MIning - Future Upgrade?

[Styles743]

Is there somewhere we can float ideas for future additions to the game?

I am back again after 200+ hours for the Dark Fog addition, just getting into PLS and ILS and I am remembering just how tedious it is to setup new mining operations... The miners as is are great for the early game but suck once you get into heavily blueprinting everything.

I would like to propose an idea for a miner upgrade in the mid-late game. Change from a building with a mineable area to a two building system. First, a single cell mining laser or whatever tech you want to call it. Target a single cell/single mining node. So 24 stone nodes you need 24 lasers. Each will need power and automatically transport contents to a container building within say 10-15 cells. Also need power and the container building could then move the product onto a belt for transport.

This way you could setup say a 30x30 grid of mining lasers in a bp, around that grid have 8 "collectors" to harvest the mineable material and get it onto belts. Then a couple splitters get it all into one line and you can go from there into your logistics system. You would need to Shift+Enter override the bp to place down but could quickly and efficiently target all the nodes on a planet in a matter of minutes instead of 30-40m.

Anyway, just a thought. What does everyone think?

[Handbanana]

They already have the photon miner for late game. It can already hit the entire ore patch most of the time and you can use a blueprint to attach smelters or assemblers to it. Yea its kinda deep in the tech tree but by the time you need it its there. I wouldn't disagree with a mid game upgrade to the existing miner with maybe a bit more range

[Styles743]

Oh wow, that is good to know. I haven't seen the photon miner yet, I'll have to scour the tech tree tomorrow for it :D

[Handbanana]

Originally posted by Styles743:

Oh wow, that is good to know. I haven't seen the photon miner yet, I'll have to scour the tech tree tomorrow for it :D

It also has a feature that is kinda hidden in its UI on the bottom once you get it. You can turn its produciton up to 300% at the cost of a lot more power use.

[Erebus Hunter]

Originally posted by Handbanana:

Originally posted by Styles743:

Oh wow, that is good to know. I haven't seen the photon miner yet, I'll have to scour the tech tree tomorrow for it :D

It also has a feature that is kinda hidden in its UI on the bottom once you get it. You can turn its produciton up to 300% at the cost of a lot more power use.

Dont forget that the photon miners have a docking station for logistic drones, so you dont even really need belts when you just want to mine a planet's resources - just a few ILS stations, Logistics Drones, and enough Photon Miners for every resource node on a world.

[Jahaga]

The advanced miners are a huge game changer, but the research requires green cubes so it's very deep and late game.

It's so perfect because it can cover an entire mining patch and drones can access its storage and transfer it to a logistics station. After learning drones can access it, I started plopping one logistics station on a planet and scatter advanced miners all over and let the drones bring all the resources to the logistics station to then transfer it to my central smelting planet. It made expanding mining operations significantly easier and I no longer had to constantly pick up smelters and move them around. All I had to do was plop the logistics station and more advanced miners.

[Handbanana]

Originally posted by Jahaga:

The advanced miners are a huge game changer, but the research requires green cubes so it's very deep and late game.

It's so perfect because it can cover an entire mining patch and drones can access its storage and transfer it to a logistics station. After learning drones can access it, I started plopping one logistics station on a planet and scatter advanced miners all over and let the drones bring all the resources to the logistics station to then transfer it to my central smelting planet. It made expanding mining operations significantly easier and I no longer had to constantly pick up smelters and move them around. All I had to do was plop the logistics station and more advanced miners.

Technically green is late game i guess but it doesn't require a lot and its fairly easy to set up a small production fairly early on.

[K.I.L.E.R]

I wish the photon miners would come earlier, the energy they consume makes up for the ease of use in colonising planets during mid game. It would remove some tedium from those small mining stations.

[AbhChallenger]

Originally posted by Kruno Saho:

I wish the photon miners would come earlier, the energy they consume makes up for the ease of use in colonising planets during mid game. It would remove some tedium from those small mining stations.

I don't think it really matters too much. Yes they are very late in the tech tree but unless you are going nuts trying to colonize 10 systems before you even get you first actual Dyson Sphere. The extra effort to set up a simple mining setup belted to a transport station is not going to take much more of your time. And again is space REALLY an issue at this stage of the game?

Factorio is going to get a vastly improved mining building at mid game for the expansion but that is because the whole gameplay loop is being changed to REAAAALY encourage massive factories on multiple planets. In DSP it is more there because at that point in the game you have set up more than your fair share of mining setups and just want to automate it a bit.

[namenloss]

About being tedious - I think Dark Fog will make it less tedious than before, just use harder setting and mining other planets gets new colours:)