Well, the refinery/forge is easy once you understand how the thing works, neither is it time consuming couple of clicks and all is set. Be able to build up and use your own forces seems certainly entertaining.
Where the problem lies for me is the mining.
You can have currently 2 ships but only have one pilot. With how fast the fully upgraded refinery goes through the minerals you probably need 4 or more miningships to keep it going without longer pauses.
Mining on the other hand is really time consuming if you try to find good spots, which also degrade rather fast, especially hard to find good spots for nickel, gold and diamonds.
Maybe a bit more simplified like it was in ME:2 where you can scan in a certain radius and not need to pin point probes again and again and again and at the right deep...it's really not fun as is, not to mention it costs way too much time.
Mining tricks...
1) Send Maive out EVERY day! I even tried to give her a day off as I was fully loaded and wanted to allow the refinery to catch up and she just kept mining the same spot as her last orders and I ended up with so much nickel she filled one bin and had half of a second filled before I noticed and had her mine something else! You CAN get ahead on mining...
2) Take ALL of the mule's upgrades.
3) Do NOT worry about diamonds in the current build. You do NOT need them yet. When you DO need them it will be in rather small quantity. Admittedly, they are the most finicky ore to mine and difficult to locate.
4) Just use the mule for the current update. Buying the Phantom is a waste of money when you can build one later on.
5) Buy the cheaper ore resources. You make Graphene from coal in the Purifier. You can purchase better quality coal through Alexia's contacts than you can mine. I purchased 200 tons of coal and now have what is likely more graphene than I will need for the entire game. Sand is another you may choose to purchase but Maive kept me well stocked without falling behind so coal is all I purchased. Sand yields three things in the Concentrator, Silica (Quartz in the Purifier and Glass in the Arc Furnace), Titanium ore and Rutile which you use to make Zirconium.
6) Probe all over the map! If you haven't figured it out yet (Xav had to tell me, doh!) you can run your mouse cursor all over the mining map and pick and choose where to drop your probes. You can also set the depth with the vertical slider on the side of the map. (Don't shoot me for this next one, Xav) You can do a "hunt and peck probing all over the map to find the richest location available in the current random map, roll back to Maive and click forward into the map again. The numbers for ore deposits will still be the same. That allows you to go to the area you previously identified as the richest source in the current random map and pepper that one area with probes. Send Maive to the hottest probed area first and then...
7) Keep sending Maive to mine the same area until you see the ore quality drop below the target you set for yourself. For example, on a planet where iron ore can be as rich as 60% iron, I find as many probe sites near 60% as possible and just keep sending Maive to that destination until I have enough iron or the iron purity falls below 50%. You CAN and SHOULD send Maive back to mine existing probed sites until the purity runs low. THEN you can probe again. Maive will hold the probe data in the background for the last probed mining on EVERY planet. If you don't send her to a specific location, she will automatically mine the last site to which she was ordered. Maive is a F
ing TROOPER and I love her to death!!! Love you Maive!
8) Take ALL of the upgrades for the refinery as early as you can produce them. You can see what is required to produce each upgrade by going to see Krog during the day and clicking on his options for refinery or ship upgrades. Take them ALL!!!
9) Your warehouse has NO space or weight limitations. Store as much as you like. It will hold it ALL.
10) Be diligent and patient. Rome wasn't built in a day and mining resources DOES take time. I have had the privilege to help with alpha and beta testing for this game and made the mistake of mixing my alpha saves in with my keepers. Ooops!
I had to restart from the beginning in the latest release version after amassing several hundred thousand credits and several thousand tons of billet. I have recreated nearly all I had accomplished in the alpha on the release version now and will keep alpha saves separate going forward. The big change I made in my replay was NOT purchasing the Phantom or the sandgroper as they can be manufactured for a fraction of their cost once we actually NEED them. Be diligent and patient. Keep Maive busy and play chess with Skylar. I sleep in the afternoon/evening (for immersion not need), play chess with Skylar all night, send Maive out to mine every morning only probing for new sites when the existing one starts to dry up and manage the refinery and hang out with Alexia unless I'm probing a new mining site with Maive during the day. I had what Xav recommended for stores sufficient to await the next update by day eighty something but I kept going. The mining and refining cycle is an infinite loop that you may repeat indefinitely so there are no time constraints. You may loose a few faction points doing this in the later game spending all that time working and not associating with the other factions but it has little effect on your status in this early stage of the game. So, I chose to fill my warehouse as well as I can at present. I do occasionally sell off my billet overage just to have the cash on hand but it's all virtual hoarding at this stage.
Currently I have over 200K credits as of day 111 and I attached a screenshot of my warehouse inventory and refinery just so you can see my results. I had just finished processing a large load of iron and sand at that point. I also had sold off some of my surplus billet along with my current stash of quartz. I will make another run at amassing more before the next update. I want to have EVERYTHING I will need to build my fleet! I had even more stashed during alpha testing but I'm sure I went overboard... at least a bit.
Hahahahahahaha
I hope this helps you, my friend.
Adventure ever on, Phat