Luna mine costs 56 boost?

[Why Not Dr Z?]

It's 2025, I earn 9 boost per year. How the heck am I supposed to ever build my first mine?

[Brakiros]

invest in boost, it takes awhile to actually get the boost you need and 9 boost a year is quite low

[Toblm]

Make more boost and wait a couple years.

[Mr Stickball]

Research chemical rocketry. It'll reduce that a bit. Not all of it, but it should drop to around 30 boost or so.

[76561198859928956]

If you're rushing to space you have to really, really focus boost in the early game.

However, while it's nice it's not necessary to get to space as quickly as possible. There are plenty of asteroids to go around.

[qwerlancer]

Boost are very cheap in terms of IP

Furthermore There is a "Extensive Mining Network" modifier that increasing your MC cost by n+1 starting from 1 for each planet and asteroid. If you have 4 different mining locations it costs you extra 1+2+3+4 = 10 MC FYR. You need to build up MC until 100.

[Prodigious1]

Research Nuclear Freighters also, that cuts the boost cost in half i think.

[SteelHeart]

You can get the first lunar mine down to about 49 boost with all the realvent techs. Space tugs and basic chemical rockets are unlocked early on and nuclear tugs are unlocked with solid core fission. Those techs also make your stuff get out there faster. Also, build the mine first. You can build up the 5 boost for a solar panel while you wait for the mine to get set up.

After you have a mine set up and some space resources then things get much cheaper and somehwat faster.

[corisai]

You can also trade for Boost. Sometimes (especially non-radical factions) could buy it quite cheaply BEFORE orbital techs are unlocked.

[MrSmiley]

I find it's basically required, every single game - to coup and occupy Kazakhstan.

That 2.5 boost or whatever it is, is just too good at the start. I also just go 100% spoils on it and then by the time I've got the boost set up in my superpower, I can dump Kazakhstan once you've ruined it for money.

[corisai]

Originally posted by MrSmiley:

I find it's basically required, every single game - to coup and occupy Kazakhstan.

It doesn't. For example if you're controlling world science - you can delay your mines a bit (and go for a marines vs best enemy mines on Luna before unlocking Mars for example).

[Why Not Dr Z?]

Thanks for the tips, guys. By getting a couple techs and by disbanding my earth orbital station, I was able to get a couple mines down no problem. And now I can build in space so I'm not boost limited as much.

[Ichangedmynamelol]

Mars might be a better decision, since Moon has little resource on it.

[Batailleuse]

Originally posted by Vorsichtig:

Mars might be a better decision, since Moon has little resource on it.

The point of Luna is either get one of the few location that has massive uranium/rare metal or skip it and send send marines in a ship later on to capture the good spots.

But you need a place with massive uranium to feed anything at mars or beyond or its gonna cost you way too much in rocket/month to keep them up and running if you don't.

Mars/most asteroid and even ceres have relatively low uranium while Luna has a spot with 10+/month which is basically enough to feed your whole empire.

Mars is technically skippable. You get nearly double the ressources of Mars capturing ceres. And the real limiting factor are your rare metals when you want to build ships... Those are dispersed mostly in the asteroid belts. And the 2-3 good spot for that ressources are pretty much golden.

Luna is important to get to have basic ressource going to send stuff directly from space to save tons of fuel.

After ceres/asteroid the only. Other Important one Is mercury.

Also worth noting that getting few spots with higher values is better because the more stuff you got in space the easier you gonna pisss aliens.

I had a game where I rushed space hard... First on Luna got 3 bases there before anyone else. Which then let me also be first on Mars (5 bases before anyone else) and ceres (all base mine) + 3 very juicy asteroid.... And 10 ish space bases around earth.

Didn't take long for alien to get pissed and start blasting all my bases.

[Brakiros]

you built up too fast there's also technologies that allow you to increase your limit it's like 120 MC before they start blasting on Normal with both techs researched. In the next patch it's being increased to 165 with both techs researched

[Hydra]

It's completely doable, but the game doesn't do a very good job at pointing you to the right techs that will make getting over the initial hurdles easier.
There's one tech in particular that's completely essential for any run and you should rush it as quickly as possible. I forget what it is called, but it's something like advanced chemical rockets. Early in the tech tree. Just look for it any you'll find it.