Resources mined as one (no "red" miners anymore)
Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2025 7:23 pm
This is more a cheat-like for some while other will just sugest the mod that allows auto deconstruction, but nevertheless, I want to suggest a quality of life feature that's a bit different. If anything, before start of game, we can have a tick box where, just like with pollution and evolution, it's on because default is default, nothing gets replaced.
So what's happening when it's unticked? The miner's area will not be the default one but the whole ore patch. As in, when you open the map and you hover the mouse over the ore patch, it shows how much there is. And this is exactly what the miners will mine, not the ones that are right next to them but the whole thing. This means 2 things: you can place 1 single miner and never need to move it unless the whole ore patch is empty, because this one will mine the whole patch, as in, you can shape the miners in any way you want because you don't need to maximise to cover the ore patch. The second is that we finally get rid, no mod needed, of any case where, after hours of mining, a circle of red shows up, since the miners don't have anything to mine. So now you either ignore them for hours and even more hours until the whole thing is empty, or you manually remove the ones that are empty. Like this, you place miners just one single time and you don't need to touch them since they will work until the whole thing is empty.
Second suggestion is for pumpjacks. They get a longer area (still one pumpjack per one vein). This is in case you are doing city blocks or similar and, due to a vein or more, you need to create "holes" OR ignore said vein completely and construct over it. Also in case of cliffs and lava preventing the placing of a pumpjack due to random map generator (does this even happen? or am i just paranoid). But again, it's not as with the miner, it's still one pumpjack per one vein, the idea is just quality of life improvement via flexibility due to the veins never getting empty and no possibility to move them (like a way to drill "new holes" do redirect the veins would also be a perfect solution). Since, like I said, this is a quality of life feature that you have in case you want to improve your gameplay experience.
So what's happening when it's unticked? The miner's area will not be the default one but the whole ore patch. As in, when you open the map and you hover the mouse over the ore patch, it shows how much there is. And this is exactly what the miners will mine, not the ones that are right next to them but the whole thing. This means 2 things: you can place 1 single miner and never need to move it unless the whole ore patch is empty, because this one will mine the whole patch, as in, you can shape the miners in any way you want because you don't need to maximise to cover the ore patch. The second is that we finally get rid, no mod needed, of any case where, after hours of mining, a circle of red shows up, since the miners don't have anything to mine. So now you either ignore them for hours and even more hours until the whole thing is empty, or you manually remove the ones that are empty. Like this, you place miners just one single time and you don't need to touch them since they will work until the whole thing is empty.
Second suggestion is for pumpjacks. They get a longer area (still one pumpjack per one vein). This is in case you are doing city blocks or similar and, due to a vein or more, you need to create "holes" OR ignore said vein completely and construct over it. Also in case of cliffs and lava preventing the placing of a pumpjack due to random map generator (does this even happen? or am i just paranoid). But again, it's not as with the miner, it's still one pumpjack per one vein, the idea is just quality of life improvement via flexibility due to the veins never getting empty and no possibility to move them (like a way to drill "new holes" do redirect the veins would also be a perfect solution). Since, like I said, this is a quality of life feature that you have in case you want to improve your gameplay experience.