Is anyone using Steve's Carts 2 for automatic mining?

[KirinDave]

Steve's Carts 2. You see a ton of people using the farming and treefarming carts, and they work really well. But I'm curious if anyone has actually managed to work out how to make the mining carts profitable? Because they seem very expensive and require iron resources just to move forward. And you can imagine that it takes a fairly sophisticated multi-cart railcraft+sc2+rp2-deployer system to send carts down, derail, reload, redirect and rerail in a new direction.

SC2 is such a good mod and I'd really love to see more awesome alternatives to the quarry. The arcane bore has been working out great for me so far, and I'm hoping my next project can use something besides a quarry as a mid-level resource miner while I work my way up to the arcane bore.

Any thoughts? Proofs of concept? Demos?

 

[Saice]

I've thought about it.

But it would require a large investment in SC2 to get to the level to make a decent auto mining cart and all the rails it would need. And that would be really the only thing I would use it for. So while I think about it I never realy get around to it. Becusae I enjoy caving to much on my own.

 

[Symmetryc]

By the time you get to the Galgadorian Drill you're already god so why would you even need a quarry? And I don't see how you would even make this remotely profittable. XD.

 

[KirinDave]

But it would require a large investment in SC2 to get to the level to make a decent auto mining cart and all the rails it would need.

Yeah, the rail cost is what worries me the most. The cart itself wouldn't be so expensive because you just don't need the max-level drill to mine decently; it's the ongoing cost of making rails and how fuel-hungry it'll be. It'd have to be crazy good at what it does to justify that cost.

 

[Symmetryc]

Yeah, the rail cost is what worries me the most. The cart itself wouldn't be so expensive because you just don't need the max-level drill to mine decently; it's the ongoing cost of making rails and how fuel-hungry it'll be. It'd have to be crazy good at what it does to justify that cost.

Exactly, there is no way you can justify the costs needed not only to make the thing, but also to fuel it, keep it on the right track, etc. I just don't see the point :/.

 

[KirinDave]

Exactly, there is no way you can justify the costs needed not only to make the thing,

The carts themselves are almost too cheap for what they do. My other carts could be twice as expensive and still be worth the cost.

 

[Symmetryc]

The carts themselves are almost too cheap for what they do. My other carts could be twice as expensive and still be worth the cost.

Sorry missed the bit about using a non-Galgadorian Drill, but still, I haven't messed with Steve's carts too much aside from the generic farms and such, but wouldn't it take a really long time?

 

[adjl]

Could always use a T5 Enderman grinder and a minium stone to generate iron in large quantities to keep it supplied with rails (one minium stone would be able to transmute ~20,000 rails' worth of iron, so that cost would be pretty negligible). That's not exactly an early-game solution (really only viable either after beating the Ender Dragon), and it's not gonna be something that people who don't like EE will be happy with, but it's a thought. Otherwise, I don't see it bringing back enough iron to really be satisfactory after taking out what's needed for new rails.

Although, thinking about it, you might be able to rig something up with turtles and a derailer cart, effectively moving the cargo manager along with the mining cart (presumably feeding an ender chest or item tesseract), while the derailer cart follows behind and dumps the rails back into the manager. That would get awfully complicated, though (not to mention going through a ridiculous amount of coal/charcoal), and at that point you might as well just use mining turtles. It might also be possible to rig up an RP2 frame structure that would do a similar thing, but I see that being complicated as well. I dunno. Just some thoughts.

 

[Milaha]

I tried using them, but the combination of only mining at one level, as well as the logistics of having it return to drop off, then manually set it up on a new path was just more trouble than it was worth imho. The farming and forestry carts are quite nice though, very low maintenance and pretty flexible. Though next build I just might go with golems, even easier and has a bit more of a cool factor (plus more flexibility for mod crops like flax.)

 

[KirinDave]

I'm just gonna spitball this...

So let's imagine for a moment we have some way of laying tracks in different directions (or at least signaling you that you should come do that). I don't know how to solve that short of computercraft, but...

You could easily build out say, 128 rails and then lay a large track circle and have the mining cart run those 2 stacks out in a branch-mining-like setup. You could use a Module Toggler[/i] in conjunction with a few [url=http://stevescarts2.wikispaces.com/Detector+Manager]Detector managers to reclaim the rails with one omni-cart.

It'd look like this:

1. The cart goes down the first branch it finds, and begins railing. It will eventually run out of rail.
2. The cart returns its cargo, taps 1/3 of the found coal for fuel (or perhaps an on-site coke oven?), then resumes. The module toggler now turns on a derailer and disables the railer (the two cannot act at the same time).
3. The mining cart now derails and reclaims the 128 rails up to the minehead.
4. Somehow the cart is rerouted...

Come to think of it, module togglers on multiple junctions might be able to handle that rerouting by just turning off the derailer at the right point.[/url]

 

[netmc]

In case you weren't aware, the latest version of railcraft has doubled the amount of rails created. So, the high rail cost should be quite a bit less of a concern.

 

[arkangyl]

The SC mining carts may be expensive, but they're anything but slow. The Galgadorian is the fastest mining device in the game. It mines a 9x9 tunnel at a rate of 20bps. The Hardened Drill is slower, but more reasonably priced. It mines around 3-4bps on average, in a 5x5. The Basic Drill, which only requires three diamonds and three Iron Ingots, mines a 5x5 at around 1-2bps. The challenge with a SC mining system is in its linearity. It requires a lot of effort to mine in something other than a straight line. Albeit, with the Hardened, or Galgadorian, you don't really need to care. Sending a track remover in after it, and restarting it in a different direction is probably around as time consuming as setting up a quarry.

 

[adjl]

The SC mining carts may be expensive, but they're anything but slow. The Galgadorian is the fastest mining device in the game. It mines a 9x9 tunnel at a rate of 20bps.

Fastest single device, perhaps, but you can potentially make a RP2 frame bore as large as 15*10 without running into issues with the number of frames you're moving (caps at 200 if you don't alter the config setting, if memory serves, which would make 18*10 pretty feasible as well, since the machinery won't take more than 20 extra frames to set up), which will advance every 2-3 seconds (for 50-75 bps, discounting the occasional missed timer tick), can feed directly into a sorting system rather than needing to come back and dump stuff (enderchests or tesseracts), and requires only a battery exchanger (made easy with enderchests or tesseracts) to keep running. And also doesn't require like three stacks of diamonds to make (though 150 block breakers will take nearly ten stacks of iron, but you can easily scale it down to match what you have available).

The galgadorian mining cart is cool and all, but there really are better options available, and by the time you have the necessary resources available, it probably won't be all that necessary anymore (or you could have spent those resources on 15 quarries and probably gotten a better return on your investment).

 

[Bibble]

The SC mining carts may be expensive, but they're anything but slow. The Galgadorian is the fastest mining device in the game. It mines a 9x9 tunnel at a rate of 20bps. The Hardened Drill is slower, but more reasonably priced. It mines around 3-4bps on average, in a 5x5. The Basic Drill, which only requires three diamonds and three Iron Ingots, mines a 5x5 at around 1-2bps. The challenge with a SC mining system is in its linearity. It requires a lot of effort to mine in something other than a straight line. Albeit, with the Hardened, or Galgadorian, you don't really need to care. Sending a track remover in after it, and restarting it in a different direction is probably around as time consuming as setting up a quarry.

The issue is not only with the actual mining speed, but also with the delivery speed. If you have a massive mining cart, each time it needs to unload it's materials, it'll be further away, increasing the round-trip time. Not to mention it getting further and further away.

I'd probably say that the drills would be more use if you are wanting to make a tunnel to connect to remote places, and need a tunnel to do it. The disadvantages for auto mining just seem mush greater than the advantages, in comparison to other methods available.

 

[Lambert2191]

I see SC Mining Carts as ways to create easy tunnels between areas, but for mining for actual materials? Nah, RP would be faster.

 

[Sphinx2k]

I would like to but they are so "bad" compared to the other automatic mining systems that i did not.
When i build one it would be for pure fun.

But this is not a real problem. Imagine you only play with SC and not the other mods then it would be finde i think.

I am also dreaming about a play through where i only use carts for moving items around and as sorting system.

 

[Revemohl]

The one thing that would make this worth it, in my opinion, would be some kind of Ender Chest storage module, simply because of what Bibble said. Sure, I could wait an hour for my chunk loader module to be added, but in the end the cart would have to go back to the starting point every time it got full.
I doubt that module would be any less expensive than the Galgadorian Drill, though, seeing how it completely removes the point of having a Cargo Manager.
Or maybe some kind of movable CM?

 

[Bibble]

The one thing that would make this worth it, in my opinion, would be some kind of Ender Chest storage module, simply because of what Bibble said. Sure, I could wait an hour for my chunk loader module to be added, but in the end the cart would have to go back to the starting point every time it got full.
I doubt that module would be any less expensive than the Galgadorian Drill, though, seeing how it completely removes the point of having a Cargo Manager.
Or maybe some kind of movable CM?

Could possibly have some manner of portal device (obviously requires nether star) which would allow an instantaneous travel back to a cargo manager. Obviously, it would be incompatible with seats and the like, but it would make the automation of worker/builder carts much better.

 

[arkangyl]

The one thing that would make this worth it, in my opinion, would be some kind of Ender Chest storage module, simply because of what Bibble said. Sure, I could wait an hour for my chunk loader module to be added, but in the end the cart would have to go back to the starting point every time it got full.
I doubt that module would be any less expensive than the Galgadorian Drill, though, seeing how it completely removes the point of having a Cargo Manager.
Or maybe some kind of movable CM?

The best trick I've seen for overcoming this is adding a seat module to the cart, riding along with it, and manually moving its inventory into an Ender Pouch connected to your processing system. This also saves on a Chunk Loader Module.

 

[Abdiel]

What's so bad about returning to a resupply/dropoff station if you're building a hands-off fully automated system? It's going to be running whether or not you're there watching it, and the carts are quite fast. I don't think the little bit of travel time lost is a big deal. And you can keep moving the manager further (manually) as you continue digging.