Choose the production of mining drills

[Jim-Bar]

Hello everyone,

When two ore fields are overlapping each other, it's not possible to choose what a mining drill on top of both will produce. I don't understand how the mining drill chooses the ore to produce, but it alternates from one to the other by itself. I find this really annoying because it forces the player to put filter inserters and the likes for sorting the output ore.


In the image above, the mining drill first produced copper (bottom of the belt), and then suddenly changed its production to stone.

It would be really nive if it were possible to choose the ore being produced (in the same fashion we choose recipes for assembly machines).

[impetus maximus]

i think it's random which is chosen. just use filter inserters to separate them.

[Factoruser]

Selecting the ore to "produce" like at an assembling machine would be nice. A new built drill should automatically assign one item type, maybe the "best" item first (copper ore, not coal), maybe just the item with the lowest internal ID (I guess coal comes before copper ore)...

[Koub]

The question has already been asked, and the answer is : filter inserters are made for that.

There's already filter inserters which can handle mixed resources.

Source

[Jim-Bar]

The question has already been asked, and the answer is : filter inserters are made for that.

There's already filter inserters which can handle mixed resources.

Source

Since it has been already decided I won't argue, although I'm disappointed to be forced to do this kind of things:

[Ringkeeper]

With the introduction of Uranium the filter inserter option gets quit harder^^ specialy if you have small patch of uranium in a huge field of something else. Then you need to bring accid all the way or the miner won't work at all.

[Koub]

That's totally what I dislike (the uranium that prevents mining ordinary ore until you have access to sulfuric acid in abundant quantities).

[5thHorseman]

I just sneak the miners around the other ore. If I miss some, I miss some.

[Koub]

That's what I do too, but I feel it more like a design flaw than a "should be that way".

[Ringkeeper]

fun thing: they (most of the time) start mining just fine... until they decide that now its the uranium turn... then they stop till replaced xD

[Koub]

A dev explained recently that a mining drill cycled through all ore tiles one after the other continuously. That's why : they'll start from probably one edge, and sweep ... until they try to mine uranium, and ... nope.

[Veklim]

On the whole, adding a simple belt scrubber is pretty damned simple, I have numerous examples in my current factory alone, some of which even feed 'syphon stations' which automatically turn on or off depending on whether they have enough to load a train or not. The issue I see here is the uranium overlap problem, which is something I'd suggest fixing by merely skipping the uranium if a miner isn't getting acid. That way you can continue to mine the rest of the patch and be left with just the uranium until such time as the miners get acid. It doesn't solve the multiple materials question, but there are already methods in the game to deal with such perfectly effectively.

I would suggest not putting the filter next to every miner which produces multiple ores, but instead make a series of filter inserters further along, once you have merged the miner belts. This way they can feed into chests, or onto other belts (or in the case of coal, directly to a small power plant if you like, I did that by one iron/coal patch a while back because I was bored). Another alternative is to place miners so as to avoid overlap, you will be left (eventually) with thin strips which are easily sorted en masse once the main patches are gone.

[Koub]

the uranium overlap problem, which is something I'd suggest fixing by merely skipping the uranium if a miner isn't getting acid.

That's exactly what I'm hoping.

[Jim-Bar]

I would suggest not putting the filter next to every miner which produces multiple ores, but instead make a series of filter inserters further along, once you have merged the miner belts.

I agree, I just quickly added overlapping mining drills with chests and inserters next to them for the sake of the picture.

This way they can feed into chests, or onto other belts (or in the case of coal, directly to a small power plant if you like, I did that by one iron/coal patch a while back because I was bored).

I never thought of putting the coal into power plants, but that's a good idea. The problem with chests is that they're likely to end up full, then the coal passes through and messes up the smelters.

[torne]

When I filter mixed belts I use the circuit network to just turn the belt off if any of the "wrong" item slips through - better to stop production than have to clean up belts by hand

[Rseding91]

Personally, I don't consider this to be something that needs fixing.

There are already several game mechanics you can use to work around the problem. Making the drill have a filter seems like it would remove from the gameplay that is figuring out your own solution.

Much like filtered belts or filtered chests removing from the gameplay - the game is in logistics and figuring out *how* you're going to get the mixed items un-mixed and the un-mixed items mixed and in the correct ratios is what's fun about it.

[Koub]

Personally, I don't consider this to be something that needs fixing.

There are already several game mechanics you can use to work around the problem. Making the drill have a filter seems like it would remove from the gameplay that is figuring out your own solution.

Much like filtered belts or filtered chests removing from the gameplay - the game is in logistics and figuring out *how* you're going to get the mixed items un-mixed and the un-mixed items mixed and in the correct ratios is what's fun about it.

I agree with you Rseding, except on one topic : if there is even one uranium ore tile in a patch, you can't just mine everything around ignoring the uranium, you have to make an ugly contraption, and move several times your mining drills to mine the iron/stone/copper/coal there is around without your mining drill halting on uranium. I think mining drills should at least skip what they can't mine instead of halting indefinitely.

[Engimage]

Personally I find this task more annoying than challenging. Most of times secondary resource is totally not needed and you can't really dispose of it.
This is one thing that really makes me nervous every time I meet it. Not like something I should solve.
I would say personally I do just avoid resource merges 100% of time not to even bother with it. And trust me I am kinda perfectionist and try to solve most of tasks available.

[Jim-Bar]

Personally I find this task more annoying than challenging. Most of times secondary resource is totally not needed and you can't really dispose of it.
This is one thing that really makes me nervous every time I meet it. Not like something I should solve.
I would say personally I do just avoid resource merges 100% of time not to even bother with it. And trust me I am kinda perfectionist and try to solve most of tasks available.

I agree with that. Separating the ores is annoying, especially when you don't need one (e.g. coal). There are plenty of problems to work out in Factorio, but I d'ont like this one when it is imposed to me.

[Krusnik]

+1

Kinda annoying when there is Uranium near by and you can't mine anything but it.