When mining drills run out of expected resources, they should mark themselves for deletion

[osndok]

Sometimes it is not obvious which mining drills have run out of resources (b/c you have to look for lack of motion). As a user, it would help visually distinguish those miners that have run out of resources if they had the red "X" on them that comes with the deconstruction planner. Furthermore, once the player has construction robots, they would then automatically collect the obsolete mining drills to be available for new construction.

In addition to the visual/automation help, this kinda makes since from a theory perspective as well, b/c the game would not let you initially place a mining drill where there are no resources, the placement has become invalid.

[Koub]

Related :
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=62071
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=48348
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=959
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=30024

Also if you're OK with mods :
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/mindmix/AutoDeconstruct

[Zavian]

Personally, I wouldn't want that behaviour. It will just lead to my personal construction bots running off and getting left behind every time I travel past in a train. (Now if the devs changed bots to not launch if I'm in a train, then automatic marking of drills for removal might be alright).

[bobingabout]

Make it an option, in the options, somewhere.

I'd find it useful personally.

[Amarula]

Side note: Koub you are amazing! Thread is posted and poof you have added the links to topics where this idea has been suggested and discussed. Thank you!

I have made my first base that has reached a large enough size that depleted drills are becoming an issue, so seeing all the options has been very helpful - still haven't decided on which solution I am going to pick, but I have lots of input to my decision. So thank you osndok for bringing this to my attention.

I ran into an issue yesterday, running out of electric engines, so dropped down a handful of factories to extend my production line... and no increase in output. Hmm whats up all the input parts belts are full... oh oh, missing a pipe, so three quarters of my factories had no lube, sitting there inactive. Easy to diagnose, once I took a close look, exactly the same way it is easy to diagnose a single mining drill sitting there out of resources.

So I would be very interested in something that makes inactive entities, not just drills, easier to spot, at a glance, without requiring close inspection. And I wouldn't want my inactive factories to be automatically marked for deconstruction! So not only would I want deconstruction to be an option, I would want to be able to control which entities get marked for same.

[osndok]

Reading Amarula's post, I am reminded that there is at least one solid exception... automatic removal of uranium ore mining drills could break the sulfuric acid supply pipeline.

[Ace_W]

Reading Amarula's post, I am reminded that there is at least one solid exception... automatic removal of uranium ore mining drills could break the sulfuric acid supply pipeline.

I believe that the mod does that specifically for uranium mines for that reason. That said, you can probably run a pipe down the inside gap of your power pole section to stupid-proof the design.

[Zavian]

So I would be very interested in something that makes inactive entities, not just drills, easier to spot, at a glance, without requiring close inspection.

https://mods.factorio.com/mods/trold/Bottleneck

[Sad_Brother]

Reading Amarula's post, I am reminded that there is at least one solid exception... automatic removal of uranium ore mining drills could break the sulfuric acid supply pipeline.

I think it would be enough to mark for deletion empty uranium ore if it has only one liquid connection.
So chain of such drills can be deleted from one side when empty.
For something more complicate than simple drill line you can always leave thinking to player.

[Hannu]

Personally, I wouldn't want that behaviour. It will just lead to my personal construction bots running off and getting left behind every time I travel past in a train. (Now if the devs changed bots to not launch if I'm in a train, then automatic marking of drills for removal might be alright).

I agree. Benefits are very marginal, mostly OCD reasons. But practically it is complex thing and have many possible problems mentioned in this discussion. At beginning, when number of miners is low and their value may be significant, it is easy to check all miners. Later, when there is hundreds or thousands of miners their value or energy consumption is negligible and it works very well if player disassemble whole miner field when all miners are depleted. And there are a mod for those who wants this function.

[Darinth]

Have to repeat and support the same point of view a lot of people have. I think this would cause a bunch of issues for the average player. It seems pretty straight forward, but I already get annoyed on the occasion that bots fly off to repair a turret that has taken 2 damage as I'm riding by. And honestly I wouldn't want my inventory getting cluttered with the potentially hundreds of mining drills and their upgrades. I'd rather just wait until a patch finishes and then collect the entire base at once.

[bobingabout]

And honestly I wouldn't want my inventory getting cluttered with the potentially hundreds of mining drills and their upgrades.

Why would your inventory get cluttered up by this? wouldn't it go to the storage chests of your outpost's roboport network?

[Hannu]

Why would your inventory get cluttered up by this? wouldn't it go to the storage chests of your outpost's roboport network?

I make very rarely bot networks at my mining outposts and never during endgame phase when there is hundreds of miners. But I see your idea. It is not big work to put storage chest if you build bot based mining outposts.

[Ace_W]

Why would your inventory get cluttered up by this? wouldn't it go to the storage chests of your outpost's roboport network?

I make very rarely bot networks at my mining outposts and never during endgame phase when there is hundreds of miners. But I see your idea. It is not big work to put storage chest if you build bot based mining outposts.

Since i bot mine or bot logi my turrets at our posts, i set up what i call a trash train stop. 1-1 nuke fuel train, and on the side of the cargo wagon is six storage chests wired to the stop. Anything >0 and the stop enables, train takes stuff back to my build everything train for recycling.

I very rarely have to worry about my personal robots running out to collect/fix anything.

[Darinth]

And honestly I wouldn't want my inventory getting cluttered with the potentially hundreds of mining drills and their upgrades.

Why would your inventory get cluttered up by this? wouldn't it go to the storage chests of your outpost's roboport network?

I see where you're coming from, but I generally don't worry about building bots networks at outposts. So, from one perspective it could be useful, from the other it'd become a nuisance.

[herkalurk]

Personally, I wouldn't want that behaviour. It will just lead to my personal construction bots running off and getting left behind every time I travel past in a train. (Now if the devs changed bots to not launch if I'm in a train, then automatic marking of drills for removal might be alright).

I've suggested an indicator similar to combat bots that shows how many construction bots are out of the personal robo port so when you are driving around in the train you would know bots are doing things.

[bobingabout]

And honestly I wouldn't want my inventory getting cluttered with the potentially hundreds of mining drills and their upgrades.

Why would your inventory get cluttered up by this? wouldn't it go to the storage chests of your outpost's roboport network?

I see where you're coming from, but I generally don't worry about building bots networks at outposts. So, from one perspective it could be useful, from the other it'd become a nuisance.

Why would your inventory get cluttered up by this? wouldn't it go to the storage chests of your outpost's roboport network?

I make very rarely bot networks at my mining outposts and never during endgame phase when there is hundreds of miners. But I see your idea. It is not big work to put storage chest if you build bot based mining outposts.

To be clear, the bots at the outpost are not to carry the ores around, that is usually handled by belts/trains in the "normal" way. the Bot system is added to handle ammo or wall repair. usually only like, a single stack of construction robots in a single roboport, or small network of roboports, just enough to cover the base.
The same network was probably used to help setup the base in the first place, as I would likely blueprint it.

I guess I'm a bit oldschool in that I don't often carry a personal roboport. Then again, I'm also Bob, the bob's mod modder, I drive around in a train full of roboports that build the railway network, and mine the trees and rocks for me as I go, just slapping down blueprints through the wilderness, with my trusty plasma cannons blowing up all the enemy spawners, and lasers killing the biters. The plasma cannons also blow up my own train, so I have to reload a lot.

[osndok]

I've thought about the principal objection to this idea (losing drones by training by a mining outpost), and realize that this is, in fact, an entirely separate (and IMO independently fixable) bug.

Namely, that drones often operate contrary to your desires.

Consider the case where a player meticulously lays out his whole base in advance using shift-click 'ghosting'... organization is good, right? No... pretty much the moment he gets drones, he can no longer craft things, because they are immediately taken out of his inventory.

I have seen many people frustratingly work-around this (standing out-of-range of ghosted buildings, removing the roboport from your armor, temporarily stashing your construction drones), but they all skirt the same issue: that drones should probably be 'explicitly pausable', and (perhaps) entering a train would implicitly pause them (requiring them to be explicitly unpaused).

[Serenity]

but they all skirt the same issue: that drones should probably be 'explicitly pausable', and (perhaps) entering a train would implicitly pause them (requiring them to be explicitly unpaused).

This has also been requested a lot. Would definitely be nice

Disabling personal roboports beyond a certain speed would also be nice (at least as an option)

[osndok]

Disabling personal roboports beyond a certain speed would also be nice (at least as an option)

I wonder if the 'correct' cutoff speed is actually quite low compared to a train, such as: "if you would outrun them" (so the speed-cutoff changes with the worker-drone research & exoskeleton upgrades).