Mining needs overhauled. It's too tedious.#3965

Both fluid and shape mining consume an inordinate amount of gameplay time due to the random shape nature of the resource blobs. Not only that, the directional requirement for shape/fluid miners to connect further consumes time I’d rather be building my base, optimizing a factory, or thinking about a new challenge shape I could be constructing. I’m spending two thirds of my time playing mini-Tetris to get an extra full belt of squares out of a blob. This is not the core game loop that will keep players interested. Players are punished harshly for just ignoring optimal mining layouts since an inefficient factory DEVOURS building points through train loading and smurf train laddering.

Mining needs to happen in an area around a miner Factorio style and then I can decide to leave the remainders on the table or worry about sorting them at the train depot. I plop down a miner in the center of a 9 square mining area, then decide the output direction. That’s it. From there, the belts or pipes are connected as normal.

Optionally and far more interestingly, the mining system could be worked on in a sort of “fencing” fashion where a loop is constructed around a resource blob. The larger the loop, the more resources required. Mini-Vortexes suck the shapes off the platform and into an output zone along the loop. The mini-Vortexes are powered by Vortex energy/crystals given to us by the almighty Vortex because it needs the shapes for SOMETHING, right? It also gives a reason to have train lines coming FROM the Vortex, the vortex is now encouraging us to feed it and it needs our help to devour the shapes.

It’s funny that someone saw this as a problem. But the idea of mining like in factorio is quite interesting.

I think it would be nice to have asteroids and paint generate only in arrangements on which a tiling is possible to get it covered with fully upgraded miners.

The simplest check for this is number of squares is divisible by 4.

But there’s also the issue of whether or not it’s possible to place upgrades such that the miners are all fully upgraded and there is a way to route out the belts or pipes.

Another nice setting would be make sure all deposits can be set up put out all three levels of belt or pipe. For shapes this means fill up an even number of space belts completely¹.

That’s easy once you have the previous checks done: number of squares in a deposit must be divisible by 3 and all previous checks, including number of squares divisible by 4 and being there existing some placement of miners and upgrades such that all miners are fully upgraded and there is a way to route an output pipe or belt such that it doesn’t cross another.

¹Though indeed you need three fully upgraded fluid miners² to paint an entire space belt, the space belt in turn taking the output of three fully upgraded shape miners, the space pipe is a bit special in that it can take far more paint.

If you do the math, it turns out one can actually can take enough paint to paint six whole space belts, or 18 fully upgraded fluid miners. presuming the input is evenly split over the three layers of the pipe’s input.

²Each fluid miner having three fluid upgrades pointing at it or at another fluid upgrade such that eventually an upgrade in the chain will point at the miner)