Lategame mining options are lacking

[Bauer]

I am seeing quite a few ideas here that fulfill the requirement to take the tediousness out of late game mining.

However, without having better ideas, I have to say that they seem to be too easy to implement. The next step in mining tech should enable large scale mining without making it a trivial endeavour.

BTW, we all like factorio because of it's complexity. This is why I believe that a huge cost is not the answer. We have a great abundance of construction materials available in late game. And what seems to be huge cost is trivial once your 10 times bigger.

What we need is a new mining concept that is challenging to set up, and then rewards the player with high yield.

[Bauer]

Idea:
A mine that can placed anywhere and that drills deep infinitly long with the same (high) yield.
Problem: It produces a mixture of all 5 basic resources (iron ore, copper ore, stone, coal, wood) with a random distribution that changes with time for all miners. Thus, the player has to handle changing outputs of the different stuff. He also has to find a way to "use" the unwanted byproducts. We might need a process to turn stone into ore and to "transmute" Fe <-> Cu.

[Hannu]

Idea:
A mine that can placed anywhere and that drills deep infinitly long with the same (high) yield.
Problem: It produces a mixture of all 5 basic resources (iron ore, copper ore, stone, coal, wood) with a random distribution that changes with time for all miners. Thus, the player has to handle changing outputs of the different stuff. He also has to find a way to "use" the unwanted byproducts. We might need a process to turn stone into ore and to "transmute" Fe <-> Cu.

That would be interesting, but at least some times ago devs was strictly against any variations in weather conditions. Many players want to build mathematically exact ratios and would lose their mind if there were variations which they should take into account and utilize some entities less than 100 %.

[Hannu]

BTW, we all like factorio because of it's complexity. This is why I believe that a huge cost is not the answer. We have a great abundance of construction materials available in late game. And what seems to be huge cost is trivial once your 10 times bigger.

Unfortunately this is not true. Overwhelming majority of Factorio players want simplicity and feeling of fast progression. Game is ingeniously built to be very simple (from engineer's viewpoint) but look to be very complicated. Devs will not add significant complexity, it would break sales and make average customer's less happy.
I would like to have variations and real reason to use combinator logic, build feedback loops and PID-controls etc. automation stuff. I see why it is not realistic wish for vanilla game, but I hope they they would give more tools to mod such variations into the game. Like temperature, weather and other environment conditions at different biomes, would would affect to production entities, mixed resources with temporally varying amounts and ratios, side products and their handling chains etc. There are mods to change production chains to more complex but realistic changes would need functions from core game to be effectively added.

[Bauer]

BTW, we all like factorio because of it's complexity. This is why I believe that a huge cost is not the answer. We have a great abundance of construction materials available in late game. And what seems to be huge cost is trivial once your 10 times bigger.

Unfortunately this is not true. Overwhelming majority of Factorio players want simplicity and feeling of fast progression. Game is ingeniously built to be very simple (from engineer's viewpoint) but look to be very complicated.

I agree that the individual mechanics are rather simple from an engineer's point-of-view. Being one myself, I also have to add that I play the game for it's complexity that arises when all the different elements come together in a very big base (or with mods -- e.g. seablock pack). The beauty of factorio is that you can chose the level of complexity. My son, 13, is completely overwhelmed by some of the elements, e.g. combinator logic, and he builds completely differently compared to my style. Also, the goals are different. But to say that he would want simplicity is not right. It's the satisfaction to solve the puzzles factorio provides that make him stay with the game. It's a walk on eggshells for the devs to balance this for players with very different backgrounds, e.i. from the 13 year old to the full blown engineer.

I also cannot see that the devs strive to make higher tiers simpler. Trains is surely more complex than belts, beacons add complexity and not simplicity; petro-chemistry is way more complex than smelting; etc.

Having that said: Yes, I would also like to see more use of combinator logic, etc. And an automated vehicle for mining concept could bring this in. But my son wouldn't stand a chance (for a few more years) to employ such a concept.

[Rjskeet]

Hmm what about a massive open stripmine concept. You have to survey for resource dense areas and setup a mining pit( would be a good source of landfill) and then mining machines ( I'm partial for bucket wheels) and it could give you multiple different ores on maybe multiple blue belts that need to be sorted before shipping off. I'm sure it could be controlled by the circuit network for more efficient running.

[Hannu]

The beauty of factorio is that you can chose the level of complexity.

This is true. There are basic game from beginning to rocket, which is well balanced and simple enough to teach things and be entertaining for average player. And what is better, there are so many ways to make that. And after that game can develop to huge megabases modded to everyone's personal preferences.

My son, 13, is completely overwhelmed by some of the elements, e.g. combinator logic, and he builds completely differently compared to my style. Also, the goals are different. But to say that he would want simplicity is not right. It's the satisfaction to solve the puzzles factorio provides that make him stay with the game. It's a walk on eggshells for the devs to balance this for players with very different backgrounds, e.i. from the 13 year old to the full blown engineer.

Yes, you are right. Players get entertainmen when they feel that they have made difficult things. But average player is not used to make plans and calculations in their hobbies or handle hundreds of different items.

I also cannot see that the devs strive to make higher tiers simpler. Trains is surely more complex than belts, beacons add complexity and not simplicity; petro-chemistry is way more complex than smelting; etc.

It is true. But if you compare to for example simple electronic circuits or mechanical constructions, Factorio is not complex. The biggest difference is that Factorio world is always ideal and predictable, but real world is not. There are noise, spikes, internal and external conditions etc., which must be taken into account. Real engineer can never plan to perfect ratios and 100 % utilization of components, which is typical for players.

Varying mine which produce mixed ores would add this kind of unpredictability to the game. It would be new and significantly more complex thing that any existing. In my opinion such "realistic-like" complexity would be a great optional element at endgame, long after rocket launch and first infinite researches. Then anybody who not like it is entertaining could skip it without losing any essential experience. But it is so high step that I do not believe devs will make it.

[Bauer]

It is true. But if you compare to for example simple electronic circuits or mechanical constructions, Factorio is not complex. The biggest difference is that Factorio world is always ideal and predictable, but real world is not. There are noise, spikes, internal and external conditions etc., which must be taken into account. Real engineer can never plan to perfect ratios and 100 % utilization of components, which is typical for players.

lol
This is the truely relaxing thing about Factorio.

-- no maintenance
-- no dirt, no cleaning
-- no stupid/not well trained operators
-- no unplanned machine downtimes
-- no impotent suppliers
-- no demanding bosses
-- no process drift
-- no REACH, ELV, RoHS, no Cr+IV phase out, no nuclear waste problem, etc.
-- the only f*ckers who complain --> shoot them

You can watch your good design and it will beautifully run forever.
And if the design in not good/perfect, you have plenty of time for a redesign without any tear-down costs.

[Jeeto]

Containerization of everything like shipping containers that can be filled directly from a few miners and then sent down a conveyor belt and put on a train car without all the stack inserters would be cool. Or some kind of dump truck that treats ore as a fluid you can have dumped into a train car in a second or two.

[Trebor]

Containerization of everything like shipping containers that can be filled directly from a few miners and then sent down a conveyor belt and put on a train car without all the stack inserters would be cool. Or some kind of dump truck that treats ore as a fluid you can have dumped into a train car in a second or two.

Ore hoppers?

[Rjskeet]

Containerization of everything like shipping containers that can be filled directly from a few miners and then sent down a conveyor belt and put on a train car without all the stack inserters would be cool. Or some kind of dump truck that treats ore as a fluid you can have dumped into a train car in a second or two.

At that point you should be able to automate trains to hook up to rolling stock like the player can

[mrt144]

BTW, we all like factorio because of it's complexity. This is why I believe that a huge cost is not the answer. We have a great abundance of construction materials available in late game. And what seems to be huge cost is trivial once your 10 times bigger.

Unfortunately this is not true. Overwhelming majority of Factorio players want simplicity and feeling of fast progression. Game is ingeniously built to be very simple (from engineer's viewpoint) but look to be very complicated. Devs will not add significant complexity, it would break sales and make average customer's less happy.
I would like to have variations and real reason to use combinator logic, build feedback loops and PID-controls etc. automation stuff. I see why it is not realistic wish for vanilla game, but I hope they they would give more tools to mod such variations into the game. Like temperature, weather and other environment conditions at different biomes, would would affect to production entities, mixed resources with temporally varying amounts and ratios, side products and their handling chains etc. There are mods to change production chains to more complex but realistic changes would need functions from core game to be effectively added.

Man, you could make good money 'playing' this stuff for real

[Avezo]

My biggest issue with mining options is how annoying setting up each new outpost is. Wish there was simple vanilla ore miner vehicle like in Red Alert (Yeah i know there's a mod for that).

[BlueTemplar]

Have you tried Autotorio ?

Can be a tad overkill...

EDIT : Oh, wait, my fault, it's because it defaults to 2-4-2 trains... XD

[Durentis]

I see mining as a solved problem. It is simple and just needs to be encapsulated for use in more complex systems. Any upgrades or "reskins" within a resource patch are irrelevant when you zoom out from the patch in the late game so I see no benefit of having such in Vanilla. If you think you want more ore from a single patch faster, you really just need to link up more patches. Turn to mods and just get any achievements you want in a Vanilla game separately if you want more variety at this level.

Anyway, when you get to the late game, instead of thinking of the layout of a single patch or how best to mine from it, think of the patch and its train loading station as a single entity. As a whole, it is as a single upgraded electric miner as far as your factory is concerned. The station either has enough ore in it to fill a train or it doesn't.

The complexity, or new problem to solve, isn't a new type of miner (which would be irrelevant because sufficiently full loading chests are sufficiently full regardless of how they got that way) but linking together a widely distributed group of patches and getting them to your smelter(s).

I highlighted a few threads in my signature that you may be interested in. Especially my attempt at an orphan train solution, which conveniently also tackles the problem of linking distributed patches among other things. I wouldn't go so far as to say this is a solved problem, but there are good solutions available for train networks if you hunt around.

[Rjskeet]

I see mining as a solved problem. It is simple and just needs to be encapsulated for use in more complex systems. Any upgrades or "reskins" within a resource patch are irrelevant when you zoom out from the patch in the late game so I see no benefit of having such in Vanilla. If you think you want more ore from a single patch faster, you really just need to link up more patches. Turn to mods and just get any achievements you want in a Vanilla game separately if you want more variety at this level.

Anyway, when you get to the late game, instead of thinking of the layout of a single patch or how best to mine from it, think of the patch and its train loading station as a single entity. As a whole, it is as a single upgraded electric miner as far as your factory is concerned. The station either has enough ore in it to fill a train or it doesn't.

The complexity, or new problem to solve, isn't a new type of miner (which would be irrelevant because sufficiently full loading chests are sufficiently full regardless of how they got that way) but linking together a widely distributed group of patches and getting them to your smelter(s).

I highlighted a few threads in my signature that you may be interested in. Especially my attempt at an orphan train solution, which conveniently also tackles the problem of linking distributed patches among other things. I wouldn't go so far as to say this is a solved problem, but there are good solutions available for train networks if you hunt around.

Dear Sir,
you miss the Point of the post and highlight the very problems we have been discussing. By the late game we only see these late game outpost as giant miners, by taking the monotony out of setting up these super miners, you free up more time for setting up trains and improving your factory. Also while mods are nice, this does pertains to the base game, after thousands of hours of play outpost building can be a strain that makes you not want to start that new save or keep playing an old one. It fatigues the player doing the same action over and over. Why not embrace that all your doing is dropping a super miner on a deposit and then trying to get the ore it mines back to base.

Simple and tedious are usually decided by a thin line, and sadly outpost construction late game is very much tedious

[Durentis]

Perhaps I just see it from another perspective.

Frankly, even if you can upgrade through a complicated tech path to the supremely expensive "Uber Miner >9000" that crits for 42 over a wide area, that end game in terms of outpost creation is exactly the same as dropping a blueprint full of basic electric miners as far as I'm concerned. It will be shiny and exciting for a moment and in the next it will be as a basic electric miner that just isn't good enough anymore. And when you have it, you'll still be bored at having to create so many outposts because they'll be mined out quickly unless you use infinite ores. Now that would be truly boring (for me).

Bots from multiple personal roboports take seconds not minutes to build even the most elaborate of blueprinted outposts, btw.. same with rail connections to the main lines.

And it's not like a complicated tech path adds to the fun, at least not for me. Tech is just something that happens incidentally behind the scenes. I've had games where I've flown through whole tech paths I didn't need just to research "something" while I was off building/designing something else of interest.

The only argument I can see for upgraded miners in Vanilla is if they contribute significantly to freeing up UPS. Now that would have to be a truly massive base that is most likely struggling with UPS for other reasons.

Anyway, to each their own. I just strongly disagree that late game mining options are lacking. Or perhaps, given that there really are no such options in Vanilla, it would be better to say that I find their lacking irrelevant.

[Hannu]

Man, you could make good money 'playing' this stuff for real

Actually, that is from what they pay me. But worst and most stressing part of engineering work is interacting with people and their stupid opinions. There are millions or regulations, political decisions, applications and waiting that they are accepted, opinions of higher rank bosses and users, who does not always know what they are doing, which I must take into account. I would like to have a computer game which would give quite hard technical challenges without all that human interaction shit which is inseparable part of real engineering work. Factorio could be excellent starting point for that kind of use.

[BlueTemplar]

you'll still be bored at having to create so many outposts because they'll be mined out quickly unless you use infinite ores

Just go farther out for your outposts ?

The only argument I can see for upgraded miners in Vanilla is if they contribute significantly to freeing up UPS. Now that would have to be a truly massive base that is most likely struggling with UPS for other reasons.

How well did mining directly into wagons work for Clusterio ?

[Nubm2]

How about something like this?

First, for long range transport, a cargo shuttle can be researched. We arrived at the planet via space ships, so i don't see a reason this tech should not exist at some point. its a follow-up of the rocket and bot tech.
It requires a lot of rocket fuel and should only be efficient at very long ranges.

From here on, new areas could open up for mining operations. Other continents or even space, like asteroids or moons. This could even be outside the playable map to reduce load on the PC.

This is not meant as a replacement but a support. Downsides would be the need for runways (another repurposed concrete tile) that require a lot of space to get a decent throughput of resources, and the increased fuel consumption.

Also satellites could have a purpose. Each successfully launched satellite increases the detected resources that could be harvested via cargo shuttles. This is an automated process, so no additional interactions with the map is required. But of course additional production is, to build shuttles and satellites in a matching ratio and dedicated fuel lines to support them.

Cargo shuttles wouldn't be easy to build though. Low density structures, blue chips, Accumulators and dedicated engines. And it should be loaded with bots for automated harvesting.