Of course one can use a huge blueprint, but it is still tedious and annoying work, that just repeats itself, without bringing anything new or enjoyable to the game after you've done it a few times.
My suggestion to this:
A new miner structure, which is much bigger than the existing miners.
So a player has to place only one or two of those bigger miners to cover an entire ore patch, instead of the arrays of electric miners.
- It would additionally to its bigger size have a bigger radius around itself, as it would work underground.
- It would have multiple output rows, instead of the single one of existing miners, which it would serve equally (if they're connected). So the player can build multiple belt lines directly from this single structure.
- It would be a separate mid- or late-game research to unlock, so it is completely optional to use and even to research.
- It would extract ore faster than the original miners since it also covers more ground, making its output similar to the output if you would just cover the ore patch with the original miners.
- I suggest to make it a bit slower if you compare it's output to the output of the original miners on the same surface. Or it could use a huge amount of energy compared to the original miners approach.
Just to give the player a reason to use the old approach with the multiple electric miners, if a player prefers that approach. So it's a real decision whether to use this simpler approach, over the original approach.
