How to get a jump start on a new game in vanilla or modded

[Jeff]

Have played many multiplayer games over the years and in each start I see players start automating the iron rods and plates, screws, concrete etc. by building construction lines of all types. Getting enough resources for everyone is a "very slow" process. You spend an enormous time on the craft bench just to get a few plates or rods to work with or to unlock stuff (because the Mk 1 miners are so slow).

There's an easier and much faster way that I figured out over a year ago. When you plop a Mk 1 miner on a node, you get a maximum of 60 resources per minute. This really slows down your whole construction line. However a portable miner gives you 80 resources per minute and you can have about a hundred of these cheap miners on a single node. So instead of using a Mk 1 miner, place a storage at the start of the line and transfer resources from the portable miners to the storage. Using this trick you can have as many lines as you want (not limited to Mk 1 miners on nodes anymore). This way everyone gets plenty of resources to work with and to unlock milestones.

Eventually when you get the Mk 2 miner and over-clocking them, you can go back to the normal way of mining for resources.

[DrNewcenstein]

It's not the miners as much as the Mk 1 belt. Granted, portable miners do run faster, and you can spam them on a node, but you spend so much time harvesting from them. I suppose in MP it would work.

[Jeff]

I've used this technique in every new game I've started. Now in a modded game, those portable miners hold 500 resources as does the storage. So you aren't collecting as often. There is a mod that collects them for you (Portable Miner Collector), but it messes up so much I don't use it.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Jeff:

I've used this technique in every new game I've started. Now in a modded game, those portable miners hold 500 resources as does the storage. So you aren't collecting as often. There is a mod that collects them for you (Portable Miner Collector), but it messes up so much I don't use it.

If mods like that are to be used you may as well just save edit the items directly into your inventory. Takes away the purpose of the game in my opinion.

[Jeff]

It was something new to try. If man did everything the same way and never tried anything new, we'd still be living in caves :)

[Maddin]

Yeah that way has been used for Speedruns several years ago already. I mean it is quite an obvious move.

[Jeff]

The slowness of a regular line using the Mk 1 miners combined with the milestones sucking up anything you gain, makes you come up with any way to fix it. When I start a new game (twice a month) the early stage isn't that bad anymore.

[Mojo]

Mk.1 Miner on a pure node without over clocking will get you 120 a minute. 60 on a normal node and 30 on an impure node. Also you state doing this starting out. Starting out the only belt you have is Mk.1 Belt, which only carries 60 a minute. So your theory of plopping down multiple portable miners with a storage, because portable can give you 80 ore a minute. Well it is still only going to go down your belt at 60 a minute.

I don't see your logic on how it is better, the only way I can see it being better is if you are just stuck by impure nodes only. With iron nodes they usually (again I said usually) close to other iron nodes that are better purity. Even then you would spend so much time running around gathering placing in storage that all that time spent a Mk.1 Miner probably still would "beat" you.

[Aven]

I actually agree with Jeff on this strategy. Portable miners allow you to shorten the time needed to generate stockpiles of the early game iron resources needed for the construction of your early factories, assuming you put any effort into those structures.

The majority of naysayers focus too much on the tedium of it, while others focus on the belt still being a limiting factor. However, much like biomass, both of these negatives can be mitigated or eliminated by scale. The portable miners can also be run in parallel with the standard miner on the same node.

Take a pure iron node as an example. With a Mk. 2 belt, its output is 120/m. To duplicate that output, you would need to empty 2 portable miners every 100 seconds, 6 portable miners every 5 minutes, 12 miners every 10 minutes, or 24 miners every 20 minutes. Emptying 6-12 miners every 5-10 minutes to give myself access to another pure node seems like an easy trade-off to make given how much activity centers around those early iron nodes.

But, what if you emptied 24 miners every 5 minutes? Well, that would give you an ore/m production of 480, the equivalent of 4 pure iron nodes. Split between 4 containers, you can now run 4 120/m production lines, all from a single node. Add the standard miner and its production line, and you have a 600/m production from a single pure iron node. No running around, no belting things back to one spot. A 600/m iron ore production in one location. That's enough production to fill a container full of iron plates in 6 minutes.

With that kind production, the tedium is self-defeating, because the scale at which you can produce reduces the frequency of needing to empty the portable miners, because you simply cannot use the amount of product at the rate at which they are replaced.

[Jeff]

Originally posted by Aven:

I actually agree with Jeff on this strategy. Portable miners allow you to shorten the time needed to generate stockpiles of the early game iron resources needed for the construction of your early factories, assuming you put any effort into those structures.

The majority of naysayers focus too much on the tedium of it, while others focus on the belt still being a limiting factor. However, much like biomass, both of these negatives can be mitigated or eliminated by scale. The portable miners can also be run in parallel with the standard miner on the same node.

Take a pure iron node as an example. With a Mk. 2 belt, its output is 120/m. To duplicate that output, you would need to empty 2 portable miners every 100 seconds, 6 portable miners every 5 minutes, 12 miners every 10 minutes, or 24 miners every 20 minutes. Emptying 6-12 miners every 5-10 minutes to give myself access to another pure node seems like an easy trade-off to make given how much activity centers around those early iron nodes.

But, what if you emptied 24 miners every 5 minutes? Well, that would give you an ore/m production of 480, the equivalent of 4 pure iron nodes. Split between 4 containers, you can now run 4 120/m production lines, all from a single node. Add the standard miner and its production line, and you have a 600/m production from a single pure iron node. No running around, no belting things back to one spot. A 600/m iron ore production in one location. That's enough production to fill a container full of iron plates in 6 minutes.

With that kind production, the tedium is self-defeating, because the scale at which you can produce reduces the frequency of needing to empty the portable miners, because you simply cannot use the amount of product at the rate at which they are replaced.

Heh, I agree. But after the first hour we have left the portable miners behind. Twenty hours later there are still large groups of dormant miners there. The only way they are used again is to restock our inventories to make Mk 2 miners or higher.

[Jeff]

Originally posted by Mojo:

Mk.1 Miner on a pure node without over clocking will get you 120 a minute. 60 on a normal node and 30 on an impure node. Also you state doing this starting out. Starting out the only belt you have is Mk.1 Belt, which only carries 60 a minute. So your theory of plopping down multiple portable miners with a storage, because portable can give you 80 ore a minute. Well it is still only going to go down your belt at 60 a minute.

I don't see your logic on how it is better, the only way I can see it being better is if you are just stuck by impure nodes only. With iron nodes they usually (again I said usually) close to other iron nodes that are better purity. Even then you would spend so much time running around gathering placing in storage that all that time spent a Mk.1 Miner probably still would "beat" you.

Which has more output, three mk 1 miners with mk 1 belts, or 12 construction lines with mk 1 belts? If you replace the Mk 1 miner with a storage at the start of the line, you can get a much higher yield. Of course you can also do both at the same time. A node will hold the Mk 1 miner and several portable miners (the portable miners will each be much faster).

[El Presidente]

Originally posted by DrNewcenstein:

It's not the miners as much as the Mk 1 belt. Granted, portable miners do run faster, and you can spam them on a node, but you spend so much time harvesting from them. I suppose in MP it would work.

It's not the mines at all they mine 120 per minut but you on can make a MK1 belt at the start of a new game. The MK1 belt only moves 60/M so the miner is idle half the time since can only output at half the speed that it mines at.

[CryptEarth]

Well - for me I just have my world run on my server.
I tried a couple of early-game stuff local and then after starting a new world after the 0.7.0.1 hotfix I rushed towards coal power so I can have the game run byitself without have to worry about running out of biofuel (which I only use as jump start at the very beginning). Why? Cause I don't mind to have the server running 2 days to fill up all my storage so I then can play for a day without running out of stuff.

[Maddin]

Originally posted by Mojo:

. So your theory of plopping down multiple portable miners with a storage, because portable can give you 80 ore a minute. Well it is still only going to go down your belt at 60 a minute.

.

There are 4 factors to consider:

1. You don't have to run the belts from the various locations to where you want to produce stuff, which is an insane ressource hog early on

2. You can produce far more early on. Instead of 60 or maybe 180 per minute from your standard 3 iron patches close by, you can get 800 per minute without issue if you really want to, although this might be a bit much.

3. Early on you don't have splitters. So 3 lines for example can only go into 3 smelters and then constructors. Meanwhile with the portable ones you can go and take like 10 stacks of iron or similar whenever you feel like it, connect a storage to a smelter and plop it in there. This allows me to run lines for screws, plates, rods as many as I need early on instead of slowly having to build to even get the ressources to create these lines.

4. They don't take power. Miners have quite a power draw and the power to run 6+ miners early on really means you need to gather so much more plants and ♥♥♥♥. I would argue that alone makes the portable miners worth it, because you probably spend less time and effort picking the iron from the portable miners than you spend gathering plants to power the MK1's

[Jeff]

We just started a vanilla game on a dedicated server a couple days ago. I started using a bunch of portable miners on the nodes (8-12 per), but after an hour I graduated to a mk 1 miner and a few portables on the sides. Two hours later the portables were gone. Finally unlocked Mk 2 miners and Mk 3 belts/lifts this evening.