Frankies, Loader vs Excavator, and Gold Loss

[Pwnocchio]

Preface: Maybe this should be in Technical Issues but I'm not convinced I just mine like the Hoffman Crew, so maybe it's just user error.


Problem: I feel like I'm going things wrong because the amount of gold I'm seeing on my gold map and the amount of gold in my clean outs are drastically different.


For example, I cleaned out two squares on the grid that should have held a combined 724 oz of gold (after clearing overburden), but I only walked away with 298oz in the bank using a full T5 setup (Glacier, Reinforced Trommel, x2 Gravel Pumps, x2 Hog Pump Sluices, Magnetite Seperator, Gold Wash Table)

My current process is like this:

1. Clear any overburden that contains less than 3oz / m3 with the dozer
2. Use a Front End Loader to move paydirt to the input of my Frankie #1
3. Frankie #1 ---> Frankie #2
4. Frankie #2 ---> Conveyor Feeder
5. Profit


I've inspected the Frankies when they are moving pay dirt and it appears visually that there is zero spillage from Frankie #1 to Frankie #2 and Frankie #2 to the Conveyor Hopper.

Other notes:

1. I fill my buckets with a hose until they seem to stop filling, but I have noticed that the water level isn't always consistant. Sometimes water is right up to the bucket rim, sometimes it's only 75% full.

2. I'm clearly experiencing some spillage under the feed size of Frankie #1 with the Loader because paydirt starts to pile up under the feeder, but I can't imagine I'm missing 50% of the soil so it doesn't explain all the gold loss

3. Before I learned how to bulldoze I was getting much better clean outs on this claim (River Town) without clearning overburden just using the loader and dump truck but I wasn't really collecting hard data on the gold volume of the map squares other than 'they were pretty hard yellow with 3oz+/m3, so kinda weak data here.

4. I went through my worker roster and there are no known members of 316 Mining so it's not a labor issue.

Thoughts:

1. Is the Frankie meant to be fed with the Excavator only and I'm derping hard using the loader? I just feel like I get more volume this way.

2. I wonder if I could be pushing the pay dirt pile too hard when I scoop with the loader trying to get a full bucket and maybe some of the gold volume is shifting to other squares and then not updating on the gold map?

3. Maybe my result is expected because there is an inherent loss in all of the wash plant gear, meaning there is no current way to achieve 95%+ gold capture. Maybe even with the T5 plant the gold capture rate is still around 50%?

4. It would be fantastic if we could buy a modification for the Frankie to make the input hopper larger so I stop spilling pay dirt on the ground.

Thanks to all who reply. Very much enjoying the game.

[sandmanjw]

I am not sure on the loader losing gold, some of the old timers swore that the loader was bugged to not get the same gold as the excavators,

But i HATE the excavators, can not get the hang of the controls like i did for the loader. So i did 2 things.

Would kill for a conveyor type addon to the frank to make all the below un needed.

1. Load the frank from the side. Some of the pay goes straight to the belt, not the conatiner of the frank, but i do not spill like i do from loading from the end.

2. (my prefered way of doing it now) I back up the dump truck to the last frank in the line. Raise dump till it just starts working, not any higher than that. Then load the dump truck like that with the loader from the side as close to the rear as possible.

Either one of these ways eliminates the loader spillage and seemed to increase my gold from cleanouts and made them faster as well. What i mean by faster, is that when i was loading the frank with loader it took me longer trying to get it just right to dump into the frank and i still always seemed to be spilling alot.

Last thing is never run your plant past the point of the top mats being 100% full. If you run your plant till all mats are full. including the hog pan mats, you will be loing quite a bit of gold.

This last is easy to test, get top mats to 100% stop then fill conveyor with a coupls (3-4) buckets from loader. Save, do a clean out,get total, then run conveyor pay and clean, get total. Then re-load save, run the conveyor pay, the hog pan mats should still be under 100% so you are not losing any thing. Do clean up and get total. When i did this the total was off by quite a bit of gold, so i was losing lots of gold if i ran till all mats were 100%.

Making the franks have an easier/wider load area would be so awesome so this part of game was better:)

[Pwnocchio]

Postat inițial de sandmanjw:

...But i HATE the excavators, can not get the hang of the controls like i did for the loader.

I got the hang of the excavator using my game pad and keyboard but I get carpel tunnel with it. Every other vehicle I can manage with my joystick alone which is far more comfortable. You need 2 joysticks to properly run the excavator (and extra software) and I just don't want to buy another stick.

1. Load the frank from the side. Some of the pay goes straight to the belt, not the conatiner of the frank, but i do not spill like i do from loading from the end.

Confirming that the above is my method as well.

2. (my prefered way of doing it now) I back up the dump truck to the last frank in the line. Raise dump till it just starts working, not any higher than that. Then load the dump truck like that with the loader from the side as close to the rear as possible.

This is pretty genius. I may have to try it. So you have to have the loading side of that Frankie all the way to the ground then?

Last thing is never run your plant past the point of the top mats being 100% full. If you run your plant till all mats are full. including the hog pan mats, you will be loing quite a bit of gold.

So this notion has occurred to me in the past. I never push to fill my Hogpans to 100%, but I usually do push to fill my Jiggs 100%. In retrospect this absolutely accounts for some non-trivial portion of my gold loss.

Great thought.

This last is easy to test, get top mats to 100% stop then fill conveyor with a coupls (3-4) buckets from loader. Save, do a clean out,get total, then run conveyor pay and clean, get total. Then re-load save, run the conveyor pay, the hog pan mats should still be under 100% so you are not losing any thing. Do clean up and get total. When i did this the total was off by quite a bit of gold, so i was losing lots of gold if i ran till all mats were 100%.

Thats a nice test case. +1

Making the franks have an easier/wider load area would be so awesome so this part of game was better:)

I created a suggestion thread in the other forum for a better/larger means of loading the Frank.

[sandmanjw]

Postat inițial de author:

This is pretty genius. I may have to try it. So you have to have the loading side of that Frankie all the way to the ground then?

Yup needs to be on the ground. The front part of dump is raised why you need to use the rear as far as you can so you do not hit the side of dump with the loader bucket.. You can actually dump the loader bucket so that some fall into the frank loader as well as part into the bed of dump truck.

But this is faster than fiddling with getting it just right on the frank, and speeds up the operation and eliminates the spillage. But i also want a better option to load the franks with the loaders. This is just the best way i have found to do a work around. And not need to switch back and forth from vehicles.

[Pwnocchio]

Honestly, you should post a screen shot of your Dump Trump / Frankie work around to motivate Code Horizon to get us a better option :)

[thyintimidator3]

People, gold mining is not meant to be easy!!!!! Stop it with the give me give me. Does Parker use a loader to load his Frankie? No, he uses an excavator, which is what is meant to load it. Stop crying, and do things the way they are meant to be done, instead of how you feel it should be done!!!!!!! And stop it with the cheats. Using the dump to help load it, is clearly a cheat, and all doing it should be banned from the game!!!

[Pwnocchio]

We are trying to determine if there is a bug in the game.

253 yards processed of material that drilling indicated was 3 to 4 oz / m3 and the clean out was 219 oz of gold. That is greater than 66% gold loss.

And for the record, the man that designed the Frankies has giant hoppers mounted on them much larger than those in the game.

...banned from 'cheating' in a single player game?

[sandmanjw]

Postat inițial de Pwnocchio:

We are trying to determine if there is a bug in the game.

253 yards processed of material that drilling indicated was 3 to 4 oz / m3 and the clean out was 219 oz of gold. That is greater than 66% gold loss.

And for the record, the man that designed the Frankies has giant hoppers mounted on them much larger than those in the game.

...banned from 'cheating' in a single player game?

Just ignore the trolls, the play my way or your cheating.

Most of the gold miners do not follow any rules. They do what works the best, and when that is not good enough they make new ways to do things better.

Heh cheating:P

[Roger Juneo]

Do you want to know if you have an error in the game? I'll give you the answer: YES. I did not read the whole post, the translation is bad and I'm out of time, but from what I understand and if I'm right, the answer is yes.

What I understand: You're digging using the front loader to load your Frankies. What I do not understand is what part you're taking off from earth, you see, if you're digging the top of the ground and sinking, the gold will appear right. If you're digging from the bottom to the top of the terrain, you're digging it wrong.

To get better: when you dig a dirt wall from the bottom up using the front loader or even the excavator, the game does not recognize that you are taking part of the land from the top to the bottom, it only considers that the bottom land has been removed and more land above that was excluded. It's a game bug that ends the fun of anyone who wants to dig deeper using the excavator or who wants to stay on the gravel taking that mountain of land and playing in the wash plant.

There is no right way to play the game, death to the trolls, (laughter).

But as long as they do not correct these errors, the correct one is to excavate in layers, remove the superficial earth, then the middle earth and finally the earth from the bottom.

Unfortunately my Dozer is not working so I can not push earth to make ramps just glide, if I could make ramps I would push part of the land to where I already cleaned and pick up with the front loader would be faster and easier for me but still would have to test this hypothesis, as there could be loss of gold.

I know of this bug in the game in excluding gold from the top, because I went through that, a place that should yield between 600 and 800 ounces of gold, 17 to 20 pounds of gold, yielded less than 200oz, about 6 pounds of gold . there were four Old Arnold rich fields. I refined the cleaning using the excavator, if it had 8 to 10 meters of land, I took 5 meters, the other 5 meters I removed with the front loader, got in the end 39 kilos of gold. The value after changing the method of excavation is higher than expected because I ended up digging more than the 4 fields, but for me it became clear the difference of digging in layers than using the front wheel and digging from bottom to top.

[Pwnocchio]

Postat inițial de Roger Juneo:

What I understand: You're digging using the front loader to load your Frankies. What I do not understand is what part you're taking off from earth, you see, if you're digging the top of the ground and sinking, the gold will appear right. If you're digging from the bottom to the top of the terrain, you're digging it wrong.

I'm digging from the bottom to the top.

I clear the overburden with the dozer, then I dig from the bottom of the pit at the base of the pay dirt wall.

But as long as they do not correct these errors, the correct one is to excavate in layers, remove the superficial earth, then the middle earth and finally the earth from the bottom.

Thank you for your insight.

I'll re-configure my Frankies and mine the way you suggest in layers. Then I'll reply here.

[Pwnocchio]

I just completed a clean out after mining the same quality land ( around 3 oz / m^3) but mining from top to bottom of the pay streak (As suggested by Roger Juneo) with the Large Excavator feeding into the Frankie.

The first thing I noticed that was different than my prior 4 very weak clean outs was that my Hog Pan Sluices were filling faster than my primary Sluice boxes and Gravel Pump buckets. Previously my Primary Sluices were filling faster.

I did a clean out of the Hog Pans and finished pushing the primary Sluice Boxes to 99%, then did a complete clean out.

My gold pay out was much higher. I ran 275 m^3 of material that yielded 683 oz of gold, which is roughly 2.66 oz / m^3, which was better than x3 gold yield from my previous clean out.

Finding strongly support that there are gold loss bug issues with the loader AND/OR there are issues mining from the bottom of the pit.

[sandmanjw]

Postat inițial de Pwnocchio:

I just completed a clean out after mining the same quality land ( around 3 oz / m^3) but mining from top to bottom of the pay streak (As suggested by Roger Juneo) with the Large Excavator feeding into the Frankie.

The first thing I noticed that was different than my prior 4 very weak clean outs was that my Hog Pan Sluices were filling faster than my primary Sluice boxes and Gravel Pump buckets. Previously my Primary Sluices were filling faster.

I did a clean out of the Hog Pans and finished pushing the primary Sluice Boxes to 99%, then did a complete clean out.

My gold pay out was much higher. I ran 275 m^3 of material that yielded 683 oz of gold, which is roughly 2.66 oz / m^3, which was better than x3 gold yield from my previous clean out.

Finding strongly support that there are gold loss bug issues with the loader AND/OR there are issues mining from the bottom of the pit.

I am still not sure if we are losing the gold or just burying it and pushing it around.

Think we would need to actually add up the drilling map and then completely clean out a map and get total and see what is what.

That would take quite a while to do though. I drilled the majority of arnold claim but i didnt add them all up to see what the total was before i started mining. I wonder if the dev's know what the gold amounts on the claims are, or at least to within a range?

It is something to have a conversation with them about though. See if we can get to the bottom of this.

[Ruges]

I did a post on this a couple months ago. But the gist of it all is dirt can be created from nothing. Angling a bulldozer up creates dirt. Using a front loader against a face wall creates dirt. Using a excavator bucket on a face wall creates dirt. Its pretty easy to replicate this to show this dirt is created and not somthing pulled or moved from the ground. I used to believe this created dirt was worthless dirt and did not contan gold (Since it has been proven that dirt can contain no gold (process tailings)),

Also dirt can be deleted several ways with the bulldozer. It can also be deleted when using the front end loader at the bottom of the face wall or an excavator at the bottom of a face wall.

So what I believe is happening in your tests. Your using the frontend loader in the bottom of a pit against a face wall. When you first begin to scoop You are grabing some of the dirt on the ground. when you press it against the face wall it finishes filling the bucket with this created worthless dirt. So you end up with a half bucket of good dirt and a half buck of bad dirt. Also by digging against the face wall it is deleting some of the dirt above making it apear you have dug out the right amount of dirt. When you end up processing this dirt. Well you dont get as much gold as you should. Because allot of the dirt your processing is worthless dirt and your deleting allot of the good dirt.

[spzme]

Interesting thread, I'll try to summarize.

1) (OP) We're not getting the right amount of gold as indicated on the gold map.

This is my finding too, I am getting nowhere near the amounts shown on the map.

2) (Roger J) Digging from the bottom of a pit yields less gold than digging from the top. Goes for the loader as well as the excavator.

3) (Ruges) Dirt can be created from nothing, but contains no gold.

If 3 is true then this would give us more soil to process, but it still doesn't account for the missing gold.

My own observation:

4) We lose dirt by using our equipment. This is easy to test with the bulldozer, just keep pushing around a pile of dirt from all sides and after a while it's just gone. Same goes for the excavator, just dig and drop the soil on the ground. Dig that pile up again, drop, and soon it's all gone. I'm sure this violates some law of thermodynamics even videogames should adhere to :P

[Roger Juneo]

Not only is it possible to create dirt, invisible obstacles that hinder the front loader shovel also appear on the gravel of the swim and prevent the vehicle from moving forward.

Try rapas or gravel when there is no more visible earth, or even with the shovel, if there is dirt, or there is still dirt there, which shows that the earth's bottom is not synchronized with the surface of the gravel, or simply the game is creating a land beyond.

Pwnocchio, you are the second I saw that had the same result, took little gold when "scooping it wrong" and was surprised when it dug right.

I discovered this bug because my gold map remained with a gold-rich square 2 to 8 meters, but no land of 8 to 12 meters. And I asked myself, What if I have removed the whole earth from the field? I went to do the cleaning on the mobile wash plant, it was one of the worst cleanings, nor would Tod Hoffman outdo it, (laughs). When I went to Tier III, to clean up faster and get money for heavy equipment, I started to clean well in the beginning of the earth and went on, on the surface I did a great cleaning, but when I got to the bottom, disappointment. I refined the cleanup using the layer method and was surprised by such a bug.

The game is not yet ready to withdraw land just deep, or as the Hoffman's did, Great ramp throws the land from the top of it to pick up the bottom and play in the wash plant.

I like to use the bulldozer, but the game gets very slow and boring using only it, and I'm forced to remove matade from the ground in order to use the front loader.

I would like one of the moderators to give their opinion, I already did a topic reporting the problem and I commented in other posts about the problem, but I did not see any of the moderators commenting afterwards. The Dozer itself, does not work right.

[sandmanjw]

Postat inițial de Ruges:

I did a post on this a couple months ago. But the gist of it all is dirt can be created from nothing. Angling a bulldozer up creates dirt. Using a front loader against a face wall creates dirt. Using a excavator bucket on a face wall creates dirt. Its pretty easy to replicate this to show this dirt is created and not somthing pulled or moved from the ground. I used to believe this created dirt was worthless dirt and did not contan gold (Since it has been proven that dirt can contain no gold (process tailings)),

Also dirt can be deleted several ways with the bulldozer. It can also be deleted when using the front end loader at the bottom of the face wall or an excavator at the bottom of a face wall.

So what I believe is happening in your tests. Your using the frontend loader in the bottom of a pit against a face wall. When you first begin to scoop You are grabing some of the dirt on the ground. when you press it against the face wall it finishes filling the bucket with this created worthless dirt. So you end up with a half bucket of good dirt and a half buck of bad dirt. Also by digging against the face wall it is deleting some of the dirt above making it apear you have dug out the right amount of dirt. When you end up processing this dirt. Well you dont get as much gold as you should. Because allot of the dirt your processing is worthless dirt and your deleting allot of the good dirt.

Yes i did a test on this a few days ago. Have a spot along the wall of claim that i can get dirt from with the front loader. It never stops loading from that spot but there is no gold in it. A full mat clean up from that spot was 1.5 oz total:)

Also if you pay attention while loading loader you can drive forward hit pay and immediately back up and watch bucket fill. Could be just video issue, but i think it is something in the way the equipment works/physics of the game. Why i think it is a combination of things happening with the loader.

Wish i knew how much total gold the arnold claim had or close to it so i could compare later when i finish the claim. Think i have 3rd or so left to finish and am around 7000 oz. Not sure yet i did write down each clean out total so i will know when i am done how much i got from gold and how much from workers. Just have not totaled it up yet.

Anyhow if we keep bringing it up maybe a dev will take a look, Hope they would know what is going on:P