Nessus Mining Station (SMAC)

Nessus Mining Station
Requires	Self-Aware Machines
Cost	12 rows
Maintenance cost	0
Effects	+1 satellite Mineral for each owned base.

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"Red-hot iron, white-hot iron, cold-black iron; an iron taste, and iron smell, and a Babel of iron sounds."
– Charles Dickens, "Bleak House, Datalinks"

Nessus Mining Station is a base facility in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

Strategy

Each of your bases produces +1 additional minerals per turn for each satellite built. This bonus is halved for bases without Aerospace Complexes and cannot exceed the size of the base in any case. You can build any number of satellites, for a cumulative bonus at every base. This makes them much more useful for larger factions than for smaller ones, as the cost is the same no matter how many bases you have to benefit from them.

This type of satellite does not become available until later in the game, and can easily tip the strategic balance once it appears. If you want to use the satellite strategy, get the Cloudbase Academy if at all possible because it will almost double the effect of your entire satellite constellation. If you can't do this, then you will need to build aerospace complexes at as many bases as you reasonably can. Of course, the more satellites you have up, the bigger the payoff for each aerospace complex you build. Don't bother building one or two satellites and then stopping. Instead, if you're going to put up satellites at all then plan to keep going until you have 4-6 of each type. A large faction with a large constellation of satellites is well positioned for world dominance.

Building nessus mining stations will increase the production capacity of every base, including both your core production facilities and your remote and newly established outposts. This makes it much quicker to get new bases up and running, since you will have an initial production capacity for making the base facilities and supply crawlers that the base will need as it grows. If you have the Cloudbase Academy, each base gets this bonus as soon as it is established. If not, you can hurry the production of an aerospace complex as your first base facility which will then give you the minerals bonus (plus the energy bonus and nutrients bonus, if any, from your other satellites).