To me either, not even the starting patches, because we are talking about the big mining drills which you probably won't have access to before those are depleted, by that time you should have researched splitters. And that's all you need to solve the puzzle.FuryoftheStars wrote: ↑Wed Mar 06, 2024 5:32 am To top that off, with the exception of the starting area (which by nature of starting with nothing and having to work your way up you'll typically be working manually with the starter fields anyway), mixed patches are actually very rare in vanilla.
None of these reasons, to me at least, make for strong convincing arguments to support the idea of adding a filter to miners. The fact that the new miners are bigger and have a bigger mining area doesn't change any of that.
Adding filters to mining isn't going to solve the "problem" of managing the output of a mixed mining drill, as it only delay the moment when it will require manual intervention. It forces 1 to be necessary when changing the filter when one of the ore is depleted, maybe more if you have to change the filter twice if you have 2 ores under the drill.
Whereas you can already automate the distribution of ore from mixed-ore-sources with priority over ore from regular sources without requiring human intervention until the mining is depleted, which is part of the game. Giving an incentive to suboptimal method i think would be detrimental. The game is already trying to tell the player how to deal with byproduct on Vulcanus : you can throw things into lava !
If you have a mixed-ouput source, (like a mining drill or also the foundry creating copper AND iron ) that stall because you don't need one of the output that is blocking the other you do need, you can just throw some of the not required away. Vulcanus seems a more forgiving planet for players that struggle with byproducts than Fulgora. I think Vulcanus can be like a learning experience.
