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I had an idea for the game that might come in handy, should some map run out of minerals and ores to mine.  They have this on Plinga's Knights and Brides game, where you can build a device that can help you find mineral deposits.  You can then set up a mine and get to work on the spot.  Wouldn't that be a huge help?  Finding new minerals randomly on a map?  

Most of the maps are pretty well set up for minerals, but that would actually be interesting, looking for new ones via a probe or scanner drone.  The drone could tell you if there's something there or not, and it could tell you what the mineral is, or isn't (you could surprise the player with a random mineral).  You could then send out some kind of drone that zaps the "sweet spot" the scanner picked up, and boom!  New mineral deposit to mine!  Cool idea, huh? 

I remember something they had on Star Wars the Old Republic, where you were treasure hunting on a tropical planet call Rishi.  You would go over to possible spots where the treasure might be buried.  You then selected the probe from the menu, and it gave you a footprint to put on the spot.  Once you had the footprint positioned, you clicked, and then the probe came over and scanned the spot to see if it had anything.  If it didn't, it gave you a red light.  If there was treasure in the spot, the scanning light turned green, and the probe dropped an arm down into the spot, dug out the treasure box, pulled it up, and floated back to your avatar to deliver the goods. 

It probably wouldn't be that simple with Aven Prime, but having the ability to find minerals after the first deposits ran out would be super-helpful. 

Fragile Allegiance also had prospecting and it was great. But like this game it was a one shot thing. You see what minerals are available and you work with what you're given.

However, the point is you're given a specific set of resources and you need to work with what you have. More like a puzzle than a classic RTS. 

It was weird when one of the earlier missions said 'you've created a successful colony'. But there's no iron left. How can that be sustainable? idiocy. Our new home for humanity only has 250 iron! We'll be dead in 3 more sols! HOORAY!

But there's mining accelerants  while might help but the feature doesn't seem to work.

Paul has said there's not going to be anything random added :/

Okay.  But I did learn how to deal with not having a lot of metals on some maps.  Kelko sludge.  It's slower in processing into nanites, but you can grow as much as you need on farms and use chemical plants to manufacture the sludge.  It's how I dealt with the Hyla's Crescent mineral shortage problem. 

Speaking of which, they really should add a research project where Kelko Sludge processing can be improved and sped up.

Regarding the Kelko Spores alternative.. is it really an alternative? And yes being able to research ways to make it better would mean you could get off of mineral resources faster or right away if you were really determined and patient. But you'd still have to have a base with enough capacity and infrastructure to do the research. Really hoping there's more research options coming down the line to make structures and farming more efficient. 

1. Growing being slowed during the winter is dumb if this is fungiculture. It should at least be consistent since sunlight isn't as big of a factor like it is for agriculture. Granted this is a non-issue, if you have enough spare water you should be able to grow everything anywhere, because it won't be addressed by the developer. It would make sense to grow more of it if you can provide more water not just more ambient sunlight. It would grow fine in the winter and so provide a good continuous source of material for more nanites, AND still use it in pharmaceuticals. 

2. Being something like 20 times slower to produce nanites on just the Kelko alternative makes it almost not even an alternative once you run out of minerals since you need to many colonists in the green houses and chemical plants. Instead it's something you want to have going before you run out of materials. 

3. For the crescent mission just keep expanding and start lean. Like don't add more colonists because you don't need them. If you can build almost nothing while you're expanding that isn't required for for a quest you can make it to the end without much trouble. The more mission objectives you do for Vory, Veronika and Uros the fewer nanites you need to produce for yourself.

(to the devs because the use of the term nanite is incorrect) I really hate this techno-jargon term nanite(s) used in this context. A nanite is a microscopic machine. If you're creating stores of nanites to create larger self-assembling structures then that's fine. You don't need the drone. It can go to the construction site and drop off the construction nanites like a liquid or powder and they'd self-assemble into the desired structure given access to grid power. You aren't making 1 nanite, you're making a unit of construction nanites (to be ferried by a construction drone) which could be used by a construction drone at a construction site like spray paint (if not simply unloaded). You don't make a house out of 1 toothpick or 1 sawdust. that drone would eventually run out of construction nanites and need to go back for more.

It might even make more sense just to say the connection to the grid is required because the construction nanites used by the drones come from being connected to the colony. This isn't the case since you can build whatever you want anywhere in the reach of a construction drone building. How does 1 construction drone carry 360 units of construction material (nanites)? that's literally saying 1 construction drone can carry an entire building as if it was nothing (even if it would take 1 drone a very long time to build a stadium by itself it still does that without a connection to power). Instead the construction drone(s) should have to fly back and forth because they have to fetch construction materials to be dumped onto the self-assembling building. It would provide the player a reason to add more drones to the work of ferrying more nanites. That and the more efficient the workers the faster the drones would fly back and forth.

And that makes the Hyla Crescent and similar missions that require the player to expand, a bit harder, because they'd have to expand the colony without cheating by building things that aren't connected to the colony until they can add tunnels and apartments.