Self-Fueling for Burner Drills

[IronCartographer]

tl;dr: Burner drills could behave like burner inserters, feeding themselves from compatible fuel while mining.

Watching an early game Let's Play from a beginner, it occurred to me that the principle of self-refueling could be extended to the burner drills without much downside.

It would remove the self-refueling puzzle from mining coal, but burner drills on any other resource would have the same level of challenge.

A box (or looped drill setup) would still be needed to store large amounts, but for the beginner player it could be that one extra bit of "Aha! Smart machines!" before wondering "But how will I refuel the drills on everything else?" ...

[bobucles]

This is a simple and pretty nice idea.

[Brathahn]

You can already refuel burner drills automatically very easily:

burnerrefuel.PNG (226.7 KiB) Viewed 17796 times

if everything is perfectly self-maintaining, the game gets pretty boring in my opinion.

[dood]

if everything is perfectly self-maintaining

This topic isn't about everything. Just burner mining drills.
Pay attention.

[Jap2.0]

if everything is perfectly self-maintaining

This topic isn't about everything. Just burner mining drills.
Pay attention.

Then we get things like "but it happens with burner mining drills, why can't it happen with this?"

(Don't take that as me giving a decisive opinion on the topic, just the precedent you would be setting.)

[Mike5000]

I prefer the early game as it is now with burner inserters feeding burner drills acting as an introduction to inserters.

[dood]

Then we get things like "but it happens with burner mining drills, why can't it happen with this?"

"This" what?
Pray tell, which other thing mines and runs on fuel?

[Hedning1390]

I have nothing against it. It would only apply to coal burner drills, and we already chain those to feed themselves anyway. If the newbies can get the very first minutes to be just a little bit easier I don't think that's a bad thing.

I prefer the early game as it is now with burner inserters feeding burner drills acting as an introduction to inserters.

Is anyone actually doing that? In any case you would still have to insert the drills for the other ores.

[Jap2.0]

Then we get things like "but it happens with burner mining drills, why can't it happen with this?"

"This" what?
Pray tell, which other thing mines and runs on fuel?

I don't know, maybe iron -> conveyer belt?

[Brathahn]

Then we get things like "but it happens with burner mining drills, why can't it happen with this?"

Thats exactly the point.
when you make parts of the game "doing it by itself" then other parts will follow. Maybe you will get logistic request turrets because an ammo belt is too complicated or self repairing walls because maintaining the outer wall with bots is too expensive etc. etc. In the end you will loose more and more of the puzzle aspect of the game.
The filtered splitter is a good example of this problem.. filter inserters are now more or less obsolete and the overall design of belt filters is now completely trivial.
Another good example would be the Loader. It may be super useful but will make balancers and similar contraptions completely useless.

Is anyone actually doing that? In any case you would still have to insert the drills for the other ores.

I beg to differ. You can get pretty far with burners only if you are creative.

burnerrefuel_2.PNG (2.23 MiB) Viewed 17746 times

[dood]

What's with the sudden paranoia?
Burner inserters fuel themselves too and that didn't magically, through a chain reaction of tangentially related events will an "I win" button that farts out rocket parts into existence.
Now get off your slippery slopes.

[Jap2.0]

Burner inserters fuel themselves too

If they did not, there would be no way to automate them without electric tech.

[IronCartographer]

You can get pretty far with burners only if you are creative.

The only thing that would change with this setup is the need for inserters on the coal patch.

On further thought, however, there is a wrinkle to consider: Burner inserters are placed with enough energy to grab a fuel item.

It wouldn't make sense for burner drills to have that feature, and thus this might introduce a new inconsistency.

That said, I enjoy the idea of being able to start self-sustaining coal production by placing a drill, a wooden box, and using the remaining bit of wood as kick-starting fuel.

People would love it as an early-game convenience introduced at the "last minute" in 0.17...

[Hedning1390]

Is anyone actually doing that? In any case you would still have to insert the drills for the other ores.

I beg to differ. You can get pretty far with burners only if you are creative.

Your answer does not seem to relate to what I said. Did you intend to quote someone else? Please clarify.

Burner inserters are placed with enough energy to grab a fuel item. It wouldn't make sense for burner drills to have that feature

Why not? I think the flashing "out of fuel" icon is clear enough to not cause any confusion when placing other ore drills. Though if that's your concern I don't think they have to have initial power for this to still make the introduction to the game easier.

[IronCartographer]

I think the flashing "out of fuel" icon is clear enough to not cause any confusion when placing other ore drills.

I agree. My issue with burner drills starting with instant energy is less about clarity and more about the weird behavior it would encourage if placing drills repeatedly could compete with mining with an axe, and similarly not use fuel.

Though if that's your concern I don't think they have to have initial power for this to still make the introduction to the game easier.

Yep. Having them sustain themselves would be nifty, even if you're forced to hand-feed them once.

[bobingabout]

what is the purpose of the boiler?

[Zavian]

Pretty sure the boilers are so he can transfer coal to the burner inserters that are removing the iron plates.

[darkfrei]

Pretty sure the boilers are so he can transfer coal to the burner inserters that are removing the iron plates.

Vanilla Burner Leech? viewtopic.php?f=92&t=14634

[Philip017]

after 3k hours i still wish burner miners that were mining coal fueled themselves, it just makes sense,
*BUT* once i learned how to chain them and using the quick transfer to take all the coal by walking by them, it became a non-issue, but still for the new guy learning the game, before we understand that we can chain mine with coal burners this would be a very helpful addition imo.

[IronCartographer]

Pretty sure the boilers are so he can transfer coal to the burner inserters that are removing the iron plates.

Vanilla Burner Leech? viewtopic.php?f=92&t=14634

It's not new to remove fuel from a boiler--used to be done to chain boilers together. It's not very common anymore, but with the old 1x1 boiler it was often done with long inserters.

after 3k hours i still wish burner miners that were mining coal fueled themselves, it just makes sense,
*BUT* once i learned how to chain them and using the quick transfer to take all the coal by walking by them, it became a non-issue, but still for the new guy learning the game, before we understand that we can chain mine with coal burners this would be a very helpful addition imo.

Exactly!