Mining Drill

The mining drill is the standard tool for mining. It runs on a battery cell in its slot and, according to the game data, draws 30 W while drilling and 1 W when idle.

Worked example: the game calculates in ticks of 0.5 s, so "30 W" means 30 J per tick – 31 J while drilling, together with the idle draw. An Battery Cell (Small) with 36,000 J therefore lasts about 1,160 ticks, i.e. just under 10 minutes of pure drilling. With an Battery Cell (Large) (288,000 J) it is about 77 minutes. Merely switched on without drilling, the small cell lasts 5 hours.

It has two modes: Default (0) for normal mining and Flatten (1), which by its name is meant for levelling terrain. You can also switch it through logic, as the drill knows Mode, On, Activate and Power.

This is how to read the mining values: every block of terrain has a density from 0 to 1. One stroke of the drill takes 0.2 of it from a block and lasts 0.11 s, times the mining factor of the vein – iron 1, gold and silver 5. A block of an ore vein releases its ore as soon as it drops below half density. A full iron block therefore needs three strokes, about 0.33 s, a gold block about 1.7 s. Below height 0, the bedrock, nothing can be mined.

The Pickaxe takes 0.5 per stroke but needs 0.5 s for it – two strokes for a full iron block, so 1 s. The Mining Drill (Heavy) from the tier 2 tool manufactory manages 0.4 per stroke in 0.05 s, but draws 150 W. According to the game data the Mk II mining drill has the same mining and power values as this one.

It is printed in the tool manufactory from iron 3 and copper 2. It fits into the tool slots of the Mining Belt. More in Mining: finding and extracting ore.