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About this mod
Reworks balance of mines and adds new related content.
- Permissions and credits
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- Changelogs
Important: Requires at least InfraSpace 1.46.438! If you have an older version of the game then make sure that you download V1.0 of this mod and will still work.
Reworks balance of mines and adds new related content.
(This mod will not work well with existing saves due to changed building sizes and some other balancing changes.)
First, here is a summary of all changes:
- All mines have a longer production cycles, releasing minerals in batches.
- Most mines have a bigger footprint.
- Large mines need much more power and a few more people.
- Large mines produce even more resources compared to small mines.
- Large mines consume motors during operation (1 per batch).
- Motors are slightly cheaper to produce.
- New resource Diamond.
- Diamonds can upgrade mines to increase yield.
- High tech tools and the drill need Diamonds instead of methane.
- New building: Diamond Synthesizer. Requires a new tech Diamond Coated Tools to unlock. Turns carbon into diamonds.
- New visualization overlay for resource deposits on the map.
- New building: Seismic Prospector. Requires a new tech Seismology. Increases minable area around mineral deposits in its range.
- New car models for trucks carrying ore (sand, iron, copper, aluminum, iridium, uranium, adamantine).
- New models for sand and sulfur mines to match their footprint.
Below are some design notes (optional reading):
Mining in vanilla IS is very simple and feels little rewarding. My goal was to spice it up a little bit. My main issue with the game was that large mines are simply always better than small mines once you unlocked them. So something had to be done about that. Also I found it odd that large mines require the motor tech but do nothing with motors. This spawned the first idea: make large mines consume motors. Now it's obvious that I can't have the short production cycles, or else you'd need to pay tons of motors for your minerals, so I created the long production cycles with batch release to tackle this issue. It feels weird at first but in the end it feels quite nice and can create additional challenges for your traffic plans in some circumstances.
The long cycles also work very well with Diamonds, another idea I had but whose origin I can't remember. You can inject it into the mines to make them more efficient. But just using an efficiency boost like high tech tools seemed lame. The bonus resource system on the other hand is very underutilized so I used that instead. I also use a fix number (+4) with each yield so diamonds have different strength, depending on the mineral.
Diamonds are supposed to be completely optional, just like industrial robots and high tech tools. This would be great for acceptance of the mod. But I don't like having a resource with just a single sink. So I also added it as an ingredient to high tech tools. It fits very well there (much better than methane anyway) and it means it remains an optional thing to pursue. However, as I was thinking about the nature of Diamond Coated Tools I couldn't help but feel that the drill must use this as an input, it fits perfectly. And it would crunch up those diamonds like cornflakes, because it's so colossal after all. So in the end diamonds are not purely optional, but only become mandatory very late in the game.
I haven't really explained how small and large mines are different in this mod though, compared to vanilla IS. In my many playthroughs I noticed that there is a phase in the beginning where I am a bit short on mineral patches. This gets better later with large mines, the laser and faster infrastructure options (which allows reaching farther mineral deposits more easily). So I thought I would like this shortage to be a more prominent problem, which can be alleviated with large mines to a large degree. So their main benefit is a high yield per surface area kind of density. But they need to be more expensive, so they consume more powers and workers. In the late game as you unlock diamonds (and seismography, see below) small mines become viable again as your main extraction method, if you value worker efficiency over simplicity and compactness of design.
I also wanted to have another upgrade for mines and after some time I came up with the idea of 'finding' new resource deposits through a tech. But spawning new deposits on the map would create all kinds of problems so instead I just made existing ones bigger. Lore-wise the seismic prospector fits very well into this role. This is a late game option to get more out of your existing mineral deposits, but you will need to spend some effort to change the mines' layout.
The downside of having the prospector in the game is that now there are just too many mineral deposits. The best way to tackle this was to make the footprint of all mines bigger. This would also make the deposit scarcity in early and mid game more severe, forcing you to either pay the price of large mines or invest into upgrades for small mines (or both!). I think I managed the trade-off quite well, although the game is still too easy for my taste. Another thing to consider was the cost of the prospector. Making it work with constant resource consumption would have caused all kinds of problems, so I opted for a power-up building instead. Those are also very underutilized. But they only have a one-time payment in construction material and no running cost, which is somewhat lame in IS. In the end I decided the prospector's main cost would be building space - and made it a really huge building with a non-standard footprint. Since you are going to unlock this rather late in the game, you're also going to have some fun to integrate it into your existing city. I am looking forward to screenshots of cities where roads are cutting through the space between the sensors and the main body ;)
Another problem with the prospector is how to visualize its benefit. In the end I created a new overlay so you can see the extend of resource deposits. Placing a prospector should make it obvious how they grow in size. I found that this visualization is also really handy without any prospectors around. On a new map or when expanding my city I regular use it to scout the map for the resources I want. That made me think this should be its own mod really, but unfortunately I can't (easily) separate it from the seismic prospector, and I can't separate the prospector from this mod either because of all the balancing interdependencies :(
Sand mines don't need resource deposits so they needed special treatment as well. I went with the same building space cost for those and made them very big. Since there would be little benefit to use a large sand mind over a small one with all the changes above, I made the big one only slightly bigger and gave it a sizeable production advantage over the small one and less extra cost in power and workers. Unfortunately this required me to create new models, which was a lot of work and the result is not quite satisfying yet. I also made new models for the sulfur mines because they have different footprints than all the remaining mines and because I think it's lame that all mines look the same. But then I ran out of ideas so all metal ore mines remain the same (for now). I first made both sand mines, then both sulfur mines, then the diamond synthesizer and the seismic prospector. I think the progress I made as I was learning how to create models is quite visible. I hope I won't forget all of this stuff before my next project!
If you look closely at the loading screen then you can see a truck on the right lane in the foreground carrying gold-colored ore into the city. I always wondered why they have so many in-game models in that picture but that truck doesn't exist. It fits so perfectly for all the ore resources! So I made it and added it as part of this mod, because it fits thematically to the entire package. But then I quickly realized that this model doesn't work well with the return trip option. One day I'll make a separate ore truck for the return trip...
Reworks balance of mines and adds new related content.
(This mod will not work well with existing saves due to changed building sizes and some other balancing changes.)
First, here is a summary of all changes:
- All mines have a longer production cycles, releasing minerals in batches.
- Most mines have a bigger footprint.
- Large mines need much more power and a few more people.
- Large mines produce even more resources compared to small mines.
- Large mines consume motors during operation (1 per batch).
- Motors are slightly cheaper to produce.
- New resource Diamond.
- Diamonds can upgrade mines to increase yield.
- High tech tools and the drill need Diamonds instead of methane.
- New building: Diamond Synthesizer. Requires a new tech Diamond Coated Tools to unlock. Turns carbon into diamonds.
- New visualization overlay for resource deposits on the map.
- New building: Seismic Prospector. Requires a new tech Seismology. Increases minable area around mineral deposits in its range.
- New car models for trucks carrying ore (sand, iron, copper, aluminum, iridium, uranium, adamantine).
- New models for sand and sulfur mines to match their footprint.
Below are some design notes (optional reading):
Mining in vanilla IS is very simple and feels little rewarding. My goal was to spice it up a little bit. My main issue with the game was that large mines are simply always better than small mines once you unlocked them. So something had to be done about that. Also I found it odd that large mines require the motor tech but do nothing with motors. This spawned the first idea: make large mines consume motors. Now it's obvious that I can't have the short production cycles, or else you'd need to pay tons of motors for your minerals, so I created the long production cycles with batch release to tackle this issue. It feels weird at first but in the end it feels quite nice and can create additional challenges for your traffic plans in some circumstances.
The long cycles also work very well with Diamonds, another idea I had but whose origin I can't remember. You can inject it into the mines to make them more efficient. But just using an efficiency boost like high tech tools seemed lame. The bonus resource system on the other hand is very underutilized so I used that instead. I also use a fix number (+4) with each yield so diamonds have different strength, depending on the mineral.
Diamonds are supposed to be completely optional, just like industrial robots and high tech tools. This would be great for acceptance of the mod. But I don't like having a resource with just a single sink. So I also added it as an ingredient to high tech tools. It fits very well there (much better than methane anyway) and it means it remains an optional thing to pursue. However, as I was thinking about the nature of Diamond Coated Tools I couldn't help but feel that the drill must use this as an input, it fits perfectly. And it would crunch up those diamonds like cornflakes, because it's so colossal after all. So in the end diamonds are not purely optional, but only become mandatory very late in the game.
I haven't really explained how small and large mines are different in this mod though, compared to vanilla IS. In my many playthroughs I noticed that there is a phase in the beginning where I am a bit short on mineral patches. This gets better later with large mines, the laser and faster infrastructure options (which allows reaching farther mineral deposits more easily). So I thought I would like this shortage to be a more prominent problem, which can be alleviated with large mines to a large degree. So their main benefit is a high yield per surface area kind of density. But they need to be more expensive, so they consume more powers and workers. In the late game as you unlock diamonds (and seismography, see below) small mines become viable again as your main extraction method, if you value worker efficiency over simplicity and compactness of design.
I also wanted to have another upgrade for mines and after some time I came up with the idea of 'finding' new resource deposits through a tech. But spawning new deposits on the map would create all kinds of problems so instead I just made existing ones bigger. Lore-wise the seismic prospector fits very well into this role. This is a late game option to get more out of your existing mineral deposits, but you will need to spend some effort to change the mines' layout.
The downside of having the prospector in the game is that now there are just too many mineral deposits. The best way to tackle this was to make the footprint of all mines bigger. This would also make the deposit scarcity in early and mid game more severe, forcing you to either pay the price of large mines or invest into upgrades for small mines (or both!). I think I managed the trade-off quite well, although the game is still too easy for my taste. Another thing to consider was the cost of the prospector. Making it work with constant resource consumption would have caused all kinds of problems, so I opted for a power-up building instead. Those are also very underutilized. But they only have a one-time payment in construction material and no running cost, which is somewhat lame in IS. In the end I decided the prospector's main cost would be building space - and made it a really huge building with a non-standard footprint. Since you are going to unlock this rather late in the game, you're also going to have some fun to integrate it into your existing city. I am looking forward to screenshots of cities where roads are cutting through the space between the sensors and the main body ;)
Another problem with the prospector is how to visualize its benefit. In the end I created a new overlay so you can see the extend of resource deposits. Placing a prospector should make it obvious how they grow in size. I found that this visualization is also really handy without any prospectors around. On a new map or when expanding my city I regular use it to scout the map for the resources I want. That made me think this should be its own mod really, but unfortunately I can't (easily) separate it from the seismic prospector, and I can't separate the prospector from this mod either because of all the balancing interdependencies :(
Sand mines don't need resource deposits so they needed special treatment as well. I went with the same building space cost for those and made them very big. Since there would be little benefit to use a large sand mind over a small one with all the changes above, I made the big one only slightly bigger and gave it a sizeable production advantage over the small one and less extra cost in power and workers. Unfortunately this required me to create new models, which was a lot of work and the result is not quite satisfying yet. I also made new models for the sulfur mines because they have different footprints than all the remaining mines and because I think it's lame that all mines look the same. But then I ran out of ideas so all metal ore mines remain the same (for now). I first made both sand mines, then both sulfur mines, then the diamond synthesizer and the seismic prospector. I think the progress I made as I was learning how to create models is quite visible. I hope I won't forget all of this stuff before my next project!
If you look closely at the loading screen then you can see a truck on the right lane in the foreground carrying gold-colored ore into the city. I always wondered why they have so many in-game models in that picture but that truck doesn't exist. It fits so perfectly for all the ore resources! So I made it and added it as part of this mod, because it fits thematically to the entire package. But then I quickly realized that this model doesn't work well with the return trip option. One day I'll make a separate ore truck for the return trip...