Friday Facts #350 - Electric mining drill redesign

[FactorioBot]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-350

[CrushedIce]

It looks amazing! Cant wait to see it in the game.
The old design looked indeed more like a field harvester

[PaqpuK]

It may sound rude, but the original always looked kinda dumb to me. So this is really awesome, it does look very authentic now. Would be interesting to see the animations at max speed

[Jon8RFC]

It looks amazing! Cant wait to see it in the game.
The old design looked indeed more like a field harvester

"Harvester"? Yeah, C&C Remastered is on my mind, too!

Yeah, the different colors of debris/smoke for different ores is a nice touch. Will the burner be updated to do the same?

[E-37]

I can already see a modded drill that just stabs the ground repeatedly.

[Klonan]

Would be interesting to see the animations at max speed

[wobbycarly]

That's cool.

[MaX33333]

Can I toggle it to old one? I don't really like new one actually, It's top covers a lot in upper tiles...

[jockeril]

Can I toggle it to old one? I don't really like new one actually, It's top covers a lot in upper tiles...

There's always one that's not happy... you can use mods to change the way it looks

Myself, I love the new design and looking forward to seeing it in game, even though I was really used to the old one (and liked that it reminds me of a harvester )

Again I must rally the troops to say "thank you wube for this amazing game! "

[MaX33333]

There's always one that's not happy...

I'm happy, It looks nice, fits well into new game art but personally, I'd like to see old one. Maybe I can swap it in game texture files somehow... But will be nice to have some kind of client graphics override thingy.

[StahnAileron]

I kinda feel like the timing between drill movements (or "dwell time") should both be longer and independent of the effective drill speed. Seeing it move like every half-second with twelve beacons looks... Wasteful? The amount of "working" movement doesn't fit the amount of output, IMHO.

Personally, I think it'd might be better for the drill head to stay in one spot until it runs out of ore, then move to another location. (Reverting to long dwell times if you're dealing with infinite ores.) With the new design, I don't think it has to be that active and dynamic.

All this is just in regards to the movement of the drill head. The normal drilling animation is fine. (The drilling animation being affected by beacons makes sense.)

[DOSorDIE]

Looks and Animation are great, but that sounds ... horrible ... sound like a damaged miner that explode every second.
Its to glaring ... when i must hear that longer i got headache.

[thewrulph]

This looks amazing! Can't wait to try this out. Great work!

[conn11]

Those new mining drills look and Sound pretty nice. Pluses for the LED.
I‘m looking forward how a cramped or fully beaconed setup will look like.
If any animation is missing, then a more visual degredation of the mined ore patch/tile. For example by using a modified explosion crater texture. This would convey the mining part even better, IMHO.

PS: the old „harvester“ graphic can still be reused in an furure bio/food expansion or dlc.

[allon]

The new model and animation look fantastic! I agree with a previous comment about it being a bit too busy and jumpy, it could spend more time drilling each spot. The ratio between time spent drilling and time moving the drill head could by about 4:1. But the thing I'd want to see the most in the new design is to somehow convery to the player that the mine drills and extracts resources from the tiles surrounding it as well - not only the tiles it occupies. And so for full coverage there's no need to place them adjacent, but rather two tiles apart from each other. I really don't have a suggestion about how to make this work, and if it's even possible. I know the surrounding tiles are highlighted when placing the drill, but it still something that feels like a case where form and function doesn't match.

EDIT: Eh, never mind. Someone on Reddit already raised this concern and a dev answered. I really should check it before posting.

[Cooldude2606]

The new design and sounds are nice and really makes you feel like you are destroying the planet with these drills.

One issue I have with the new design is how the north and south facing drills look very different to the east and west facing drills.
When the output is to the east or west the distance between the drill arms is bigger than when the output is to the north or south.
I would say it was down to perspective but when the output is north or south the arms are practically in line with each other.

I also agree with alot of previous about dwell time and how at fast speeds the movement feels wasteful.

[dee-]

Will the mined area be changed to 3x3 or is it still 5x5, which would be outside of the harness?

I kind of liked the old graphics; especially because they had the association of slowly grazing the surface... a whole field of grazing cattle... kind of meditative.

The new graphics are, well, energetic and spastic, hectic.

[Optera]

The new entity looks nice.
However it doesn't change that icons of burner and electric drills look too similar.

Will the mined area be changed to 3x3 or is it still 5x5, which would be outside of the harness?

I already looks as if the animation only mines a 3x1 strip.

[legrems]

What about the additionnal computing time required ? Is it more (less or equal) CPU-friendly ?

[MarvinCZ]

Looks really amazing. But maybe the best part is the addition of the status LED so it will be really easy to visually distinguish depleted mines from the clogged ones.