Best mining method?

[Buffalo_Wings_Master]

What would be the possible mining methods for a start/mid game system?
Here are the ones i am aware of:
manual (always an option)
quarry (requires a good amount of power and makes ugly holes)
tunnel bore (dont know much about it)
arcane bore (havent discovered it/dont know much about it)

What about making a mining-minecart with the cart assembler?
what parts/modules would i have to use?

 

[Bomb Bloke]

Turtles aren't bad. A stack of coal (or charcoal even) and they'll quite happily dig out a chunk for you. Slow, but they leave you free to set up tree farms or whatever.

Manual mining is much faster when it comes to getting specific resources. Setup consists of digging down to the level where your target is and then swinging away at things - or simply running through a cave system that happens to be at the right level. Caving's probably best but unfortunately nearby caves are a bit of a limited resource.

Ultimately you want a system where all forms of resource production are automated. Lava in a centrifuge is one such early method of getting some nice resources without having to look for them. Because of this, I feel the late-game mining mechanisms are probably better for quickly making a hole then actually gathering materials, but play style probably has some bearing on that opinion.

 

[Demi]

- frame-bore
- frame-ship (ugly holes again)
- turtles
- iTNT

where the turtle prolly is the most ressource-efficient and a flying frame-contraption the fastest solution

minecarts are more of a mid to late-game solution (imho) and not very efficient (both ressources and time related) compared to the rest.
anyway you'd need a drill, storage, engine, railplacer, (prolly want a torch placer), liquid something, bridgebuilder

 

[Jess887cp]

I'd recommend a turtle quarry that starts a few levels underground.

 

[ApSciLiara]

Of course, everybody disregards the arcane bore as a serious mining tool. Even though it has silk touch automining cabilities. Something that no other miner can do.

Sent from my phone using black magic

 

[Buffalo_Wings_Master]

Many people seem to be saying turtles
unfortunately my knowledge on computercraft and turtles is complete rubbish
so i dont really know what to do or if there is any code etc...

 

[Ember Quill]

If you want to make a mining cart with the cart assembler, you'll need an engine (obviously), a drill of some kind, plenty of storage, a railer, a bridge builder, and a torch placer unless you don't mind lots of mobs spawning in your tunnels. You could also add the cleaning module, or whatever it's called, to clean up anything that gets dropped on the ground (I know Xycraft crystals tend to get dropped when the blocks they're attached to are destroyed).

If you just need more resources in general, rather than looking for anything specific, you're probably best off with a quarry if you have the resources to both build and power it. If you don't have the resources for that yet, I'd suggest manual mining until you do. Branch mine if you're looking for specific resources.

Tunnel bores and mining carts and such are great, but if you're looking for more than one or two specific resources, you'll end up missing out on some stuff since they mine horizontally rather than vertically, so you can't, for example, find diamonds, copper, AND tin with the same tunnel bore unless it's digging out a really tall tunnel.

EDIT: As for turtles, which I totally forgot to mention, they're easy to use for simple things like digging a tunnel. As a matter of fact, you can just open up a turtle, put some fuel in the first slot, then at the prompt you type "tunnel X" where X is the length of the tunnel you want. It'll dig a tunnel as long as you told it to, three blocks wide and two tall. Great for semi-automated branch mining. It'll stop if it runs out of fuel or inventory space though.

So "tunnel 20" would dig out a 3x2x20 tunnel. It's not the fastest method, but it's pretty easy.

 

[Ako_the_Builder]

Many people seem to be saying turtles
unfortunately my knowledge on computercraft and turtles is complete rubbish
so i dont really know what to do or if there is any code etc...

That's the problem with this thread, 10 players can give you 11 answers because best is subjective.

I like quarries because they're simple to set up and you can forget about them until they need moving.

 

[Bomb Bloke]

Another in-built turtle command, which is probably much better for resource gathering, is "excavate".

Create the turtle, put it back in the grid with a diamond pickaxe to create the mining variant (other gemmed tools may work too), then place it. Open it like a chest to view its inventory and give it commands. Escape closes it.

Start out with the command "label set turtlename", where turtlename is whatever you want to call it. Naming your turtle ensures that it'll remember certain things if you pickaxe it and later place it somewhere else (like its fuel level, for starters).

Put a stack of coal/charcoal in its inventory and type in the command "refuel all". Alternatively, if you've got EU to spare (it doesn't need all that much, 10k is fine) build a charge station and place the turtle next to that a while.

Put the turtle somewhere you want to mine from and place a chest directly behind it. Give it the command "excavate x", where x is width/length of the hole you want it to dig.

It'll go to bedrock or until it runs out of fuel, whatever happens first. Whenever it fills its inventory it'll return to the chest and dump off its load before going back down to continue digging. It doesn't care about silly things like mobs, lava, or gravity, but you'll have to manually collect and restart it if its chunk happens to unload - keep this in mind before telling it to dig out a 32x32 area or something larger then you've got time to wait for in a sitting. Either that or set up a chunk loader.

You'll probably want to spend some resources on upgrading its storage chest. Wood is easy enough to acquire but it'll fill it very quickly. For larger digs, even a diamond chest will require some watching to prevent overflow.

Again, turtles are slow, but you can have more then one digging at once (gathered around the same chest if you like) and they really do cost very little for what they do. The space they clear for you is almost as valuable as the resources they bring up.

 

[Buffalo_Wings_Master]

Another in-built turtle command, which is probably much better for resource gathering, is "excavate".

Create the turtle, put it back in the grid with a diamond pickaxe to create the mining variant (other gemmed tools may work too), then place it. Open it like a chest to view its inventory and give it commands. Escape closes it.

Start out with the command "label set turtlename", where turtlename is whatever you want to call it. Naming your turtle ensures that it'll remember certain things if you pickaxe it and later place it somewhere else (like its fuel level, for starters).

Put a stack of coal/charcoal in its inventory and type in the command "refuel all". Alternatively, if you've got EU to spare (it doesn't need all that much, 10k is fine) build a charge station and place the turtle next to that a while.

Put the turtle somewhere you want to mine from and place a chest directly behind it. Give it the command "excavate x", where x is width/length of the hole you want it to dig.

It'll go to bedrock or until it runs out of fuel, whatever happens first. Whenever it fills its inventory it'll return to the chest and dump off its load before going back down to continue digging. It doesn't care about silly things like mobs, lava, or gravity, but you'll have to manually collect and restart it if its chunk happens to unload - keep this in mind before telling it to dig out a 32x32 area or something larger then you've got time to wait for in a sitting. Either that or set up a chunk loader.

You'll probably want to spend some resources on upgrading its storage chest. Wood is easy enough to acquire but it'll fill it very quickly. For larger digs, even a diamond chest will require some watching to prevent overflow.

Again, turtles are slow, but you can have more then one digging at once (gathered around the same chest if you like) and they really do cost very little for what they do. The space they clear for you is almost as valuable as the resources they bring up.

Thanks for this very helpful information! What i will probably do is use turtles until i have resources to build a efficient quarry (need more resources for the power supply of the quarry)

 

[dlord]

Another in-built turtle command, which is probably much better for resource gathering, is "excavate".

Create the turtle, put it back in the grid with a diamond pickaxe to create the mining variant (other gemmed tools may work too), then place it. Open it like a chest to view its inventory and give it commands. Escape closes it.

Start out with the command "label set turtlename", where turtlename is whatever you want to call it. Naming your turtle ensures that it'll remember certain things if you pickaxe it and later place it somewhere else (like its fuel level, for starters).

Put a stack of coal/charcoal in its inventory and type in the command "refuel all". Alternatively, if you've got EU to spare (it doesn't need all that much, 10k is fine) build a charge station and place the turtle next to that a while.

Put the turtle somewhere you want to mine from and place a chest directly behind it. Give it the command "excavate x", where x is width/length of the hole you want it to dig.

It'll go to bedrock or until it runs out of fuel, whatever happens first. Whenever it fills its inventory it'll return to the chest and dump off its load before going back down to continue digging. It doesn't care about silly things like mobs, lava, or gravity, but you'll have to manually collect and restart it if its chunk happens to unload - keep this in mind before telling it to dig out a 32x32 area or something larger then you've got time to wait for in a sitting. Either that or set up a chunk loader.

You'll probably want to spend some resources on upgrading its storage chest. Wood is easy enough to acquire but it'll fill it very quickly. For larger digs, even a diamond chest will require some watching to prevent overflow.

Again, turtles are slow, but you can have more then one digging at once (gathered around the same chest if you like) and they really do cost very little for what they do. The space they clear for you is almost as valuable as the resources they bring up.

I wish I knew about this command sooner. I had to write my own from scratch with the exact same functionality. ~_~

 

[Virgoddess]

Manual all the way

 

[hotblack desiato]

regarding cost effectiveness and environmental effects, the IC2 miner is an option.

set up a bunch of these, supply them with energy and extract the goods from adjactant chests. and when they are done, fill them up with cobblestone or smoothstone from an igneous extruder, and the world looks very friendly again. it's just completely drained...

 

[Everlast]

Branch mining with 3 or 4 turtles is not only ridiculously cheap (you can make their pickaxes out of gemstones), but also extremely efficient.

Here's a very good script, if you don't feel like writing your own: http://www.computercraft.info/forums2/index.php?/topic/6766-mlg-mining-circular-branch-mining/

 

[khorozm]

Branch mining with 3 or 4 turtles is not only ridiculously cheap (you can make their pickaxes out of gemstones), but also extremely efficient.

Here's a very good script, if you don't feel like writing your own: http://www.computercraft.info/forums2/index.php?/topic/6766-mlg-mining-circular-branch-mining/

i actually want the same program, but a windmill branch version.
i don't really like the circular branch mining

 

[Everlast]

i actually want the same program, but a windmill branch version.
i don't really like the circular branch mining

Advantages/disadvantages?

 

[netmc]

I personally prefer the manual mining method with a silk-touch pick and a fortune III pick, along with a upgraded mining and digger backpack. If you also make one of the picks a pickaxe of the core with the repair enchant, you can use it extensively to show you nearby areas of interest. It searches in a 3x3 area, and can search in any direction including down. I'm not sure what the distance range is, but it is quite far. (16 or so blocks?) You can really exhaust an area of good ores. Once a few more ores have aspects tied to them, it will be much easier to search for other items such as uranium.

Diamonds show up as 10 or 12 crystal (can't remember)
RP2/GT gems are 8 crystal
gold and iron are 6 metal
silver, lead, copper, tin are 5 metal
nikolite and redstone show up as 2 (gear)
xycraft ores show up as 2-3 of their main aspect.
Coal shows up as 2 "power". (the one that looks like a fish)

So since the range is so great with a pickaxe of the core, I can use a highly modified branch mining system and only excavate the areas of interest instead of "showing" every block.

For automated methods, I prefer the IC2 miner myself as it doesn't leave large holes in the ground and also ignores the thaumcraft shards. I want those left in the ground for the aura.

 

[Bigglesworth]

People judging turtles by their default scripts 100% miss the damn point of turtles.

http://www.computercraft.info/forums2/index.php?/topic/7675-advanced-mining-turtle-ore-quarry/ x 1 turtle faster fully powered BC quarry at getting low level mats than anything else.
http://www.computercraft.info/forums2/index.php?/topic/7675-advanced-mining-turtle-ore-quarry/ x 4 turtles faster fully powered BC quarry. Period.

Turtles are only as good as you make them.

 

[Mash]

If you don't mind ripping off someone's code, go with turtles. They're probably better than 95 percent of the other alternatives.

Now, I on the other hand never use anything that I can't make myself. For that, I go with a BC quarry. The BC quarry is fast enough to pull in materials much faster than I use them, and doesn't require any specific knowledge of a programming language.

What more would I need? This isn't by any means the BEST mining method, but it is a perfectly viable one.

 

[Bigglesworth]

That's the problem with this thread, 10 players can give you 11 answers because best is subjective.

I like quarries because they're simple to set up and you can forget about them until they need moving.

Not that subjective. You either want it done fast or you want it done in some super awesome funtime way. Fast = 4 turtles using the proper script. Fun is whatever you like and you wouldn't be asking a question like 'what is best'. Best in terms of speed has been stated.[DOUBLEPOST=1367869639][/DOUBLEPOST]

If you don't mind ripping off someone's code, go with turtles.

Ripping off? You mean the code they post for the purpose of other people to use? Wouldn't that mean we are 'ripping off' mode code to play FTB in the first place? lol