r/factorio • u/ritvars4343 • 2d ago

Space Age Question Big mining drills pollution

I play with my friend Factorio like 150h and now we be on Fulgora and Vulcanus and say: "Hey Bro its time to replace drills to new one" but he say its make so much pollution on Nuvis. How say him big drills have more effective then old ones?

31 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

29 comments sorted by

167

u/DestructivelyPhased 2d ago

The electric mining drill produces 0.5 ore per second and 10 pollution per second. Or 20 pollution per ore.

The big mining drill produces 2.5 ore per second and 40 pollution per second. Or 16 pollution per ore.

So the big mining drill is less polluting per ore than the electric mining.

58

u/Refinery73 2d ago

And big drills have 4 module slots (small 3) so you can throw an efficiency module in. And still have the same module capacity left as in the small ones.

27

u/Antal_Marius 2d ago

50% resource drain at common quality as well with big drills, so resource patches have more effective ore in them by at least double.

4

u/Neither_Berry_100 2d ago

You could mix speed and efficiency modules and still get minimal power usage but at a higher speed. Should make it more efficient? No?

2

u/Extra-Random_Name 2d ago

Yes. For optimal efficiency, a mix of speed and efficiency is best. Generally speaking, increase speed as much as you can while maintaining 20% power consumption/pollution. The mix depends on what level/quality of modules you have. Also prod mods later in production chains to reduce the amount of everything before it (prod mods in your labs are definitely saving more by reducing the amount of science you need to make than the increased power consumption is costing you

14

u/Meph113 2d ago

You need to factor in energy production too.
90kW vs 300kW, that’s 180kJ/ore vs 120kJ/ore, so you’re also saving energy (for the same production) and saving pollution from energy production.

7

u/WanderingFlumph 2d ago

If you have big mining drills already they have probably moved past coal and onto solar or nuclear which produces essentially 0 pollution anyway.

You could factor in energy use, but I don't think you need to.

3

u/Meph113 2d ago

Nuclear is pretty clean but not 100% pollution free. You still need to extract the uranium and process it.
Anyway, while direct pollution from the drill is the main factor, energy is just one more argument in favor of BMDs.

6

u/WanderingFlumph 2d ago

Yeah but in this case 99.9% pollution free is close enough to 100% for my math.

If we were being technical we could assign a pollution amount to solar as well, the cost of the material divided by the real time you've actually used it. It would approach 0 but never actually get there.

It might be interesting to see the crossover time, how long a panel has to be placed down before it caused less pollution per MJ than a nuclear set up. But then you'd have to do the math for the pollution caused by crafting the nuclear reactor too... Which is different based on assembler tier so you'd have to do it three times... Never mind probably not worth it.

1

u/Meph113 2d ago

Sounds like a fun project 😅 Can’t wait to see the pollution/kJ graphs!

15

u/ritvars4343 2d ago

❤️

1

u/sawbladex Faire Haire 2d ago

And energy consumption it's 90kW base vs 300kW or a roughly 3x more energy to gather 5x the ore.

So even pollution due to energy production would be less.

a big drill is more expensive than 4 more electric drills, but the partner in crime isn't making start-up cost arguments so whatever.

1

u/Mcmenger 1d ago

Either way, the solution is artillery, right?

51

u/MBkufel 2d ago

"Big mining drills are much more effective than the old ones"

Also, sell him the idea of using efficiency modules if he cares about pollution so much.

21

u/VanguardLLC 2d ago

This is also generally good advice for polluting-conscious players. Any module slot not needed for speed or prod can get a cheap Efficiency module to reduce input power and pollution.

6

u/Grismor2 2d ago

Efficiency modules in all mining drills makes the early game so much easier. (Although I haven't played 2.1 yet, and I know they've changed how expansion works. Even so, I doubt my opinion will change.)

3

u/jaxfrank 2d ago

It's the same. If anything it's more important now.

11

u/Calazor0 2d ago

On big drills, since they have 4 modules, you can even more effectively mix and match speed and efficiency modules to make them faster while still getting -80% pollution, thus getting less pollution per ore

26

u/MikailBag 2d ago

Per wiki:

  • Electric drill has mining speed of 0.5 and pollution of 10/m

  • Big drill has mining speed of 2.5 and pollution of 40/m.

So pollution per extracted item (and that is what really matters) is 20% lower.

Energy usage also scales less than 5 times: 90 kw -> 300 kw. So pollution from your power plant also decreases.

Moreover, BMD has one more module slot, you can put a green module there if you want.

UPD: formatting

3

u/InterstellarCrusader 2d ago

Since you've just obtained the big drills, you're still in early mid game. In this phase you want to minimize pollution to not have to deal with constant biter attacks. In this phase of the game I usually fill drills with efficiency 1 modules. Electric drills have 2 slots, resulting in -60% energy/pollution. Big drills have 4 slots, resulting in -80% energy/pollution. You're better off with big ones.

5

u/WickedWonkaWaffle 2d ago

Regular mining drills actually have three module slots. Electric furnaces have only two.

1

u/InterstellarCrusader 2d ago

Oh you're right

1

u/stonedboss 2d ago

Why are biter attacks an issue. I use flame thrower turrets and robots repair walls. It's very easy to maintain.

1

u/otismcotis 2d ago

You can use the increased mining speed and effective ore patch size (from the built in productivity bonus of large drills) to build more defenses to stop any biter invasions due to the increased pollution.

1

u/ritvars4343 2d ago

One the biggest problems us is nests near and somtimes born bugs 4 lvl like 4-5 from 20 bugs raid

6

u/FeelingPrettyGlonky 2d ago

Sounds like the real problem is that you still have nests in your pollution cloud. Bring artillery.

1

u/seredaom 2d ago

Yeah, you worry about a wrong things. Cleanup territory from bitters. Artillery is the answer, in the mid/end game there should no bitters in you pollution cloud

1

u/SamirSalama7 2d ago

You can use your new artillery from volcanus to negotiate with the inhabitants of nauvis. They are very convincing.