[0.16.4]Placement Aid when drills are in-hand.

[Krazykrl]

With the amount of ground clutter in Factorio, and the fact that said ground clutter covers ore deposits... A "resource extractor placement aid" similar to offshore pumps would be beneficial (I know it would be beneficial for me, since it's difficult for my eyes to discern contrast sometimes.)

I suggest something along the lines of a transparent flood-fill overlay of all visible resources on screen (similar to the electric mining drill coverage area) when a drill(or Pumpjack) of any type is in-hand. Since resources are mutually exclusive, this transparent tile tint could share a similar color to the resource that is contained in that tile.

Issue:

Difficult to see contiguous coal deposit

20171216193803_1.jpg (879.95 KiB) Viewed 3665 times

Proposed solution (When "alt-mode" details is on with a Drill/Pumpjack in-hand or in-blueprint.):

Miner Placement Aid

MinerPlacementAid.png (4.53 MiB) Viewed 3665 times

[Tekky]

I agree. It is quite hard to determine the exact limit of the ore patch, with all the decorations and the fact that the ore tiles all look different.

[Lav]

Highlighting the patch would be nice. Concealing it almost completely with an unrelated texture, not so much. I'd rather go the route of highlighting patch borders.

[Krazykrl]

I agree. It is quite hard to determine the exact limit of the ore patch, with all the decorations and the fact that the ore tiles all look different.

Yep, I don't want the artwork to suffer for a minor(miner?) issue. It's not utterly gamebreaking/showstopping, but It's frustrating and takes a long time to manually parse out where the deposits are.

Highlighting the patch would be nice. Concealing it almost completely with an unrelated texture, not so much. I'd rather go the route of highlighting patch borders.

The crosshatching I used is just to get a point across. I'm no professional designer (it took me literally 2 minutes in an image editor); I just want to know where the resources are under all this clutter... you've already scouted the area with radar and such (since the terrain is visible.) So it stands to reason that you have surveyed the area for exploitable resources.

[Engimage]

I totally support this.
With introduction of hi res ores in addition to their visual beauty their boudaries became very unclear. Also decoratives (and belts) do conseal ores pretty effectively.
It would be awesome to see it highlighted when you hold mining drill.
I also like OP's idea about highlighting with respective color. Would be awesome for placing on mixed ores!

[Caine]

Or they could just fix the graphics such that it isn't so hard to see.

[bobingabout]

I must admit, that's where pre 0.15 ore graphics were useful, the edges were kind of square and helped highlight the edges of the ore patches. Since the 0.15 ore graphics were introduced to help things blend in better... well, now they blend in too much.

[Tekky]

Since the 0.15 ore graphics were introduced to help things blend in better... well, now they blend in too much.

I fully agree.

[sadkov]

Opened the forum to propose this exact idea and found this thread

Hope, devs will add this small feature to the roadmap

[Brambor]

Yes! I would like that too.
The more experienced players could get used to that (gain experience with the current state), but even they would definitely appraise it.

For the newer players I feel it is almost necessary.

If it will be added in like a year from now I believe that it will get similar reaction to train block visualisation in some sence.