Factorio Forums

(Not space age)

Yesterday (2025-Jan-20), I was doing a 100% speedrun on version 2.0.31 with vanilla (non-space age) Factorio and ran into an issue with the Mining with Determination achievement. My expectation is that you can search the map for a small resource patch and then proceed to mine it out and trigger the achievement. However, that is not what happened.

Over multiple instances I found small patches via the map resource find feature, set miners down on them, and waited for them to get mined out. One of my viewers mentioned:

so I've heard on the map if you hover over the patch, it will highlight if they are joint, but you have to turn off your filter first if you are searching for iron ore

I had just ended the stream (and recording) when they said this, but I tried this offline with the same procedure as is evident in the Twitch vods, but this time I cleared the map search field before putting miners down. This time, I triggered the achievement. I don't know if this was because of what the viewer said, or something else entirely. Either way, this seems to suggest that the achievement is non-deterministic.

I've attached the replay and have also provided the VOD with links to relevant timestamps. These mining attempts will be found towards the very end of the replay.

Link to where the exploration of this achievement really begins in earnest is at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2359822092?t=5h43m14s

Thanks for the report however that is Not a bug.

There is no strict definition of what an ore patch is and for the purpose of save file there are no groups of resource entities that could be considered a "patch". Chart and chart search are attempting some simple distance based heuristic to group similar resource entities but there are no strict rules saying that this achievement has to follow the same rules. In fact it does not follow them because this achievement was incorrectly triggering for players when a "patch" was being partially consumed - with many patterns of drill placement, due to overlapping mining ranges there was often a 1 tile wide strip of resources left under the drills which was often isolated from the rest and when it was consumed, the achievement was triggering when a player would not yet consider resource to be fully depleted.

Exact condition for triggering this achievement is that when a finite resource entity is depleted, a search is performed on the surface up 12 tiles away (imagine a 24x24 tiles square centered at the resource that is depleted) and if there is another resource entity found of the same prototype, then achievement does not trigger.

(More precisely it is not 24x24 tiles square, it is 20x20 tiles square centered at the resource, but this square is then extended slightly on each side so all the edges align with the 2x2 tile grid, that is an "advanced tile grid", 24x24 is not accurate but gives enough margins to not care about the 2x2 alignment and to guarantee condition is fulfilled).

On the provided video it looks like there is a lot of similar resources within that range causing the achievement to not trigger.

Here i will give you a simple ruler blueprint: if you align the wall with a resource entity to be depleted, if there are any other resources of the same type within the area inside of the belts, then you will not get achievement. (Outer 1 tile ring is conditional based on alignment).
Copy blueprint

Thanks boskid. I knew there was something going on, but wasn't sure what.

(And, shoutout to the chatter who suggested the achievement was distance based)