Mining - numbers

[Severous]

Ive been watching my miners carefully for a while. These are my observations.

Mining Sequence
1) Miners go into the mine building.
2) They dont go underground despite the interesting looking winch mechanism of the mine. Open pit mining only in Tropico2.
3) They leave the building and head for a surface area that has lots of iron ore (darker green the better on the iron overlay).  Not necessarily the closest area with ore.
4) They get there and briefly square their sholders.
5) They swing their pick into the ground repeatedly.
6) They stop mining and a sack appears on their sholder (where is pick?)
7) They head back to the mine building with the sack over their shoulder.
' Sometimes they stop to get their bearings. The sack of Ore disappears momentarily (pick reappears) before sack of ore reappears on the miners shoulder (pick disappears) and he continues his journey.
9) Gets back to mine and deposits ore. Ore stock in the mine increases.
10) Repeats from 2) above unless the miner is needing to eat or sleep, or has been reasigned in the meantime to another job.

Recording the time and outcome of 30 or so mining sequences with different miners and overseer combinations produced the following conclusions:
- Skills and Overseer affect speed of mining
- Colour of area mined affects amount of Ore mined.
- Unskilled miners swing their pick a little faster but with less effect
- Skill 5 miner is no more effective than a skill 4 miner ?
- An overseer in a mine with skilled miners adds nothing
- Skilled Miner is not that valuable - his skill seems to be limited by a minimum of 20 days to dig iron ore.

Skill 0 miner (+overseer) took 119 pick swings over 27 days to dig ore.  
Skill 2 miner (+overseer) took 102 pick swings over 24 days to dig ore.
Skill 3 miner (+overseer) took 93 pick swings over 22 days to dig ore.
Skill 4 miner (+overseer) took 83 pick swings over 20 days to dig ore.
Skill 5 miner (+overseer) took 83 pick swings over 20 days to dig ore.

Skill 3 miner (NO overseer) took 102 pick swings over 25 days to dig ore.
Skill 5 miner (NO overseer) took 83 pick swings over 20 days to dig ore.

Favourite observation:
The skilled miner always has the lamp in his helmet on.
- How? If its candle powered wouldnt it go out as miner bent over? No batteries in them days.
- Why ? Open cast mining, and various Tropican2 quotes "Not a cloud in the sky" and "Its always day"

All this for an industry you dont absolutly have to bother with...unless you want to test the efficiency of blast furnaces and blacksmiths.  Give me a week..or two.

[Severous]

Hi Coconut Kid

The proceedure for counting the passage of days is not very user friendly taking several key strokes to achieve.  

Create an event thats recorded in the Island Log then go look at the log. Do this at the start and end of the period of time you want to record. Subtract one from the other allowing for variable month length.

Usually I do this via using the edict prohibiting captains attacking a certain nationality.  Many other edicts will do...freeing a surplus unskilled captive is another.  Just pick one that has no adverse impact on your current game position.  Edit on 12May: renaming a ship by adding or removing a "!" from its name is another way.

I have visions of my island being strew with torn up edicts issued for the sole purpose of establishing the exact date.    IMHO game design should have had the time/date displayed when hovering the cursor over the date in the bottom right corner.

The only way I use of getting close to the exact start of day (assume its start), is to watch for the month to change/red $ symbols to appear over buildings.  Thats always my pause point for tracking monthly production levels for the various industries im tracking.

A miners trip to 'dig ore' - is one sackful.  A sackful contains a variable amount depending upon the quality of ore at the location he digs. The sack size itself does not vary. The time taken to dig this sackful varies based on miner skill and if an overseer is assigned (doesnt have to be present whipping the poor miner).  

I dont think the ore mine runs out.  Ive got a dozen or so mines running at the moment to test the possibility. My interim observation is that the lay of the land changes as each miner takes away a bit or ore. Over time a gently slopeing pit appears. This pit effect seems to be prevented from getting too severe by the presence of immovable structures (the mines) located around the edges.  I was hoping to dig a real deep pit. Maybe I can - will give it another 12 years to see what happens.

Yes you can have the overlay on whilst placing the mine.  I usually trigger the overlay by clicking on the small symbol at the top of the close up mine building window (bottom right).

I havnt tried placing a mine on top of the ore field but think its possible. I  did have a logging camp right over the top of one.  The miners then dig all around it - but cant get to the rich deposits under the building.  

Ideal mine placement suggests the mine doorway should be leading out directly to the richest ore area. This will minimize miner walking distance to/from the ore field. You dont need the road to go to the door so make sure the road touches the mine via a route that minimizes covering rich ore land (same for farms)  

Have slop and sleep nearby - all the time spent walking is time lost. Miners like farmers and woodcutters have to be on the job site itself to produce the goods.

[Severous]

Took thirten years to reach my target of 10,000 Ore.

This is what it looked like.

- 10,343 Ore has been mined

- The pit wont go any deeper

- Only one of these mines (red mark) has a skilled miner (one)

- When short of overseers I tend to remove them from the rightmost mines.

- The numbers over each mine is 'ore produced per month'.
    * Life time production divided by life time maintenance ($1per month)

The mine in the foreground had a surprising highest production rate. Maybe its the proximity to the slop and bunk house that helps as well as the mine exit facing in the right direction to the pit.

[Severous]

No... this isnt Mars the red planet.

Its the same island as the posting above with the iron overlay on and zoomed out a bit.  A before and after image.  

The iron density reduced overtime as can be seen by the lack of dark green in the second image.

Productivity was falling.  By the time I stopped playing this island i had removed 2 of the 14 mines in order to gain access to relatively rich deposits under them.   The whole iron production line had also contracted.  

Overall a very satisfying feel to it.  Nice one Frog City.  

Had I played on the steepness of the mine slopes would have got a bit more servere but not much. So no hope for those captives planning to dig there way outta here.