Mining efficiency

[Lady Lucins]

Hi,

There's probably an obvious answer that I'm missing but how can I make digging long ladders down more efficient?

A dupe will go to the storage area to pick up sandstone, go all the way through the atmo suit dock, travel all the way down the ladder to deliver the sandstone to the bit on the end of the ladder to build, then travel all the way back again and do something else!

At this rate I will never finish get down the oil I'm trying to get to! :D Any tips?

[Sundance]

Don't use sandstone to build the ladder but instead whatever material you're currently digging through and your dupes don't need to run back all the way every single time.

If you really want to build it out of sandstone just replace everything afterwards in one go.

[Angpaur]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/457140/discussions/0/2439210602490442453/?ctp=1

[[HW] Boar]

The problem you're having is priorities imo. Building a ladder has two different tasks associated with it. Supplying the materials which can either be done as a supply or a building mission, and then building the ladder which is a build mission.

I find that making my diggers prioritize building highest, digging second solves this. Assuming everything else is built on the map except for the ladder in question they will dig the hole, and then immediately start building the ladder since it's the new highest priority on their list. Otherwise another dupe might snag the delivery mission leaving your digger dupe looking for something else to do (which is why they treadmill back and forth from the base) It also helps for excavating large areas since they prioritize building escape routes first that I place out with ladders.

Double checking that you're making it out of local stone will also save you massive amounts of time. It's basically the first time the material type matters to ONI beginners. And lastly, if you're digging up (I know not the problem you mentioned) making sure to dig out little side chunks of stone to build latters with less walking time helps.

Oh and lastly: If you have dupes running in and out of atmo areas that you don't want them (say picking up 200c copper to bring into the base) building a door and setting access rights lets you choose which dupes can get into that area. Lots of uses there imo.

[Strygald]

Just follow Angpaur's suggestion with the digging then build over it with ladder tiles... they will supply and build multiple ladder tiles at a time, and more than one dupe will do it too...much faster; you can also use the trick to build ladders upwards faster.