side-drilling patent explanation?

[pgames-food]

hi can you help me understand this further please?
i posted it as a question in herman the germans thread but just posting here under a specific thread title.

thanks

"one thing which did not seem to make sense, was the side-drilling patent... because i couldnt see any way to utilise it, or see any benefit from it. (my assuption was that it would either "allow me to build a free mine on a hex which is adjacent to an existing mine", or to "simple epand/grow the existing mines to cover 2-3 hexes" as as to start extracting resources from next to them. (if it already did something please let me know, and might be good to show some extra tooltip popups or animations to represent the extra syphon process that is taking place?"

[DeftMunky]

Sorry it's not clear.

The way that slant drilling works is if you build a resource extracting building (one of the mines or quarries) you can draw from an adjacent tile for its resource output. This allows you to build mines on empty tiles as long as there is a valid resource adjacent to it. This also optimizes your existing mines because slant drilling will use the *best* resource it can find, so if you have two mines, one on a high iron and one on a low iron, both will be producing at a high capacity because the low one will "slant drill" into the high iron plot and be able to produce resources at that rate.

Does that make sense?

[jj]

Yes, it does make sense. But does it also drill under a competition occupied tiles, and do you then share that resource or do you both get full amount? Agree with pgames that some icon/indicator clearifying what it is doing would be helpfull. Also I noticed a icon missing when an chemical factory is getting scrubbed carbon (displays windows missing image icon). Oh and great game.

[DeftMunky]

Hi JJ,

Yes, both you and your opponent get the full amount for the tile.

Glad you like the game!

[Rea]

does it affect scientist buildings?

[DeftMunky]

Yes, it effects scientific buildings! Scientists + slant drilling is a really powerful combo.

[pgames-food]

cool many thanks for all the info :)
would it be possible to include in the buildings popup (in case not there) something along the lines of "Bonus: from slant drilling patent"?

[Zing]

I see, thank you for explaining this. I was confused at to how it works. But with this, I can build a bunch of electrolysis generators surrounding 1 water tail and they all keep on producing :)

[narF]

Too bad it's not displayed clearly in the game. There's room for improvement there. Or for a mod to improve the UI.

The way I understand it, it's the equivalent of having each ressources tile to spread. So the game could display a "ghost" ressource icon, only visible for the player who have Slant Drilling.

[Red Earth]

BTDubs, it does not work for geothermal. So you can't share a geothermal vent with a competitor, or build seven geothermal plants. Not that you'd want to, it would flood the market.

[Jamie A. Rose]

Yeah, Slant Drilling will allow you to leech off a competitor's claim.

The term comes from the "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" episodes of The Simpsons. Where Groundskeeper Willie strikes oil under Springfield Elementary. The school becomes filthy rich, until Mr. Burns "Slant Drills" from his own property and sucks the oil out from under the school so they can't get at it.

Here's a clip of that episode so you can get a visual idea of what's going on.

Note that this will not steal the resource from your opponents, it just allows you to tap into it as well.

[SorenJohnson]

heh, definitely saw that episode but didn't (intentionally) get the term from it!

[Red Earth]

I drink your milkshake. I DRINK IT UP!