Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Having a way to improve resource drain of all drills with a tech modifier.
Purpose favor resource drain mechanism instead of infinite mining productivity.

What?

Add resource drain modifier to https://lua-api.factorio.com/latest/types/Modifier.html working as such:

f(0) = 1
f(1) = 0.9
f(10) = 0.5 (like +100% productivity but without the speed)

After 10 you will get less that what would give you productivity bonus but close enough I think.

f(20) = 0.37
y is the base resource drain of a drill.
x is the modifier.
f(x) would give final resource drain of a drill
Require resource_drain_rate_percent to be a double type.

Why?

Mining productivity (and all productivity research of space age... but I will skip this part) break the game a little, after enough research like +200% productivity, one miner == 3 miners. While it's very cool to have ore patch last longer, I always feel it was a bit sad to only see few of my drill working in late game. I end up with >+500% productivity and then only few drill are enough to fill my turbo belt. Say otherwise, late game, mining productivity make the size of ore field irrelevant. Also, since you have way less drill working you reduce your energy consumption and your pollution.

The new resource drain mechanism would allow for mostly the same effect but without the insane output of mining productivity. It would be nice to have a tech that improve resource drain of all drills. Cause quality is optional we can't rely only on quality feature to implement this.

This would also make a purpose to put productivity module on drill (since it multiply with rss drain it's would actually be a very nice module on drill).

This also make new oil field relevant since with current mining productivity even an "depleted" oil field can produce tons of oil.

I would like this as modding feature first to try out this way of playing. Also, my number are completely arbitrary and I'm lacking a lot in math science so if you have better formula please advice.

Actually maybe just:
It should be exactly the same number than current mining productivity. But this doesn't have diminish return the more you upgrade.

+1, im all for more types of technology bonus modifiers, and it'd be nice to be able to do more with miners then just productivity.

I’d like to add my support for this idea. Right now, the way the productivity modifier works means that with every +10% step, the cost for the next level always increases. Because of this, you can’t ever reach a truly infinite resource output just by stacking productivity — there will always be a point (even if astronomically high) where you run out of resources before reaching the next level.

A simple fix would be to let the modifier also reduce resource drain. That way modders could build their own growth formulas on top of it. For example:
y = 100% * 0.94^x, where x is the tech level.

+1

Communicating this to the player unambiguously might be tricky - if you just say it reduces drain by 10%, they might think 10 levels == 0 drain. You could say it increases lifetime yield by 10%, but that makes it sound just like productivity.

Maybe say it depletes the ore patch 10% slower? So: "+10% Resource Efficiency - Depletes ores 10% slower"