Anyone doing Mining Specialization?

[mavendark 2]

Hi all,

 

I'm still relatively new and experimenting with specializations. For those of you doing Mining specialization, are you exporting? If there is another city in your region that might need your resources, do you keep it "local" (I wasn't sure if that's what it means by keeping it local). Also, how do you guys deal with the pollution problem? Since the pollution is going to affect the whole region, is there anything I can do to decrease that a bit?

 

Any tips or feedback would be welcome!

[Zpike 79]

Yep, I played the mining spec all day yesterday.

 

OK, I got both the mining special building and the trade special building. I'm at work and don't have access to the names. I got the trade building because you need the trade depot so you can import ore after your local nodes run out. I also found I could keep multiple smelters going once I started importing ore. You need ALOT of ore to run multiple smelters at max production.

 

I made TONS of cash.  My city always ran at a deficit because of all the really expensive buildings you need to keep the production line going.  This is something you have to get used to.  You have to keep lots of cash on hand to support your city while you run at 5k and greater an hour deficits.  Then you make a huge haul from export profits in one big gulp.  I had a million or more cash on hand later in the evening but 300k or so is enough of a buffer as long as you don’t go below a 5k deficit.

 

It was literally TONS of fun.

 

As for polution... I had no problem with it.  I just ignored it and my city did fine.  You can build your mining region downwind I guess but polution does not really seem to be a problem.  I may change my mind after I fill and entire 16 city region though.

 

I did lots of things wrong but had a blast doing it.  I plan on going back in tonight once I’m off work and doing a better job at it on my second run.

 

I'll see you on the leaderboards!

[Matttheduckman 0]

I am starting my attempt of a mining city, as Zpike said, is quite a bit of fun. Nowhere near as much capital backed up while I run an hourly deficit, but trying to work out how to keep everything in the black is a blast. Big chunks of mone coming in every now and again.

 

Only issue I had was my ore deposits were ALL UPWIND, which meant the few houses I could build upwind of the mines resulted in them sharing the same road the mine was on. At least it was a short commute to work! Managed to build a few houses on the opposite side of a river, which was still downwind of the mines, but just out of the way enough to not be a huge problem.

[Spatzimaus 77]

I've got a mining city, sort of.  It's got two ore nodes side-by-side (thankfully downwind of most of the tile) and one coal deposit up on a hill on the upwind side of town.  It wasn't intended to be a factory town; I'd intended to make a culture/university town, but the resources were there and the region tourist logic is broken at the moment.

 

For a while, I just had those mines exporting the resources with no processing.  It was just a nice little profit, without much effort.  Eventually I added a smelter and processor factory (which went well with my recycling center), and eventually I'll add a consumer electronics factory, so I've stopped exporting the raw materials and I'm making far more money now.  Sure, my budget is losing 12-15k per hour now, but I'm easily making twice that from the trading.

[wanns 0]

Mavendark: " For those of you doing Mining specialization, are you exporting? If there is another city in your region that might need your resources, do you keep it "local" (I wasn't sure if that's what it means by keeping it local)."

 

You always export unless you need the resource locally in the city you are playing. Everything is connected to global market, so if another city needs those resources, they will just buy it from the global market.

[mavendark 2]

Thanks for all your input! I think I'm getting a fuller understanding of what the mining specialization is. So it seems like everyone mines until they run out of the resource, and then continues by either smelting/producing the raw ores, then reselling or importing that raw material and then refines it.

 

However, one of my original questions still stand, how do you deal with the air pollution, if there is much at all? I was warned by a city-mate I was playing with to "be careful with the pollution" since it could spread to other cities.

[Major_Heartfire 1]

The pollution will continue on the regional map in the same direction it leaves your city. So any cities downwind of your mining city are going to choke on the air pollution.

 

There really is nothing you can do about air pollution. It blows away (eventually off the city map, then, later, off the regional map) but you can't 'cure' it like you can with ground pollution. Lots of parks and such will reduce air pollution, and I THINK planting trees might also help. The mining facility itself doesn't produce too much air pollution.

 

Although I haven't even gotten a city that could smelt before because I can't seem to get the required ore sales/day unless I have several of these ore mining plants. Is that really the only way to do it? Just get a bunch of the plants down to mine the ore to upgrade the minerals HQ and build a smelter? Or is there an easier way that I'm just not realizing?

[Glandrex 3]

The pollution will continue on the regional map in the same direction it leaves your city. So any cities downwind of your mining city are going to choke on the air pollution.

 

There really is nothing you can do about air pollution. It blows away (eventually off the city map, then, later, off the regional map) but you can't 'cure' it like you can with ground pollution. Lots of parks and such will reduce air pollution, and I THINK planting trees might also help. The mining facility itself doesn't produce too much air pollution.

 

Although I haven't even gotten a city that could smelt before because I can't seem to get the required ore sales/day unless I have several of these ore mining plants. Is that really the only way to do it? Just get a bunch of the plants down to mine the ore to upgrade the minerals HQ and build a smelter? Or is there an easier way that I'm just not realizing?

Im trying to get the smelting division too. Its probably just too hard to get without playing sandbox, im thinking of building another coal mine when i already have 2 coal fully upgraded and 1 ore mine. Im still 40k daily profit short short

[Bibor_Kiraly 21]

Thanks for all your input! I think I'm getting a fuller understanding of what the mining specialization is. So it seems like everyone mines until they run out of the resource, and then continues by either smelting/producing the raw ores, then reselling or importing that raw material and then refines it.

 

However, one of my original questions still stand, how do you deal with the air pollution, if there is much at all? I was warned by a city-mate I was playing with to "be careful with the pollution" since it could spread to other cities.

 

Hi there, I've read somwhere (but cannot confirm), that planting forests around the industrial area helps reduce air pollution. The forest planting tool is under parks and recreation. It's the icon with a big downward pointing green arrow. Also, check how much pollution does the industry do compared to the mining operations and the smelters. It might very well be that your mining operation pollution is trivial to the rest of the industry.

 

I've been playing with mining as well. What I learned is that it's best to start mining early, and start exporting raw ore until you unlock (both financially and trade-wise) the HQ upgrades. After that I keep mining and slowly adding smelters (I still sell the excess ore, that's why having two ore trade depos is a good idea: one sells goods to global market, the other keeps it locally). 

[Zpike 79]

OK, first "exporting", "importing: and "use locally" work as follows...

 

Export: You will sell any of that product that hit that trading post on the global market.
Use locally: You will stock pile the resource and use it locally when needed.
Import: You will buy the resource from the global market, stock pile it, and use it locally when needed.

 

You MUST have trucks enough at the trading depot to handle moving the resources.

 

The smelter: I can get to it relatively quickly.  I just drop three or four mines, a couple of trading depots making sure to have three resource types in them for the trade building, and I go to town exporting ore.  Within a half hour or so I have the required money and have exported enough ore to get both the trade building and the mining building.  Once you have both of them you can drop the trading port and/or the train depot and start pumping out more ore.  Keep saving your money and within a short period of time you can get the metals building and the smelter.  After that you are rolling in cash from exports and can do anything you want.

 

Note, I ran out of ore in my mines but it made no difference except I didn’t quite make as much money.  I just started importing ore for my smelters and coal power plants.  Just dropped another trading port for imports and kept going.

 

Pollution: I don’t worry about it and it does not worry about me.  The only time I care is when I need to reallocate land from industry to residential for one reason or another.  I have found you can just drop a clinic in the area to absorb the sick people you get until the ground cleans up and again, not worry about it.   You can also drop a filtering plant to clean up after industry quicker.

[Cob92 360]

It's not really even necessary to have the mines around once you have smelters. Raw materials are cheap, and you can sell metal for about 5x the price of the ore it takes to make it. But if you produce resources in your region and use them in production then the profits are enormous. I don't even have to bother watching my budget because I make so much money.

[Zpike 79]

I heard today that the global market will change once they turn it back on.  We all may be in for a shock on prices once the get the kinks worked out.