Earlygame On-Patch Mining Setups and the Importance of Expiration Awareness

[GregoriusT]

So I have faced a weird problem in two of my Space Age playthroughs, one that before the DLC did not have as much impact as it does now.

That problem was the motivation to get rid of my old Furnace Stack and to a lesser extent also my old Steam Power Setup.

The Furnace Stack became a problem because it wouldn't produce Quality Stuff, so if i kept using it, procrastinating Electric Furnaces in the process, I would lose out on Quality Ingredients I could produce. So I needed some motivation to get rid of the thing instead of feeling the urge to keep using it.

At the same time, this very same Issue also applies to my Steam Setup, where I feel the urge to just keep it around, instead of upgrading to Solar, Oil or Nuclear, and then just routing another Coal Belt from some other Ore Patch into the Steam Setup and calling it a day, resulting in my Power supply simply becoming insufficient over time, having my base run at half power until i finally decide to... wait why the heck am i doubling the existing steam setup to fix this, NO I DON'T WANT THAT, I WANT TO UPGRADE DARNIT!!!

But how can we fix this Issue? I'll tell you how, by putting an expiration date on both of those things, so they cant be used again!

This artificial deadline will be supplied by the starter ore patches and their low yield. We will just build something that is only useful for those Ore Patches, and once they run out of Ore, good luck using that again without tearing it all apart!

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Therefore I present you, the very simple and basic On-Patch Mining-Furnace Array (remember to upgrade to Steel Furnaces once you get em)

on-patch-smelting.png (1.29 MiB) Viewed 324 times

A simple Setup, where that one Inserter on the bottom left with a hand size of 1 is supplying enough Coal to run more than one conventional Furnace Stack! Perfect for making a whole yellow Belt worth of Iron Plates (once upgraded to Steel Furnaces, and disregarding the depleted Mining Drills), it really is as simple as making sure those Furnace Inserters dont pick up Iron Plates instead of Fuel!

The singular piece of Coal every now and then blocking a spot on the belt CAN reduce Iron Plate throughput yes, but if you deploy this Setup you almost never get a full belt per row anyways (I had to U-turn the belt to check basic throughput), so it is fine earlygame.

The Coal is also flowing back into the spot where the inserter grabs it, in a way that cannot be blocked by coal overflow, resulting in a nice simple sushi. Just make sure the piece of coal enters on the side of the belt that is closer to the Inserter, otherwise it will pick up from the other side of the belt and it will get stuck horrendously.

It is easy to build too, and may even feel better to build than a boring Mining Belt with a separate Furnace Stack.

This Setup works just fine for Iron, Copper and Stone Patches, and leaves next to no desire of wanting to somehow reuse it, which is perfect!

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And now for the Power Station!

on-patch-power.png (1.54 MiB) Viewed 324 times

Lets start with the small setup on the right, this is one Mining Drill, one Boiler and two Steam Engines, which by happenchance are exactly enough to power 20 Mining Drills in the earlygame (10 Drills per Engine, 1 Drill per Boiler). This small Setup is the only source of Power for the Ore Patch and will prevent a Brownout Situation when your Base eats too much Power.

Then we have the middle-right, which is just a bunch of Drills along a single Belt, covering the juicy center of the Ore Patch. This is where you get the Fuel for your Furnaces from along with enough Coal to get some Plastic and Grenades later on.

And the setup on the left two-thirds, which is Mining Drills direct inserting into Boilers, no Inserters necessary, and the Steam Engines can be placed anywhere reasonable since the 2.0 Fluid improvements fix throughput. Just make sure to keep them disconnected from the Coal Patch Setup.

What I like about this Setup is that the part of the Patch that is used for Boilers is not shared with the part that is used for Coal Output, and that it is a quite simple repeatable pattern you can easily build manually, since you usually wont have Bots at this point.

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And there we have it, Setups that will definitely expire once their Ore Patch runs out without any temptation to reuse their corpses whatsoever, therefore giving you a little bit more motivation to build proper new Setups right away instead of upgrading the old earlygame trash, while also being a less monotonous and refreshing experience to build.

I would love feedback on this, and more Ideas on how to have well done single-use Setups that will eventually force you upgrade your Base, without making you feel like doing the lazy solution instead.

[computeraddict]

This is an on-patch smelter I made in a Space Exploration save. Hideously overengineered to make the belts do fuel/plate duty with a splitter per furnace.

[GregoriusT]

Yeah this is exactly the type of Setup I was talking about!

Your one is even a little bit more spaced out so the ore patch itself will last longer, though I do wonder if staggering it just a little more could get rid of the double-wide-ness of the belt in the middle.

[GregoriusT]

Another thing I want to address is, everything you build on Nauvis can be considered temporary in a long term playthrough, and therefore expires.

Why is that the case? Because all you really need from Nauvis is Eggs, Biolabs and some Uranium, because everything else you do on Nauvis will cause excess pollution, lag the game and blow up the save file size. (wube really needs to somehow rework the code for pollution clouds)

This means everything you build on Nauvis in order to unlock your first other Planet is not worth keeping around, and can easily be rebuilt on any of the three starting planets with the help of Construction Bots.

So once you're on another Planet and set up Science Packs there, you can tear down most of your Nauvis Science Pack Factory, which will reduce your Pollution Cloud until you eventually return to build the Biolabs.

A benefit of that is, that Biters might expand to be close to a Uranium Patch that has Oil nearby, so that you can capture the Spawners there for their Eggs and have a very compact Nauvis Base around that Uranium Patch.

Rocket Parts and Iron or Drill Acid can just be dropped from whichever Ship is picking up Eggs from Nauvis, so no need for mining Iron, Copper or Coal on Nauvis.

And then you got a nice permanent Base that wont expire... or will it?


See even after all those optimisations that shrunk the Nauvis Base down to just the Biolabs+Eggs Setup and its defences, we will eventually have to face the consequence that shipping the five earlygame Science Packs from other Planets or your Space Ships cant last forever.

one of two things happens once you reach that point:

1. You stop playing because you feel like you have made the perfect Legendary Base and there is nothing left to work on. This is when the entire base suddenly "expires", because without anyone playing, it doesn't run anymore.

2. You realise shipping Science is worse to the UPS than making the Packs on Nauvis, meaning once you got a few hundred levels of Mining Productivity, you will need to go back to Nauvis and set up your five base Science Packs there, and suddenly your previous five-packs setup expires when that happens.


That any part of the Base can expire, because it can eventually be optimised further and further, is something to be aware of and should help you making fun Setups first, even if they turn out to be trash, it is the process of designing them and optimising them for some useless stat that you just made up, that is the fun part.

Everyone can just build a standard Coal Patch Mining Drill Setup, then attach it to an amount of Boilers and Steam Engines that serve only that one Coal Patch (Brown-Out prevention) and have the rest be delivered to the Base and the real Power Plant.

But YOU can build fun temporary Setups that may not be optimal but definitely fun to build, design and use!

So embrace the temporary nature of those Setups, make sure they will stay temporary without any temptation to re-use them, and build those Single-Use Setups!