Show range on existing mining drills when the player holds a drill

Post your ideas and suggestions how to improve the game.

Moderator: ickputzdirwech

Davosaurus
Burner Inserter
Burner Inserter
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2016 8:01 pm
Contact:

Show range on existing mining drills when the player holds a drill

Post by Davosaurus »

TL;DR
When the player is holding a mining drill in their cursor/hand, all existing drills should show their mining range/coverage.

What?
Some entities, when held in the cursor/hand, show a shaded overlay for already placed entities of the same type. This should be implemented for mining drills, so the player can see which tiles are covered by drills and which are not.

Current state:
Other entities for reference
drillCurrentState.png
drillCurrentState.png (2.68 MiB) Viewed 160 times

Proposed future state:
drillFutureState.png
drillFutureState.png (2.67 MiB) Viewed 160 times
Why?
  • Several other entities already work this way, so it would create more consistency. Notably: all types of military turrets; roboports and all logistic chests; electric poles.
  • While the burner and electric mining drills can be easily estimated since they extend 0-1 tile beyond the edge of the entity, the addition of the Big Mining Drill makes coverage and overlap much harder to distinguish at a glance.
  • New players are often confused about the feature of larger mining range, since the burner drill only mines the 2x2 underneath it. Highlighting all drill coverage is much clearer and instantly communicates more information than shading only the area around the cursor entity.
SirSmuggler
Fast Inserter
Fast Inserter
Posts: 136
Joined: Tue May 24, 2016 1:55 pm
Contact:

Re: Show range on existing mining drills when the player holds a drill

Post by SirSmuggler »

Sounds good to me. I often find my self musing over a big mining drill and try to find a good landmark to focus on at the edge of its range befor I switch over to trying to place the next drill. This would help with that (very mild but still) annoyance.
Post Reply

Return to “Ideas and Suggestions”