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TL;DR

I really hope dirty mining (Long term mining drills in FFF-129) will make it in 1.0.
I suggest 2 main features in completion to the main concept:
-A part of each ore field have an additional dirty ore layer
-The fluid inserted in miner drills determines if the dirty ore layer is depleted or infinitely exploited

What ?

The long term mining feature has been announced 1 year ago, but the developers decided that it wasn't a priority anymore. I'd like to share my vision about dirty mining.
Each ore patches would have 2 layer of ores:
-The normal one
-The deep one (dirty mining) that is present only in the center of the biggest ore patches

Once the normal ore is depleted, we need an end-game research to access to the deep one.
Then you can choose to make a long term mining outpost that will no longer disappear. If you supply the drill with water or lubricant, the deep ore layer is exploited at a low yield speed, then the dirty ores need to be washed in something like the centrifuge.
Or, if the ore patch is too small, or if it's in your main base and you want to get rid of it, you can choose to deplete it at fast speed by using sulfuric acid.

Why ?

The developers gave few answers in FFF-129

In my opinion, the current limited resources prevent us to enjoy a lategame base in default options. Because while rockets are launched, the mine outposts get depleted. Most of the time is spent replacing outposts. It feels like we're only sustaining the base, not improving it.
The long term mining feature would allow to improve the base in a permanent way.

Also, without dirty mining, in mid-game I feel like I have to push the Mining Productivity research at maximum, and use as much productivity modules as possible, otherwise I'm wasting ores. Long term mining would solve this problem.


I hope this suggestion can give some food for thought.
What do you think about these ideas?


Here is an example from Angels Infinite Ores, that works in a slightly different way:

FasterJump wrote:In my opinion, the current limited resources prevent us to enjoy a lategame base in default options. Because while rockets are launched, the mine outposts get depleted. Most of the time is spent replacing outposts. It feels like we're only sustaining the base, not improving it.

My thoughts exactly. I think I've written up a gigantic post myself about this somewhere but couldn't figure out which FFF mentioned dirty mining. Thank you for supplying that!

There we go! viewtopic.php?f=38&t=46557&p=268436#p268436


I'm happy to see other people actually caring about dirty mining enough to write stuff like this. I can say with hard certainty now that I can't enjoy Factorio as a single-player game because of the lack of dirty mining. Later on, I'm stuck constantly adding more mines rather than actually automating things and I start measuring the game in "number of ore patches I have to hook up" rather than "Number of ore I'm getting according to the Production screen". While that concept was mildly amusing for about an hour, it quickly got tiring when Factorio stopped being a game about automation.

Obviously /a/ solution is to turn the richness up, but I don't think that's a very good one. Taking that route makes the logistics are way too easy early-game and I get bored two hours in. I want to have to care about setting mines up and to have the logistics be reasonably complicated during the early-game and late-game, but at the same time I don't want to have to have to shift 90% of my focus over to building new mines as time goes on.

Simply altering the algorithm to make further ore patches have even more richness than they do now won't work either, because after a certain point the logistics become simpler with all the extra technology we have late-game. I'm sure that setting up mines will still feel like a chore rather than something fun and interesting. Sure, I'll have to merge more belts down to 6 lanes for loading onto longer and longer trains, but all that requires is me setting the train station further and further away to give more room. Having to use a train consisting of fluid wagons /and/ cargo wagons mixed together and interweave them in to the stations would make things a lot more interesting for me.



Just a thought, maybe for kicks we should try generating a map with an insanely large uranium deposit somewhere and pretend that's where we're gunna set up dirty mining, just to get a feel for at least /some/ of the supposed mechanics. We can see how it feels from there. Obviously it won't have infinite resources, but at least we can play with mixing two wagons together and having to work with the scheduling to get things to run smoothly.

Yes I also agree with this! I also came to the realization that productivity research, while it does give more ores per base, still depletes bases at the same rate, so while you could in theory make a slightly bigger factory, you will still spend as much time replacing depleted mines.

I would suggest something similar to Angel Ore's mods. This means you can actually get more out of same amount of stuff but you need more complicated product chain.

Also, one thing to note that depending on the nature of the resource.

Machines mining a constant infinite resource patch benefit from having speed modules in them.

Machines mining a resource that's mined out in 5 minutes but fully generates in every 10 minutes benefit for having productivity modules.

I would like to have the dirty mining, because its a new challenge ... when you need more off all.
Only build a new Outpost is boring, ... its bring a new wind in the endgame.
You get more off it but also more useless byproducts that you must wash out and process then.
More items mean bigger trains and a new logistic challenge.
The finish product is the pure ore that you can normally process to plates.

I saw a good dirty mining proposal here: viewtopic.php?p=268436#p268436

I found this related thread: Underground Mining / Endless Resources / Hidden Ores

People also suggested to add a richness option: infinite ressources to allow permanent trains outposts.

Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=29236 "Dirty Mining" / Underground Mining / Endless Resources / Hidden Ores...

The more I think about dirty mining, the more I think it might be a mod feature. There is obviously a tight "entity budget" in the vanilla game so as to not make the game needlessly complicated. Dirty mining with drill shafts, washers, dirty ores (in several varieties) and so on would really blow the entity budget. But it can still be done really nicely in a mod, kind of like the mining version of Angel's mods.

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