Lategame mining options are lacking

[Koub]

[Koub] Maybe we could refocus on the OP's topic ? There has been quite some wandering in the off-topicness, hasn't there ?

[wahming]

[Koub] Maybe we could refocus on the OP's topic ? There has been quite some wandering in the off-topicness, hasn't there ?

I don't know, that sums up Factorio gameplay pretty well. Plan one thing, get distracted by something else, then a resource patch runs dry.... hey, this place could be optimized somewhat.

...

What was I doing again?

[roax206]

I feel like something similar to the rocket system from Oxygen Not Included would suit this game well. When loading the rocket there could be several alternatives to the satelite which when launched gives a huge amount of 1 or more types of ores or oil.

UPS: the rocket would only update once per launch (though building the rocket might be UPS intensive).
Complexity: each resource line would require a full rocket manufacturing plant to be maintainable and factories need to be set up so they dont run out of resources to make the rockets.
Scalability: each rocket factory could be able to be made into a modular setup with different size factories feeding different numbers of silos.
Automation: This would mean the player doesnt have to manually sustain the factory in any way and other than expansion, the factory is able to be fully automated.

[Rjskeet]

The actual reason for the thread was, copy pasting the same mining drill BP is what you do all game so there's no change, and hence no progression. And in my mind there's no progression because you only have 1 kind of mining drill. By adding more like the bucket wheel mod does you have to think more about how you build them, how you place them for output, routing there outputs, and how to properly defend them if they are producing super amounts of pollution.

And I'm using the bucket wheel mod as an example because it is what I personally would want. There expensive and have a complex blueprint, produce monster pollution, and you basically need to park a train next to it because its producing super fast.

EDIT: btw someone asked about clustorio very early on in the thread, and the answer is they prioritized mining production infinity research then got it to some crazy level, that way they could use like 16 mining drills mining straight into trains to cut out all the ups problems hundreds of drills caused

[Ringkeeper]

i think i didn't miss a post to read, if i did, sorry^^

Someone mentioned the AAI vehicle, which are for vanilla too complicated and better left in the mod .

But what about some kind of miners like in C&C or Dune ? You build a drop-off building on/near the ore patch which can either put stuff on belt(s) or direct into train/chests and then build miner vehicle that drive over the ore patch, harvest, drive to the drop off automatical without the need to program them. Maybe a setting for which ore , if you have mixed patches.

Sure, you end up with a blueprint for drop-off buildings+train station but would be still faster then blueprint with thousands of miners (and i guess UPS friendlier).

[Cribbit]

I like how Industrial Revolution handled mining. Big buildings, with even bigger footprint - think 2x the size of a normal drill, and footprint goes 2 tiles out.

This gives you a balance between "sparsing" the patch, with as little miner overlap as possible, or going full density, in a more meaningful way than vanilla does.

The bigger machines means when you're colonizing a patch there are less things to place & modules can be meaningful.

[Selvek]

In a way, there are significant late game mining changes!

Mining phases:
1) Hand placed burner miners, belt to smelters
2) Hand placed electric miners, belt to smelters
3) Replace belts with trains
4) Create a small miner blueprint and a train loading blueprint, manually connect together
5) Create a full mining outpost blueprint: Contains the miners, balancers, train loading, everything up to where it interfaces to the main rail line
6) Small, medium, large mining outpost blueprints, complete with walls, turrets, roboport, support for a logistics train w/ combinator control to deliver spare bots/walls/repair packs/etc.

This works reasonably well except you no longer have walls that match the size and shape of the ore patch perfectly, but with a few different blueprint sizes, you can get "close enough".

[BlueTemplar]

i think i didn't miss a post to read, if i did, sorry^^

Someone mentioned the AAI vehicle, which are for vanilla too complicated and better left in the mod .

But what about some kind of miners like in C&C or Dune ? You build a drop-off building on/near the ore patch which can either put stuff on belt(s) or direct into train/chests and then build miner vehicle that drive over the ore patch, harvest, drive to the drop off automatical without the need to program them. Maybe a setting for which ore , if you have mixed patches.

Sure, you end up with a blueprint for drop-off buildings+train station but would be still faster then blueprint with thousands of miners (and i guess UPS friendlier).

What about "flying vehicles" ?
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/robotMiningSite

[mrvn]

i think i didn't miss a post to read, if i did, sorry^^

Someone mentioned the AAI vehicle, which are for vanilla too complicated and better left in the mod .

But what about some kind of miners like in C&C or Dune ? You build a drop-off building on/near the ore patch which can either put stuff on belt(s) or direct into train/chests and then build miner vehicle that drive over the ore patch, harvest, drive to the drop off automatical without the need to program them. Maybe a setting for which ore , if you have mixed patches.

Sure, you end up with a blueprint for drop-off buildings+train station but would be still faster then blueprint with thousands of miners (and i guess UPS friendlier).

What about "flying vehicles" ?
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/robotMiningSite

That makes it even more look like ore simply lies around on the surface.

Ore is hidden underground for the most part. So I would like to see two things:

1) strip mining

Make a big vehicle that drives around and scoops up the ore. Output can be ore + dirt because it just scoopes up everything in it's path. As it moves it will pushes a cliff before it. It literally digs into the cliff and removes it leaving the cliff one tile further away. At the start it will have to dig down leaving a cliff with ramp behind itself and creating the cliff in front of it. At the sides there can be either a cliff or flat ground depending on the hight of the sides.

And this doesn't have to be a single pass. The now lower floor could still have an ore patch (of smaller size). So you could dig multiple levels deep with a corresponding amount of cliffs around the hole then.

The digger vehicle could either collect ore+dirt and periodically dump it at a collection building or it could have a stack of belts. As it advances along a row it leaves belts behind it that transport the ore. When it reaches the end of ore for a row it can go back, collecting the belt tiles, put down a few belts going up or down and then start the next row.

2) deep mining

Factorio has surfaces. So there could be underground layers for actual underground mines. Or just mine heads that you build over underground ore deposits and they give you ore till it's depleted.

[BlueTemplar]

Several mods already do various flavours of deep mining and underground maps.

I guess someone could do a mod that does for AAI Miners + Depots what the above one did for bots ?