Lategame mining options are lacking

[BlueTemplar]

This is great, but sounds like more an idea for an expansion pack, as currently anything involving rockets / satellites is not "lategame" stage, but "after-the-game-has-already-ended" stage...

[Rjskeet]

This is great, but sounds like more an idea for an expansion pack, as currently anything involving rockets / satellites is not "lategame" stage, but "after-the-game-has-already-ended" stage...

Hmm I feel like launching the rocket is the mid game. After that its all late game, figuring out where all your bottlenecks are and truly learning how to make mega class designs. Personally after launching my first rocket I realized how bad my factory was and completely redesigned it using all the techniques I had learned building my first factory.

Nubm2 that seems like something that would be an expansion, it's a cool idea that should be explored but not for the base game.

you'll still be bored at having to create so many outposts because they'll be mined out quickly unless you use infinite ores

Just go farther out for your outposts ?

Or have multiple like he said... If you have 3 deposits of super miners all mining the same ore your not going to mine them all super fast your actually just going to saturate your transport system. Factorio works like this you get ore to expand a factory and you use the factory to get more ore. You'll always need more ore however, the amount of ore is only ever determined by the factory consuming it.

The only argument I can see for upgraded miners in Vanilla is if they contribute significantly to freeing up UPS. Now that would have to be a truly massive base that is most likely struggling with UPS for other reasons.

How well did mining directly into wagons work for Clusterio ?

They had 4 trains loading up from 1 deposit in seconds, all miners had lvl3 production mods, the shear amount of miners moving ore that fast was actually causing ups issues because the server was Trying to calculate how fast 200 miners with mining production 4000 and lvl 3 modules could output the ore. Not to mention generating 1 ore every cycle tick instead of many ore a cycle tick for the miners. Truly maddening speed.

[BlueTemplar]

Hmm, I generally build a second brand new factory after oil / blue science (conbots make it easy!)...

By definition, anything after the "you won" screen is after the end game.
Also, look at the tech tree, the "final" research is pretty much the Rocket Silo...
(Ok, there's the Atomic Bomb I guess, but it's pretty situational...)
The devs were nice to add infinite technologies in 0.15 for the few dedicated people that keep playing after the end game, but note how they are just numerical upgrades...
(they *have* to put the end of the game at some point, especially if they want to ever leave Early Access !)

That's why you'd better specify what you mean by "lategame" :
for me for instance it means "nuclear (due to cost) and cheap gold and purple tech : beacons, fusion and logisystem",
with the nuclear upgrades, artillery and rocket silo being "the endgame" due to their costs...
(similarly the term "megabase" is often unclear : I've seen it being used as to be from anything just after the rocket to Clusterio...)

BTW, mods don't disable achievements (only Steam ones)...

modded_achievements.png (463.28 KiB) Viewed 6412 times

[Rjskeet]

Good point, Bluetemplar
When I say late game for this topic I mean the gap between nuclear power that would be needed to fuel these massive mining machines and rocket launching that would be consuming there outputs. This could also help marathon players by giving them something to recycle there older electric mining drills into for a more efficient play.

[mrt144]

Man, you could make good money 'playing' this stuff for real

Actually, that is from what they pay me. But worst and most stressing part of engineering work is interacting with people and their stupid opinions. There are millions or regulations, political decisions, applications and waiting that they are accepted, opinions of higher rank bosses and users, who does not always know what they are doing, which I must take into account. I would like to have a computer game which would give quite hard technical challenges without all that human interaction shit which is inseparable part of real engineering work. Factorio could be excellent starting point for that kind of use.

Sounds like I should make an RPG game that focuses on you, the engineer, who just wants to design perfect little things and is constantly interrupted by NPC bosses giving you tasks and whatnot. Maybe the first token quest can be "Sign the Birthday Card and Pass to Next Person"

[Hannu]

Sounds like I should make an RPG game that focuses on you, the engineer, who just wants to design perfect little things and is constantly interrupted by NPC bosses giving you tasks and whatnot. Maybe the first token quest can be "Sign the Birthday Card and Pass to Next Person"

Oh no! That game has really hard learning curve.

[MobRules]

Sounds like I should make an RPG game that focuses on you, the engineer, who just wants to design perfect little things and is constantly interrupted by NPC bosses giving you tasks and whatnot. Maybe the first token quest can be "Sign the Birthday Card and Pass to Next Person"

Oh no! That game has really hard learning curve.

Especialy when:

Everyone you know has already been crossed off, and the remaining names are people in other departments

And

You have wicked social anxiety.

[mrvn]

that is a good point, but as it stands outpost construction is still very cute and paste I think we can all agree, breaking up the monotony of the late game is the overall goal. Also there is a mod ( https://mods.factorio.com/mod/BigDrills/downloads )this is what really inspired me to make the post because using it feels alot better then making outpost that look all the same.

A new concept that could be modded using the BigDrills would be to have actual mining pits. You have this big drill that digs up tons of dirt every second. It should leave a hole. And we do have cliffs. So why not actually make it dig a hole? have it drill along the cliff and move the cliff forward over time. And as each layer of ore is removed move ore could be uncovered below it (or not, depending on the shape of the deposit).

The drill could also produce landfill, slag, dirt, soil as by product when there place where you drill doesn't have enough ore in it. Sometimes you have to dig a hole in dirt to get at the ore below it. Add a new concept: Prospecting for underground/hidden ores.

And then you can go even one step further and add below surface mining. Factorio supports multiple surfaces so a mine shaft that leads to below ground caves is possible.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, I've been thinking about cave entrances opening into BobDiggity surfaces. But it's waaaay down the line !

[mrt144]

Sounds like I should make an RPG game that focuses on you, the engineer, who just wants to design perfect little things and is constantly interrupted by NPC bosses giving you tasks and whatnot. Maybe the first token quest can be "Sign the Birthday Card and Pass to Next Person"

Oh no! That game has really hard learning curve.

Especialy when:

Everyone you know has already been crossed off, and the remaining names are people in other departments

And

You have wicked social anxiety.

Gotta farm 'Water Cooler Conversations" until you can get a bump to your "Social" stat. Okay, I'll stop now...but the idea is kinda funny, right?

[quyxkh]

Miners produce the same amount of ore per ore resource consumed regardless of speed boost, the only concrete effect speed-boosting miners gets you is, you need fewer outposts but you have to replace them that much more often.

Go about 5km out on default settings, unboosted miners on a so-so 500k/miner patch will last three days. About 30 outposts of those at pre-launch tech, 40 miners/outpost isn't too much to ask at default settings 5km out, will feed a 1KSPM base for three days should you choose to build one that early, spending it all on mining prod will do utterly ridiculous things to your production rate or resource consumption rate. Just about any rig can handle a 1KSPM base these days, somebody designed a 4KSPM base that ran at 50fps on a budget i3 using the 0.15 release. Getting from ore production that will feed a 1KSPM at 130% production (from mining prod 15, max pre-space) to 5KSPM's worth of production from the same outposts, that's adding 4*130%=520% production, 260 mining-prod levels, 275*276*50/1000-12 launches ~ 3975 launches, at one per minute that's less than three days and this isn't even counting the snowball effect of building the KSPM capacity needed to _use_ the vast excesses you start producing. That's three days where you didn't have to touch an outpost even once.

Punch a path farther out, past about 10km, you get to the patches you can mine for weeks, but after three days of torrid mining productivity growth either your rig's already at however many KSPM it can handle or you might as well just punch on through to 50km and go for the patches that last months.

[leadraven]

Another suggestion - classic scheme with ore hub and mobile harvesters.
Flying ore harvesters - huge drones. They can carry sufruric acid to harvest uranium. Runs on fuel (like trains) to increase mobility.
Ore harvesting hub - dock for harvesters. Stores ore and replenishes fuel.

Harvesting area must be very big, or even unlimited (limited by harvester fuel capacity).
The farther harvesters have to fly, the more harvesters are needed to keep up the ore.
Each hub is configured to send harvesters to one type of resource (like recipe).
Player will be able to create centralized ore hubs, or provide supplies directly to production. Scaling ore mining will be much easier.
One more good thing - minimum new game mechanics. It is just big drones with fuel and locked dock-stations.

P.S. I understand that this "big drones" relates to railroad as roboports relates to belts. But in this specific context I think it's ok.

[Cyonic]

One possibility is asteroid mining to remove the need for late-game outposting. Get your stuff from the asteroid belt.

A mod that already implements this is 'expanded rocket payloads', it also includes a bunch of other stuff that can be pretty OP in the lategame. I feel that the solar power and asteroid mining for ores is pretty well done.

[BlueTemplar]

Does it have an "outer space" surface, or is it all abstracted ? If abstracted, then IMHO it seems kind of boring... (and not the Musk kind ! :p )

[Rjskeet]

I think we are falling off topic here, the post is about mid - late game mining, and to reduce outputs construction time, and to also give some progression in mining tech within the game

[Avezo]

I think special mining roboport would be the best. Just make sure it can mine beneath itself aswell lol.

[Rjskeet]

I think special mining roboport would be the best. Just make sure it can mine beneath itself aswell lol.

Harvesters bots/ harvester port? , give it a radius that it can mine, mix construction bots with EMDs
Seems interesting, would those bots get both a mining bonus and carrying bonus?

[Avezo]

I think special mining roboport would be the best. Just make sure it can mine beneath itself aswell lol.

Harvesters bots/ harvester port? , give it a radius that it can mine, mix construction bots with EMDs
Seems interesting, would those bots get both a mining bonus and carrying bonus?

The way I imagine it is like this:
- construction bots do the mining
- logistic bots do the transport
- all bots are restricted to a single mining-roboport, which have mining area
- generic roboport repair pack storage slots are used for mined ore

Not sure about all the bonuses, it probably would need separate infinite research to not make it overpowered.

[Divaya]

I was kind of bummed that 'dirty mining' got tossed out when infinite mining productivity research was added.

Some sort of mining that gives you more resource but needs filtering / refining would be very cool. Some bigger drills would be appreciated too, something new to automate.

[FunMaker]

I started a new 0.17 map and there is one point that bothers me alot with lategame mining. Sure there needs to be a good lategame option for mining where you should get ore really fast and that forces the player to burn his mind to get it working. But the most simple problem in lategame mining for me is that miners can't be placed on non-ore tiles. If that would be possible i could go to an ore field, stomp my blueprint with miners + smelter + train station on the ground that covers the complete ore field and all i have to do is connecting the rail...
But in normal situations it is not possible to create such a blueprint because i can't create such a blueprint because i need to have a gigantig ore field to prepare this blueprint that covers most ore fields.
I had this problem in a previous game and what did i do? Start up another game with RSO extreme settings in sandbox mode so i could prepare blueprints in this game.

So please give us an option to place miners on non-ore fields.