Mining rework
Mining is cumbersome and unintuitive. To remedy this I suggest following: let's get rid of Mining tower and move it's functionality to the mesh of connected designations like if it was an object. So user can click any of the designation' square and get the UI window ("Mining site"), where excavators, trucks and routes can be assigned, dumped materials set and so on. So any continuous mesh of designation squares represent a separate mining site object now. It is created by simply placing new designation anywhere away from existing designation. Or the existing one can be modified by placing designation in direct adjacency to the existing one.
The excavators assigned to the site choose the square they work on without area restriction now - once square they are on is finished, they choose next one based on proximity, accessibility and material preference. If no work to do, they sit where they are (as there is no tower to go to now).
Comments: 2
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24 Jun, '22
YandersenAs an addition, must be mentioned that this technique will also require ability to force excavators to go work on specific spot (click "Go to" button in excavator UI and point the spot for it to move there to start work in specific spot). Without that feature it will be impossible to work out the pit from different sides or get a dedicated team of diggers working on ramps away from the bulk of the Mining site's fleet extracting the resource. This requirement arises as a result of the removal of working area of Mining control tower, which was used for this purpose in such scenarios. As the whole designation becomes available to all of the diggers now, without manual relocation of diggers such tasks could not be completed.
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24 Jun, '22
YandersenAnother thing to mention is the change of behavior of excavators in case any of the Mining site' designations got changed (f.e. user lowered down ramps to go further down). When it happens, all squares must get reevaluated for accessibility, and all machines found inside the squares with indirect access (inside of the pit) must go out to the nearest edge squares that can be mined directly (entries of the ramps in most cases). This logic is aimed to replace "go back to tower" behavior since there is no such spot now. To avoid issue of stuck vehicles, the extra condition may be added - "no digging 'till all get out", so the excavators that reached their safe spots will wait for the others assigned to this mining site before they start digging again on the modified designations mesh. This will prevent vehicles from being stuck when pit' entry got worked on while the other machines are still down there.