Maketh Mohole Manned?

[YertyL]

So...another one of my ideas to fix a few problems at once.

• Mohole Mine currently is just too good, both compared to other wonders, and to other mining options. The research cost of the mohole wonder is in the area of deep scanning + deep mining. For that, you get a mine that never runs dry, and that you can conveniently place anywhere without worrying about deposits, and you basically get the unmanned mining breakthrough, which itself is OP already, for free. It eliminates all the challenge of regular mining in one swoop. This leads to me regularly just skipping deep mining, and I'm sure I am not the only one. I have heard about people skipping metal mines altogether.
• It's actually one of the cheapest wonders, as you tend to be more stripped for polymers and electronics than machine parts. 300 parts are not a big enough hurdle to not go straight for it. But while other wonders feel more like an enhancement of stuff you can already do, mohole is a complete game-changer for the reasons noted above. If the omega telescope gave 10k research on its own, people would probably also start skipping hawking institutes.
  
• At the same time, building a mohole mine basically eliminates a whole class of specialists, namely the geologist. And something about "eliminating a whole class of people" just feels iffy to me.

So, in addition to giving mohole a significantly increased research cost compared to deep mining, I think the best change would be making it a 36-48 geologist building (12-16 workers a shift). The number of workers could increase further when upgrading. The number of ressources produced per worker should be lower than for a regular mine to leave some incentive to use those first, and only move to mohole once you have a large number of colonists.

This would give both geologists and deep mines a role in the later game, and significantly increase initial cost and planning required for a mohohle, as you would at least need to have geologist domes around it. It would just make its power feel a lot more earned. Thoughts?

 

[SillySMS]

At least in my experience, 50 metal per sol evaporates very quickly in the late game (a mere 4 tribo scrubbers, maintaining two machine parts factories, building 1/4 of a mega dome), and much of that metal is immediately plowed into generating the machine parts to upgrade the Mohole.

It also breaks the pattern of wonders being unmanned 1-off buildings, and if you want to expand past that, you're back to colonists.

What is the real issue to me is that it's the sole source of late game metals unless you get lucky with trade partners or import via Elevator. The upgrade series is an ugly patch that centers the late game around an unmanned building, instead of some sort of mechanic to extend the usefulness of geologists past deposit depletion.

Nerfing tribo scrubbers so you still need to worry about maintenance would also be a huge help.

 

[YertyL]

At least in my experience, 50 metal per sol evaporates very quickly in the late game (a mere 4 tribo scrubbers, maintaining two machine parts factories, building 1/4 of a mega dome), and much of that metal is immediately plowed into generating the machine parts to upgrade the Mohole.

It also breaks the pattern of wonders being unmanned 1-off buildings, and if you want to expand past that, you're back to colonists.

What is the real issue to me is that it's the sole source of late game metals unless you get lucky with trade partners or import via Elevator. The upgrade series is an ugly patch that centers the late game around an unmanned building, instead of some sort of mechanic to extend the usefulness of geologists past deposit depletion.

Nerfing tribo scrubbers so you still need to worry about maintenance would also be a huge help.

Just because 50 metal "evaporate very quickly" that does not mean that mohole is not much better than other options of getting them, does it? From your description, you also seem to build and upgrade it regularly and early. Do you still expand to mine deep metal deposits in the later game? For me it is usually 1-2 at most. Heck, in my last game I expanded to 2 deep metal deposits, but ended up not mining them, because it's just so much easier to upgrade the mohole. I have a very hard time imaginging that you actually mine the map dry. Apart from that, I never even argued for lowering mohole mine output - just for raising the bar to get there.

It does break the pattern of wonders being unmanned, but that's because it also breaks the pattern of wonders not directly doing colonists' jobs. The excavator also provides an unlimited source of something you will need a lot of in the late game, but you have a much lower incentive to build it, because it is far easier to mine concrete than metal. The mohole mine in my eyes really is most comparable to an omega telescope giving 10k research on its own. Even if research costs were a lot higher in the end game, that would not be great design.

If you also want to nerf scrubbers though (which I agree with!), I am not sure if you want late game metal consumption to be higher or lower...?

EDIT: In my last game, I had 2.6k people. Maintenance (without workshops): 26 metal, 55 concrete, 15 machine parts, 25 electronics. And I'm pretty sure that in-game calculation does not include the use of scrubbers. I would not say that you absolutely need hundreds of metals per sol in the late game.

 

[RyanDA]

Just because 50 metal "evaporate very quickly" that does not mean that mohole is not much better than other options of getting them, does it? From your description, you also seem to build and upgrade it regularly and early. Do you still expand to mine deep metal deposits in the later game? For me it is usually 1-2 at most. Heck, in my last game I expanded to 2 deep metal deposits, but ended up not mining them, because it's just so much easier to upgrade the mohole. I have a very hard time imaginging that you actually mine the map dry. Apart from that, I never even argued for lowering mohole mine output - just for raising the bar to get there.

It does break the pattern of wonders being unmanned, but that's because it also breaks the pattern of wonders not directly doing colonists' jobs. The excavator also provides an unlimited source of something you will need a lot of in the late game, but you have a much lower incentive to build it, because it is far easier to mine concrete than metal. The mohole mine in my eyes really is most comparable to an omega telescope giving 10k research on its own. Even if research costs were a lot higher in the end game, that would not be great design.

If you also want to nerf scrubbers though (which I agree with!), I am not sure if you want late game metal consumption to be higher or lower...?

EDIT: In my last game, I had 2.6k people. Maintenance (without workshops): 26 metal, 55 concrete, 15 machine parts, 25 electronics. And I'm pretty sure that in-game calculation does not include the use of scrubbers. I would not say that you absolutely need hundreds of metals per sol in the late game.

The ingame maintenance calculation is pretty useless. It only counts what you used the previous sol.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

I might not be typical, but in my last game before GP, I was constantly stockpiling metal from the mohole. Was wishing I could shut down metal production and just keep the rare metals coming.

 

[SillySMS]

-snip for length-

1) I would rather see maintenance go way back up, with more colonist investment in keeping the colony from falling apart. Ergo: nerf scrubbers.

2) While I still think 45-60 geologists is excessive, at least for the baseline Mohole (a rich metals deposit can do over 40/sol on 12 geologists), I am a little bit coming around to some colonist investment, especially for an upgraded Mohole. The one-off nature of the Mohole and Excavator mean they're a tad analogous to a Core Metals deposit: inexhaustible, but you don't get many.

3) I'd really like to see some way to get long-term basic resources that isn't either a 1-off wonder, fickle trade routes, or the Elevator. What might be nice is to establish sub colonies: huge up front investment and then a constant drain on advanced resources, but not prone to exhaustion like your own small patch's deposits. That Mars only ever gets four tiny colonies maintained by Earth sponsors gets absurd later on.

4) IIRC, metals exhaustion tended to occur on metals-poor maps, especially before I broke my no-scrubbers rule.

 

[YertyL]

1) I would rather see maintenance go way back up, with more colonist investment in keeping the colony from falling apart. Ergo: nerf scrubbers.

2) While I still think 45-60 geologists is excessive, at least for the baseline Mohole (a rich metals deposit can do over 40/sol on 12 geologists), I am a little bit coming around to some colonist investment, especially for an upgraded Mohole. The one-off nature of the Mohole and Excavator mean they're a tad analogous to a Core Metals deposit: inexhaustible, but you don't get many.

3) I'd really like to see some way to get long-term basic resources that isn't either a 1-off wonder, fickle trade routes, or the Elevator. What might be nice is to establish sub colonies: huge up front investment and then a constant drain on advanced resources, but not prone to exhaustion like your own small patch's deposits. That Mars only ever gets four tiny colonies maintained by Earth sponsors gets absurd later on.

4) IIRC, metals exhaustion tended to occur on metals-poor maps, especially before I broke my no-scrubbers rule.

Gotta love it when opinions actually change in a discussion
We are very much on the same page on scrubbers; and for some reason, I thought hawking institute was 36 workers and aiming for 1.5-2x that -- while it is actually 24, so 36ish might be more appropriate for the mohole.
Yes, a rich mine will do a lot more per worker, but you can't build it anywhere, and mining expansions are one of the larger investments in the mid game, whereas you can build the mohole anywhere, so I thought at least 1 barrel to medium dome to mine it would be appropriate.

One of the larger problems in the game for me, which you seem to see as well, is the binary nature of the survival aspect. It can be pretty harsh to get to one fully staffed factory of each advanced ressource, but once you are there, any threat is often over, and you just take a victory lap and staff workshops. I feel the mohole mine is a bigger part of this problem because it eliminates the need for mining expansions. I would just like it if some tension, or at least need to think, invest and expand, remained until the very late game.

 

[RyanDA]

You can;'t expand mining forever, and its much worse on 1-2 metal maps as I find some of them sometimes only have 5-7 rare metal deposits (including deep ones).

 

[Promethian]

My personal solution is to remove the Nano Refinement breakthrough and make the Mohole activate its effect. Then reduce the output of the mohole itself down to the equivalent of a single mine of each type on a very high quality deposit. This way when we get big we still need all the old deposits running their weaker mines and still need the workforce for them. Mohole no longer solves the game for us but is still very powerful as a wonder should be.

 

[Foefaller]

What if, instead of upgrading to increase the output, you spend parts to spawn new v.high core deposits nearby? Still get the base 50/20 (or less) output labor-free but if you need to produce more that means colonists working extractors.

 

[YertyL]

My personal solution is to remove the Nano Refinement breakthrough and make the Mohole activate its effect. Then reduce the output of the mohole itself down to the equivalent of a single mine of each type on a very high quality deposit. This way when we get big we still need all the old deposits running their weaker mines and still need the workforce for them. Mohole no longer solves the game for us but is still very powerful as a wonder should be.

Well, that also seems like a reasonable solution.