Ore Excavator

[BenGoldberg]

Sometimes it can be a bit annoying to mine a strangely shaped ore patch.

Wouldn't it be so much easier if you could reshape ore patches to be nice and rectangular?

With the Ore Excavator, you can.

It's placed anywhere that a miner can be placed, and it will scoop up ore from within it's range and dump each scoop onto a tile just outside of it's range in the direction it is facing.

From a programming point of view, each time it acts, it subtracts from the "amount" field of one resource and adds to the "amount" field of another resource (after making sure the ore types match). It is not at any point creating items, either in an inventory or on the ground.

It can be affected by speed and efficiency boosts, but not productivity.

After some additional research, it can be programmed to deconstruct itself when there're no more ores under itself.

Also, with research, it can be programmed to move itself forwards when there's no more ores under itself. This might be done with deconstruct+reconstruct or it might have a cool driving animation.