>Imgur Album of all blueprints in this book with statistics and analysis of each blueprint<
>Reddit post with a more in depth discussion of mining strategies<
This is a blueprint book of a variety of designs for mining drill placement for a variety of needs. The needs of an early-game, mid-game, and late-game player are all different and this book contains different blueprints for all stages of the game. Every layout is tileable, and all but the two logistic based designs can tile directly vertically and horizontally, allowing the use of the snap to grid feature. Also every blueprint describes the features of that design, some statistics that can be used to compare it to other designs, and a short evaluation of when is it best used.
The blueprints all show the minimum level of components necessary to build the design. Players in later stages of the game will have likely stopped using wooden electric poles and yellow belts, but these designs intend to show the minimum tech needed be built. The upgrade tool can be used to directly upgrade components in a blueprint to use these blueprints with higher tier components.
This book contains:
- 9 plain belt based designs
- 1 beaconed belt based design
- 2 logistic based designs
- 4 smelt on site designs
- 3 designs using burner drills
Every blueprint has 5 measured criteria that can be used to evaluate each design. The ratings for all 5 criteria accompany the picture of each blueprint on the Imgur album.
- Coverage is the simplest way of evaluating a mining drill blueprint and puts a number on how compact a design is. It is simply the proportion of the total area that is covered by mining drills. A higher coverage means that a design will have more miners per area and produce more ore.
- Belt Length per Drill is a bit different. It is a value that shows how long of a stretch of belt belongs to an individual mining drill. This value can give an idea of how far a particular design can tile before the belt is compressed. This is a concern in the late game if you have a very high production bonus on your mining drills and just a few can compress a belt. A higher value means that a design can tile further without fully compressed belts causing your mining drills to back up. This value is independent of the belt speed, mining drill speed, or production bonus. This value is specific to each lane of the output belt.
- Distance Between Output Belts is simply that. Some players building an integrated train depot might put a high priority on a specific value for this. For designs with different distances between output belts in one design, the distances are listed in order from left to right.