Astro Miner
Though it has been considered or is in development for a future version of Galacticraft 4. Text subject to change.
The Astro Miner is a new vehicle added in Galacticraft 3.0.11. Currently (in 3.0.11 versions) this is in beta and so it is a Creative-only item, there is no crafting recipe or Schematic. It is planned that the schematic for it will be a treasure item in the Asteroids dimension.
The Astro Miner is an automatic mining vehicle which moves around, making tunnels and mining up everything it finds, and brings it all back to a base station where it docks. It is not player-ridable so do not try and climb inside it!
The Astro Miner is the ultimate automatic mining system in Minecraft!
It has certain similarities with:
- a Railcraft Tunnel Bore - but it does not only move in straight lines, and it returns to its base and unloads itself
- a ComputerCraft Mining Turtle - but it is considerably more powerful and you do not need to program it!
- a Buildcraft Quarry - but it is fully mobile, and also lag-free.
Additional advantages are that it looks awesome, and it works in space: it is optimised for mining asteroids!
Contents
Minable blocks
The Astro Miner cannot mine bedrock or lava source blocks or any other liquid. It can mine obsidian. When mining, it always mines the ore block not the drop, similar to a pickaxe with Silk Touch.
The Astro Miner by design will not mine certain blocks which are normally only found in player bases or underground dungeons:
- chests
- any type of machinery (from any mod)
- rails
- sign
- beacon
- farmland
- growing crops
- mob spawner
- mossy cobblestone, stone brick or End Portal blocks.
Examples of "machinery" in the vanilla game are: piston, furnace, redstone wire, hopper, dispenser, comparator, noteblock.
It is likely that it will not mine GregTech ores, but this has not yet been fully tested.
Usage
To see the functional beta preview of the Astro Miner in Galacticraft version 3.0.11.318 or later:
- In Creative mode (or NEI) grab yourself:
- 8 Astro Miner Base blocks (if your game language is not English, please search for "minerbase")
- an Astro Miner
- Place down the 8 Astro Miner Base blocks in a 2 x 2 x 2 cube - when correctly placed, it should transform into an industrial looking dock. At this point make sure the opening in the dock it is facing outwards from your base, you don't want your precious base to get all chewed up. You can wrench the dock to rotate it.
- When you are ready, right click the Astro Miner Base with the Astro Miner item to place an Astro Miner (you cannot wrench the base any more after an Astro Miner has been placed in it)
- Connect power to the Astro Miner Base, let it power up for a few seconds, and enjoy!
You will be warned in chat if you cannot place the Astro Miner - for example because the Astro Miner Base already has an Astro Miner, or because there is not enough clear space to place it (because a non-minable block, such as chests or wiring or machinery, is present). The release version of this in Galacticraft 3.0.12 will also have a server-set limit on the number of Astro Miners a player can have in the game, default 4.
If you need to stop the Astro Miner, just hit it to break it, like hitting a rocket.
To get the blocks it has mined:
- breaking the Astro Miner will drop any blocks it currently contains, but is not the best plan because then it will forget its route
- blocks can be extracted from the Astro Miner Base using hoppers (placed beneath it) or any type of item pipe or duct from other mods
- breaking the Astro Miner Base will drop any blocks it currently contains.
Warnings
- Use at your own risk - this will destroy blocks (but only in the direction the Astro Miner Base is facing)
- This is a beta preview, there may be minor bugs - especially if you do challenging things with it
- The Astro Miner has not been tested with other mods - it should be OK with most things though. The Astro Miner will not break any block (from any mod) which looks like machinery or chests
Tips
- On servers, the Astro Miner will operate only while the player who owns it is online - if the player logs out or is kicked from the server, the Astro Miner will immediately stop and go into a dormant state, with its engines and scanning beams off. This is to prevent it from being overpowered and mining up the whole map for an offline player.
- An Astro Miner will only move and operate if the chunk it is in is loaded and entities are active in that chunk. It is the same behaviour for a minecart in the vanilla game and the machines in most other mods. To be active will normally require it to be 2 chunks inside the chunk loading radius, for example if the chunk loading radius is 8 chunks (128 blocks) then the Astro Miner would need to be maximum 6 chunks (96 blocks) from the nearest player to continue operating.
- If the Astro Miner finds something it cannot or will not mine, then it will turn around and go back to its base. If it is already en route to its base when obstructed, then it will stop where it is (and you will need to go and find it and break it).
- For this reason, currently it does not function best at very deep levels underground (below y = 15) as it will keep on encountering bedrock and returning to base
- If you break the Astro Miner Base after it was already linked with an Astro Miner, the Astro Miner will come back to the base location and stop there until the player breaks it too
- The Astro Miner will respect Grief Prevention / WorldGuard type plugins, so that it should be impossible for it to mine in another player's protected land. (We would appreciate it if server owners and modpack makers would now thoroughly test that in the 3.0.11.318 beta version of this.)
Known issues
(Do not report / bug the developers about these!)
- These items are Creative mode only and there is no recipe or schematic, for now
- There is no GUI yet - currently the only way to get items out of the Astro Miner Base is to use hoppers or item pipes
- The mining is not yet smart - currently it will go out and start mining in a random spot chosen some distance out from, and below, its base.
- There is currently no sound.
Future plans
- The look of the Astro Miner and the scanning beam effects are currently a beta only, these are not the final versions
- A GUI for the Astro Miner Base will be added, with a "return home" button to call the Astro Miner home
- There will be special mining AI for the Asteroids dimension - it will know how to go find the asteroids and mine out only their cores. (This has been in planning for 6 months or more! All this time your Galacticraft world has been carefully saving a list of where the asteroids are, ready for this day!)
Future upgrades
In a future Galacticraft version (maybe not until Galacticraft 4) there will be optional upgrades for the Astro Miner to add extra capabilities. Likely upgrades will include:
- increased range
- larger hold capacity
- faster movement, faster mining
- a chunk loader for the chunk where it is currently mining (disablable in config)
- advanced AI (pathfinding around obstacles instead of returning to base)
- mine also any valuable blocks visible on the sides of its tunnels
- fluid collection tanks
- option to ignore (or not pick up) certain blocks while mining
- possibly, gas mining for gas planets
Please do not ask when these exciting features will come, it will not be for some time!
Gallery
Astro Miner and its base.
The first image of Astro Miner and its base, tweeted by Radfast.
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