StrangerFeelings

I have a question, and I hope it doesn't get burried under the hundreds of comments here before it's answered.

I keep having my drones dying for some reason, but there are no biters nearby or anything like that. Also the amount of drones I have in the mining base hasn't gone down with every death. What is up with this?

Image attached to show whats up: https://imgur.com/a/dX155UL

When they get stuck on things they suicide, but that shouldn't happen that often. Are you playing with any other mods?

puuuuuud

Could you make the area visible while placing similar to the mining drill?

Its not really possible with the modding api yet

overmog

How do you feel about replacing the drone visuals with something like ground based construction robots from your other mod? Having human slaves is a little bit too morbid imo.

I used the character graphics mainly because they have the mining animation already prepared, so i didnt have to worry about making any sprites or anything.

500239

1 ore at a time, or can you select multiple ores? That would be a neat solution for some of those overlapping ore sites.

1 at a time, but you can switch the depots anytime you like (killing hundreds of now useless drones)

500239

/u/Klonan some spec questions:

• How far will these drones go out to mine from that building?

• When there is no ore to mine, do they mark on the map?

The drones can mine any ore in the 80x80 mining area.

They make a warning in the GUI and on the map when they run out of things to mine

Zako248

It seems that inserters cannot insert mining drones into the mining depot.

I was trying to automate deploying newly made drones.

They can, but only when the output is empty. Its some hardcoded engine logic.

StormTAG

Out of curiosity, for a single depot, how many drones can attack the same tile?

Its just 1 drone per resource

CzBuCHi

Another mod, that i never knew i need ....

but some "serious" questions:

1) why not use domesticated bitters?
2) how they react to natives? do they fight them?
3) do they say 'yes m`lord?' when clicked?

As for 2, they are only programmed for mining, so won't defend themselves.

Wuave

Tested it with All Resource Yield (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/yield-ores)

and Infinite Resources (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/sonaxaton-infinite-resources)

The issue is that because they don't list a set ore amount, the mining drones instead pull from the yield percentage, which causes them to deplete the ore patches.

Ok, I did some basic fix, they won't deplete them.

As for correctly calculating how much they should mine, it is some very complex equation, I might tackle it some other time.

DaemosDaen

I had an idea that would probably render faster (if that is even an issue) but I'm not sure how much of the animation you used or have control of but....

Dunno about that, the bot flying, then 'landing' (playing the drone's portion of the animation used for entering a roboport) then minning (the repair animation of the construction robot) then taking off (exiting the roboport animation) back to flying.

having said all that, nor sure if that's less frames as I'm not sure how many frames from the player character you are using for these drones.

Man we need the return of pre-blue science construction robots.

If you want early game construction bots: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Construction_Drones

Wuave

Is there a way to make these work with the infinite resources mod? They seem to deplete the ore patches even though they're suppose to be "Infinite".

Hmm, which mods in particular? I can look at adding support

mobsterer

for performance: would a version with default drones and without sounds possibly improve it?

I love the mod, but am afraid of not being able to use it in big setups.

The graphics and sound don't really affect performance.

You can use up to like 10,000 mining drones before it would start to affect the UPS a lot.

Flux7777

Hi Klonan, thanks for this, it has great uses for mixed ore patches. Does it work with custom ores from other mods?

Yes, it should work with mod ores. If you find a mod that doesn't work, just let me know and I can fix it

JMJ05

How many miners does a supply depot allow you to create?

100, up to 144 or so (The game engine does some weird logic to determine the number)

krusnikon

But can they mine Uranium?

They can, as long as you provide the acid

Azthais

It's so tempting to use as a replacement, it makes me wonder what if any of a UPS difference would be using a field of drills vs. their equivalent in mining drones on a large scale. I know you mention elsewhere this is probably not a good replacement for larger factories but seeing that you'd need to move to logistic drones at a certain point due to drills outputting more than a single blue belt in a row, it makes me wonder if there's a point where mining drones would produce more ore for less processing power compared to drills and a logistics network.

Hmm... if you get enough speed and productivity research, they could be more efficient

DaemosDaen

Notice a lack of slots for modules/ Guess speed modules are useless if you can have a stupid number of drones.

Any spicific reason you didn't just use a re-colored construction robot doing the repair animation for mining?

They walk along the ground and do pathfinding, so the flying drone graphics would look out of place

Loraash

Are they driven from Lua to still have this UPS or some kind of clever biter AI abuse to make them hate ore?

Most of the hard stuff is handled through the engine, the script just makes the drones and tells them to 'attack' the ore.

GeePee29

Do they produce pollution?

Yep

Troyseph91

Do the blue arrows on the building mean anything?

One indicated which way the drones will come out (and where the mining area is). The other is the fluid input, for things like mining uranium.