Regarding SC miners, I have some questions.
Firstly, what is a good cart setup (modules and configurations)?
I definitely see railer, drill, torch, liquid detector and chests being part of the mix, but what about bridge maker?
What I recommend for mining is a Standard Hull with:
- Coal engine
- Basic Drill
-Torch Placer
- Large Railer
- Bridge Builder
- Top Chest
- 3x Internal Storage
- Liquid Sensors
- Height Controller
That should fill up the entire hull with only 2 point to spare, I think. Going for any other drill doesn't look like it's worth it to me, the Advanced Drill is on the edge of "cost vs usefulness". I think it's better to make 2-3 of these carts than 1 super expensive cart.
Though I have to say the "Chunk Loader" module is quite attractive as at some point your carts will be going out of the area. I would probably swap the Height Controller for the Chunk Loader, if that fits. Otherwise I would need an Advanced Hull which is of course a lot more resource intensive.
Can we link other carts to it to increase the storage, or take care of the other business (like placing the torches, or loading the chunks)?
As far as I know, no. But I have to admit I never tried making a train with carts from Steve's Carts or just having multiple following each other. Though no doubt it could cause "traffic jams" if the carts aren't linked in any way.
Can you use wooden rails? If so, what are the downsides for doing it?
SC can't place Wooden Rails, but they can traverse them without issues (at least I've seen 0 adverse effects from using Wooden Rails). So what I do is I replace whatever my SC lay and I plan to make a "Track Relayer Cart" from Railcraft to replace the regular Tracks with Wooden Tracks.
I ask, because I can't see where the "0 maintenance" is coming from, when you need to supply fuel and rails, at least, and maybe torches.
Track isn't all that hard to produce, it requires Wood, Creosote and (pretty much) a metal of choice. For the Creosote you can burn wood into Charcoal and use that Charcoal to fuel your SC and make Torches. Also make sure to give your cart a good bridge material (no wood), otherwise it might bridge over a lava pool and then get stuck when the bridge it made burns up.
I think SC can be fully automated, but it will take quite a bit of work. But they're best early in the game when you have time to follow them and dig out any valuables they leave in the walls/floors/ceilings.
I can see the carts being a real way to mine at specific heights, but I can't figure out how to do it efficiently.
Well early on you just let it dig a tunnel for you and you pick up anything it doesn't take. Later on efficiency will be a (nearly) unsolvable issue because you can't really make the carts dig a pattern or something.
Even though I think full automation is possible, late game there are far better options and I can't really recommend SC at that point. SC just has too many issues to be useful late game and few enough that they're decently useful early game.
I'm pretty close to completion. It's been fun, when I'm done I'll let all you experienced LUAphiles dig through it and rip it to shreds XD