Factorio Forums

So far i have not seen a mod that does this but i believe that having smart drills added to the base game could be very beneficial to many play styles.

what i mean by "smart Drill" is not one that can drill faster as many mods do, but allows the drill to be linked into a circuit network. my vision of this would be that on my mining outposts, they would recieve a constant signal from my main base and if interrupted, aka the power being cut, the drills would shut off to conserve power from the accumulators for the lasers. thereby giving me time to save the base. even in the base game it could enhance the game play. and if someone doesn't need to hook up their drills there is no need.

if anyone knows of a mod i overlooked please let me know. if not what are your thoughts on this idea.

Drills already work like this. When the output backs up it stops working and only consumes idle power usage.

I would occasionally like a smart drill where you can set a filter for the type of resource it mines. Could that be added as a basic drill functionality?

Xeanoa wrote:I would occasionally like a smart drill where you can set a filter for the type of resource it mines. Could that be added as a basic drill functionality?

Could be: yeah, will be: most likely no. It wouldn't add any value and would just use more processing time for no real gains.

You can filter the output with filter inserters or just don't place it overlapping other resources.

Rseding91 wrote:Drills already work like this. When the output backs up it stops working and only consumes idle power usage.

im not talking about how and when drills can consume less power on their own. i want to have an ability to shut down the drills even if the output is not blocked. using a a constant contaminator to send say a red signal and the drills only operate if the signal is heard. so if there is a power interruption the signal would be cut off and the drills would stop. there by conserving power for the defenses in say a FOB giving me more time to fix the connection and destroy the nest that cut my power. that way my FOB doesn't get over run if it is attacked.

The ability to turn a drill on/off already exists: it's the power switch.

This is very similar to the other guy who suggests to make beacons (and all devices) switchable by circuits.

For the miners this is really not needed, cause as Rseding already said: there is the power switch: one switch and you can turn of big areas.

For the beacons etc.: well that's a different subject...

Rseding91 wrote:The ability to turn a drill on/off already exists: it's the power switch.

well i shall admit my lack of knowledge with this. should of looked up a wiki but everything i have learned was self taught. i do like idea of the power switch. thank you for humoring my idea.

Rseding91 wrote:Drills already work like this. When the output backs up it stops working and only consumes idle power usage.

Just a quick note: At the moment, electric mining drills have zero idle power usage. Not sure if that's intentional or not, but I noticed it after going to the trouble of hooking up a power switch to turn them off, only to realize that it was pointless.

I believe (it's been thrown around once or twice) that it has been designed to have electric drills have zero idle power as it stops the need for people to continually go round and "trim" the dead mines off. Instead you can set & forget, only lifting them up when you want to move them somewhere else.

Rseding91 wrote:Drills already work like this. When the output backs up it stops working and only consumes idle power usage.

electric drils dont have idle power usages