How to become an industry powerhouse?

[RobOda]

I'm enjoying the game so far, but I've got one problem early-game.

Minerals. A severe shortage of it. At the start I'm barely making enough to set up the infrastructure. Even getting it up to +20 isn't stockpiling it fast enough for me to get colony ships out at a reasonable rate - It's 350 for a colony ship right? So that's a year and a half to save up for one.

My last map was ridiculous, I was swimming in Energy credits, which seem to have limited uses and snoring away at the mineral mining. This causes two problems;

1. It stunts the growth overall for the Empire.

2. The AI seems to be happily spawning two-three new planets at a time, thus running away with all the premium areas while I'm trying to get out of my home sector. =p

Even if I did get a colony ship out and running, my military would be laughed at, it's proving a troublesome balance (that, or I'm getting awful maps).

So yeah, any suggestions short of spamming mines on the home planet?

[justdrop]

Survey and anything that gives minerals, start putting to work.

[Illyrien]

I perform extensive exploration and scouting and then build a few frontier outposts in high value areas, then move in with constructors to build up the area.

[Mansen]

With my scarab slaver empire, my issue isn't one of minerals but power. The 20% bonus to minerals and food stacks up quite nicely over time.

But really, focus on growth early on and balancing minerals and power. Ignore science bonuses until you have a solid basis of mineral income. Don't be afraid to scout out your area and put down a frontier outpost if it can cover a couple of system with really good bonuses.

[NixBoxDone]

Unlike other games, Stellaris so far seems to be mostly of a balanced approach. Early game you want a few planets that just do everything equally well.

Later on you can then scout out systems/regions with several close by planets to colonize. You designate those as "Mineral Sector", colonize them, build all the mining stations/research stations, and just ignore tiles.

1 to 3 farming buildings on each planet according to size so they can grow to maximum population.
2 to 3 power plants so they produce a nice comfy net plus in energy credits.
The rest of the buildings go towards whatever resource you want the sector to be, in your case minerals.
If you have the building that boosts total income, chuck one of those down on any planet that is medium to large, too.

Create the Sector - name it something that will remind you what it does, set it to "focus on minerals/science/energy/whatever", hire a governor that gives the relevant bonus if possible, and then set it to 75 % income goes to you. Don't forget to give the sector some seed minerals/energy so they can upgrade buildings as appropriate.

I have a two planet system that produces 60ish minerals at the moment and requires no micro managment - building one for science as we speak.

[Avalanche]

I have had instances where the home system and surrounding systems had nothing but energy credits and another game, was pure minerals and another was....nothing. lol.

The rest were a mix of all of them...which is preferrable.

[Emmote]

Yeah, I just had a game where no system inside my starting border had any materials at all, not even the home system...