Factorio Forums

TL;DR

The mining drill can extract different tipes of ores if there is a mixed field. What if you let people select the kind of ores they will extract?

What ?

Let electric mining drills selkect the kind of ores to extract as priority or to ignore others at all and drill only 1 kind of ores.

Why ?

The idea was almost useless until 0.14, but with introduction of uranium if you have a mixed field near the starting area you cannot extract freely ores until you have tecnologies for extracting the uranium ores. The mine will stop extracting ores having reached the uranium and the mine is totally locked as production.

If this is not a good idea for you, a good alternative solution is to let player select if build an uranium mine or a generic one. This way you can work on other materials and leave uranium alone or choose to extract uranium too.
A good idea for the second solution is to give drills a sort of flag for let them extract or not uranium ores.

This will not force players to restart a good map just because they get a lot of uranium scattered on other ore fields...

I'd go for if no acid and other resource mine other resource but I don't think that we'll get the mine only one ore type when it's so easy to separate even from early game with filter inserters.

Selecting ores can give a better chance of get the selected ore, maybe, but not exclusively extraction.
The ore selection actually is a personal preference, but the main purpose is not this one.
And for sure the problem is not filtering them outside mines, but inside.
If you build a mining drill over a mixed uranium/coal, for example, early in the game, the mine will dig eventually few coal ores, but when it start digging uranium ores it will lock until you feed acid to drills them...
I've started in an area water surrounded where many fields was heavily mixed with uranium. That has slowed greatly an almost perfect map where starting.
And it happen often that fields are mixed...
The surrounding water was a perfect way to protect my base because I was in an relatively small island.
Once gained the way to other earth the defensive lines must be focused only on the exit way... A great advantage at beginning, if you can use not only coal mines...

That's what I was suggesting, if you don't have acid it just ignores the uranium you're not locked out. But I've seen devs and mods point out that since ore sorting is such a trivial task there'll never be a select this ore only button (also you might be interested to know you can still use burner inserters on mixed areas and they don't touch the uranium at all)

Yep,it's harder build both coal and other sourcesbelts because you have to feed burner mines.
Electricity is cheaper, specifically, because you dont need to have more than electrics poles, at the beginning, and you can mine a larger area with just a mine.
At the beginning, where reources are limited, starting well is a good starting point.
And build directly mines that will remain the same until end of game, is a lesser waste than go with a lot of burning drills. low space is a good reason to optimize the factory directly from the beginning.

I wasn't suggesting mine out the entire thing with burners look ... 90% of this field is mined with electric and if/when you need less or you get acid you can convert to all electric and then filter.

Honestly I am more concerned that mods cannot add new resources that require different liquids to mine since if they are merged with uranium you can't then feed them two liquids.

The island now is lost, because when I've seen how drills was blocked on production I've started a new one, but it was a bit different. Lot of resources, because each has more than 2000 each tile, but too mixed. A small part of uranium, a 10 tiles in average, surrounded by 20 tiles of coal, then, a little away, a few pach of uranium surrounded by iron, a lot more, but without coals... and same for copper, even if not at this level, but the better has been a field mixed made by uranium on the center, stones, few, on the left and copper and iron on the right.
As told in that island there vas a lot od fields, but all messed up.
I was forced to use all burning drills for get enougn resources, but after this any other developement was a pain...
And, with some settings, this happen very often.

I'm in the same crowd that thinks you ought to be able to filter what you mine for these disgusting mixed ore patches...without having to spend extra resources to have filter inserters sort the extract.

deer_buster wrote:I'm in the same crowd that thinks you ought to be able to filter what you mine for these disgusting mixed ore patches...without having to spend extra resources to have filter inserters sort the extract.

You've not got the real problem...

Foreros wrote:You've not got the real problem...

If the real problem is "uranium nearby another ore forces you to use acid to mine, when you just want the other ore", then there's another, easier solution. Just add a Mk II electric drill to the game, which is the one that allows acid, and make the current electric drill unable to mine uranium. i.e. Split apart the acid-drill and normal drill into two separate minders. It wouldn't need any new UI or art; It'd just be using existing in-game stuff.

except that it's a pain to have to carry 2 levels of drills, I already only ever carry stack inserters and long inserters with me rather than all of them even if it'd be 'better' if I used regular ones or fast ones than stacks, and it's frustrating to have to go fetch the odd filter inserter, I don't want to fetch a second type of mine or have to think about the mine when there's already an existing mine that ignores uranium/acid mining, that's perfectly suited of early game when you get this problem, and it's not really that much of an expense to use as you should be having a coal/wood/fuel surplus early game.

Ranakastrasz wrote:Honestly I am more concerned that mods cannot add new resources that require different liquids to mine since if they are merged with uranium you can't then feed them two liquids.

This sums up the real issue, everything else here just sounds like people find the logistics too difficult to manage.

No offense intended, but IMO the current mechanic with mining mixed patches adds, as opposed to subtracts from the game. Allowing people to select what they mine will somehow remove some "fun" from the game. You can always justs build over the patch if it is not worth your while.

BenSeidel wrote:

Ranakastrasz wrote:Honestly I am more concerned that mods cannot add new resources that require different liquids to mine since if they are merged with uranium you can't then feed them two liquids.

This sums up the real issue, everything else here just sounds like people find the logistics too difficult to manage.

No offense intended, but IMO the current mechanic with mining mixed patches adds, as opposed to subtracts from the game. Allowing people to select what they mine will somehow remove some "fun" from the game. You can always justs build over the patch if it is not worth your while.

Yep. I saw a mod, can't remember which, which covers the entire map with tiny patches of random resources. Only water lacked any resources. That sould be nearly impossible now with uranium jamming everything.

If you add, say, infinite ore that needs lubricant to mine, if it touched uranium ore you would have to build such that only one of the two ore types is covered, as miners can only hold one type. Its an issue.

Just skip liquid mining if you cant mine it. The rest of it is fun. I think there is also a mod that gives you a bunch of single patches of random resources in each patch of a resource, so you HAVE to filter it.

Why not choose the resource you want to mine when there is 2/3 available for the miner, it requires circuits so it should be possible to make an option table in the miner when opening it. with a "whitelist" option to mine that certain resource untill it runs out

I'm using splitters.
But an option to choose... Also choose recipe in furnace!

I agree, splitter with output priority is simple to solve this. I don't think a choose option is needed to my pov.
Edit : I can see how it can be annoying for the plutonium near to an another "early"ore, maybe an exception can de done for uranium.. or where there no sulfuric acid input, the minig drill is just able to make the other ore mining.

Unfortunately this has been very much rejected, after uranium was introduced. If that wasn't enough to justify this, I doubt anything is.

What is the devs take on this?

Options so far:

1) current mining stays making it sometimes impossible to mine ore requiring different liquids.
2) ore to mine can be selected.
3) mines whatever it can mine and skips what it can't mine
4) if different liquids are required mine the ore it has liquid for and skip the one it doesn't