TL;DR
Make both input and output fluid boxes standard on all miningdrills.What ?
Make both input and output fluid boxes standard on all miningdrills.Essentially this will make "fracking" and steam enhanced extraction of tar sands possible.
Relevant for extracting fluid resources (output fluid box) with the use of fracking emultions, oxygen (aka "fireflodding")
Relevant mainly for fossil fuels but possible for uses that involve ore mining, rare earths mining and similar.
Easy to implement: Pumpjacks have output fluid boxes, mining drills have input boxes, as well as "sharing boxes" of sorts (for sharing mining fluids in between drills). Having both in same drill would not seem to be a big or complicated task.
Explain in detail your idea:
While trying to implement fracking of shale formations I ran into the issue, where I have to choose between a input fluidbox (in standard mining drills) and an output fluid box (in miningdrill/pumpjacks) but could not use both. This means that fracking is not an option.
I have tried to find a work-arround for this limititation but have come to think that it is solvable by changes to vanilla code only.
- Required fluid.png (516.34 KiB) Viewed 695 times
Why ?
Canada currently sits on the worlds third largest reserve of fossil fuels, most of it being in the form of tar sands. The US supplies itself with oil from fracking sites in Texas, Wyoming, Pensylvania and a lot of other states.These resources are often only extractable through the use of (fluid) emulsions and in the form of (fluid) sludges. Some of the tar sands can be dug out at surface level, but 80 % of the reserve is found at deeper levels. Extraction of these tar sands reserves also requires injection of gases or fluids underground.
Similar situation is true for shale formation extraction and "fracking": You need a miningdril/pumpjack that can both deliver the mining fluid into the underground and deliver the "product" in form of a fluid.
So for added variation, complexity, realism and relevance I think that two-box fluid systems are the way to go for future miningdrills.
See more about here (what prompted the suggestion in more detail):
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=55616