Extended Vanilla: Mining & Drills

Short description of this mod(pack): =======

• Expand your mining capabilities with multiple extraction machines.

This mod adds the following structures:

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• 6 tiers of electric mining drills, which will help you keep pace with your factory's growth. (3 in case of an SA - Space Age - run);
• 2 tiers of big mining drills: even faster, better, stronger. (SA run only);
• 2 tiers of pumpjacks, because we also want to pump oil faster. (American dream intensifies.)
• A brand new machine: the quarry. Structure and mechanics explained in a dedicated section here below. (EV: Refining needed)

Additional features:

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+ Balanced Progression: The unlockable tiers are tied to your technology progression, ensuring a smooth integration into your gameplay experience. + All stats are modifiable via startup settings. (Dedicated for each structure, easily understandable.)

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Space Age DLC Compatibility:

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+ Unlock is capped at Tier 3 to respect the inclusion of the Big Mining Drill on Vulcanus.

As in the rest of the Extended Vanilla mods, the gameplay integration is as seamless as I could make it.

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The quarry drill - go deeper to skyrocket megabases in space ======= + The quarry drill is a ultra-lategame megastructure: 11x11 tiles, 50MW base energy drain, 8 module slots, researchable after prometheum science is obtained. + What could justify such an huge capital investment? Simple: the quarry doesn't need ore patches to extract ores.

Rock agglomerate processing:

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+ Quarries don't extract just raw resources: such thing is not plausible kilometers deep into the ground, at that heat and pressure! + A compressed, rich resource is instead extracted: a rock/mineral agglomerate. + Agglomerates need to be extracted and then refined in order to obtain the wanted resources. + Different planet means different resource extracted: each planet in Space Age has it's own composition, so different minerals, different resources. + Quarries don't work by themselves: drills made of tungsten are needed for each iteration, and the different agglomerates can be obtained and processed only if working with the appropriate fluids.

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How do you craft them? Well, you can decide:

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+ You can directly craft each mining drill yeah, as you'd normally do. + Or you can just upcycle every tier with the next one with some alternative recycling recipes. (Overall cheaper, but requires dedicated crafting setups.) (Works with burner drills too.)

Direct or Upgrade?

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+ Direct Crafting: Faster Crafting - Easier to produce (Useful if you need a determinate amount to quickly create a strategic setup.) + Upgrading: Drill recycling - Cheaper recipes - Longer to make (Recipes can be automated from the beginning up to the highest tier. It's complicated, yeah, but it is cheaper.) (These recipes can't be handcrafted.)

Ah yeah, also Krastorio 2 and some other mods are supported (see bottom of the modpage), so that this mod can feel fully integrated in some major modpacks.

Balancing these machines is not as easy as it can look like, so I'd be thankful to see what you think of this mod both on both my discord server and in the comment section.

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Modularity & Customization: the Extended Vanilla philosophy ======= + The modding community increases as the player base does. So in a so crowded game compatibility is the key. + And since I can't keep up with all the mods that each day get released, updated and changed, I'll let you do that as much as the code lets me do it. + Mining drills and pumpjacks are defined by tons and tons of features, like mining speed, HPs, resource drainage, module slots, etc. + In this mod you can configure basically all of them, for all the machines, from drills to pumpjacks.

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Projects for the mod: (Last updated: 14 July 2026) ======= + Extend Quarry recipes to the other SA Vanilla planets. + Extend Quarry recipes to the other SA Modded planets. (Open to suggestions.)

Projects finished:

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+ ~~Updated to Factorio 2.0 and SA~~ (Done!)