Advanced Mining Drone

This is an idea which came to mind while I was redesigning mining mode for Autonomous Modular Mech Companion

Incompatibilities:

None discovered or reported so far. This mod and its scripts are completely independent of those used by other mods, so it should be safe. The drone’s upgrade script only reads the stats of the player’s equipped manipulator, so it’s fully compatible with Frackin’ Universe or other mods which contain means to influence the stats of the manipulator.

Since the drone only checks for generic tags common in all modded tiles regardless of their mod origin, it should be able to detect and mine every ore out there. I personally tested it on Frackin’ Universe and Arcana planets, and it works like a charm. If something is unable to be detected and/or added to a filter list, let me know in the comments below.

Adds Advanced Mining Drone to the game, craftable at the Engineer’s Table (T2 Inventor’s Table) for:

• 10x durasteel bars
• 5x silicon boards
• 4x sticks of ram
• 2x batteries

This highly sophisticated drone will follow the player closely, unhindered by the environment. It passively scans for nearby valuable tiles, highlighting them based on whether they’re in the background or foreground. It will also approach and mine the tile, adding the drops directly to the player’s inventory.

The drone will grow in capabilities as the player upgrades their manipulator tool. Its max distance from player, detection range, tile damage, hits per second, and chained tile stats are influenced purely by it.

A user interface can be accessed with the special function of Advanced Mining Drone (shift + left click), allowing you to adjust its stats up to the maximum values based on the player’s equipped matter manipulator, change the drone skin (right now, there’s two options, either the drone or gyrocopter), and modify color configuration options for both the skin and light source (the light source can also be disabled if necessary). There’s also an option to toggle the drone’s passive sound loops if you find them to be too annoying or distracting.

There’s a material filters button which will open up a secondary UI, allowing you to precisely focus on specific ore / material / block types. To use it, place a valid sample inside the inventory slot at the top. It will add the entry to your active filters list, making the drone only detect and highlight that specific item. You can add multiple items to the active list or exclude items from being detected. If you don’t want to use the filter, you can move it to the inactive filters pane to store for later use. The stored inactive filters can also be deleted. Filters are the only way for the drone to collect blocks, which are ignored in its default detection logic.

Detection range bonuses for the drone are on a diminishing returns curve formula, starting at a range of 20 tiles and hard capping at 48 to avoid tanking the performance of your game. A detection range of 40 can be achieved with the master manipulator from Frackin’ Universe with maxed optics. I highly recommend reducing the detection radius if you’re using a slower CPU, however. I’ve optimized the performance, but I haven’t tested it on slower machines.

The advanced menu can be accessed just below filters, allowing you to adjust the maximum number of highlighted tiles, idle scan interval, and active scan interval. By default, these values are 40, 1, and 1.25 respectively, but they can be increased or lowered as needed.

Only one scan can be performed at a time by the drone, and it must complete the current scan before issuing another no matter the interval settings. If you specify 0 in the interval input boxes, it only means there’s no wait after a scan has been completed. You don’t have to worry about it crashing the game with infinite scans or the like.

The max distance stat caps out at 130 tiles with a fully upgraded master manipulator from Frackin’ Universe, but I recommend adjusting this value down to 35-45 if you’re not running Openstarbound since the drone will cease to function if it wanders too far outside the viewable area while seeking valuables. There’s nothing that can be done about this since the game handles itself in chunks. In Openstarbound, you will have to zoom all the way out to get the full use out of the max distance.

Introduced in version 1.5, there is now an upgrade chip slot beneath the filter and advanced buttons. Four new upgrade chips were introduced, craftable at the Architect’s Table. You’ll have a choice of the following:

• Enhanced Detection Chip: +50% max detection radius / +50 maximum highlights
• Enhanced Laser Optics Chip: 25% extra tile damage + mining speed
• Enhanced Agility Chip: 50% extra drone movement speed while it’s in active mode
• Enhanced Dispersion Chip: +3 chaining radius / +50% max chained tiles (making it mine larger veins faster).

Only one chip can be used at a time, but they can be swapped out on the fly.

These upgrade chips can be crafted at the Architect’s Table (T3 Inventor’s Table) for:

• 5x Solarium Stars
• 3x Silicon Boards
• 2x Sticks of Ram
• 1x Battery

The behavior of the drone is as follows:

1. Passively follow the player, detecting nearby tiles deemed valuable.

2. If a detected tile is nearby, it highlights it for the player. Foreground tiles have a red box, background tiles have a blue box, and the drone’s current target has a green box.

3. If the detected valuable is within the "max distance" stat, it will break away from orbit around the player and move to a range of 2 tiles from the detected tile.

4. It will the mine the tile with the same stats as the player’s manipulator. It will also chain additional nearby valuable tiles within a span of 5 tiles from the primary target based on the radius of the player’s equipped tool.

5. Once it has mined the tile(s) and automatically transferred the drops to the player’s inventory, it will move on to the next valuable tile based on proximity.

6. If the drone reaches its max distance from player, it will leash and return to the player, though it will re-engage with valuable tiles during its return trip.

Don’t forget to like and favorite if you enjoy the mod!

Also Be sure to check out my other mods if you haven’t already:

• Autonomous Modular Mech Companion [Frackin’ Universe]
• Autonomous Modular Mech Companion [Vanilla Version]
• The Precision Movement Mod (Frackin’ Universe Edition)
• The Precision Movement Mod (Vanilla Edition)
• DigitalCrafting Multiplayer Crash Fix
• [Frackin’ Universe]Growing Tray Eject Button QoL
• [oSB] [FU] Space Station Terminal Quick Sell QoL
• Reaper of Worlds – OP Mech Beam Arm for [Frackin’ Universe]