Matrix Games Forums

Aside from research this is one of the chiefly annoying things about an otherwise great game. Luxury extractors add nothing to the game, give custom station/ship designers a headache, and custom created luxury/non-luxury stations don't get retrofitted correctly causing even more of a headache.

In anticipation of the "its in the default design and I just don;t worry about it neither should you" let me just say that alot of strategy gamers are defective human beings with OCD. Why would we put a luxury extractor on a gas mining station when it saves X dollars and its only needed for those weird tyderos / luxury ice planets, i think it actually hurts the muscles in my head to know I am paying those extra maintenance fees for no reason.

And hurting an OCD brain is ok if it makes some sense and provides interesting decision making, luxury extractors are pretty much meaningless in terms of game choice.

2 potential Fixes

1) Get rid of them and make mining engines and gas extractors grab luxury as well.

2) Since Luxury is only on potentially habitable worlds, and mining them doesn't make a lot of immersive sense, just make them produce when a world is colonized and then have freighters trade them between colonies

Also, why not just get rid of multiple extractors/engine per station/ship and only allow one per station/ship and adjust/balance the rate to the tech instead of having us all hold some unknown idea in our head about how many extractors/engines we need to be optimal per tech level.

I'd be happy with either of those two options.

As for engines, there should definitely be multiple engines... It's a design choice about how much speed you want against protection/firepower.

I would however like getting rid of multiple extracters, it only strengthens the player because he might customize the design to maximize output whereas the AI doesn't give it any thought at all. It's not an interesting choice for the player either, so removing it would save the player the hassle and make it easier on the AI.

Engine refers to a "mining engine" which should probably be named "mineral extractor".

Ah, right. In that case I think I agree with everything you said.

ORIGINAL:jamthree
Luxury extractors give custom station/ship designers a headache, and custom created luxury/non-luxury stations don't get retrofitted correctly causing even more of a headache.

A lot of strategy gamers are defective human beings with OCD. Why would we put a luxury extractor on a gas mining station when it saves X dollars and its only needed for those weird tyderos / luxury ice planets, i think it actually hurts the muscles in my head to know I am paying those extra maintenance fees for no reason.

YES! AGREE 100%!!
Also pretty decent ideas on solutions too; great post jamthree! (see above)

I just came to the forums to search and find out how to deal with this very problem... "can I make separate Luxury mining stations without too much issue?"
it's driving me mad and I can't even start my game i'm so stuck on designing at this point.

Being one of those 'defective human beings with OCD' I don't see the problem, my new fangled design templates work on autopilot, although they were much more controlled with the custom designs in Legends, there have been so many discussions on the subject of how many I put five gas and luxury extractors on a gas mine and five mining engines with five luxury extractors on a mine in the templates and they come out ok. My normal preference is manual design though, going from 1 or 2 on a mk1 design to the full five of each on the mk2's, after that I forget them, done, not even the major malfunctioning 'auto upgrade selected designs' button changes them after that. Must admit though it has always struck me as a strange idea that you need a gas mine on an ice world and a mine on an ocean one, beyond that I have no real problems with them.

Darkspire

WHY do you care about what is on board of a Private sector base ? You don't need to pay any maintance for this base anyway.
You still can design 2 different Gas mining stations, one for Gas giants who don't got Lux. resources anyway and one for Ice planets. Ok need you need to micromangemant all your Constr. ship manaualy since the AI only build the latest design.

You are a human you made normaly much better designs then the AI even could, but whats about your opponent the poor AI empires, they are stupid enough and need to life with that.