Why is the Autominer so terrible?

[ItsDarthChaos]

I genuinely don't understand the purpose of the Autominer. The amount of resources it collects is so small that I could have collected them by hand faster, multiplied exceptionally by the amount of setup it takes just for a 2x2 area. I'd rather abandon it entirely and just keep hand mining til I can build an Aimee

[gpedro178]

Well, the suggestion I made for the autominer is that instead of excavating, it should produce a constant amount of X resource during Y time because is too expensive and inefficient to be of any use, even the setup is annoying and if you miss the vein, you end up with nothing.

[Blueberry Muffins!]

If you stare at all the things that make it slow, you'll discover they're all things you can change about how you use it. It's not something you can use mindlessly or indiscriminately, not if you want good results.

[ItsDarthChaos]

Originally posted by gpedro178:

Well, the suggestion I made for the autominer is that instead of excavating, it should produce a constant amount of X resource during Y time because is too expensive and inefficient to be of any use, even the setup is annoying and if you miss the vein, you end up with nothing.

Yeah, it would be nice if instead of simply stopping after it finishes its hole, it can just like... produce a constant, even if tiny amount of material, based on the grid its been built on. Would not only make it less tedious by not having to constantly move it just to get use out of it, but would be a nice way to do early resource farming if it can only produce like, Iron and/or maybe Copper.

[dupa]

You can use it to dig elevator shafts. I never actually built one, the heavy drill looks way more effective for mining.

Keep in mind the game is still in development, so the autominer could join the fabricator one day, or they could release some kind of or update, which will make ores more concentrated and suitable for mining with the autominer. As for now, you may want to use the ore scanner to find big concentrations of ores before using the autominer.

[Eightball]

I use them quite often and find they are well worth the time to construct (which is just a few minutes at the longest).

Find a dense spot with the GPR, set up and power it with one large battery (enough for a complete run to bedrock in almost all cases) and walk away.

Come back with a new battery, collect ore, move the miner (another few minutes) and repeat.

The added benefit being the shaft usually will expose deeper deposits you can then hover down to and collect.

Could it be better? Sure, but for what it costs now I find the return to be more than adequate since it lets me do other things while it mines.

[CMDR Sweeper]

Yes, it is too useless for most of the deposits I have seen.
Possibly for the really deep ones, but I haven't had a need to go deep yet as the riches on the surface is quite high and the veins are fairly long.
Even if there was a lack of resources, getting there is quicker with the handdrill.

This is similar to the quarry's for those who come from industrial based Minecraft, and the changeable mining area is what makes them strong at gathering resources, if you could enlargen or set an area with this, its usefulness would increase.

[Blueberry Muffins!]

getting there is quicker with the handdrill.

Well, sure, if you use the autominer wrong, using it doesn't get you resources quicker. Funny thing: If you use it right, it does.

[Tajin]

The whole "oh I can mine quicker with the handdrill" point is kinda moot. The benefit isnt how fast the thing is, the benefit is that it does the job for you.

In other words you could even set up the autominer and use the handdrill to mine somewhere else at the same time.

[Blueberry Muffins!]

We were trying not to just say that. The idea is to get them to stop whining and start thinking. Mommy-make-it-easy-for-me whiners are difficult to cure, but just giving them what they want just kicks the can down the road, inflicting their whining on the next poor sap to encounter them.

[ItsDarthChaos]

Its not really moot, since the idea is that in the time it takes the autominer to dig up half a vein of ore, or the full vein if you're lucky, you could have taken the hand drill and done a half dozen veins. The time you spend setting up the miner heavily outweighs the time it saves by not having to do the digging yourself.

Its just like Sweeper said. The idea behind the autominer is similar to the MC quarries. Except what those do that this does not is cover a large area, comparative to the veins. In MC when a full chunk can hold dozens of veins of varying material, the prospect of having a machine that can dig it all for you while you do other things is highly valuable. It's what we would call a 'passive income', and a profitable one at that. In Stationeers, however, you don't typically have that high density of materials, and chunks usually only have one large vein of one singular material. Add to that the time it takes to set up power circults, and a gas collection system for ice, this significantly reduces the autominer's value as a passive income. Compare this to Aimee, which can actually go around and find the resources on its own, then be able to dump them directly into a collection system that requires zero setup after the first time, you have a MUCH more valuable passive income.

So I reiterate... Why does the Autominer exist? At least in its current state, its value as a passive provider is practically nonexistent, if not negatively so. The only value I see in it is if you wanted a machine to dig elevator shafts for an underground base. It can do that beautifully.

[gpedro178]

Originally posted by Blueberry Muffins!:

We were trying not to just say that. The idea is to get them to stop whining and start thinking. Mommy-make-it-easy-for-me whiners are difficult to cure, but just giving them what they want just kicks the can down the road, inflicting their whining on the next poor sap to encounter them.

Chill mate, its not about difficulty or lack of creative thinking, its about usefulness, I prefer to use the IC program I made to send my army of AIMEes to gather ore and return it for me from the confort of my base instead of moving a machine limited by its position, lack of storage and lack of a battery port.

The idea of the Autominer sound good on paper but the implementation could be much much better to reduce the amount frustration this machine gives just to try to nail a vein.
For me, the Autominer is more of a bulky hole generator than a resource extractor.

[Eightball]

How long does it take you all to set one up? I can do it in about a minute. And I really don't see how you could mine an entire shaft to bedrock in the time it takes to set one up as some have posted.

But again, the greatest benefit, at least to me, is it allows me to do something else while it mines. Fire and forget.

It also continues to mine in situations where a player would have probably already stopped believing they have extracted all the ore of that vein. More often than not the auto exposes ore veins deeper than I would have continued to mine the surface deposit (which also makes it easier for those that want to horizontally mine exposed deep deposits).

Luckily, no one has to use it if they don't want to.

[ItsDarthChaos]

Originally posted by Eightball:

How long does it take you all to set one up? I can do it in about a minute. And I really don't see how you could mine an entire shaft to bedrock in the time it takes to set one up as some have posted.

But again, the greatest benefit, at least to me, is it allows me to do something else while it mines. Fire and forget.

It also continues to mine in situations where a player would have probably already stopped believing they have extracted all the ore of that vein. More often than not the auto exposes ore veins deeper than I would have continued to mine the surface deposit (which also makes it easier for those that want to horizontally mine exposed deep deposits).

Luckily, no one has to use it if they don't want to.

Well~ if I had to guess, about 4 minutes to set up the miner, airtight chamber, wiring, and piping for gas collection. And about the same amount of time to tear it all down. Thats 8 minutes, give or take, every time you move the autominer for a process that takes it about 10 minutes to run through. And to fully extract a vein, unless you get lucky and it spawns perfectly in the area of the miner's reach, you have to move it at least once if not several times to extract an entire vein. Thats 40 minutes of runtime and 32 minutes of preparation for one single vein with the POTENTIAL to reveal additional veins, though more likely than not, you won't. When it takes maybe 5 minutes to thoroughly excavate a vein with the hand drill, you could do anywhere from 7 to 14 veins in the same amount of time the autominer collects 1. And remember, half that time you are STILL actively working in the area while you are setting up and tearing down the miner, so you can't even use the argument of 'oh, well its something that collects materials while you are doing something else, so obviously its better.'

[CMDR Sweeper]

Exactly it just takes too long to get it going and the resource investment.
At the time it is viable in the tech tree it also has a lot of competitors for resources as well, if we could adjust the size of it, then we would be talking a worthwhile investment.
It just requires too much babysitting or special structures in its current form to be an useful investment.
Sorry, but the math just doesn't add up currently, not to mention scouting out the deep veins which is where it is useful takes time too.
The time it takes fidgeting with the GPR (Ground Penetrating Radar) alone, I could have stumbled across, filled my belt with the needed ore to finish the current project.

[Eightball]

Well I see you spend far more time setting up than I do. I don't worry about capturing volatiles and such so your time investment is greater than mine and as such I can see your dislike for the machine.

Again, I agree it is not perfect, but in my case it fills a niche. I can, for example, set up a line of four or five in very little time and move them as they complete a dig basically strip mining to bedrock a huge area rather quickly and thoroughly.

And as to the GPR, yes you can always surface mine "just what you need at the moment" pretty easily, but I tend to like to mine en mass so I have plenty of resources on hand. The GPR is a nice aid especially when looking for those sub surface deposits once the top has been 'skimmed'.

But it is a tool and some will use it and others will find little use for it. That is what is nice about the game so far; options.