Best way to dig tunnels on earth?

[[LockedIn] Nickelberg Senpai]

I need a realiable way to dig mid to huge sized tunnels.

In space it's easy (no gravity),

however I could'nt find a way doing that on earth.

The tunnel drills I've build are simply to heavy for thrusters and controlling tunnel drill "cars" is too hard since you cant go up or down.


Sorry if there is a obvious way that I dont noticed, I am rather new to this game (bought it years ago but never really played)

[BurlsoL]

Originally posted by RoofCat:

Originally posted by BurlsoL:

It's nowhere near that problematic...

With a small grid atmospheric miner you can get to around 2-3 million kg of total weight with the right design.
...

and that 2 mio kg miner would need 2000/8=250 small atmospheric engines or ~ 50 large ones.

To power them it would need 250*600/4000=37 batteries draining them within 15 min from 100% to 0%. Sure, why not. Small grid math genius.

I did mention it as an upper limit, and made no mention of it being entirely battery driven. 50 large atmospheric thrusters certainly sounds about right for being the maximum you would want to go with a small grid, wouldn't you think? Your design at that point wouldn't be a manuvering ship, but more of a plow you move through terrain controlled with a remote block so that it inches forward at 0.2m/s... But it can be done if so desired.

http://prntscr.com/mx33lj
A small scale version which can certainly be made longer. This one is battery powered though the solars will take several hours of sunlight to recharge all ~70 batteries. Again, not practical, but can certainly be done.


Same with large grid. You can go with a dinky ship that tries to work using 2 drills and constant stability problems, or you can make a large earth chewer with 40+ drills and has onboard processing.


My main point is that you totally can design a mining ship to work within atmosphere, and even provided a blueprint to an example of one that does exactly that while being totally stable under a full load. An upscaled version can certainly also be done. It may not be in the 1-2m cargo range, but for a battery powered craft it will certainly meet your needs until you can get to space and have a supply of uranium.

[[LockedIn] Nickelberg Senpai]

Ok, first of all thanks for all the answers.

I will try to build my own drill ship, however it seems that I have to work a long time to build an underground network of tunnel and Hangars.

The best way (from what I figured out) is to have several drill ship designs for different purposes.

My goal is to achieve all that in survival with minimum (preferably 0) use of creative mode.

But I am still open for more ideas. :)))

[iGoinsane1124]

Originally posted by S A D B O I . E X E:

Thanks for the response, I did try some different approaches, however evertime the drill head (basically 4 drills integrated in a platform on a rotating motor) is too heavy, draging the whole ship down.

Hmm I guess I have no choice but to use the Voxel Hands ....

And btw yes I know the disintegrate function of the normal hand drill but I need bigger tunnels :)

heres what i do: build a few pistons, then conveyor belts back to the beginning, then add more pistons, giving you a further reach than tearing down the drills each time they make their max distance. as its extending and drilling build armor blocks under the extended part all the way to the drill, this will keep it from lowering. then place a few blocks making a square around it, once or twice per piston. this will decrease the wobble. Button panels are very useful for this type of drilling. even more so when using rotors, vertical and horizontal pistons to drill wide deep holes.

[NYVS]

^ Learn from the heaviest machines here on Earth; hydraulics (pistons, landing gears for terrain locks, and rotors) used properly can physically outmove any other system. Recent autominers take advantage of this through using pistons for lifting of platforms and hard armor blocks to slide accross/ create flat platforms from which to drill, etc.

[Annonymous]

The long and short of it is: It's exceedingly difficult to build something even remotely like what you can do in space.

Think in modern Real Life terms. How many 'boring machines' do we use? They are so enormous, so expensive and so difficult to design, build, maintain, or use - that we only have a handful across the world.

That's why traditional mining methods are rather slow in tunnels, or utilize strip mining.

I ran into this issue as well, banged my head against it in utter frustration for quite some time. Finally, just built a large grid vertical driller on pistons - there's a post in here somewhere with descriptions and pictures.

Then, I tried stationary sub-stations with 70meter drilling capacity (can be increased).

In any case, you end up drilling straight down past the ore, and then hand mining the sides. You can use 'ant-lion' approach with the mobile driller, where you build a Collector at the bottom of the shaft and pipe it up to a storage container - or you can use the drills in the stationary sub-station to extract it (leave them on, it picks up loose ore you hand-drill out).

But as to a vehicle driller.... This game currently doesn't really support them, unless you go enormous. And even then, you can't really store much in the vessel - you drill and destroy and hope you don't waste the targeted ore, or you make NUMEROUS trips to dump off and use the stone.

[RoofCat]

Just drill a hole, put rotor and piston underground at ore level. Ore follows surface so it might be inclined a bit. But then you don't care about that much either. Since you are going to drill a 10x20m cylinder ;/

At some point I made this
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1686207602
it's 9x9x11 so it can turn underground really well and has 2 remote controls for vertical and horizontal case to make it even more convenient... but I still don't use it often. It takes some to build it first. All those motors... And then you work quickly and still lose almost all power in deep places. ~45k ore to return. Not too much, not too small. Whatever. Not my favorite thing.

[Wraith Graven]

I've been blasting my way through mountains with the atlas super laser makes a beautiful hole.

[Jel]

I recommend this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1700961796

Digs your tunnel with just one press of a button :)

[terry309]

Grab your shovel and get digging. What do you think they do in medieval engineers?

[PatientZero424ttv]

One of my favorite projects is terra mining. I've had decent success with a rover build for making horizontal tunnels, and can even angle my tunnels up and down. Part of good engineering is to figure out how to do something, so I won't give you a blueprint of my current design, but the basics are: mount a rotor on the front of your rover, put your drills on it and right click dig. When you want to go up or down, change the rotation of the rotor to the angle you want, right click drill until your front wheels are on the new floor and then go back to zero on the rotor. You'll need at least a six-wheel rig with counterweights on the back end (I use batteries and cargo holds in case I find a juicy resource vein in my tunneling) to keep your rig from being front-heavy and tipping forward on you...but it works very well with either large or small grids. Hope this gives you some ideas!! Oh! Remember not to try too aggressive an angle when you go up or down...you might not be able to back out or climb forward! (The voice of experience there)

[Psojed]

Originally posted by mid endian:

Perhaps placing scaffolds of armor blocks for your drilling Rover to move on can keep its path focused and straight. You can also try adding extra weight to the back end of your Rover so the drills don't dip down as much

Expanding on this idea, you could add two projectors and welders on the rover., one for each wheel area to automatically project and build a light armor block under your wheels as you go.

[[LockedIn] Nickelberg Senpai]

Originally posted by Jel:

I recommend this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1700961796

Digs your tunnel with just one press of a button :)

Thanks, that sounds good.

Originally posted by Hive_tyrant:

..Oh! Remember not to try too aggressive an angle when you go up or down...you might not be able to back out or climb forward! (The voice of experience there)

Originally posted by Psojed:

Originally posted by mid endian:

Perhaps placing scaffolds of armor blocks for your drilling Rover to move on can keep its path focused and straight. You can also try adding extra weight to the back end of your Rover so the drills don't dip down as much

Expanding on this idea, you could add two projectors and welders on the rover., one for each wheel area to automatically project and build a light armor block under your wheels as you go.

thanks for you feedback, I stopped playing it for a while since terra forming is way too complicated right now (for me, others might be enjoying it)

I dont know much about projector blocks etc etc, and learning about them required me a lot of time which I unfortunately didnt have anymore (because of private life related stuff)

However sometimes I do comeback and try to figure out a way in creative mode to engineer some things too learn more about. :))

[Rampant Rabbit]

I think it's one of those learning experiences. I think it should be easier to dig a straight, level tunnel.. but the game makes it harder than it might need to be.

Pet gripes-

Particle effects. Yes, dust, sparks and stuff to obscure your view while drilling. No problem you say, switch to 3rd person!

Automatic camera angle adjusting. So you set it to a nice follow-cam mode so you can see where you're going. But then the game will throw you back into the cabin so you're not clipping through the terrain.

Snagging stuff and going off the straight & level and into whichwayisup?!? mode +/- losing track of the artificial horizon.

Some or all of which can be mitigated with practice. So figuring out where to place drills on wheeled vehicles. Especially when trying to use RMB mode for bigger tunnels. Then you may find drills dig below wheel/ground level, wheel dives off, mining rig goes nose down and it can be a PITA to get back to good'ol horizontal. So figuring out best combination of drill height, and maybe rotors to give better control.

Some day, I may figure out the merge block / projector sorcery to make autominers. Until then, what I tend to do is make a long wheelbase rig with a piston that extends drills a decent way in front, retracts then crawls forward a bit & repeats. Downside is can't auto-do the RMB mode (AFAIK), but the other mode gives a bit more precise control over the size, and ejecting the rock saves cargo space.

[Burstar]

It should be pointed out that digging gratuitous tunnels in MP is to this day a major lag inducer. If you're in SP go nutz, but if not you'll annoy the admin(s). Sucks, but it is what it is.