Factorio Forums

A few suggestions to improve mining drills:

1. I would love the ability to be able to set a filter in mining drills such that when they are placed over multiple resources the filter could be set to mine just that ore. It would work similar to filtered inserters and could possibly be set using the circuit network.

2. Have mining drills be able to output a signal of remaining ore underneath it. This one could be a bit tricky though as the drill radius extends 1 tile over the edge of the entity and as such would overlap with surrounding drills if placed side-by-side. I believe this was mentioned somewhere in the Friday Facts a while back so it might already be in the works.

3. Circuit network connection for on/off - although this is somewhat redundant as it can already be done with a power switch. If suggestions 2 was added though I am guessing the drill would still need power to output the signal and as such this suggestion becomes relevant to have drills turned off but still be able to output a remaining ore signal.

Xeteth wrote:1. I would love the ability to be able to set a filter in mining drills such that when they are placed over multiple resources the filter could be set to mine just that ore. It would work similar to filtered inserters and could possibly be set using the circuit network.

I think it should keep as part of the game to filter this out after mining.
This makes also sense, cause there are some ideas sweeping around, which goes to the direction of having mines, that output endless, but random resources.

2. Have mining drills be able to output a signal of remaining ore underneath it.

Isn't that already working?
http://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-123

Mining drill: Read the amount of remaining resources.

3. Circuit network connection for on/off - although this is somewhat redundant as it can already be done with a power switch. If suggestions 2 was added though I am guessing the drill would still need power to output the signal and as such this suggestion becomes relevant to have drills turned off but still be able to output a remaining ore signal.

I would say you won't switch each miner, so the switch is the much better choice here. And the rest is just guessing.

ssilk wrote:

2. Have mining drills be able to output a signal of remaining ore underneath it.

Isn't that already working?
http://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-123

Mining drill: Read the amount of remaining resources.

No. I guess he hardly would have suggested it if it was . Mining drills are not circuit connectable yet.

ssilk wrote:I would say you won't switch each miner, so the switch is the much better choice here. And the rest is just guessing.

You're quite good at knowing what other people need to do in their games . It might be useful to switch off miners individually or in groups, and that's much easier if you can do it with a signal.

Unpowered combinators do not output circuit signals, but unpowered inserters do (inconsistent in my opinion).

BTW I would add this suggestion regarding Mining Drills signal input/output:

Basically, the mining drills should work like inserters in that regard. You could set the filter (if that feature is not considered OP), you could have it stop/resume on signal, you could read "hand" contents in two modes (pulse = ore being mined, hold = remaining ore in the ground), or simply have the normal mode of operation.

That would check all important boxes, and the mining drill would behave like an inserter, so it's intuitive and easy to learn.

An Electric mining drill with a built-in resource filter would be nice... even if it is a late game tech.