The stated goal for a Neptunium game is "The winner is the first player to accumulate 200 kilos of Neptunium..." But in short time I've been playing, neptunium plays a relatively small role for most of the game time.

I believe in order to really enjoy the idea of racing to get neptunium you need to enable drillers to earn neptunium while stationed at an outpost, without having to build a mine.

I'm not saying to abandon mines altogether, merely allow drillers to earn a smaller percentage of neptunium while stationed at an outpost. The player would then have to weigh using drillers in combat vs. using them to mine plutonium.

The player already has to weigh that decision with the current setup

He only makes that judgement long into the game, when his final standing is practically a foregone conclusion so it makes it seems that mining neptunian is an afterthought.

Choosing to mine neptunium early in the game would be disastrous, so its a false choice. Its been my experience that 5 days into the game we already know who won, and if you haven't resigned, all you do from that moment on is hang out till trading drillers for neptunium officially declares the game over.

I don't mean to come off as condescending or something, but you clearly haven't played enough games.
Most of the games I'm in, things are just heating up at day 5, and few people resign, if any.

I've been the biggest fleet and have been beaten by being outmined on several occasions. I have made it my strategy to make strong allies and mine early in plenty of games and it works out really well. I think the solution you are proposing will turn the game into just a numbers race.

I was actually thinking it would be nice to have a mode that made pvp military action even less of a dominant strategy. I've been playing some Catan recently and it's refreshing to play a game without destroying things.

notabi perplexi wrote:Choosing to mine neptunium early in the game would be disastrous, so its a false choice. Its been my experience that 5 days into the game we already know who won, and if you haven't resigned, all you do from that moment on is hang out till trading drillers for neptunium officially declares the game over.

I'm currently ranked 13th and have never finished a game lower than 2nd place. I can tell you that mining early is often a very good decision. Not only does it start you toward winning, but you can also use it to buy allies/loyalty through funding.

kevlargolem wrote:
I'm currently ranked 13th and have never finished a game lower than 2nd place. I can tell you that mining early is often a very good decision. Not only does it start you toward winning, but you can also use it to buy allies/loyalty through funding.

In that case you've obviously played few games with a player my type. Being on the win timer, an outpost down and 50 drillers behind is all that we often need to convince our way to a massive attack coming along nicely... All aimed at you of course

kevlargolem wrote:

notabi perplexi wrote:Choosing to mine neptunium early in the game would be disastrous, so its a false choice. Its been my experience that 5 days into the game we already know who won, and if you haven't resigned, all you do from that moment on is hang out till trading drillers for neptunium officially declares the game over.

I'm currently ranked 13th and have never finished a game lower than 2nd place. I can tell you that mining early is often a very good decision. Not only does it start you toward winning, but you can also use it to buy allies/loyalty through funding.

I play a totally different game. I see an early mine as a target and a discounter for funding. If I can stack funding from two, three, or even four people; then couple that with a smuggler to zip my drillers around, I can drop mines like they're hot and zoom up the leaderboard.

Really, it's all relative. I've played games where I've mined early and games where I've mined late and succeeded in both. It's all dependent on how the game plays out and I don't think there's one surefire mining strategy that works every time. That's part of the fun is learning to adapt and try new strategies based on what you're given.

I tend to mine later if I can help it just because I enjoy combat and going on the offensive.