the influence and mining bases (only if you don't use/need the resource).

The economy and military bases are quite useful.  Military bases are a good way to establish a beach head of sorts when beginning an offensive and holding off the hordes of fleet the NPCs get to build due to their difficulty bonus.

Thank you, Yasu. I tried to use the influence and mining bases, and when I found out they did not work yet, I assumed that the economy and military bases were useless as well, and did not try to use them. I will certainly work on them now and in the future, them being so valuable as you say.

Thank you again; sorry it took so long to reply, somehow I missed it.

We have cats also, one who looks similar to yours, and for whatever reason likes the game also. He will get onto my lap and watch, and see me get excited often when I am hitting those keys, and will try to help by hitting them himself. I will then, after the game, take him out of the room, and give him one of his favorite treats. I am not sure this is helping though, I think he is learning that whenever he starts typing with me he gets a treat, so I don't know if I am doing this the right way or not. 

God bless, and have a Merry Christmas, or one of the other two.    -Mistralok-

Goodness, I also wanted to say hi to DivineRath; we entered on the same month and year, and have spoken to him a number of times before, not in quite a while, but Hi!   We both entered during the same month and year, something I have not seen elsewhere before. I have a new picture, so you may (probably) don't remember me, but hi anyway.

I just purchased Galciv 3 on steam, and couldn't believe that mining asteroids fields wasn't in-game and was only being "considered".

I'm a long-time Galciv 1 & 2 player, probably put in hundreds of hours of gameplay. If this option isn't put into the game, Why have asteroid fields in the game at all?

Merely as an obstacle to pilot around? Silly. Eye candy? Silly.

Are you sure the influence modules don't work? I have been running constructors out and creating star bases next to other race boundaries, adding more constructors to build the various influence modules and watched my borders expand, such that the other race's planets start flipping to me.

Yeah, I think they work

I think there was a time where influence starbases didn't work (they didn't have any influence), but I tested things in a later patch and they worked then.

Asteroid mining is in game, it has just changed since GCII. Now asteroid fields are where you find and mine Derantium.

I tend to play Iridium and build both the free market and iridium store on all planets so I have a lot of influence already and so far I haven't seen much change with cultural starbases.  I don't know if its that the AIs are building more influence buildings or the bonus isn't noticeable with the the other bonuses I already have.

Back to asteroid mining, I'm of the opinion that having asteroids only to house durantium is pretty lame.  Let me use them some other way, either let me mine them for more production or put in a late game tech to build a planet or something with them, use them to make starbases or asteroid colonies with only a few tiles available.

The culture star bases don't seem to have the power that they did in GCII. They work, but the effect is very weak. Most of influence seems to come from planetary influence created by your culture buildings and culture research. I am not certain it is even worth building anything but econ star bases. On the other hand, it has occurred to me that since the econ bases power up the planet so well, the culture bases might also work better built within range of one of your own planets as a multiplier of the culture that seems to emanate from the planets. I'm not saying the remote bases don't expand your influence. It is the improvements that don't seem to help much. This is just my impression. I could be dead wrong.  

I thought the relic mining was working in beta 2 but they are not working now, that I can tell. I just won an influence V on a huge map vs godlike AI, (about 350 turns), I had the Altarians as an ally. I was too chicken to go it alone at godlike. All of the AI did pretty good. The Yor starts slow but came on strong by the late middle game. Frankly, I pretty much traded my way to victory. The AI is always broke and will trade anything but their planets for cash. The Yor agreed to sell me a planet but they wanted all my credits when I had about 15,000. I was able to stay ahead in tech and if they started to get too powerful I would buy 2-3 of their best ships for a few tech and a bit of cash.

Another AI problem, I was playing with uncommon habitable planets (not rare but the next one up). There were only about 30-40 habitable planets on the huge map and the AI seemed to give up on colonizing pretty soon. I wound up with 15-16 planets and the AI had only their home planets and 1-2 more.

Regarding the asteroid mining in GCII. The first thing I did was upgrade my mining ship for a colony ship and I never built another. It might be just me, but the return on asteroid mining just didn't seem worth the effort vs the other resources available. I don't recall what the mining pay back was but in my memory it was puny compared to trade routes and putting star bases on top of anomalies, (or whatever they were called) . If I am wrong, tell me what I was missing.

+1 to kestlstw. If we can not mine the asteroids, then we should remove them from the game.

But the bigger question is why not have the ability to mine the asteroids like in GalCiv 1 and 2? It was a popular and useful tool.

The way I see it, you do mine the asteroids. The only difference is they tell you what you are mining and where it is in the asteroid belt.

well then why not remove the nebulas and dust clouds as well and black holes? /sarcasm

Mine them too!  Well, collect gasses from them, we'd probably still just call it mining though.  Give a range bonus for mining nebula and manufacturing bonus for asteroids.  Or come up with another use for nebulas, but for nebula and asteroids to only have purpose to house exploitable resources is lame and putting them in for "terrain" in space is about as lame.  Anyone paying attention is not going to fight in them and autopathing avoids them that's not much for being "terrain". The map is 2d so your ships when around them in the z axis should be reasonable too.

Paul did say theres more resources coming into the game where you can mine different resources from different asteroid belts and substances from the nebula's. As for mining with bases I'm getting on quite well with it as I unlock the mining ring and barracks quite early on. I haven't fully developed a base yet but look forward to when I do