The Mining Ministry allows production of mining platform ships at the shipyard. The mining platform ship is deployed to asteroids where you can mine their ore. The ministry also allows management of deployed mining platforms and controls the flow of cargo ships to and from the platforms. You can control one platform per two levels of the mining ministry.
NOTE: The Mining Ministry is no easy building to make work. It takes lots of platforms and lots of upgrades before it becomes profitable, but once it does become profitable it is well worth the effort.
The Mining Ministry is a complex building, and cause for much confusion. However, with a simple explanation much of this confusion can be eliminated. Here's how you make it work.
Step 1: Build the Mining Ministry. ( You need level 12 University )
Step 2: Build a Mining Platform Ship at the Shipyard.
Step 3: Build at least one Dory, Barge, Cargo Ship, Freighter, or Hulk at the Shipyard.
Step 4: In the star map, click on an asteroid and send the Mining Platform Ship to the asteroid.
Step 5: Once the Mining Platform Ship arrives at the asteroid, it will show up in your Mining Ministry. Go to the Ships tab in the Mining Ministry and assign the Cargo Ship to start mining.
Step 6: Monitor the "Current production to shipping Metric" in the Mining Ministry. If it's lower than 100 then you have more ships carrying cargo than your Mining Platforms can produce. If it's more than 100 then you are producing more ore than you have Cargo Ships to carry. Being below 100 does no harm to your ore production, you're just using more ships than you need. Over 100 means your ships can not keep up with the ore from the asteroids.
You don't need to do anything once you have the mining platform set up with ships servicing it. The cargo ships will come back and forth automatically delivering ore to your planet. The amount of ore they deliver is automatically calculated into your planetary production levels.
Ore upkeep costs from buildings with negative ore income will be subtracted from terrestrial ore income ( Mine, Planetary Command Center, Waste Treatment Center, Waste Digester and Volcano ) before it is subtracted from Mining Ministry ore income.
Calculations of ore production from the ministry take place when you make changes to the ministry. Adding ships, changing platforms or upgrading will cause a recalculation.
Requirements
Mining Ministry Strategies
Platform Positioning
The Mining Ministry has a relatively unique ability to be able to alter the types of ore produced on your planet by targetting different types of asteroids with your
mining platforms. One of the most popular types of asteroids to target is one often referred to as a Rainbow Roid because of it ability to produce every single type of ore. It does come with a downside however that Rainbos Asteroids have a lower overal total of
resources on the asteroid which lowers the total amount of
resources returned per hour by a platform deployed there.
Another common strategy for deployment is to target asteroids which have a large concentration of a particular resource that you may be needing to store up or that you planet happens to lack. A sometimes used extension of this especially when trying to build higher level
buildings is to move you capital to the planet which would allow you to upgrade the Mining Minstry to even higher levels and allow you to get more of a particular resource.
When calculating the mining metric for the Mining Ministry both the cargoship's speed and cargo capacity are taken into
account. If most of your selected asteroids are in very distant locations you will likely want to include
ships with greater speed like the
Smuggler Ship. If most of your
ships are in close by locations you'll want to use mostly high cargo capacity
ships. In such a case as you may have a little
Essentia to use it would be best to purchase some
Hulks with a cargo capacity of 4.64 million. A single one of these
ships can handle all the needs of a level 15 Mining Ministry as long as the deployed platforms are not too distant. On a capital planet you could need 11 or more such maxed out
Hulks.
Not Enough Asteroids
Not having enough asteroids or enough of the right kinds near your planets is a very common problem in the center regions of the expanse and even more so in zone 0,0. There are several things you can do about this.
First, look for some asteroids in more distand locations. If you are a member of an alliance you'll have more
probes available to allow you to see more of the expanse and to allow you to search more easilly. Also some empires create databases cataloging various asteroids and other bodies. Try asking some alliance mates for assistance.
Second, you can clear an asteroid by force. This can be done with
Sweepers or
Detonators. Many empires though consider this to be a severe act of agression as you are disrupting the ore production on their planets. Note: It has been discussed to make AI's like the
Diablotin start sending out
Detonators to cause some mayhem.
Third, you can make your own asteroids. This can be done either with the
Black Hole Generator, or by launching
Space Station Hulls and then destroying the resulting
Space Station. Some Star Systems have been turned entirely into asteroids sometimes referred to as Rock Gardens.
What else does mining metric take into account?"