The robominer: mining with logistics

[Narc]

A brief brainstorming session in the #factorio IRC gave me this:

- A mod which defines two entities: the robominer, and the robochest.
- The robominer is a structure similar in size and shape to the roboport. It provides the usual roboport logistics and construction range, and holds the usual number of robots.
- The robochest is a one-stack passive provider chest that, when placed on an ore patch within logistics range of a robominer, will consume power from the robominer in exchange for harvesting the ore.
- When a robominer has ore entities within logistics range, it periodically orders robochests to be built on them.
- When a robominer has within its logistics range a robochest that's not on an ore entity, it orders the robochest to be deconstructed.


This leads to the following mechanics:
- When a robominer is placed near an ore patch, it orders robochests to be built on the ores in it.
- Construction bots will fly out, pick up robochests from a nearby storage chest, and place them (just like normal blueprints/ghost building)
- The robochests will slowly fill with ore (consuming power from the robominer to do so), passive-providing this to the logistics network.
- Requesters can now cause logistics bots to fly out to the robochests, pick up ore, and deliver it to themselves.
- When robochests get empty, they get marked for deconstruction (requiring construction bots again). The robochests can be reused, as they go back to logistic storage.


Tweakables:
- mining speed and hardness of the robochests
- recipe costs for both robochest and robominer
- power cost for robochest operation

Depending on how the tweakables are set, these could be faster/cheaper to run than the equivalent mining drill setup.

Ultimately, this is not better than a mining drill blueprint, but it could be as good, as well as feeling more in the spirit of how logistics bots operate compared to belt/inserter-based systems.

[Mr Sunol]

I was thinking it would be cool to have a way to mark ore deposits with a deconstruction planner, and over time any free construction robots go and mine one piece of ore. ( say free bot, because you want to prioritize things like healing walls and guns over mining excess ore)
That way you can get rid of those annoying little bits that you missed with your miners.
Or if you are running low on ore for a short bit, and you have 100 spare construction bots, you can deconstruct a small ore deposit that you previously ignored and the bots will take it out for you, just like they do with trees (although it will take longer obviously).

There also could be problems with your idea, if you have one inserter giving an item to another, then you won't have anything built on that square. If your roboport then places a miniing chest in that square (because it has ore underneath it), you are going to end up with the inserter grabbing the ore and tainting your production lines, OR your inserter will fill up that box with something that you dont want to overproduce.
It is a minor problem (get it, a MINER problem!! ), but it could happen.
Otherwise, your idea sounds cool too.

[Narc]

There also could be problems with your idea, if you have one inserter giving an item to another, then you won't have anything built on that square.

And miss out on the inserter stack size bonus? Not a chance. Also, why would you do that without mining the ore first? Really, that barely rates "minor problem" status and is more along the lines of user error.