Blast miners

[Shunyaku]

Is there anywhere with data on blast miners or how they affect things?
A friend told me that they provide the same sort of 2 for 1 exchange of the fabrication machines, but then I see their thresh value produces 25 ore?

I'm pretty lost as to some of it, so maybe just asking the final question is better; Is the return from blast-mining ores enough to justify the heightened cost and need for belt complexity? Is there an ideal method with which to mine out the ores as you go along? I only recently even realized that veins weren't infinite, so I'm still wrapping my head around a few things lol

[Fenix]

Originally posted by Shunyaku:

Is the return from blast-mining ores enough to justify the heightened cost and need for belt complexity?

If you wanna max out what you can get from a ore vein, you have to use the 15 Mining Charges per blast.
You can get 5 times The amount of ore chunks.
Ok so every time that a Blast drill goes off it remove one Voxel from that vein... if you use 15 Charges you get 5 chunks instead of 1 per voxel.
Now It's up to you if that is worth it.
But you have to also take into account Limestone Ore Infusion.
this isn't well explained either, but you can "make" unlimited ore with this tech. Basically Thresh ore into a Powder, Use Shiverthorn Extract and Limestone to make Infused powder, thresh that into more ore and limestone... this net you more ore than you put into it... but that is a logistical nightmare in and of itself.

[Shunyaku]

I appreciate the higher-level detailing, but I'm not there yet. Probably a week or two from it minimum, given how I enjoy playing games.
I'm mostly concerned about just the comparisons of the base miners, how much is gained or lost between blasting or normal drilling. I *can't* do the 15 mines thing yet--I barely have the first tier of that unlocked--but since I can't build MKII miners yet, and blasts fuel takes a lot of other infrastructure, I'm just trying to know if it's worth the work to only use blasts, and thresh the chunks.

[barbrady123]

If you're only going to do the "base" blasting (1 charge per 12 sec, 5 per min) then it's equal efficiency, except you're losing a mining charge. So it's fine if you're using the chunks for slabs, but if you're using them to make things more efficient in any other way, it's not worth it. Once you're far enough that you can afford to burn extra mining charges, then it becomes more ore efficient (up to 5:1) but...it seems like most folks don't care about ore depletion on the map, so I would think most people wouldn't need to use this setup.

I've built for it now, just for fun and because it's new...but I probably won't do it again. I just hope they eventually give us an option for unlimited veins honestly, but that's just me. The blasting is fun for now, but maintaining that many mining charges per minute kinda sucks.

Yes there's the older "infusion" tech as well, but 1. It's a pain, and 2. When you finally do get it setup and running, it's too slow. For it to replace a standard mining output, it would be an insane amount of work.

[Badacid.Wraith]

I managed to get one mine explosive feed to the Blast Furnace every 11.97 seconds.. so one charge per 'ore' being smelted.. but had a thought and experimented... If you pre-load the Blast Furnaces with 'ore' with 200+ say.. then if you feed in ONE mine manually.. it chunters away smelting 60 at a time for ?most? 'ores' and 6 at a time for the top tier recipe "Steel Mixture"... the 60 or 6 is exported one at a time via the Red inserter etc..

[Badacid.Wraith]

Just re-done a test.. if you put in one Plant Matter Brick and one Mining Charge you get 60 Carbon Powder.. but if you put more than one brick in again with just one Mining Charge.. you get a multiple of Powders.. think the limit for me is 10 bricks being processed at once.. yielding 500 powders.