Mine Upgrades

[Braxtil]

Do you all ever upgrade your mines? It seems sort of pointless/situational to me, as it just means they will run out sooner. Or am I missing something? Thanks!

[maerchen]

Depending on my need of metal and surplus of IP I upgrade sometimes to II.

What I do every time is upgrading my recyclers to II or III if they have an artifact dig site. Some planets are rich of ruins and had a university in the colonization phase. These yield a lot of artifacts.

[maerchen]

Most of the time it is better to build MSF assets to III+ than mines.

[ulzgoroth]

I'd agree it's rarely desirable, though it's an option if you don't have a better way to augment your income of a particular resource.

[Braxtil]

Do you get more artifacts in total with a higher level recycler, fewer, or get the same number faster?

[CHOO CHOO]

Depends on whether it's your current bottleneck. If you need metal NOW, then what good does slower deposit depletion do you? Mine your heart out and get what you need.

But to be fair, I tend to play a slow game and rarely upgrade mines either since they tend to run out soon enough for me. Almost all my games tend to end up relying on MSF.

[George The Ork]

For every 10k of a resource I'll upgrade a mines level if possible. It's not like metal rots or runs out of storage space like the others.

[laagamer]

Originally posted by maerchen:

Most of the time it is better to build MSF assets to III+ than mines.

MSF?

[Thomas]

Metal Soil Filtering probably.

[maerchen]

Yep, Metal Soil Filtration. MSF yields metals, rare metals and radioactives. I still build rather additional mines I than leaving them to the private sector.

@Braxtil as the artifacts are digged up in a ratio in regards to recycled resources, higher recycler levels yield artifacts faster but deplete the ruins faster, too.

Mind that adjacent ruins give each recycling plant a bonus, reference 5.5.2.4. manual:

"You’ll get +25% extra Scavenge Items for each scavengeable Hex directly
around the Assets Hex and +10% for such Hexes at range 2."

Another good to know thing is that you don't want to strip mine these, as the bonus is only applied if there are scav points left.

[Braxtil]

Thanks for the info!