Mineral prospecting

[Raziaar]

I have read the idea of hidden ores on these forums, and this is along those lines. I would like to see the game shift from everything on the surface, to very minimal amounts of visible surface deposits. These would facilitate start-up and maybe smaller industries, but to expand and grow large in scale you would need to locate larger underground deposits. I envision differing types of prospecting technologies, to research and utilize as you advance in the game. Each different technology would have a different radius that they could detect minerals in, with the simpler ones having a smaller dependency on power(perhaps a few battery cells to allow it to do it's thing, and the more sophisticated ones requiring significant amounts of power and time as they image the earth around it.

I think in this way, the smaller ones would remain useful. You could place them in areas further away from your main base of operations, and prospect more areas at once, coming back to check on their progress. The larger ones would be a more surefire way to find the minerals because of search radius, but due to the infrastructure required to sustain them they would be used more infrequently.

I personally like this idea... as it reminds me of the adventure and chance game of setting a bunch of snares to catch rabbits and seeing what you get, or dropping crab pots in the ocean and hoping for that jam packed one. It gives a little more incentive to go out in the land and explore, trying to find more resources as your current surface deposits cannot sustain you for long, and some(as of yet unplanned) resources lacking availability completely on the surface.

[ssilk]

Like.
Some older ideas about this combined here:
- yes, game shifts targets
- smaller resource fields, so that the surface can be cleared early.
- the F mod ( https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=14&t=390 ) has underground-mining drills
- underground mines can have only a probability of mining something which sinks when resources runs slowly out
- the output of an underground mine can be really huge - I like you idea of "fishing"
- the idea of open cut mining and filling lakes with the debris...
- some ideas of not knowing what comes out and you first have to sort it - makes much sense, with more types of raw-material (uranium, titanium ...)
- some "radar/sensor/scanner" - prospectors is a good name - which shows places where underground mines could make sense...

I personally think that first the game-speed must be much faster, because when playing in sandbox you will get to this point of "I now can afford to leave the home base" is 2-4 hours.

[Raziaar]

Oh man, I love the idea you mentioned of dealing with large amounts of unknown rocks, trying to sort and filter out the good from the bad.

I can just imagine building up costly and expansive mining operations that collect and sift through tons and tons of resources, sending them through different sized crushers and filtering them out onto different conveyor belts of different sized ores, and either using chemical processes or other various machines to extract the ores and concentrate them before sending them into a furnace to be smelted into bars.

[ssilk]

Yes! This brings me to another point!

That's the moment, when trains come into play: mines can load a full belt with output, but when mines get older the needed stuff is only 10% of output; where will you put the other 90%, keeping in mind, that you will have 10 of those mines?

Only solveable with trains! Many trains!

Put the garbage in a wagon and unload it into a lake...

[slpwnd]

The idea that you would have to sort out the garbage and the ores is really interesting.

[ssilk]

I think the first time this idea came up was here https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =879#p6090

Edit: here it was:
"As long as it is positioned on a mineable area, it tries to empty the field, like mines. In normal mode, it stops when all is mined.
Switching to mode 2 (autoswitched when placed on an empty area), it digs into the earth and finds by decreasing probability any supply (iron, coal, copper...) and by increasing probability dirt"

Remove this switching (thought for differing between normal miner and open cut) and it's ready.