Lategame Mining

[Monster]

My conclusion after reading through the posts

Mining productivity research is "King" in this case and it is already implemented .

Best additional solution would be a MKII, maybe even a MKIII drill at additional material costs to produce.
This means more assembling = more Factorio!
Mining area should be max. 6x6, so you can use beacons without moving after finishing a stripe
MKII and MKIII should have a increased mining speed, so you can leave 4 tiles of space between each drill and could get almost the same amount of ore as before (depending on your productivity research and the speed of the MKx drills).
Your ore patch could last longer and with about half of the drills totally needed, i am sure it will be a gain in performance too.

So everyone can play as he did till now and everyone, especially the "hundred of hours" Players, have more options.

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Wouldn' t it be a great thing, if we had better mining drills or researches for mining speed and mining area?

In my last game, i was mining at over 30 ore patches (with 150% productivity) and had always the feeling, that the mining is not finished yet or could just be done better (for a X Rpm base in vanilla). I also tried speed beacon setups with productivity moduls in the drills, but the drill coverage is insufficient and you have to move everything. So i began to think about...

Main goal
Mining ores smarter, faster and with less drills at each Outpost in lategame.
Make beacons usable with mining drills (bigger mining area)

Performance
How much will the performance increase, if you have substantially less mining drills?

Mining is basic in this game (you can't play without)
A better technology or research, especially in this case, would be more fun, because it rewards the player and increases the gameplay (less tedious work, easier and faster setup of an repetitive ore outpost)

Problem with small ore patches or almost depletet ones (ex. 300K left is just annoying):
Your trains almost never gets full and you may get less ore at your smelting area. I don't want to travel far out to place some speed beacons and even if i do, the result is not enough and you have for sure to replace the beacons again.
Before you can deconstruct and rebuild the outpost elsewere (trains are reasigning automatically on the new outpost with the same station name), you have to wait till the ore is gone. You can't clear small ore patch fast away, if you care to build over them.

Suggestions
Any of the following solutions would be a great game improvement to gain comfort, less tedious work and more fun, especially in lategame.

The easy solution
1 Original mining drill
2 Second mining drill (MKII?) with bigger mining area
Make the mining speed researchable (infinite).

Mining drill research
Mining speed:
This could be +10% each research, best would be infinite
Mining area:
This could be +1, (maybe limited to 4x the original area?)

Mining Drills MK II (or multiple, III, IV, V,...) researchable
1 Original mining drill, better version will just have more speed (last at least 500%)
2 Mining drill with big area, better version will just have bigger area (last min 2x)
3 Mining drill with big area, better version will have bigger area and more mining speed
Big advantage here is, that you have to research and build the advanced drills (=more factories) and everyone can choose which drill he want to use or matches best to your needs.

* i have deleted the mining facility solution*

Thank you devs for this greate game, which is the one i played the most of all.
Any Feedback appreciated.

[Zavian]

I second the suggestion for a mining drill/facility that could cover a large area (eg 20x20). Less entities required for late game mining will hopeful mean more ups in large bases. (I wouldn't care if this was unable to accept sulphuric acid, and hence could only mine iron/copper/coal/stone. That would still reduce the number of drills substantially).

Regarding mining speed, if I want more ore/second I typically just add more outposts and let the old ones mine themselves out. Same with small patches/outpost. So I personally don't see the need for faster mining speed.

[Monster]

I second the suggestion for a mining drill/facility that could cover a large area (eg 20x20). Less entities required for late game mining will hopeful mean more ups in large bases. (I wouldn't care if this was unable to accept sulphuric acid, and hence could only mine iron/copper/coal/stone. That would still reduce the number of drills substantially).

Regarding mining speed, if I want more ore/second I typically just add more outposts and let the old ones mine themselves out. Same with small patches/outpost. So I personally don't see the need for faster mining speed.

I agree with setting up more outposts, but if we can mine with less big area drills, the speed must be faster or you have to set up much more outposts...

[Zavian]

Yeah, I meant one 20x20 drill would output the same amount of ore/s as the 16-20 regular electric drills it replaces. More if you can't overlap the covered areas like you can with regular drills.

A standard electric drill covers a 5x5 area. So with no overlap that means one 20x20 drill is equal to 16 standard electric drills. With moderate spacing/overlap a drill covers a 4x4 area, so one mining facility would replace about 25 moderately overlapping mining drills. With max overlap, and just space for provider chests + power poles, 2 standard electric drill cover a 3x7 area, so to get the same output from max overlapped drills a new mining facility that didn't allow overlap would need to mine about 38 times as much ore/s as a standard electric drill.

Personally I think i'd be fine with a facility that did 15-20 times as much ore/s as a standard electric mining drill, and allowed a bit of overlap between facilities. If the facility was designed to only output to chests, then you could probably arrange for them to sleep for 300 ticks, then just dump 300 ticks worth of ore in the chest in one hit before going back to sleep again. That should mean they could be very cpu efficient. (EDIT:Thinking about that some more, it would probably get more complicated since you need to track the electric power each drill actually gets).

[Engimage]

While it makes some sense I am strongly against solutions like large coverage mining facility.
The whole sense of Factorio game is building big things using small pieces. And the complexity of the result is the actual task for you to solve. If you are aiming for a megabase you should be able to solve the task. Yes it might be boring at times but this is what makes it a real achievement. Cause everyone will be able to solve this using several big machines which you can set up in no time.

[Jap2.0]

I'm kind of in the middle on this one - a mining drill that mines faster might be nice, or maybe even one with a slightly larger mining area, but I think what you're suggesting is too much. I agree that one mining drill covering an entire ore patch doesn't really fit with the feel of the game.

[Monster]

While it makes some sense I am strongly against solutions like large coverage mining facility.
The whole sense of Factorio game is building big things using small pieces. And the complexity of the result is the actual task for you to solve. If you are aiming for a megabase you should be able to solve the task. Yes it might be boring at times but this is what makes it a real achievement. Cause everyone will be able to solve this using several big machines which you can set up in no time.

Yes, a big mining facility is not in sense of Factorio, so i see that i didn't think enough about the proposed solution. But if you ever played with Bob's mods or others, you know that you first have to get to the point, where you can just place advanced buildings (researching and building advanced buildings like MKVIII). Then it is rewarding. The electric drills you get relativ early in game and that is it then. I still think better mining drills or researches would really add a better gameplay and some comfort, without everyone be able to have a megabase. I mean setting up ore outposts is nothing complex and it is not really easier to build a Megabase, if you can mine ores smarter and with less drills at each Outpost in lategame.

[Monster]

I'm kind of in the middle on this one - a mining drill that mines faster might be nice, or maybe even one with a slightly larger mining area, but I think what you're suggesting is too much. I agree that one mining drill covering an entire ore patch doesn't really fit with the feel of the game.

Have you seen that i proposed 4 different solutions?
The easy solution
Mining facility
Mining drill research
Mining Drills MK II (or multiple, MKIII, IV)
Please forget the idea with the mining facility as i wrote in my answer to PacifyerGrey

[JohnyDL]

Mining speed no use beacons and modules not researching like productivity, I want my patches to last as long as possible even if it has more mining at a time.

However mining area yes it would allow beacons and modules to be used, making it a separate item like other tiered mining setups (mods), a late game thing with a size like a oil refinery and a +3 radius would be enough to reduce the number of items on a patch for megabases and thus lag without removing complexity by making everything a one item does everything type building.

[Koub]

I actually thing "make bigger things so you can have less of them" doesn't fit to the Factorio philosophy.
Pushed to the extreme, why not have a huge 1Mx1M facility you plonk, that mines whatever needed, and fires satellite filled rockets ? End of the game

I see factorio like coding in assembly language : you have a limited set of very specialized tools, and you have to make things with them. And you have the flexibility to do whatever you want, however you want. And coming to ability to do powerful things, nothing beats assembly.

Well we all - even OP - agreed big facilities are a bad idea.

Concerning faster mining drills, I'm not fond of it. I'd rather have drills mining slower, but with more efficiency (more bang for your buck). That would make the outposts last longer, so it would make the "time you invest into building your outpost" vs the "time you spend exploiting it" ratio better. What would be the use building an outpost in 10 minutes if you empty the mine in 1 minute ?

I'd rather have a game mechanism like Angel's infinite ores, coupled with a research that would improve the yield of the infinite part, starting very low.

[Cribbit]

Mining speed no use beacons and modules not researching like productivity, I want my patches to last as long as possible even if it has more mining at a time.

However mining area yes it would allow beacons and modules to be used, making it a separate item like other tiered mining setups (mods), a late game thing with a size like a oil refinery and a +3 radius would be enough to reduce the number of items on a patch for megabases and thus lag without removing complexity by making everything a one item does everything type building.

https://dddgamer.github.io/factorio-cheat-sheet/ has a list of what things to use prod modules on by order of effectiveness. You save far more resources by using prod on basically anything but miners.

A proper train setup fixes this. Use circuit network and signals so that trains only go when ore is actually available. The trains will run less often as the patch runs dry and by that point you should be set up on a new patch to reincrease your ore supply. Then you only have to visit a patch when it's ready to tear down.

The main source of lag is from the ores on the belt not the miners themselves. Use faster belts, shorten your belts, use undergrounds, use drones.

Expanding on Kaub's point about higher tier miners, I would like to see hydraulic mining. This takes advantage of the existing fluid capabilities of electric miners and enforces the idea of more setup work for better efficiency - you have to get enough water to your mines but it improves productivity. (this also starts allowing a more spread out nuclear research tree)

[Zavian]

I was talking about reducing the numbers of miners megabases to save ups. Bases where you might have 10000 miners running pretty much full tilt. If you are worried about saving ups by reducing the number of drills then you have probably already abandoned belts. At that point have probably switched all production to level 3 assemblers with productivity modules + speed beacons to reduce the number of active entities. You might have already abandoned nuclear power because it costs more ups than a massive solar farm. You might have more miners active than any other entity, so reducing miners can potentially increase ups. So

The main source of lag is from the ores on the belt not the miners themselves. Use faster belts, shorten your belts, use undergrounds, use drones.

shows you haven't understood the type of base I was talking about.

Whilst I'll admit that hydraulic mining might make for interesting gameplay, the extra pipes + fluid mechanics would be a drain on ups in megabases. (I'm not saying the devs shouldn't add it. But in large bases that are ups limited, I want to minimise the amount of pipes).

[Cribbit]

I was talking about reducing the numbers of miners megabases to save ups. Bases where you might have 10000 miners running pretty much full tilt. If you are worried about saving ups by reducing the number of drills then you have probably already abandoned belts. At that point have probably switched all production to level 3 assemblers with productivity modules + speed beacons to reduce the number of active entities. You might have already abandoned nuclear power because it costs more ups than a massive solar farm. You might have more miners active than any other entity, so reducing miners can potentially increase ups. So

The main source of lag is from the ores on the belt not the miners themselves. Use faster belts, shorten your belts, use undergrounds, use drones.

shows you haven't understood the type of base I was talking about.

Whilst I'll admit that hydraulic mining might make for interesting gameplay, the extra pipes + fluid mechanics would be a drain on ups in megabases. (I'm not saying the devs shouldn't add it. But in large bases that are ups limited, I want to minimise the amount of pipes).

That's simply the downside of playing for megabases, and honestly I don't think the vanilla game should put larger buildings in simply to help megabases. As others have said larger buildings devalues many core aspects of the game for non megabase playthroughs. If you want to megabase there are plenty of mods which can add larger bulidings to reduce entities and increase UPS.

[mrvn]

I think a research that makes all miners faster makes little sense. For a faster miner you need more power so it can run faster, better materials so it can cut the ore easier and therefore run faster. Or cooling liquid so it doesn't simply melt when run faster. In all cases something in the miner itself changes. You don't just get a magical speed boost.

So I'm against a faster mining speed research. Far better to have a mk2/3/4 miner. My suggestion for a mk2 miner would be to require steel for harder mining drills, for mk3 miners require engines for more power and for mk4 add a liquid requirement. Maybe don't make them mk4 but a separate hydraulic miner since they can't just replace mk3 miners.


Similar I don't feel like a larger mining area makes much sense. Bad enough already that a 3x3 miner can mine a 5x5 area. How it is supposed to reach those tiles? The drill head never covers those tiles. And there usualy is something in the way there. Does it somehow mine under the belt without undermining it till it collapses?

If you want to mine with beacons then you have to setup stripes of miners and move them as they exhaust their place. Go from strip mining the whole patch to stripe mining. And since factorio is all about automation I would rather have a way to automate that movement of miners and beacons in vanilla. Add the blueprint printer to the vanilla game and you can make the beaconed mines move themself across the ore patch.

[JohnyDL]

*snip*
https://dddgamer.github.io/factorio-cheat-sheet/ has a list of what things to use prod modules on by order of effectiveness. You save far more resources by using prod on basically anything but miners.

A proper train setup fixes this. Use circuit network and signals so that trains only go when ore is actually available. The trains will run less often as the patch runs dry and by that point you should be set up on a new patch to reincrease your ore supply. Then you only have to visit a patch when it's ready to tear down.

The main source of lag is from the ores on the belt not the miners themselves. Use faster belts, shorten your belts, use undergrounds, use drones.

Expanding on Kaub's point about higher tier miners, I would like to see hydraulic mining. This takes advantage of the existing fluid capabilities of electric miners and enforces the idea of more setup work for better efficiency - you have to get enough water to your mines but it improves productivity. (this also starts allowing a more spread out nuclear research tree)

So you know where I'm coming from and I'm not a 'newb' thinking that productivity only needs to go in miners my current base I've set it up so speed on mining is strictly a non-issue, I say that because I load each of 8 cargo wagons from chests which are in turn filled by a supply from 1 only one belt between the ore field and station. Partly because of small patch size but mainly because I'd rather have 1/n of my stations full but open rather than a 1/nth as many stations in total.

The reason I can get away with the slow loading is each train in turn outputs onto only 1 belt and feeds only one smelting column so when one train runs out it's not all my furnace setup that suffers during a change over, I'm not wasting UPS on balancers (because splitters are far more laggy than belts or undergrounds), and I've actually got as few trains on the tracks pathfinding as possible. In this way my ore deliveries take a minumum of 3 minutes to unload onto blue belt, and it will be a lot more thanks to A not needing a constant input on productivity furnace lines and B backed up outputs. Generally then I open stations when they're ready for collection and close them when they're not (and when they're out of ore have them collected by an aggregation system not by the ore trains), as you point out, because fewer but bigger (complete) deliveries is better for performance.

Right now I have somewhere in the region of 20 stations for ore mining/pickup set up and so far only 12 trains doing the rounds (and I haven't even got blue science up and running xD) but my priority is keeping as many stations open as long as possible as I scale up, because the slow refill means I need more potential stations on the go having a slow refil is a massive hinderance if all my trains wait for the same station(s). I'm thinking really before I do my full science and rocket setup I want to have 3-4x that many ore pickup stations running. Go big or go home right? So yes mines might not be the first thing I productivity module (usually I go for green, red and blue circuits for bootstrapping of making more modules) but I will be moduling new stations when I have productivity modules available (hopefully before all of the current ones run out).

The site doesn't seem to calculate productivity on miners only on smelting and above, but the benefit I admit is limited compared to production research, and even if the payoff is measured in days of mining time that's not necessarily a problem on on goning saves like mine tend to be. By my estimate each productivity 3 module costs ~3400 ore (coal liquifaction route) so realistically each productivity module needs to live on and drain 2 ore patches (on medium richness) to be 'worth it' I'm happy with that.

[Cribbit]

*snip*

snip

Play the game however you want, I'm just trying to point out the fact that prod modules shouldn't be in miners until literally every assembler in your entire base has prod modules. For a late game megabase that might be the case. You'll find putting speed beacons on your orefields will massively improve your mining experience, requiring fewer fields to be active at once and thus less resources spent on just keeping ore flowing.

If you only have one belt between the ore field and the station is it getting backed up? If your miners are ever not mining because their belt is blocked that's pretty bad.

[JohnyDL]

The mixed station(s) yes because I can tap a lot of nearby fields in one go, the rest generally only back up when I've got 6 loads waiting for pick up, (the way I like it) I didn't make big patches or high richness so I'm lucky to get 20 miners to a patch but even if I had 200 I'd want it to empty slowly, modules might not be worth it but mining research is and the more ore that's on belts or waiting indefinitely for pickup in boxes rather than still in the ground is more that can't get the boost from extra mining productivity research.

As for speed modules and beacons they wouldn't be any better in terms of investment on resources or energy setting up the mines (twice or you leave patches of ore behind), it would just plow through resource patches faster and shut down the stations. Almost the opposite of what you want. Extra miners and rails are practically free next to speed module and beacon cost.

[Cribbit]

The mixed station(s) yes because I can tap a lot of nearby fields in one go, the rest generally only back up when I've got 6 loads waiting for pick up, (the way I like it) I didn't make big patches or high richness so I'm lucky to get 20 miners to a patch but even if I had 200 I'd want it to empty slowly, modules might not be worth it but mining research is and the more ore that's on belts or waiting indefinitely for pickup in boxes rather than still in the ground is more that can't get the boost from extra mining productivity research.

As for speed modules and beacons they wouldn't be any better in terms of investment on resources or energy setting up the mines (twice or you leave patches of ore behind), it would just plow through resource patches faster and shut down the stations. Almost the opposite of what you want. Extra miners and rails are practically free next to speed module and beacon cost.

Inexact numbers, but:

It takes about 8 fields using just prod miners (no beacons) to match the output of a single field with beacons. Thus you have 8 times the resources invested for the same output of ore. Your fields will empty faster but you will need fewer of them running at once. If you've got 20 miners each with 3 prod 3's that's 60 prod3s per field. That means you have over 400 prod3 modules in use that you wouldn't need to have if you had beacons. Half a million iron, a million copper, a hundred thousand coal, almost 2 million petroleum. That's how much you're wasting on every 8 fields that could be 1 field, if each field is just 20 miners. It's an astronomical amount of resources that could massively expand your base, allowing you to take advantage of more resources.

Right now you have to keep track of the status of 8 times as many fields as you would have to. Even if that 1 field takes a little more focus it's 1/8th the number of fields.

[FasterJump]

Lubricant could be used to speed up mining drills.

[quyxkh]

Wouldn' t it be a great thing, if we had better mining drills or researches for mining speed and mining area?

Mining productivity research gets you more ore per mining cycle without consuming more resource or power or time, it's like multiple productivity, speed and efficiency modules built in to every miner. Even with pre-launch research the combined effect is about three P3's, an S3 and six E3's in each, with thirty-odd launches you can double that.