Factorio Forums

Summary

• All resources, from coal to titanium, have various types of deposits.
• Types differ from each other in how easy they are to mine.
• "Higher tier" deposits are far more vast, but process-complex/intensive to mine and process.
• "Higher tier" deposits give mixed resource outputs, requiring more sorting to be done throughout the refining process.

Why
Allows a means for any/all/some resources to be made easily obtainable in small quantities, but progressively harder to obtain as the easier deposits run out.
Gives players a choice between expanding out (find more easy deposits) or aiming for more complex processing of nearer harder deposits.

Full blurb
In real life the viability of a mine is massively dependent on how easy a resource is to extract. As mining continues on earth, technology is continually improved and re-applied in order to mine ever more 'difficult' sources, as the easiest (and usually richest) deposits are targeted first, and therefore depleted first.

An easy example is oil, where oil reservoirs close to the surface were tapped first, then came deep wells, then off-shore, now we are already busy squeezing oil from sand or cracking rocks underground in order to get to more of the stuff.

I think a similar concept could work well in your mod.

For example, let us say we split copper into "rich copper ore", "dirty copper ore", and "mineral sand".
Rich copper ore (Copper oxides): Is what copper ore is currently. You dig it up and smelt it directly into copper. Easy. Only about 10% of copper deposits could remain like this.
Dirty copper ore (Copper sulfides): When mined, produces copper sulfide ore, which has to be pulverized, separated (water, gravity and chemical treatment) from the useless stuff, and finally electrorefined to produce copper slag (which can be smelted into plates). Produces very small quantities of other minerals as side products. Produces decent amount of sulfur as side product. Requires use of chemical plants and other specialist equipment. Makes up about 50% of total copper deposits.
Mineral sand (Copper silicates): Actually produces all minerals in their respective "rarity" ratio. Minerals start as silicates, that need to be pulverized, separated (chemical treatment), and then heap leeched (bacterial extraction, which is very slow but can be done in bulk (i.e. is only worth doing in massive bulk batches)), smelted in specialist furnces, which then produces poor mineral slag. In copper's case, it would then need to go into the electrorefining process and carry on from there.

So, basically all resources would have some deposits that are rich ore and can just be mined and smelted. (Rarity would still come in, so more rare resources would also have very very rare and small (or even none) such rich ore deposits).
But most of the resources are obtained from dirty ores, which typically yield a mix of ores, so sorting in various stages of the refining process is also needed.
Mineral sands could be (possibly) be infinite resources with decreasing yields. And would require genetic research (alien artifacts) to create bacteria that can leech the ores properly. It would produce all types of ores (rarity defining the ratio it is obtained in) and only really be feasible in huge bulk processing.

I think this is a bit more advanced than what I'd be aiming for. Also, trying to control the apearance of multiple types of ore could be difficult, there's 2 aproachs, the first is to have them use the same noise layer, which means the different grades would all be mixed in the same pile. The other is to give each type their own patch, and own noise layer, which drastically increases map generation time, something I've been trying to avoid. (A reason why I've been reluctant to add more types of ore than I already have)

bobingabout wrote:I think this is a bit more advanced than what I'd be aiming for

Cool, it is your mod.

bobingabout wrote:Also, trying to control the apearance of multiple types of ore could be difficult, there's 2 aproachs, the first is to have them use the same noise layer, which means the different grades would all be mixed in the same pile. The other is to give each type their own patch, and own noise layer, which drastically increases map generation time, something I've been trying to avoid. (A reason why I've been reluctant to add more types of ore than I already have)

[Out of interest's sake] Could it not be possible to combine ores the way galena does? (I.e. a single deposit type provides different ores in some form of ratio).
Then one could theoretically have more types of ores/deposits while still getting away with the current number of noise layers?

Multiple ores from the same resource field is possible, Though again something I want to try and minimise, it makes the early game quite difficult unless you do things by hand.

bobingabout wrote:Multiple ores from the same resource field is possible, Though again something I want to try and minimise, it makes the early game quite difficult unless you do things by hand.

I still can't find nice and easy way to sort ores that end up joined on one transport belt.
Only thing that works reasonably well for me involves big chests with smart inserters.

orzelek wrote:

bobingabout wrote:Multiple ores from the same resource field is possible, Though again something I want to try and minimise, it makes the early game quite difficult unless you do things by hand.

I still can't find nice and easy way to sort ores that end up joined on one transport belt.
Only thing that works reasonably well for me involves big chests with smart inserters.

Pretty much all sorting requires smart inserters.